BishopAccountability.org
	From Embattled Pope, Praise for a Predecessor Also under Scrutiny By Rachel Donadio The New York Times April 10, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/world/europe/11pope.html ROME — As the Roman Catholic Church continued to battle a sexual abuse crisis, Pope Benedict XVI spent Friday evening watching a movie. And not just any movie: a biopic about wartime Pope Pius XII, one of the most contentious figures to haunt his five-year-old papacy. Many Italian Jews say Pius did not do enough to help stop the deportation of Jews during the Holocaust. Benedict has said that Pius worked "secretly and silently" to help save Jews. In an official statement released by the Vatican on Saturday, Benedict praised the movie, "Under the Roman Sky," as "useful and stimulating." He said it could help younger generations understand a chapter of history they had not witnessed, adding that Pius "knew how to orient the church toward the horizon of the third millennium." The screening, at the pope's summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, outside Rome, where Benedict has been resting since Easter, comes as the Vatican continues to respond to criticism that it did not act swiftly to remove priests were who were pedophiles from its ranks. But the screening also comes amid a complex subplot in the sexual abuse crisis in which defenders of Benedict have sought to associate him with Pius and have likened criticism of the Vatican's handling of the sexual abuse crisis to anti-Semitism. On Good Friday, the preacher of the papal household, the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, delivered a sermon in St. Peter's Basilica, citing a letter that he said was from a Jewish friend who had compared what he called "the violent and concentric attacks against the church" to anti-Semitism, angering both victims and Jewish groups. "The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," Father Cantalamessa said his Jewish friend had written him. In an interview last week, the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, denounced what he called "unjust attacks" on Benedict and compared criticism of the church for its handling of sexual abuse to "the offensive against Pius XII for his actions during the last World War." In an interview in the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Sodano, who during Easter Mass said the Vatican hierarchy stood with the pope in the face of "petty gossip," also compared criticism of Benedict to that against Pius X, who reigned from 1903 to 1914, for his fight against modernism; and that against Paul VI, who reigned from 1963 to 1978, for his 1968 encyclical against birth control. According to Italian news reports, the Pius XII biopic depicts him as working tirelessly to urge Italian Catholic institutions to help hide and save Italian Jews during the Holocaust. In a visit to Rome's main synagogue in January that helped calm the waters after Vatican-Jewish tensions, Benedict said that during World War II, "the Apostolic See itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way." But many Jewish groups and independent scholars disagree and have been calling on the Vatican to open the archives of Pius's papacy to scholarly scrutiny. The Vatican has said it will take at least six more years to process the material. The film about Pius was produced by Italy's RAI state broadcaster and has not yet been released. The audience included cardinals, Italian television executives and journalists, Italian news media reported. The Vatican marked the screening with an official bulletin. By contrast, remarks on Friday by the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, on the sexual abuse crisis, were read on Vatican Radio but not released in an official statement.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.