I am a practicing Catholic. Where do my age old prejudices lie?
The Vatican should be a moral exemplar, not a politico. Murdering women and children is wrong. Men who do that don't deserve slight praise or any praise. They don't deserve approbation, they deserve condemnation.
Sometimes the Vatican is simply lost.
Why was the Vatican not able to just issue a blanket, non-descript sympathy statement? I would have preferred what you indicated, that they issue a statement praying for his soul, but admonishing his cruel and barbarous reign. And another thing (not that this is the Vatican's responsibility), nobody is talking about the fortune he amassed while his people starved. That also tells who the man really was.
The person I've been thinking of most throughout this he's dead/he's not dead season is Leon Klinghoffer (hopefully I've got the name right). That poor man who was tossed, wheelchair and all into the sea at the hands of the PLO, and left to die a horrible death. The PLO is straight from the pit of hell.
I continuously try to tell myself that the Vatican is not in need of the fumigation I sometimes think it's in need of. Then another piece appears.