Here's the best-written news report I have seen so far of the Pope's Synagogue visit - surprisingly from a Jewish news agency. It avoids most of the media pitfalls, to begin with, and, except for a surprising failure to mention the 'Ten Commandments' part of the Pope's address [maybe the paragraph was dropped in posting?], it does not miss the main points even if it is rather concise. Plus, it reports a very beautiful insight by Rabbi Arthur Schneier of New York.
Pope seeks to mend ties
in Synagogue visit
by Ruth Ellen Gruber
ROME, Jan. 19 (JTA) - When Pope Benedict XVI visited this city’s main synagogue, sparring between the pope and Jewish leaders over Pope Pius XII’s role in the Holocaust grabbed headlines.
But the emotion-charged visit Sunday held broader significance, as Jewish leaders and the German-born pontiff sought to mend strained relations and reaffirm a commitment to Christian-Jewish dialogue.
“Despite a dramatic history, the unresolved problems and the misunderstandings, it is our shared visions and common goals that should be given pride of place,” said Rome’s chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, speaking to a packed sanctuary from in front of the ornate ark. “The image of respect and friendship that emanates from this encounter must be an example for all those who are watching.”
Benedict’s visit came in the wake of tensions sparked most recently by his decision last month to move Pius XII closer to sainthood. A year ago, the Pope triggered an outcry by revoking the excommunication order on a traditionalist bishop who has denied the Holocaust.
Critics accuse Pius of having turned a blind eye to Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. Rabbi Giuseppe Laras, the president of the Italian Rabbinical Assembly, boycotted the synagogue ceremony to protest Pope Benedict’s move on Pius.
Rome Jewish Community President Riccardo Pacifici, whose grandparents died in Auschwitz, acknowledged the concern over Pius in his welcoming address to the Pope and repeated calls for the Vatican to open its secret archives to resolve the issue.
But he also paid tribute to individual Catholics and Catholic institutions that had helped Jews—and choked back tears describing how his father and uncle had been saved in a Catholic convent.
“Because of this, the silence of Pius XII in the face of the Shoah still hurts like a missed opportunity,” Pacifici said. “Maybe he could not have stopped the death trains, but he could have sent a signal, a word of extreme comfort, of human solidarity, for our brothers who were transported to the ovens of Auschwitz.”
Benedict in his speech minutes later did not mention Pius by name but implicitly defended him, repeating the stance that the Vatican had “provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way.”
The main focus of Benedict’s speech, however, was a reaffirmation of commitment to the Jewish-Catholic dialogue launched by the Second Vatican Council’s
Nostra Aetate declaration of 1965 and fostered by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.
The visit took place on the day marked by the Catholic Church as an annual Day of Dialogue with Judaism.
Memory of the Holocaust, the 82-year-old Pope said, “compels us to strengthen the bonds that unite us so that our mutual understanding, respect and acceptance may always increase.”
Benedict repeated John Paul’s prayers for forgiveness for Catholic anti-Semitism.
“The Church has not failed to deplore the failings of her sons and daughters, begging forgiveness for all that could in any way have contributed to the scourge of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism,” he said. “May these wounds be healed forever!”
Benedict’s words were interrupted by applause several times and drew a standing ovation from an audience that included Jewish, Catholic and Muslim representatives, Holocaust survivors, political leaders and the 100-year-old Nobel Prize-winning scientist Rita Levi Montalcini, who was persecuted under fascist Italy’s World War II-era anti-Semitic laws.
The two-hour visit was only the second time a Pope had visited the synagogue, a towering structure on the bank of the Tiber River in the old ghetto area where Roman Jews were forced to live until 1870.
Rome’s Jews form the oldest continuous Jewish community in the western Diaspora. John Paul II’s visit in 1986 was a milestone in Catholic-Jewish dialogue.
Before entering the synagogue, Benedict, an unwilling member of the Hitler youth organization as a teenager, placed a wreath at a memorial plaque honoring the more than 1,000 Roman Jews who were deported to Auschwitz in 1943. He also placed a wreath at a plaque honoring a toddler killed in a 1982 Palestinian terrorist attack on the synagogue that wounded scores of worshipers.
“We live in a world of symbolism, and his going to synagogue was a very symbolic statement,” said Rabbi Arthur Schneier, the founder and president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation.
Schneier said the Pope was attempting to bolster a template for a world in which the Holocaust generation was passing and the epicenter of Catholicism was shifting to Latin America, Asia and Africa — global regions where few Jews live.
“A picture is worth 1,000 words,” said Schneier, a Holocaust survivor who hosted Benedict in 2008 at his Park East Synagogue in New York. “Think what it means to a priest in, say, a village in Bolivia to see the Pope during this visit to the synagogue. It is a message that dialogue with Judaism is on. The tracks were laid by the Second Vatican Council and the trains are running.”
[Bravo and very well put, Rabbi Schneier!]
Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom also attended Sunday, and he called the papal meeting “a historic moment.”
At a news conference afterward, Shalom said he also had asked the Pope to open the Vatican’s secret World War II archives.
[OK, already! What part of "They will be ready for outside researchers in 2014" is not clear to y'all? You would think the Vatican has been stonewalling on the request!
Meanwhile, how about a serious commentary by some Jewish scholar on the 12-volume compilation of the relevant documents (from those still-closed archives) that the Vatican put out in the mid-60s?
Or on all the Pius XII material already available in archives that are open up to 1939, covering the Pius XI Papacy, during which Eugenio Pacelli was Apostolic Nuncio in Germany and then Vatican Secretary of State? Anything there that Pacelli was actually anti-Semitic, or that he colluded with any of the Nazi leaders?
Anyone? Or does no Jewish scholar think it worth his while to study those documents because there is no smoking gun to be found? And what new pretext will they have if, after 2014, they still fail to find a smoking gun?
Elizabeth Lev, who also writes now for the AOL news-and-commentary outlet POLITICS DAILY, has a great story that conveys the sense she was really there - as opposed to the standard news reports [on the template of the news agency wire] that all read as if they were based simply on available speech texts and watching the telecast of the event.
Additionally, of course, she articulates what was so obvious Sunday from the intial reports filed about the visit, when I commented in my post of the text of the Holy Father's address: "How deplorable it is that in the media's morbid preoccupation over its 'tension watch' in Jewish-Catholic relations, the initial reports said virtually nothing about the Holy Father's splendid, beautifully crafted, eminently sensible discourse on the essence of those relations, other than his reference to what the Vatican did in World War II! Without saying so explicitly, he also brings a whole new light to why Western civilization is said to be based on the 'Judaeo-Christian tradition'. And he spoke of Jesus a couple of times to his Jewish audience in the most natural way!..."
At Pope's trip to Rome Synagogue,
the press misses the story
by ELIZABETH LEV
ROME, Jan. 18 -- Just as the massive TV trucks parked around Rome's synagogue obscured the sight of one of the city's most beautiful buildings, so too have news reports obscured the real importance of the Pope's visit to the Jewish community here.
Late Sunday afternoon, Pope Benedict XVI made the short trip across the Tiber River to the Great Synagogue of Rome, located on the site of the former Jewish ghetto. The weather was chilly, but the greetings just the opposite.
Riccardo Di Segni, chief rabbi of Rome, and Riccardo Pacifici, president of the Jewish Community of Rome, welcomed the Pope on the steps of the synagogue amid thunderous cheers of "Viva il Papa!"
Benedict was accompanied by
[among many other Church officials closely involved in dialog with the Jews] Archbishop Fouad Twal, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, and Archbishop Antonio Franco, apostolic nuncio in Israel, to underscore his encouragement of inter-religious relations by drawing Rome and Israel closer together.
Despite the trite headlines about the "Pope's Controversial Visit," there was no real controversy; the chief rabbi had extended the invitation to Benedict in 2006 and the Roman Jewish community pulled out all the stops for this event.
This was Benedict's third visit to a Jewish place of worship (after stops at the synagogues of Cologne in 2005 and New York in 2008). Pope John Paul II became the first Pope to visit the Roman synagogue in April 1986, and Benedict, following in his predecessor's footsteps, has now created a double precedent.
Future popes will now be expected to visit the synagogue, just as they do the mayor's office, Parliament and the local parishes.
As with the Pope's Holy Land trip, this visit began with an acknowledgment of the suffering of the Jewish community through the Holocaust and other violence. Benedict first placed red roses before the memorial tablets that record the roundup and deportation of 1,022 Jews on Oct. 16, 1943; he then laid a wreath beneath the plaque commemorating the Oct. 9, 1982, terrorist attack on the synagogue, which killed a 2-year-old child, Stefano Tache.
More than merely remembering hostilities by outsiders, however, Benedict took the occasion to acknowledge the turbulent history between Christian Rome and its Jewish denizens.
He chose a special date for the visit, the feast of Mo'ed di Piombo, which recalls the miraculous event of 1793 when an unexpected rainstorm put out a fire set by the Roman populace in the Jewish ghetto.
Jan. 17 is also dedicated to the Study and Development of Dialogue between Catholics and Jews, celebrating its 21st anniversary this year.
The real spirit of Benedict's visit and his encounter with the chief Rabbi was not one of recrimination but of furthering dialogue, though most major news outlets were too busy waving the red flag of WWII and Pope Pius XII to see that.
So, despite all satellite feeds streaming from the place of worship yesterday, there was no hostility, just
singing and praying amid an ecstatic crowd of Muslims, Jews and Christians, all brought together in peace.
Benedict not only visited the sacred space of the synagogue but also the recently restored Jewish Museum, where numerous artifacts testify to the 2,000-year-old history and culture of the Jewish community in Rome.
For their part, officials of the Jewish Museum put together a spectacular exhibition for their visitor. Despite numerous hardships, the Jewish community managed to conserve 14 panels dating from the 18th century, made to celebrate the investiture ceremony of the popes.
Curator Daniela di Castro, who accompanied the Pope on his tour of the unique exhibits, noted that Benedict "is the first pontiff to visit a Jewish museum, just as the Jewish Museum of Rome is the first Jewish museum to be visited by a Pope. . . . Hence, it is an immense honor for our museum."
Despite all the makings of an upbeat story amid news of natural and diplomatic disasters, most journalistic accounts focused on tensions caused by Pope Pius XII's so-called "guilty silence" regarding the Holocaust, and Pope Benedict's recent recognition of the heroic virtues of this same Pope, who is on his way to sainthood.
Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, gave marching orders to the world press when he expressed disapproval of Benedict's support of Pius XII in an interview with Italy's Sky TG24 television last week.
While the rabbi's distaste for Pius XII is a matter of public record, his historical memory has been known to be a bit foggy. He has denounced the Pontiff for silence over the violence of Kristallnacht, despite the fact that Pius was not yet Pope when the event took place in 1938.
He also seems to have forgotten that Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir commented on death of Pius XII in 1958 by writing: "We share in the grief of humanity at the passing away of His Holiness. . . . When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the pope was raised for its victims. . . . We mourn a great servant of peace."
Rabbi Lau's weak mastery of history seems to be shared by Pacifici, the president of the Jewish Community of Rome. Pacifici participated pleasantly enough in Sunday's festivities, but couldn't resist a dig -- undoubtedly prompted by the multitude of TV cameras -- when he referred to the supposed silence of Pope Pius XII as a "missed opportunity."
Pius XII's actions are known to have spoken louder than his words. Gary Krupp, the Jewish founder of the Pave the Way Foundation, has dedicated the last eight years to collecting video testimony and archival evidence that demonstrate the direct action of Pope Pius XII in saving hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives by issuing false baptismal certificates, obtaining visas for refugees and ordering religious houses and parishes to hide Jews.
Pacifici is the first to thank the religious sisters of St. Marta in Florence, who saved him during the war, but
he doesn't recognize that they, like hundreds of other convents in Italy and Germany, were acting under Pius's direct orders.
Emilio Zolli, the chief rabbi of Rome during the German occupation, however, knew well of Pius's role. After the war, Zolli converted to Catholicism and took Pius's baptismal name, Eugenio.
In his biography,
Before the Dawn, Zolli wrote: "No hero in all of history was more militant, more fought against, none more heroic, than Pius XII in pursuing the works of true charity."
Simple enough information for any journalist to research, but in this case, the press maintained a guilty silence of its own.
The New York Times even forgot its own history.
On Dec. 25, 1942, it published an editorial saying, "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe. . . . He is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all."
Instead of puzzling over whether Pius XII could have done more for the Jews, maybe we should be asking who did more?
I am glad Lev was able to include some of the more striking testimonials about Pius XII as a real 'righteous among the people' in her story. There are quite a few more from Jews who spoke out between 1943 and 1958, the year of Pius XII's death - all of which have been consigned to oblivion in one fell swoop by his detractors. And yet, it should almost be obligatory for any conscientious journalist writing a news report or commentary about Pius XII's wartime actions to insert the information as a convenient ast-a-glance reference! (Except it would easily double the wordage of the original story).
The sad fact is that Pius XII's detractors - Jewish and Christian - will not even acknowledge he did anything positive at all. For them, none of the possibly tens of thousands of Jews sheltered by Catholic institutions from their Nazi hounds counts at all, because he was 'silent'!
It is a perversion of reason and common sense that has no rational explanation. Or only a psychiatric one. Perhaps if I took the time, I might be able to see how Rene Girard's scapegoat mechanism and theory of victimization applies in this Jewish compulsion to displace all their frustrations and resentments over the Shoah onto Pius XII - a convenient scapegoat not only because he is such a towering figure in history, but better yet, he is also Catholic.
They are hitting two birds with one stone - assigning guilt for the Holocaust to Pius XII and the Church - while in the process, almost completely forgetting the real culprits, Hitler and Nazism.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/01/2010 21:01]