Jewish leaders reacted with dismay Sunday to comments in Pope Benedict's new book that his wartime predecessor Pius was a "great, righteous" man who "saved more Jews than anyone else."
Many Jews accuse Pius, who
reigned from 1939 to 1958, of having turned a blind eye to the
Holocaust.
The Vatican says he worked quietly behind the scenes because
speaking out would have prompted Nazi reprisals against Catholics and
Jews in Europe.
In his book to be
published Tuesday, called "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and
the Sign of the Times," the German pope says Pius did what he could and
did not protest more clearly because he feared the consequences.
In the book-length interview with a German journalist, the pope says of Pius:
"The
decisive thing is what he did and what he tried to do, and on that
score we really must acknowledge, I believe, that he was one of the
great righteous men and that he saved more Jews than anyone else."
Jewish leaders said they were surprised by the comments.
"Pope
Benedict's comments fill us with pain and sadness and cast a menacing
shadow on Vatican-Jewish relations," said Elan Steinberg, vice president
of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.
"The
assertion that Pius saved more Jews than anyone else during the
Holocaust is categorically contradicted by the known historical record.
As survivors of the Holocaust we have a solemn obligation to the memory
of those murdered to defend the truth of the tragedy till our last
breath," he said.
When the pope
visited Rome's synagogue in January, the leader of the city's Jewish
community told him bluntly that Pius should have spoken out more
forcefully against the Holocaust to show solidarity with Jews being led
to the Auschwitz death camp.
NEW TENSIONS
Pius,
including the possibility that the Vatican may one day make him a
saint, is one of the main points of contention in relations between Jews
and the Vatican. The pope's latest comments raised new tensions.
"The
Shoah represents the darkest abyss of our history and perhaps of human
history," said Rabbi David Rosen, International Director of
Interreligious Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, using the
Hebrew word for the Holocaust.
"How
can one say that any persons did all they could have done in the face
of such evil unless they laid down their life to oppose it?"
Last
December, Benedict took the decision to advance Pius XII on the path
toward sainthood by recognizing his "heroic virtues," a move that almost
led to the cancellation of the synagogue visit.
In
the book, Benedict says he took the decision after an inspection of
unpublished archival records in the Vatican but acknowledged that it was
impossible to evaluate the hundreds of thousands of documents in a
rigorously scientific manner.
SIC: Reuters/INT'L