Israel asks pope to open up WWII archives

ROME | Sun Jan 17, 2010 1:10pm EST

ROME Jan 17 (Reuters) - Israel on Sunday asked Pope Benedict to open up the Vatican archives covering the wartime papacy of Pope Pius XII, who has been accused by some Jews of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust.

"I asked the pope to find a way to make it possible to open the archives in the Vatican in order to give some details of the papacy of Pius XII in order to ease tensions between the Jewish people and Catholics," Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom told Reuters at the end of the pope's visit to Rome's synagogue. (Editing by Charles Dick)

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Comments (77)
DavidRosen wrote:
Jan 17, 2010 7:37pm EST  --  Report as abuse
DavidRosen wrote:
Gabriel I have perused you site and find it full of misstatements, exaggerations and a highly biased exceptionalism.

It is a profoundly hypocritical for you to use such wide brushes against Christianity while trying to say Christianity has used wide brushes against Jews.

Your last sentence in your comments reflects a racism. Are you forgetting that the majority of those within the Jewish population that collaborated with Germans Executing the “final solution” were Jewish? Does that sound like a strange construction? a Tautology? that is became your entire argument and absurd book is a tautology.IE it would be equally valid to blame Judiasm. to follow your example: the majority of the Jewish capos and the Jewish getto and camp guards who Jews were Jewish, therefor the the racism inherent in Judaism caused the final solution?
The fact is monotheism is always intolerant. That is its social purpose: to vilify and anathematize the other the “other.” We invented genocide, the history is full of us committing genocide against others in the name of religion.
Should non Jews protest our celebration of Joshua. Moses etc all a prototypical mass murderers extraordinaire of men women and children on an ethnic basis?

How would you feel about a book noting that Judaism is at the heart of genocide?

Jan 17, 2010 7:52pm EST  --  Report as abuse
et1jake wrote:
I find it interesting that so many people especially Jewish people get upset over the move to canonize Pius XII. It is not like they look to the RC Church for approval of any of their practices; so why should the other way around be any different?
The real irony here is that the Jewish people “think” they have a problem with Catholicism. But the Church has not been the most ardent defender of Pius XII. The most well researched and and most staunch defense of Pius XII has not come from the Church. It instead has come from the Jews themselves. The Church’s defense of him (probably because many in the Church feel they should not have to justify him to non-Catholics)pales in comparison to the Jews who have championed his caused.
So the irony is that Jews really have a problem that exists from within. The crusade in support of Pius XII BY JEWS has stood like a stone wall against slander, media bias, and bigotry. They refuse to be silenced and are most likely being increasingly persecuted by their own.

Jan 17, 2010 10:34pm EST  --  Report as abuse
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