Pope Benedict XVI's trip to the Holy land in May will not take in Israel's Holocaust museum where WWII pope Pius XII is accused of silence on the Holocaust, the Israeli ambassador to the Holy See told ANSA Friday.Speaking after reports that the Pius XII exhibit might be changed ahead of the May 8-15 trip, Ambassador Mordechai Levy said Benedict would attend a memorial ceremony at the Yad Vashem site but would not visit the museum itself.
Levy said the pope, accompanied by Israeli President Shimon Peres, would light a remembrance fire and make a speech.
Earlier on Friday, Catholic sources in Jerusalem voiced hope the Pius 'silence' caption could be changed to avoid embarrassing Benedict.
They were speaking after the announcement of a debate on the controversial pope, who is on track to become a saint, at Yad Vashem on Sunday and Monday.
The symposium, which will take place largely behind closed doors, will look at Pius in the light of the latest historical evidence.
Organisers say the conference will see ''if there is something new or something which has to be completely revised'' in light of recent research by Jewish and Catholic scholars.
The Vatican has sought for years to persuade Yad Vashem to change or remove the caption which it considers defamatory. Pope John Paul II visited Yad Vashem in 2000 but the Pius caption was not an issue because it only appeared five years later when a new museum was unveiled.
In 2007, the Vatican ambassador to Israel, Archbishop Antonio Franco, refused to attend the annual Holocaust remembrance ceremony at Yad Vashem because of the caption.
NEW DOCUMENT LATEST IN VATICAN EFFORTS
Vatican efforts to correct the record on Pius continued earlier this week when it publicised a newly discovered document urging Rome nuns to shelter anyone being sought by the Nazis in a bid to save his ''children,'' including Jews.
Father Peter Gumpel, the so-called 'postulator' of Pius's cause for beatification, told Vatican radio that a document uncovered by nuns in the Rome monastery of Santissimi Quattro Coronati urged that whoever was being ''persecuted'' be given hospitality.
The document, dated November 1943, lists 24 people who were given hospitality in the monastery of cloistered nuns in keeping ''with the wishes of the Holy Father''.
Gumpel said the document - together with a similar one sent to then bishop of Assisi, Monsignor Nicolini - proves beyond doubt that Pius did all he could to help Jews during the Nazi occupation of Italy.
The accusations by critics that he did nothing to prevent the infamous round-up of 1,022 Jews in the Rome Ghetto on October 16,1943 is ''an absolute falsehood,'' Gumpel said.
Referring to the beatification process - the final step towards sainthood - Gumpel said the paperwork was completed and was awaiting Pope Benedict XVI's signature.
Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said recently that moves to make Pius a saint were the Vatican's business.
''The representation of Pius XII as indifferent towards the victims of the Nazis...or even as 'Hitler's Pope' (the title of a recent book) is outrageous and historically unsustainable,'' Bertone told a conference marking the recent 50th anniversary of Pius's death.
Bertone said the polemics - revived last October when a Jewish minister called plans to put Pius one step from sainthood ''unacceptable'' - were ''biased and ever less comprehensible''.
'DEFAMATORY LEGEND'
Pius was the victim of ''a defamatory legend,'' Bertone said, reiterating a view expressed by Pius's supporters.
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.
But officials have 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 Benedict in November to ask him to put off Pius's beatification until after the archives are available for study.
Benedict replied that he was ''seriously considering'' it, the Jewish group said.
Vatican sources later stressed the pope was answering a private question and not taking an official stance.
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.
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(Source: ANSA)