Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: 'Christianizing the Holocaust'

Vatican expert Dr. Sergio I. Minerbi believes efforts to sanctify Pope
Pius XII are part of a Church scheme to "Christianize" the Holocaust.
The Vatican indicated in October that it plans to accelerate the
process of declaring Pope Pius XII a saint. Pius, the Italian-born
pope who served during World War II, has been criticized by Israel and
Jewish groups for his failure to speak out against the Holocaust. The
move to canonize him has been repeatedly delayed due to these
objections. The renewed efforts have again sparked sharp opposition,
including a reprimand by Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog (who is
responsible for ties with Christian communities), as well as repeated
calls for the Vatican to open the archives covering the war years.
Dr. Sergio Itzhak Minerbi was born in Rome in 1929 and hidden by a
Catholic educator during the Nazi occupation of Italy. He moved to
Israel in 1947, becoming a senior diplomat holding a variety of
ambassadorial and other posts and a senior lecturer at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem's Institute of Contemporary Jewry.
An expert on the Vatican and on Catholic-Jewish relations, Minerbi has
written a dozen books, including The Vatican and Zionism (1990). He
spoke to The Report about the meaning behind the sanctification of
Pope Pius XII and about the deterioration of Israel-Vatican relations.
The Jerusalem Report: Is the beatification of Pope Pius XII
inevitable?
Dr. Sergio I. Minerbi: At the end of the day, they will sanctify him,
but not necessarily under the current pope, Benedict XVI. He has not
yet signed the declaration to proceed and his recent words suggest to
me that he has not yet decided.
Should Israel be doing anything to try to stall or halt the process?
Israel made its opinion known in a statement in 1998 in which the
ambassador to the Holy See, Aharon Lopez, declared that it would be
better to postpone the beatification process indefinitely. I don't
think there is anything more Israel can do.
Are you saying that this is an internal Vatican matter?
Whether or not to sanctify Pius XII is an internal problem of the
church. But when this decision rests on facts concerning the saving of
Jewish lives, then we have something to say about it - not about the
beatification itself, but about the factual basis on which it rests.
The role of Israel and the Jewish world is to set the record straight
- to recognize that Pope Pius XII did not raise his voice on behalf of
the Jews during the Holocaust.
How credible are claims that the pope was working behind the scenes to
save Jews and feared that by speaking out he would endanger them even
more?
One can't tell in hindsight what would have been if he had spoken out.
The claim that he worked behind the scenes is simply not
substantiated. The clandestine efforts of a number of bishops to save
Jews are backed up by witness testimonies, but we have no such
accounts about the pope. It's also strange that of the many clergymen
who did help Jews, only one says he did so at the instruction of the
pope. According to Vatican documents, the pope's positive actions were
mainly directed at Jews who had converted to Catholicism.
Leora Eren Frucht , Jerusalem Report, Oct. 28, 2008
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1225036831391&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

 substantiated.
quindi si avalla l'ipotesi che non sapesse neppure quello che
succedeva a 100 metri da casa sua. Però della shoah doveva sapere
tutto....interessante.