Criticised Israeli ambassador backtracks on rare praise of Pope Pius XII
The comments made last Thursday by Mordechay Lewy, the Israeli ambassador to the Vatican, were some of the warmest ever made by a Jewish official about Pius. Most have been very critical of his record.
In an indication of how sensitive the subject of Pius is among Jews, Lewy was quickly assailed by some Jewish groups, including Holocaust survivors. In a statement issued in what appeared to be an attempt to calm the dispute within the world Jewish community, Lewy said his comments were “embedded in a larger historical context”.
“Given the fact that this context is still under the subject of ongoing and future research, passing my personal historical judgment on it was premature,” Lewy said.
The question of what Pius did or did not do to help Jews has tormented Catholic-Jewish relations for decades and it is very rare for a leading Jewish or Israeli official to praise Pius. Many Jews accuse Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked quietly behind the scenes because speaking out would have led to Nazi reprisals against Catholics and Jews in Europe.
Lewy, speaking at a ceremony to honour an Italian priest who helped Jews, had said Catholic convents and monasteries opened their doors to save Jews in the days following a Nazi sweep of Rome’s Ghetto on Oct. 16, 1943. In his speech on Thursday night, Lewy said: “There is reason to believe that this happened under the supervision of the highest Vatican officials, who were informed about what was going on.”
“So it would be a mistake to say that the Catholic Church, the Vatican and the pope himself opposed actions to save the Jews. To the contrary, the opposite is true,” he said.
Elan Steinberg, vice-president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, called Lewy’s comments unsustainable. “For any ambassador to make such specious comments is morally wrong. For the Israeli envoy to do so is particularly hurtful to Holocaust survivors who suffered grievously because of Pius’s silence,” Steinberg said in a statement. He said Lewy had “disgracefully conflated the praiseworthy actions of elements in the Catholic Church to rescue Jews with the glaring failure of Pope Pius to do so”.
Jewish leaders dismayed over Pius XII comments in pope book
Jewish leaders reacted with dismay Sunday to comments in Pope Benedict’s new book that his wartime predecessor Pius was a “great, righteous” man who “saved more Jews than anyone else.”
Many Jews accuse Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of having turned a blind eye to the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked quietly behind the scenes because speaking out would have prompted Nazi reprisals against Catholics and Jews in Europe.
In his book to be published Tuesday, called “Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Sign of the Times,” the German pope says Pius did what he could and did not protest more clearly because he feared the consequences.
In the book-length interview with a German journalist, the pope says of Pius: “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.”
“Pope Benedict’s comments fill us with pain and sadness and cast a menacing shadow on Vatican-Jewish relations,” said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.
When the pope visited Rome’s synagogue in January, the leader of the city’s Jewish community told him bluntly that Pius should have spoken out more forcefully against the Holocaust to show solidarity with Jews being led to the Auschwitz death camp.
I completely agree with the points of the following author. Many, many prominent Jewish leaders; whether they be Israeli politicians or the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem have come out in support of Pius XII and his efforts during the second world war. Also, one should be careful of implying some sort of universal opinion among the Jews. Every time a Jew makes a statement about this issue, the press picks it up, and often portrays it as a legitimate, well thought out, well researched opinion, that speaks for the Jews as a whole.
There are enormous amounts of evidence supporting the view that Pius XII helped save Jews during the Holocaust. The only evidence that those who say he didn’t have to go on is that he never made a public statement against the Nazis. The reason why he didn’t is that he judged that in doing so would probably endanger many more Jewish lives. We mustn’t forget that before he was pope, he worked for years as a apostolic nuncio, meaning that he was very familiar with international politics.
When all of this is said and done, we take away this. One, there is no actual evidence that he didn’t help Jews (and other persecuted people) and plenty that he did. Two, that the press often picks up any Jewish voice (no matter how credible or not) as one of authority and one that represents the entire Jewish population.
So will this debate ever come to end? I doubt it, at least not soon. Again, I find my self agreeing with the above author; Catholicism isn’t without its enemies, and it is certainly easy to imply that the pope didn’t help stop the Holocaust as a way of attacking them. Smear campaigns, name calling, et cetera, are nothing but age old methods of propaganda that are alive and well in this ‘debate’.
Selected quotes from new book by Pope Benedict
Here are some quotes from the English translation of Pope Benedict’s new book, “Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Sign of the Times”. The book, in question and answer format with the German Catholic journalist Peter Seewald, is due to be published on Tuesday in several languages.
On condoms to fight the spread of AIDS:
“There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralisation, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanisation of sexuality.”
“She (the Church) does not regard it (the use of condoms) as a real or moral solution, but, in this case, there can nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality”.
——
On the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis:
“Yes, it is a great crisis, we have to say that. It was upsetting for all of us. Suddenly so much filth. It was really almost like the crater of a volcano, out of which suddenly a tremendous cloud of filth came, darkening and soiling everything, so that above all the priesthood suddenly seemed to be a place of shame and every priest was under the suspicion of being one like that too.”
Condoms, Pius XII, sex abuse and other main points in pope book
Pope Benedict says in a new book, Light of the World, that condoms may be used in certain limited cases to prevent the spread of AIDS. He also addressed several issues facing the Church in the book, which is based on a long interview with German Catholic journalist Peter Seewald.
Here are some of the main points in the new book:
* CONDOM USE – Pope Benedict says the Church does not see condom use as “a real or moral solution” to the AIDS problem. But it could be justified in some cases, such as a prostitute who uses one to reduce the risk of infection and thus take responsibility for his actions (see an excerpt here).
* SEXUAL ABUSE SCANDALS – Recent scandals of sexual abuse of minors by priests were “an unprecedented shock,” even though he had followed the issue for several years. He adds he can understand why people would quit the Church in protest.
* WILLIAMSON – The Vatican did not know in January 2009, when it lifted excommunications on four ultra-traditionalist bishops, that one of them was a Holocaust denier and would not have done it for him if it had known, the pope says.
* PIUS XII – The wartime Pope Pius XII, who critics accuse of not saving Jews during the Holocaust, was “one of the great righteous men (who) saved more Jews than anyone else.”
* PAPAL RESIGNATION – The pope indicates he would be ready to resign voluntarily if he were “no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office,” thus becoming only the second to do so since Celestine V in 1294.
Theologians, historians urge Benedict to slow Pius XII saint process
A group of Catholic theologians and historians has written to Pope Benedict XVI urging him slow down the beatification process for the late Pope Pius XII, the next step on the way to making him a saint. Critics accuse Pius of not doing enough to prevent the Holocaust and the theologians and historians say they need to finish research into the Vatican’s wartime archives before the pope goes ahead with this case.
The letter is extremely rare because in the past it has mostly been Jewish groups and not Catholic academics who have written to popes about the issue, which has long strained Catholic-Jewish relations.
See my news story on this letter here.
Here is the text obtained by Reuters:
20 February 2010
His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
Apostolic Palace
@ gabriel’s statement “However, his public record is well known and the available evidence seems to point in the opposite direction.” what evidence are you talking about, the communist’s or KGB propaganda which they themselves retracted? Even the Allied Forces especially america and britain failed to speak loud and clear in behalf of the jews notwithstanding that they have arms, you are expecting Vatican to speak loud and clear considering Italy was also an axis country and they don’t have arms and military force? huh!
Visiting synagogues is not getting easier for Pope Benedict
Visiting synagogues is not getting any easier for Pope Benedict.
Today’s meeting with Rome’s Jewish community was the third time he has entered a synagogue, which is a kind of a papal record considering that his predecessor Pope John Paul — probably the first pope to do so since Saint Peter two millennia ago — made only one such visit himself.
His first synagogue visit, in Cologne only months after his 2005 election, was heavy with the symbolism of a German pope visiting Jews in Germany. At one point, the rabbi referred to an elderly woman in the congregation who had a concentration camp number tattooed on her arm. He did this, though, to say that she could not have never imagined back there in Auschwitz that her son — a leader of the Cologne Jewish community present at the ceremony — would one day welcome the pope to a synagogue in Germany. It was tense, but it seemed to be a good start.
Three years later, he got a warm welcome at New York’s Park East Synagogue. Chief Rabbi Arthur Schneier, a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor, thanked God that both of them had made it through the Second World War and seen the Catholic-Jewish reconciliation begun by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. “Your presence here gives us hope and courage for the road we still have to travel together,” he added. Benedict seemed to be getting over the stumbling block of his German background and finding a way to reach out to Jews.
But instead of getting easier, today’s third visit — to the synagogue at Rome’s old Jewish ghetto — turned out to be the most difficult of all. Over 1,000 Roman Jews were deported to Nazi death camps in 1943; only 16 of them survived. The local Jewish community was divided over the visit, with some urging that it be put off after Benedict honoured his wartime predecessor Pope Pius XII last month by moving him closer to sainthood. Pius’s controversial role during the Holocaust — or non-role, as his critics see it, because he did not speak out — is a roadblock on the path of Catholic-Jewish reconciliation. But Benedict seems determined to honour him, and every time he speaks or acts in his favour, the barrier seems to get higher.
Rome’s Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni insisted on going ahead with the visit but Rabbi Giuseppe Laras, head of the Italian Rabbinical Assembly, boycotted it. Citing Benedict’s support for Pius and his decision to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust denying ultra-traditionalist bishop, Laras said ties between Catholic and Jews had “become increasingly weaker during this pontificate.”
Benedict’s visit began a stop at the ghetto monument to Rome’s deported Jews. At the synagogue along the banks of the Tiber, Di Segni and his colleagues greeted the pope and escorted him into the imposing building. Among those attending were a handful of aging concentration camp survivors wearing blue shawls with prisoner’s stripes. They got a long round of applause when they were introduced during the ceremony.
Pope’s synagogue visit splits Italy’s Jews over stand on Pius XII
Deep splits have appeared in Italy’s Jewish community just before Pope Benedict makes his first visit to Rome’s synagogue, with at least one senior rabbi and one Holocaust survivor announcing a boycott. The row revolves around the pontiff’s decision last month to raise nearer to sainthood wartime Pope Pius XII, who many Jews say did not do enough to help Jews facing persecution by Nazi Germany, a position the Vatican rejects.
Rome’s Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni has decided to go ahead with the visit and told Reuters he believed only God could judge Pius XII.
Rabbi Giuseppe Laras, president of Italy’s rabbinical assembly, announced he will not attend the visit on Sunday to protest at what he said were a series of Vatican moves seen as disrespectful to Jews, including the pope’s decision to start the rehabilitation process last year of traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson, who denied the extent of the Holocaust.
“The pope knew perfectly well that several weeks later he would be visiting the synagogue and he knew how sensitive we are about the issue of Pius XII. Wouldn’t it have been opportune to delay (the decision) by a few months?” Laras asked in the Milan newspaper Il Giornale.
Laras, a former chief rabbi of Milan, said in another interview in the German Jewish weekly Jüdische Allgemeine that the visit should have been cancelled. He said ties between Catholic and Jews had “become increasingly weaker during this pontificate.”
The Jüdische Allgemeine interview (the headline at left reads: “I’m staying away from the pope’s visit”) is worth reading in full. Here is our translation from German:
Q. Rabbi, the pope will be the guest of Rome’s Jewish community on Sunday. What do you expect from the visit?
All of you need to remember that Isreal is God’s chosen people. They will come to the truth of Jesus when God lets them. The we will all be holding the hand of a Jew. Everything that has happened in this world is a test for us, that is all. Where is your heart? where is your mind/ If you read the Bible or the Torah or any thing about God you know that the wicked will be destroyed and the rightious will live forever..that is all anyone needs to know in order to save yourself, and help others the best as you can. The past is the past and has no meaning except to see where your heart is really at. Haiti and all tradigy cannot be said to be because of the wrong religion, it could be a test to show other people how small minded you are. Look to God and keep your heart pure.
Rome’s chief rabbi says only God can judge Pius XII on Holocaust
Only God can judge whether war-time Pope Pius XII did enough to save Jews and whether he should have spoken out more forcefully against the Holocaust, according to Rome’s Chief Rabbi Riccardo di Segni, who will host Pope Benedict for his first visit to the Italian capital’s synagogue on Sunday.
Speaking to Reuters at his synagogue along the Tiber River, Di Segni criticised a comment by Cardinal Walter Kasper that Pius “followed the will of God as he understood it” and had saved thousands of Jews in Rome and elsewhere. Some Jews have accused Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of not doing enough to help Jews facing persecution.
“I think that it can be morally dangerous and, religiously speaking, dangerous to say that the will of God is to be silent and not to say a word in front of the suffering of the people,” Di Segni said, speaking in English. “So let us be careful and let us not (look for) a way of absolving people. I think only God may understand if people have done His will righteously, not us.”
Benedict’s visit to the synagogue has been overshadowed by his decision last month to move Pius closer towards sainthood. Jewish groups reacted angrily when he approved a decree recognising Pius’s “heroic virtues.” The two remaining steps to sainthood are beatification and canonisation, which could take many years. Jewish groups had wanted a freeze on the process until more Vatican archives were made available to scholars.
Here is the transcript of my interview with Di Segni:
Q. The pope coming on Sunday to your synagogue has taken on many levels of significance. One is the continuation of the process begun by John Paul. But are you afraid that the visit might be overshadowed by issues surrounding Pius XII?
A. “Each step of dialogue with Christians is very complicated so every day we have to face discussions and polemics and so on. The sensitivity of survivors all around the world is the same the sensitivity that is felt where so we are very conscious of the difficulties of this moment. We have to try to find the right way to go ahead with the process of friendship with Christians and this is the challenge for today. We are absolutely aware that there are difficulties, that the problem absolutely aware that there are difficulties, that the problem of the past, the interpretation of the past, is one of the main difficulties, but we also have the problem of the the main difficulties, but we also have the problem of the future so we all have to understand what is possible to do in this narrow street.”
Papal Infallibility means never having to say “I was wrong”.
After all, if it wasn’t God’s will, you wouldn’t have done it.
And as the only person to know God’s will is God (and you, of course), nobody has the right to say you loused it up.
Because if the Pope could be judged in the same manner he would judge you, the whole system falls apart. Without the acceptance of hypocrisy, no religion could survive.
So as the good Lord once said: “Render unto the chumps their idol”.
Who wrote the pope’s speeches for this trip?
Who wrote Pope Benedict’s speeches for this trip? Why do his speeches to Muslims hit the spot and those to Jews seem to fall short? Does he have two teams of speechwriters, one more attuned to the audience than the other?
We don’t know the answers (yet) but a pattern suggesting that has certainly emerged. Look at what he had to say today in Bethlehem to Palestinians, Christian and Muslim:
- To Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas: “Mr President, the Holy See supports the right of your people to a sovereign Palestinian homeland in the land of your forefathers…”
- To Palestinian Catholics at Mass: “In a special way my heart goes out to the pilgrims from war-torn Gaza: I ask you to bring back to your families and your communities my warm embrace, and my sorrow for the loss, the hardship and the suffering you have had to endure.”
- At Aida refugee camp: “I know that many of your families are divided – through imprisonment of family members, or restrictions on freedom of movement – and many of you have experienced bereavement in the course of the hostilities. My heart goes out to all who suffer in this way.”
- On the Israeli-built wall: “In a world where more and more borders are being opened up – to trade, to travel, to movement of peoples, to cultural exchanges – it is tragic to see walls still being erected… How earnestly we pray for an end to the hostilities that have caused this wall to be built!”
These comments stand in strong contrast to his speech at Yad Vashem, which was so abstract that his Jewish audience — and commentators in the media — were openly disappointed by it. They called it lukewarm, said he avoided speaking clearly about the Holocaust and said nothing about the fact he himself is German. He skirted the contentious issues that strain Catholic-Jewish relations, such as the possible beatification of the late Pope Pius XII or the recent lifting of the excommunication of an arch-conservative bishop who denies the Holocaust.
The latest gaffe came yesterday when his spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, flatly denied to journalists that the German-born pope had ever been a member of the Hitler Youth (see our story). He was reacting to repeated mentions of this in the media and possibly a comment to that effect by the speaker of the Knesset Reuven Rivlin. But the pope, while he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, said in a book over a decade ago that he had been enrolled in the Hitler Youth by force. Reporters who had the book back in their office bookcases quickly found the quotes on the internet. Within hours, Lombardi had to eat humble pie and admit the book was right after all.
Coming after the uproar over the case of the Holocaust-denying Bishop Richard Williamson, where Vatican communications were chaotic, one has to wonder why some speeches work and others don’t. Just imagine if Pope Benedict had added a line to his Yad Vashem speech saying there was no place in the Church’s ministry for Holocaust deniers. Or cut and pasted that line from his speech in Auschwitz in 2006: ” I come here today as a son of the German people.” It would have been so easy. It would have been so effective.
Fr. Lombardi told us yesterday that Benedict had said all these things before and couldn’t be expected to repeat them all in every speech. To criticism that he didn’t mention the total number of Holocaust dead or the issue of anti-Semitism at Yad Vashem, he said the pope had spoken about them on his arrival at Tel Aviv airport — hardly comparable to the Holocaust memorial as a place for a solemn statement. And his reaffirmation of the Vatican’s support for a Palestinian homeland was also just a repetition of what had been said before. By these arguments, he could have skated over that issue today, but he didn’t. Today’s speeches had far more sense of the occasion and the location.
Very appropriate words DJ. I commend your open mindedness and perceptive understanding of the Papal speeches.
The pope and the Holocaust: Regensburg redux?
The uproar over traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson and his denial of the Holocaust highlights an open secret here in Rome: Vatican departments don’t talk to each much, or at least as much as they should. The pope appears to have decided to lift the 1988 excommunication of four schismatic bishops of the SSPX (including Williamson) without the wide consultation that it may have merited. The Christian Unity department, which also oversees relations with Jews, was apparently kept out of the loop. The head of the office, Cardinal Walter Kasper, told The New York Times it was the pope’s decision. Kasper’s office and the Vatican press office, headed by Father Federico Lombardi, were clearly not prepared for the media onslaught that followed the discovery of Williamson’s views denying the Holocaust.
Pope Benedict’s lifting of the ban and Williamson’s comments about the Holocaust are unrelated as far as Church law is concerned. The excommunications lifted last Saturday were imposed because the four were ordained without Vatican permission. As Father Thomas Resse, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, told me: “The Holocaust is a matter of history, not faith. Being a Holocaust denier is stupid but not against the faith. Being anti-Semitic, however, is a sin.” This is an important distinction, but not one the Vatican seems to be able to get across.
It was all very reminiscent of the pope’s Regensburg speech in 2006. Few in the Vatican knew it was coming. The Vatican was overwhelmed by the Muslim reaction and the media interest. This time, it is also not clear how many people in the Vatican even knew about Williamson’s history. Surely, those negotiating with the traditionalists for the lifting of the excommunications should have known. If they didn’t, why didn’t they? If they did, why did they not tell Kasper’s department? The Holocaust is such a sensitive issue for Jews that this response could have been seen from miles away.
Even if the Vatican felt the rapprochement with the traditionalists was necessary, a clear and severe distancing from Williamson’s views issued simultaneously to the announcement of the lifting of the excommunications certainly would not have hurt.
It is still too early to gauge the public relations fallout within the Jewish community and in the Church itself. In all the years I have been covering Catholic-Jewish relations, this is the biggest blow-up I can recall — bigger than the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz, the Good Friday prayer, the controversy over Pius XII or the late Pope John Paul receiving Arafat. It will take a long time for this one to heal. Those involved in Catholic-Jewish dialogue say it will go on. It will.
In 2003, several Reuters correspondents — including myself — published a book entitled “Pope John Paul, Reaching Out Across Borders.” One contributor, Alan Elsner, is Jewish and lost relatives in the Belzec death camp in Poland in 1942. He concluded his chapter on Catholic relations with Jews with this paragraph:
“For the Jews, the central question to be put to Christians remains, in the words of Rabbi Michael Signer ‘Can we trust you, can we trust you now?’ For Pope John Paul, the answer was a resounding ‘yes’. It will be for his successor to provide an answer for the future.”
Gee Pullella – after you stupid piece beginning with a total lie “Pope Benedict rehabilitated Saturday a traditionalist bishop” why would we believe anything you write. “Rehabilitated”? From a supposed veteran Rome correspondent who could perhaps be expected to know a few basics about Catholic polity given, you know, Vatican, Rome and all?One can criticise the abysmal Vatican PR machine but then it is a church not a media outlet.Reuters however is fast becoming a laughing stock for its ridiculous and often downright mendacious religion reporting. And with good reason.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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ambassador lewy did not praise the pope!
he objectively said that jews were saved by the church and by clergy, and there is some chance that pius 12 knew about this. all this is a moot point. it cant be proven one way or the other – possibly not even after the vatican releases whatever records it sees fit to release.
Lewy has time and again also said that pius was silent on the holocaust. he remained silent even though american diplomats pleaded with him to speak up. (the response was that the nazis may make it worse for the jews. worse! get it. how much worse i dunno)
for this silence his being beatified may raise questions, but none that can be addressed by the State of Israel, for which beatification is an internal vatican matter. the catholic church can define as a saint whomever they wish, and certainly worse people than pius12 have achieved this questionable status. if the church wishes to demean the term, so be it. latin is their language and they can use it as they wish.
Favorite (0) Flag as Abusive oferdesade: ambassador lewy did not praise the pope! he objectively said
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what IS on record and IS a problem is Pius’ blatant antisemitism and his almost fascist objection to the state of israel. and lewy – as the editor of the JTA well knows – has gone on record on this account as well (drawing much more heated reactions from the vatican than what he’s received from the jews on this latest comment).
he referred to the jewish state as a communist virus (now there are those calling it a theocracy... sigh); the first time he mentioned the term “concentration camp” was in reference to palestinians (justified or not, one has to admit that concentration camps DID exist before the zionist state used them to round up and gas all those millions of palestinians to death). one can go on and on. the long and the short of it is that he was a product of that world in which the jews were to be eternally damned for killing christ, never to achieve statehood, to be the dregs of humanity for their religion... shame this kind of attitude still exists, but what can you do