'Christianizing the Holocaust' (Extract)

By LEORA EREN FRUCHT
Extract from Issue 15, November 10, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here. 'The role of Israel and the Jewish world is to set the record straight' Vatican expert Dr. Sergio I. Minerbi believes efforts to sanctify Pope Pius XII are part of a Church scheme to "Christianize" the Holocaust. The Vatican indicated in October that it plans to accelerate the process of declaring Pope Pius XII a saint. Pius, the Italian-born pope who served during World War II, has been criticized by Israel and Jewish groups for his failure to speak out against the Holocaust. The move to canonize him has been repeatedly delayed due to these objections. The renewed efforts have again sparked sharp opposition, including a reprimand by Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog (who is responsible for ties with Christian communities), as well as repeated calls for the Vatican to open the archives covering the war years. Dr. Sergio Itzhak Minerbi was born in Rome in 1929 and hidden by a Catholic educator during the Nazi occupation of Italy. He moved to Israel in 1947, becoming a senior diplomat holding a variety of ambassadorial and other posts and a senior lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute of Contemporary Jewry. An expert on the Vatican and on Catholic-Jewish relations, Minerbi has written a dozen books, including The Vatican and Zionism (1990). He spoke to The Report about the meaning behind the sanctification of Pope Pius XII and about the deterioration of Israel-Vatican relations. The Jerusalem Report: Is the beatification of Pope Pius XII inevitable? Dr. Sergio I. Minerbi: At the end of the day, they will sanctify him, but not necessarily under the current pope, Benedict XVI. He has not yet signed the declaration to proceed and his recent words suggest to me that he has not yet decided. Should Israel be doing anything to try to stall or halt the process? Israel made its opinion known in a statement in 1998 in which the ambassador to the Holy See, Aharon Lopez, declared that it would be better to postpone the beatification process indefinitely. I don't think there is anything more Israel can do. Are you saying that this is an internal Vatican matter? Whether or not to sanctify Pius XII is an internal problem of the church. But when this decision rests on facts concerning the saving of Jewish lives, then we have something to say about it - not about the beatification itself, but about the factual basis on which it rests. The role of Israel and the Jewish world is to set the record straight - to recognize that Pope Pius XII did not raise his voice on behalf of the Jews during the Holocaust. How credible are claims that the pope was working behind the scenes to save Jews and feared that by speaking out he would endanger them even more? One can't tell in hindsight what would have been if he had spoken out. The claim that he worked behind the scenes is simply not substantiated. The clandestine efforts of a number of bishops to save Jews are backed up by witness testimonies, but we have no such accounts about the pope. It's also strange that of the many clergymen who did help Jews, only one says he did so at the instruction of the pope. According to Vatican documents, the pope's positive actions were mainly directed at Jews who had converted to Catholicism. Extract from Issue 15, November 10, 2008 of The Jerusalem Report. To subscribe to The Jerusalem Report click here.