FIFTY YEARS after his death, the figure of Pope Pius XII continues to strain relations between Catholics and Jews. On Saturday Fr Peter Gumpel, postulator for the cause of sainthood of Pius, called on the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel to remove a caption attached to a photo of Pope Pius in the museum.
Housed in a section that recalls those who did not raise their voices in protest against the deportation of Jews, the caption below the photograph claims that "the Vatican did not react with either verbal or written protests", adding that when more than 1,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz from Rome in October 1943, the Holy See did not intervene.
Fr Gumpel claims this is a false interpretation of history and says, as has often been suggested by Vatican historians, that Pius did a great deal behind the scenes to save the lives of thousands of Jews.
Vatican scholars have argued that Pius chose not to speak out more directly against Hitler for fear of retaliation against the Jewish people.
Additional controversial light, however, has been shed on Pope Pius by diplomatic documents unearthed by archivist Mario Cereghino. He discovered a dispatch sent to the foreign office in London by the British special envoy to the Holy See, Sir d'Arcy Osborne. Rome daily La Repubblica yesterday carried an extract from this diplomatic "post" in which Sir d'Arcy reports on a meeting he had with Pope Pius in the Vatican on October 18th, 1943, just two days after the Jews had been rounded up in Rome and deported to Auschwitz.
Expressing dismay that Rome was at the mercy of the Nazis, the envoy asked Pope Pius to do everything possible to save the Vatican and its neutrality status: "He [Pius] replied that, as far as that was concerned and up to that moment, the Germans had behaved correctly."
Repubblica also reports the discovery of another "diplomatic" letter, this one from Hitler's ambassador to the Vatican, Ernst von Wieszacker, on December 13th, 1943, in which the envoy reports to the Nazi hierarchy that Pius "hopes that the Nazis hold their military positions on the Russian front" by way of a bulwark against the spread of communism.
Just two weeks ago the Rabbi of Haifa, Shear-Yusev Cohen, in an obvious reference to Pope Pius, told the Synod of Bishops in Rome that Jews cannot "forgive or forget" the silence of "many leaders, including religious ones", in the face of the Holocaust.
Speaking to reporters later, the Rabbi said that he felt it would be inappropriate if Pope Benedict XVI were to beatify Pius.
Fr Gumpel suggested that Pope Benedict would not make a visit to Israel until such time as the Yad Vashem photo was removed. However, senior Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi issued a note saying the photo would not be a "decisive" issue in regard to a papal trip to Israel.
Fr Gumpel also suggested that Pope Benedict had, thus far, stayed the beatification cause of Pius so as not to further strain Jewish-Catholic relations.
Amos Luzzatto, a senior figure in Italy's Jewish community, yesterday underlined the concerns of the Jewish community worldwide about the possible beatification and canonisation of Pius, saying: "No one denies that thousands of Jews were saved in convents. But the silence about the mass deportations was another thing. If they want to beatify Pius before clearing up all the doubts on those silences, so be it. But the Vatican should know that for Jews, this would open up a wound that would be hard to heal."