Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Gov't: Criticism of papal silence on Holocaust 'unprecedented'

Gov't: Criticism of papal silence on Holocaust 'unprecedented' 
 
By Amiram Barkat, Haaretz Correspondent 
 
Government sources have called statements made by a senior Vatican
official condemning the silence of the Holy See during the Holocaust
"unprecedented." 
Sources in Jerusalem said it is still too early to tell whether the
statements made Tuesday by Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Custos of the
Holy Land, reflect a change in Vatican policy about the silence of Pope
Pius XII during the Holocaust. 
Speaking in Hebrew at a conference at Tel Aviv University on the actions
of the Church during the Holocaust, Pizzaballa criticized "church leaders,
including those of the highest level, who did not adopt a courageous stand
in the evangelical spirit in the face of the Nazi regime." 
 
Dr. Simcha Epstein of the Hebrew University's Vidal Sassoon Center for the
Study of Antisemitism, said the phrase "high-level leaders" was a veiled
reference to Pope Pius XII. 
Jewish organizations and historians for years have been at the forefront
of a struggle against the Vatican initiative to beatify Pius due to his
inaction during the Holocaust. 
Jerusalem was expecting that with the ascendance of the new pope,
Benedictus XVI, the process of beatification would be stopped. However,
sources in Jerusalem told Haaretz it is ongoing, albeit at a slower pace. 
Pizzaballa said that after the Holocaust, the Church struggled with "the
question of how it failed at the task of molding the conscience of the
faithful so they would refuse to cooperate with the Nazi machine of
destruction. How so many of the faithful cooperated and even more stood
and did nothing." Pizzaballa added that the 1965 Vatican declaration
absolving the Jews from killing Jesus was a "response to the deep crisis
created after World War II." 
He said the Church subsequently had made a number of far-reaching changes,
among them emphasizing the Jewish identity of Jesus and recognition of the
Hebrew Scriptures as an inseparable part of Christian tradition, and that
"preachers and the greatest of teachers" had presented Jews in a distorted
way, which laid the groundwork for modern anti-Semitism. 
"I cannot avoid the horrific thought that if Jesus were alive in the
Holocaust, he would have been condemned to the same fate as the Jewish
people, as would his mother, his family and his disciples." Pizzaballa
said. 
Rabbi David Rosen, the international director of interreligious affairs at
the American Jewish Committee and a member of the Permanent Bilateral
Commission of the State of Israel and the Holy See, said he has heard
similar declarations in the past from American cardinals. However, such a
statement is rare from a clergyman of Italian origin like Pizzaballa. 
"The attitude is that of a man who is aware of Jewish and Israeli
sensitivities, and it is therefore more nuanced than the official
position, however, it does not reflect a change in the official stance,"
Rosen told Haaretz. 
 
da 
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 "unprecedented." 
Interessante. Grazie.
Am.