Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome has accused Pope Benedict XVI of "taking the name of God in vain" and reversing the policy of apologising for past Christian errors adopted by John Paul II, his predecessor. Referring to Pope Benedict's support for the beatification of Pius XII, who is held by Jewish and other critics to have "turned a blind eye" to the Nazi Holocaust, Rabbi Di Segni said it had aroused "indignation in our community".
He said the Pope had described the wartime pontiff as a gift from God, "but he certainly was not that for the Jewish people. There is no need to take the name of God in vain".
The chief rabbi accused the Vatican hierarchy - "especially those close to the Pope" - of using the Pius XII controversy to reverse John Paul's mea culpa policy of apologising for past Christian misdeeds, instead aiming at "a total self -absolution by the Church".
The prevailing tendency was to "paint a picture in which the Church was always perfect, has nothing to apologise for and has never betrayed its mission".
The aim of those around Pope Benedict was to "wipe out at a stroke anything which requires a severe and honest examination of conscience". This included "the Vatican's diplomatic accords with Hitler, centuries of anti Judaism and the entire responsibility of the Christian world during the Shoah (Holocaust)".
Not only had Pius XII not visited the Jewish ghetto during Nazi and Fascist persecutions, he had "failed to stop the trains taking Jews to the concentration camps".
His comments drew a rebuke from a former papal nuncio to Israel. Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, who is now archpriest of the Basilica of St Paul without the Walls, said he had read the chief rabbi's remarks with "astonishment and displeasure".
It was "absolutely untrue" that Pope Benedict had taken "a step backward" regarding past Christian errors. "Every Pope has his own character and way of doing things, but on the inter religious dialogue and the great questions there is no discontinuity between the two pontiffs" he told La Stampa.
John Paul II had embarked on a "purification of memory" with the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at his side as as his principle adviser as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the cardinal said.
The process of beatification and canonisation was "rigid, tough and complex", and those who accused Pius XII of being unworthy were "entering into a matter beyond their competence".
Pope Benedict was speaking for whole Church when he indicated that "we are tired of these attack".
Those who accused the Vatican of not opening historical archives forgot that "there are rules. We do not open archives until a certain time has elapsed in order not to involve people who might still be alive."
Jewish criticisms of the beatification of Pius XII were "ungenerous" and motivated by the "inadmissable external interference" of Israel in an internal Vatican process, the cardinal said, adding: "We all hope to see Pius XII beatified."
He said there were "thousands of witnesses" who had testified that Pius had been "a strenous defender of the Jews during the Nazi persecutions".
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(Source: TTO)