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Global NewsCatholic Church Commission proposes beatification of Pius XII11 May 2007 Pope Pius XII, who allegedly turned a blind eye to the Holocaust as head of the Catholic Church during World War II, has been placed on the path to sainthood. A group of 15 bishops and cardinals known as the ‘Congregation for the Causes of Saints’ voted on Tuesday to approve the beatification of Pius. Current Pope Benedict XVI has to approve the proposals and two miracles will have to be found that can be attributed to Pius XII. Pope Pius’s wartime record was the source of a recent dispute between the Vatican and Israel’s Holocaust memorial institution, Yad Vashem. The Vatican’s ambassador to Jerusalem threatened to boycott the annual Shoah commemoration there ceremony unless a passage saying that Pius "abstained from signing the Allied declaration condemning the extermination of the Jews" and "maintained his neutral position throughout the war" was removed from an exhibit. The Vatican claims that it has evidence that Pius quietly intervened on behalf of Jews, but still blocks access to Vatican archives from that period. |
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