Posted on 04/12/2007 2:24:24 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
JERUSALEM -- The Vatican and Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial got into a public spat Thursday over the wartime conduct of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi genocide, threatening to upset fragile relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish state.
Separately, church officials announced new developments Thursday in the Vatican's case to make Pius a saint. A massive dossier on Pius' virtues -- some six volumes of 3,000 pages -- was handed over to a panel of bishops and cardinals earlier this month to study, they said.
At issue in the Yad Vashem-Vatican dispute is a photograph of Pius in Yad Vashem's museum in Jerusalem with the caption: "Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the pope did not protest," refusing to sign a 1942 Allied condemnation of the massacre of Jews during World War II.
Pius "maintained his neutral position" with two exceptions, the caption reads, criticizing "his silence and absence of guidelines." The exceptions were appeals to the rulers of Hungary and Slovakia toward the end of the war, the caption says.
The Vatican's ambassador to Israel, Monsignor Antonio Franco, confirmed Thursday that he would not attend Yad Vashem's annual memorial service for Holocaust victims next week because of the Pius photograph.
"I don't intend to go to Yad Vashem if things remain the way they do," he said.
The memorial service is traditionally attended by all foreign ambassadors to Israel or their representatives. Yad Vashem said this would mark the first case in which a foreign emissary deliberately skipped the ceremony.
Yad Vashem is "shocked and disappointed" by Franco's decision, said spokeswoman Iris Rosenberg.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yariv Ovadia said the Holocaust "was one of the most traumatic events to befall the Jewish people ... and it is their decision whether they want to pay respect to the victims or not."
The disputed photo caption first appeared in 2005, when Yad Vashem opened its new museum. Shortly after, the previous Vatican ambassador asked that the caption be changed.
Yad Vashem has not done so, insisting its research on the pope's role was accurate.
Yad Vashem said it would be ready to re-examine Pius XII's conduct during the Holocaust if the Vatican opened its World War II-era archives to the museum's research staff and new material emerged. Despite frequent requests from Holocaust researchers, the Vatican has denied access to major parts of its archives, including wartime papers.
Rosenberg said the museum "would continue to present the historical truth on Pius XII as it is known to scholars today."
The Vatican has struggled to defend its wartime pope, insisting Pius spearheaded discreet diplomacy that saved thousands of Jews.
Franco said in his letter to Yad Vashem that he found the Pius XII caption offensive to Catholics.
"I respect the memory of the martyrs of the Holocaust but also the memory of the pope," he said. "The right of one does not infringe on the right of the other."
In Rome, the Rev. Peter Gumpel, who is spearheading Pius' sainthood cause, said he was "shocked" by Yad Vashem's portrayal of Pius.
He maintained that historians "say they find it difficult to understand how people can say that Pope Pius XII did nothing for the Jews. To present him now this way, I find it very difficult to understand."
Gumpel said he hoped the panel of bishops and cardinals would decide on Pius' case this year. If the clerics approve the dossier, they will pass their recommendations on to Pope Benedict XVI, who could then sign a decree on Pius' virtues, the first major step toward possible beatification. The Vatican would then have to confirm a miracle attributed to Pius' intercession for him to be beatified, and a second miracle for him to be canonized.
Israel and the Vatican established diplomatic relations in 1994, after hundreds of years of painful relations between Catholicism and Judaism.
Rabbi David Rosen, who helped negotiate the 1994 agreement, said the relationship remains strong, despite Israel's failure to keep key promises to the Vatican on issues including taxation.
Rosen, in charge of interfaith relations at the American Jewish Committee, said the dispute over the pope should have been resolved quietly, not in public.
"It is certainly very regrettable and will leave a bad taste on both sides," he said, adding that he did not expect lasting damage to the relationship.
I'm sorry, they weren't martyrs... they were victims.
I wonder if Switzerland and Sweden, also neutrals, refused to sign Secretary of State Hull's condemnation?
No castigation prominently displayed for any other neutrals? Hmmmm.
Did Pius refuse to sign because he could not at the same time condemn the slaughter of religious believers by Stalin, the America's ally?
The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas....
He is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all.
- Editorial, The New York Times, Dec. 25, 1941
FYI.
Throughout the Holocaust, Pius XII was consistently besieged with pleas for help on behalf of the Jews. In the spring of 1940, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Isaac Herzog, asked the papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione to intercede to keep Jews in Spain from being deported to Germany. He later made a similar request for Jews in Lithuania. The papacy did nothing.(5) Within the Pope's own church, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna told Pius XII about Jewish deportations in 1941. In 1942, the Slovakian charge d'affaires, a position under the supervision of the Pope, reported to Rome that Slovakian Jews were being systematically deported and sent to death camps.(6) In October 1941, the Assistant Chief of the U.S. delegation to the Vatican, Harold Tittman, asked the Pope to condemn the atrocities. The response came that the Holy See wanted to remain "neutral," and that condemning the atrocities would have a negative influence on Catholics in German-held lands.(7) In late August 1942, after more than 200,000 Ukrainian Jews had been killed, Ukrainian Metropolitan Andrej Septyckyj wrote a long letter to the Pope, referring to the German government as a regime of terror and corruption, more diabolical than that of the Bolsheviks. The Pope replied by quoting verses from Psalms and advising Septyckyj to "bear adversity with serene patience."(8) On September 18, 1942, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, wrote, "The massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms."(9) Yet, that same month when Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the Vatican, warned the Pope that his silence was endangering his moral prestige, the Secretary of State responded on the Pope's behalf that it was impossible to verify rumors about crimes committed against the Jews.(10) Wladislaw Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish government-in-exile, appealed to the Pope in January 1943 to publicly denounce Nazi violence. Bishop Preysing of Berlin did the same, at least twice. Pius XII refused.(11)...CRIES FOR HELP
That was a different NYT.
Today's NYT (the Old Gray Whore) is a shadow of that institution, and apparently someone at Yad Vashem reads it.
.
But what do you think of this article, Petronski? Just more character assassination and lies?
The caption of that photo is at best a half-truth.
St Max Kolbe and the other millions of Catholic martyrs of the Nazis - pray for us!
Maybe the museum just hasn’t heard yet about those 860,000 Jews that Pius XII personally saved from the death camps.
The Israelis leaked this to Asia News. Story is here (note the last line):
Vatican envoy threatens to boycott Holocaust memorial
Jerusalem, Apr. 12, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The Vatican’s representative in Israeli is threatening to boycott a Holocaust commemoration ceremony because of a public attack on Pope Pius XII.
Archbishop Antonio Franco, the apostolic nuncio in the Holy Land, has lodged a strong objection against the display of a photo of Pope Pius XII, with a caption that suggests the Pope was indifferent to the suffering of Jews under the Nazi regime, at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. The caption claims that the wartime Pope refused to sign a statement condemning the Holocaust, and “maintained his neutrality throughout the war.”
In a private letter to the head of the Yad Vashem museum, suggesting that either the photo should be removed from a new exhibit, or the caption should be corrected to provide a more balanced perspective. As it stands, he said, the caption does not reflect the weight of historical evidence, which shows that Pope Pius worked actively to protect Jews from the Nazi extermination drive.
Because Yad Vashem officials have not corrected the caption, Archbishop Franco told the AsiaNews service that he had written to the museum director, pressing his case. He warned that if the offensive caption remains, he would feel obliged to be absent from Holocaust memorial ceremonies at the museum next week.
The papal representative stressed that he did not intend to cause a public controversy. His letter was a private communication, he pointed out, “not a press conference.” But museum officials chose to make the letter a public matter, he told AsiaNews: “They gave it to the press.”
This load of horsepucky about Pope Pius and the Jews, which according to recently released documents originated with KGB propagandists at a time when the USSR was worried about the influence of the Papacy on the stability of the Warsaw pact, has been damaging to the reputation of the Church among the ignorant, but it has been far more damaging to the Jews. Most of those who believe this garbage were already Catholic bashers anyway. But it has badly damaged relations between Jews and Catholics.
Israel could use Vatican support, indeed they can use all the moral and political support they can get, but the leftists have continually gone out of their way to offend Christians, spread lies, and insult the Church. In the end, this can only succeed in angering Catholics and making enemies for Israel among people who are trying to be friends. That is NOT a good result. Very self-destructive.
Don’t confuse us with facts, madam!
;-o)
http://www.catholicleague.org/research/papacy_under_attack.htm
http://www.catholicleague.org/pius/piuswhitehead.htm
Another day, same old crap.
Frank Sheed, Arch-Papist
The Dead Rabbits
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