Pontiff’s Abortion-Genocide Analogy Criticized

Pope John Paul II was criticized by a Polish newspaper and by French and German Jewish leaders Wednesday for his comparison of abortion to mass murder.

The left-leaning youth daily Sztandar Mlodych aimed unprecedented criticism at the Polish pontiff, saying the analogy he drew between abortion and genocide is offensive.

It was apparently the first time a Polish newspaper had explicitly criticized the Pope. He commands huge moral authority and affection in his Roman Catholic homeland, which he is visiting for the first time since the fall of communism.

The Pope was criticized by Jews in Berlin and Paris after his fierce attack on Poland’s Communist-enacted law that allows abortion on demand.

The Pope told tens of thousands of Roman Catholics in Radom on Tuesday that mass killing of the unborn ranks among the worst crimes of genocide.

In Berlin, the leader of Germany’s small surviving Jewish community deplored John Paul’s comparison of abortion with the Nazi Holocaust in which 6 million Jews died.

“Those murdered by the Nazi regime did not deserve to have their memory abused to advance some topical political aim,” German Jewish leader Heinz Galinski said.

In Paris, the Council of Jewish Institutions in France also denounced the Pope’s comparison as unacceptable.

Meanwhile, the Pope addressed about 20,000 people from the Soviet republics of Byelorussia and Lithuania, who crossed the border Wednesday to greet the Pope in Bialystok.

“Belief in God is alive in Byelorussian soil!” the pontiff proclaimed in halting Byelorussian. In Russian, he acknowledged a banner reading “Moscow Is Waiting for the Pope of Rome.”

The pontiff also spoke in Lithuanian and his native Polish.

John Paul expressed support for the nationalist aspirations of Lithuania, telling the pilgrims, “The Pope is with you.”

Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union in March, 1990. The declaration was not recognized by Moscow.