13 April 2007
The Vatican’s envoy to Israel has announced that he will not attend a Holocaust memorial day ceremony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem because of the museum's description of wartime Pope Pius XII. Papal nuncio Antonio Franco said that his decision to boycott the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony next Sunday was due to a caption at the museum saying that Pius XII had ‘recognized’ the Nazi regime and not spoken out or acted against the mass murder and persecution of Jews.
"I don't intend to go to Yad Vashem if things remain the way they do," Franco was quoted as saying by the ‘Associated Press’ news agency. Yad Vashem officials said this would mark the first time a foreign emissary deliberately skipped the memorial service. "We are shocked and disappointed that the Vatican's delegate to Israel has chosen not to respect the memory of the Holocaust," a spokeswoman for the Israeli Holocaust memorial institution said.
The Vatican has insisted that Pius XII quietly helped Jews escape Nazi-occupied Rome. Critics say that the pope, sympathetic to Germany from his stint as papal nuncio there during the 1930s, turned a blind eye to the Holocaust, and have repeatedly criticized the Vatican for keeping papers related to Pius’ pontificate sealed.
