The following reaction was predictable - some people, like Pavlov's dog, always have their tongues hanging out waiting to bark and snarl when the right button is pushed. I'm only surprised the outrcy has been limited so far...
Pope's praise of Pius XII
dismays Holocaust survivors
By FRANCES D'EMILIO
ROME, Nov. 22 (AP) - A Holocaust survivors group has voiced dismay over Pope Benedict XVI's assertion in a new book that wartime Pontiff Pius XII was a "great righteous" man who saved more Jews than anyone else.
Benedict's "comments fill us with pain and sadness and cast a menacing shadow on Vatican-Jewish relations," said Elan Steinberg, vice president of American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, in an emailed statement late Saturday.
Some contend Pius didn't speak out enough against mass deportation and killing of 6 million Jews by Germany's Nazi regime and its collaborators.
In "Light of the World," to be published on Tuesday, Benedict lavishes praise on Pius, who progressed down the Vatican's road to possible sainthood when the Pope last year formally hailed his predecessor's "heroic virtues."
He notes pleas from Jewish groups and historians that sainthood efforts be put on hold until the Vatican opens up its archives on the 1939-1958 papacy. The Vatican says the documents, which Benedict says number in the "hundreds of thousands," will be opened up to scholars when archival work is ready, likely in a few years.
Benedict reveals in the book that he "ordered an inspection of the unpublished archival records, because I wanted to be absolutely sure." The "records confirm the positive things we know, but not the negative things that are alleged."
"The decisive thing is what he did and what he tried to do, and on that score, we really must acknowledge, I believe, that he was one of the great righteous men and that he saved more Jews than anyone else," Benedict said, offering perhaps his most sweeping praise of Pius' papacy to date.
But Steinberg contended that
that assertion "is categorically contradicted by the known historical record." [No, Mr. Steinberg. It is 'contradicted' only by the utter refusal of Pius XII's critics and obstinate persons like you to look at the actual record, because if you did, then you would see that if anyone deserves to be recognized by the Jews as 'a just man' by their definition of it, no one is better deserving than Pius XII. You must start looking at what he did, not at what he failed to say! After all, no one has ever said 'Words speak louder than actions!" - especially not words unsaid!]
Neither Benedict nor Steinberg cited numbers.
An Israeli diplomat, Pinchas Lapide, wrote in 1967 that Pius and the Catholic church should be credited with saving between 700,000 and 860,000 Jews from certain death. Holocaust scholars dismiss the figure as guesswork.
[Reporter D'Emilio is being utterly disingenuous, if not deliberately dhishonest. In the flood of articles that have been written about Pius XII's wartime work in the past three years alone, many have referred to the number of Jews saved by Pius XII as 'at least 8,000' in Rome alone, and as many as 12,000 in all of Italy. As a journalist, she surely saw these activities, and it was her duty to provide these figures, citing the sources appropriately, since they are even more available than the Pinchas Lapide figures. And those figures, even if you take the lower estimates, are certainly much more than other rightly celebrated anti-Nazi heroes like Oskar Schindler saved. And yet, in Jewish lore, all it takes is to save one life... Pius XII did enough for at least 8,000 lifetimes.]
If Pius becomes a saint, that would create an "unfathomable breach" in Catholic-Jewish relations, Steinberg said. "Pius' silence during the Holocaust was a profound moral failure," he said.
Benedict reiterated the Vatican position that protesting publicly against the Germany occupiers of Rome would have endangered the lives of Jews who were sheltered in convents and monasteries.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/11/2010 15:50]