Israel's president Shimon Peres has urged Pope Benedict XVI not to put off a visit to Israel over a disagreement regarding the role of the wartime Pope, Pius XII. A Catholic official was quoted by the Italian media as saying that Benedict would not go to Israel as long as a photo caption at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem alleging that Pius XII did not act to save Jews from the Nazis remained on display. The Pope has expressed interest in visiting Israel, and Israel recently extended an official invitation. Peres said the Pius issue should not be a barrier. "The visit to the Holy Land has nothing to do with anger or disputes," he told reporters in Jerusalem. "It is holy all the time, it is holy for all of us." Benedict said last week that he hoped Pius XII, who served from 1939 to 1958, would be beatified without controversy.
Pius' role during the war has long been the subject of heated debate, and Vatican archives documenting the period have yet to be made public. "Any visit by Pope Benedict XVI to Israel would be a political matter, and therefore Yad Vashem is not a part of this matter, as has been clarified by the Vatican's spokesperson," Yad Vashem said in a statement. It went on to say that the presentation on Pius' actions during World War II in the Holocaust History Museum at Yad Vashem were "based on the best research regarding this topic. Yad Vashem's historians are attentive to any research developments and new relevant documentation, and continue to delve into every aspect of the period. Yad Vashem is certain that the opening of Vatican Archives on the relevant period would help further research on the subject, which would clarify this historical issue."
The French Jewish umbrella organization CRIF has said that Pope Pius XII should not be beatified because he had remained silent on the Holocaust during and after World War II. The project to beatify Pius XII "would deliver a severe blow to relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish world," a CRIF statement said. Though Pius did hide a number of Jews from the Nazis, he "worried about burning bridges with Germany," and "never proclaimed a clear statement denouncing the specifically monstrous extermination of millions of Jews," said the leadership of French Jewry.
Meanwhile, a photograph of Pope Benedict emblazoned with a superimposed Nazi swastika appeared on Monday on an Israeli website run by supporters of the governing Kadima Party. It was later removed, and replaced with a picture of a smiling Benedict overlooking a crowd-filled St. Peter's Square in the Vatican, after what the 'Yalla Kadima' site said was a request from Kadima's leader, foreign minister Tzipi Livni. "Tzipi Livni strongly condemns this and we are working to remove this shameful picture. We strongly oppose this. It doesn't represent Kadima," her spokesman Amir Goldstein said shortly before the photo was changed.
