In a synagogue visit haunted by history, Pope Benedict XVI and Jewish leaders sparred over the record of the World War II-era pope during the Holocaust and agreed on the need to strengthen Catholic-Jewish relations.
Both sides said the visit on Sunday to the seat of the oldest Jewish community in the diaspora was an occasion to overcome what Benedict called “every misconception and prejudice.”
Signs of the Jewish community’s tragic history were abundant, as the German-born Benedict stopped at a plaque marking where Roman Jews were rounded up by the Nazis in 1943 and at another marking the slaying of a two-year-old boy in an attack by Palestinian terrorists on the synagogue in 1982. A handful of death-camp survivors wore striped scarves to symbolize the camp uniform.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Benedict defended his predecessor Pius XII against critics, telling the audience that the Vatican worked quietly to save Jews from the Nazis during World War II.
Many Jews object to Benedict moving Pius toward sainthood, contending the wartime pope didn’t do enough to protect Jews from the Holocaust. The Vatican has maintained that Pius used behind-the-scenes diplomacy in a bid to save Jewish lives.
While he didn’t mention Pius by name, Benedict told Jewish leaders in the synagogue that the Vatican “itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way.”
Benedict said Catholics acted courageously to save Jews even as their extermination “tragically reached as far as Rome.”
He spoke shortly after Jewish Community president Riccardo Pacifici, whose grandparents were killed at Auschwitz while his father was saved by Italian nuns in a Florence convent, criticized Pius.
Pacifici said Italian Catholics worked to save Jews, but the “silence” of Pius “still hurts as a failed action.”
Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni later told the packed synagogue that “human silence ... doesn’t escape judgment.”
Several prominent Jews had said they would boycott, but Benedict received warm applause throughout the 90-minute visit. In an emotional moment, Pacifici greeted the Holocaust survivors, and the entire audience, including Benedict, rose to honor them.
The temple sits in the Old Jewish Ghetto, the Rome neighborhood near the Tiber, where for hundreds of years Jews were confined under the orders of a 16th century pope.
Relations between Jews and the Vatican have at times been tense over the Vatican’s sainthood efforts for Pius, who was pontiff from 1939 to 1958.
Those tensions flared again after Benedict last month issued a decree hailing the “heroic virtues” of Pius, a vital step before beatification, which is the last formal stage before possible sainthood.
In an open letter to the pope, Rome’s Holocaust survivors also made a reference to Pius, saying that “the silence of those who could have done something has marked our lives.”
The Reverend Remigio Oprandi, a priest who watched the pope’s arrival outside the synagogue, rejected Jewish criticism of the wartime pontiff.
“We Romans saved so many Jews during the war, all under orders of the pope,” he said. “It goes against history to judge him negatively.”
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