Wartime pope Pius XII was not 'Hitler's Pope', the Vatican's top official said Thursday.Stressing that moves to make Pius a saint were the Vatican's business, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone called the slur - the title of a controversial book - ''outrageous''.
''The representation of Pius XII as indifferent towards the victims of the Nazis...or even as 'Hitler's Pope' is outrageous and historically unsustainable,'' Bertone told a conference marking the recent 50th anniversary of Pius's death.
Bertone, whose office makes him a sort of Vatican 'prime minister', called for an end to claims that Pius did not speak out clearly against the Holocaust.
He said the polemics - revived last month when a Jewish minister called plans to put Pius one step from sainthood ''unacceptable'' - were ''biased and ever less comprehensible''.
Pius was the victim of ''a defamatory legend,'' Bertone said, reiterating a view expressed by Pius's supporters.
The WWII pope's prospects of beatification - the penultimate stage before sainthood - were a matter for the Vatican alone, Bertone said.
''It is a religious matter which must be respected by all...and is the exclusive competence of the Holy See,'' he said.
Jewish groups say the only way to settle the issue of Pius's wartime role is to open the Vatican's archives on the war years.
Last week officials said it would take ''at least six to seven years'' to collate the thousands of files.
The International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations met with Pope Benedict XVI last week.
The head of the organisation, Rabbi David Rosen, said one of his colleagues asked the pope if it might not be better to put off Pius's beatification until after the archives are available for study.
Benedict replied that he was ''seriously considering'' it, Rosen said. Vatican sources later stressed the pope was answering a private question and not taking an official stance.
POLEMICS
On October 23 Israeli Social Affairs Minister Yitzhak Herzog told the Israeli daily Haaretz that the beatification plans were ''unacceptable''.
The minister, who is also responsible for relations with Christian minorities, accused Pius of betraying the Biblical principle of ''not keeping silent when blood is spilled''.
The Vatican's pointman on Pius, Father Paolo Molinari, responded by telling Herzog not to try to interfere in the Holy See's internal affairs.
Pope Benedict praised Pius at a Mass on the 50th anniversary of his death on October 9.
He reiterated that Pius saved the ''largest possible number of Jews'' by acting in silence to ''avert the worst''.
He told the mass that Pius's action had been recognised after the war by Jewish leaders including Golda Meir.
Benedict said he was ''praying'' that the beatification process would continue but gave no indication of when he would sign a key decree.
Pius XII, who was pope from 1939 to 1958, took a crucial step towards sainthood last year when a panel of top Catholic prelates voted in favour of recognising Pius's ''heroic virtues''.
This is the key requirement for beatification, but the relevant decree has yet to be signed by Benedict.
The lag has been taken by some observers as indicating the pope believes more reflection on the case is needed.
Some think Benedict may also wish to put the case out of the spotlight so that he can make a long-desired visit to the Holy Land.
Before this happens, Vatican officials are hoping an anti-Pius plaque at Jerusalem's Holocaust Museum may be removed.
But many Jews have said they cannot forgive or forget Pius's silence on the Holocaust.
At a synod of bishops last month, the first Jew to address a synod, Rabbi Shear Cohen of Haifa, said he might not have come to Rome if he had known Pius was to be celebrated too.
LONG ROAD TO SAINTHOOD
Pius was put on the road to sainthood in 1965 but progress has been slow because of the accusations that he remained silent in the face of the Nazi bid to exterminate Europe's Jews.
Polemics over the Italian pontiff's actions during the war years recur frequently. The main criticism, voiced most frequently in Jewish circles, is that he failed to raise his voice clearly against the Holocaust.
In his Christmas Eve homily in 1942, Pius condemned extermination ''by reason of nationality or race'' but did not use the words Nazi or Jew.
His defenders say that if he had been totally explicit, the Nazi reaction would have been to try to wipe out Jews even faster.
Although many of the attacks on Pius come from Jewish groups, he does have some defenders in the Jewish camp.
American rabbi David Dalin recalled recently that after the war Pius enjoyed a shining reputation among Holocaust survivors.
Tributes came from Albert Einstein, Golda Meir and Israel's chief rabbi, Isaac Herzog.
Criticism of Pius XII first began in 1963, when German playwright Rolf Hochhuth wrote a drama called The Deputy which indicted the pope for complicity in the Nazi genocide.
Since then charges that the Vatican was a bystander to the murder of six million Jews have regularly resurfaced.
In 1999 the writer John Cornwell caused a furore by claiming in his book Hitler's Pope that Pius XII had actually contributed to Hitler's rise and therefore to the Holocaust.
It also said he was anti-Semitic.
The book was denounced by the Vatican as ''trash''.
A recent book claimed that Hitler, far from seeing Pius as a bystander, made plans to kidnap and possibly even to kill him.
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(Source: Ansa)