Pope Benedict XVI Blog

Pope Shoah record 'unequivocal'

» 2009-01-27 16:00

Vatican Radio recalls Benedict's statements amid denier row

(ANSA) - Vatican City, January 27 - Vatican Radio on Tuesday defended Pope Benedict XVI's ''unequivocal'' record on the Shoah amid a row over a bishop who was rehabilitated despite being a Holocaust denier.

As the controversy rumbled on, the head of the Yad Vashem memorial to victims of the Holocaust in Jerusalem told ANSA that the Vatican should have distinguished ''clearly'' between Bishop Richard Williamson and the other three bishops whose excommunication was lifted Saturday.

The Vatican should have said that Williamson ''is not worthy to serve as a guide or hold high holy office,'' Avner Shalev said.

However, Shalev said he did not think the row would affect Benedict's planned visit to Yad Vashem as part of his trip to the Holy Land in the spring.

Vatican Radio, in a long feature marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, recalled Benedict's visit to Auschwitz in 2006 when the German pope asked how God could have permitted ''this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil''.

It also cited the pope's comments last November on 'Kristallnacht', the anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany and Austria in 1938 that heralded the Nazi's programme to exterminate the Jews.

Speaking on the 70th anniversary of 'the Night of Broken Glass' - a reference to the windows of thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues that were smashed by the Nazis - the pope said: ''I still feel pain over what happened in that tragic circumstance, whose memory should serve to ensure that similar horrors are never repeated and so that we strive - on every level - against any form of anti-Semitism and discrimination''.

The Vatican broadcaster also recalled visits to Auschwitz and Cologne Synagogue in 2005.

On all these occasions, it said, the pope had used ''unequivocal words'' which condemned the ''unheard-of crime'' produced by ''insane racist ideology''.

The Vatican has been hit by a barrage of criticism since Benedict rehabilitated Williamson, who recently reiterated his belief that there were no gas chambers and only 300,000 Jews died in the Holocaust, not six million.

On Monday the head of the Italian bishops, Msgr Angelo Bagnasco, condemned Williamson's statements as ''unfounded and unmotivated'' while the Vatican daily, l'Osservatore Romano, said Williamson's comments were ''grave, upsetting (and) unacceptable,'' repeating the Church's teachings against anti-Semitism.
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From Vatican Radio are two Vatican Radio broadcasts marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day:

27/01/2009 14.06.00
RETURN TO AUSCHWITZ
We remember humanity's darkest hour through the words of horror and of hope expressed by Pope Benedict in his 2006 visit to the Nazi death camp...

27/01/2009 14.02.34
JANUARY 27, 2009
Return to Auschwitz - Remembering humanity's darkest hour through the words of horror and of hope expressed by Pope Benedict in his 2006 visit to the Nazi death camp. Seeds of Peace - how one man in Britain has made it his mission in life to educate tomorrow’s generations about the Holocaust so such genocide will never be repeated...
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posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 11:45 PM