Rabbi Criticizes Sainthood Plan for WWII Pope

In biting remarks certain to escalate tensions between the Roman Catholic Church and Jewish leaders, the head of Los Angeles’ Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced moves by Catholic leaders toward making Pope Pius XII a saint.

Pius XII, whose papacy overlapped World War II, “sat on the throne of St. Peter in stony silence, without ever lifting a finger, as each day thousands of Jews from all over Europe were sent to the gas chambers, with his full knowledge,” Rabbi Marvin J. Hier charged in remarks prepared for delivery in New York.

His words drew an angry response from the head of the U.S. Catholic church’s Secretariat on Catholic-Jewish Relations, who called the remarks “hurtful, fractious, and negative” and warned that they could only slow dialogue over the church’s wartime actions.

Hier’s opinions also brought criticism from other Jewish leaders who charged that the remarks may not only hurt relations with Catholics but have exposed fault lines within the Jewish community over the best approach for resolving interfaith differences.

“The lines are now drawn,” said Rabbi Jack Bemporad, a key figure in Catholic-Jewish dialogues who decried Hier’s approach. “There are those in the Jewish community that say this kind of attack is simply not going to get us anywhere in Christian-Jewish relations.”

“The Catholic Church is not going to change its attitude through these kinds of attacks,” said Bemporad, director of the Center for Interreligious Understanding at Ramapo College in Mahwah, N.J.

In Los Angeles, Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, a leading voice within Conservative Judaism nationally, said that beyond the immediate issue of Hier’s speech lay a far more troublesome concern.

“Something much more serious is going on,” Schulweis said. “There is a general breakdown in Jewish-Catholic relations on the highest level.” What is needed most now is religious statesmanship on both sides, he added.

Indeed, Hier’s speech before the 92nd Street Y in New York comes at a time when official relations between the Vatican and leading Jewish organizations have been strained by disagreements over the pace of Catholic efforts to come to terms with the events of the Holocaust.

Pope John Paul II, widely credited by Jewish leaders with dramatically improving relations, has called on Catholics to use the end of the millennium as an occasion to repent for anti-Semitism. He also has acknowledged that European Catholics fell short in efforts to save European Jews from the Nazis.

But the Pope has also defended Pius XII, who is known for his strong opposition to communism, and rumors have been widespread within the church that John Paul will move to put his predecessor on the road to sainthood. This has greatly disturbed Jewish leaders, including Hier, as well as the state of Israel.

Hier’s charges Thursday are the latest--and by far the strongest--criticism leveled at the church by some Jewish leaders in recent months. Last November, Israel’s ambassador to the Vatican, Aharon Lopez, urged the church to wait 50 years before advancing Pius’ sainthood cause until “emotions and sensitivities” can die down.

Jewish groups have also strongly criticized other moves such as the pope’s beatification of Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, who was archbishop of Zagreb when a pro-Nazi regime ruled Croatia during World War II.

The criticism has stung Catholic leaders who think the Jewish community has not given the pope or other Catholics enough credit for changes in the church’s stance toward Jews.

In February, Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, voiced concern that the “good work” already accomplished in mending Catholic-Jewish relations was being threatened by what he called aggressive attitudes and a systematic campaign by one large Jewish group, reportedly the World Jewish Congress, “to denigrate the Catholic Church.”

“Jewish responses to what we seek to do to improve our relationship are often so negative that some now hesitate to do anything at all for fear of making the situation worse,” Cassidy wrote.

Hier Praises John Paul

Hier minced no words in his speech in New York, nor in an interview earlier in the day. He praised John Paul as having done more than any other pope to further Jewish-Catholic relations, but strongly condemned Pius XII.

“Normally, it would not be the business of Jews to tell Catholics who their saints are,” Hier said in his speech. “But Pius XII is surely an exception to that rule, because elevating him to sainthood desecrates the memory of the Holocaust.”

Hier noted that Pius XII refused to issue an encyclical drafted by his predecessor that would have condemned anti-Semitism and racism, and he repeated charges made in a 1983 book that Pius had prayed for Adolf Hitler’s victory over the Soviet Union and, much earlier, had given Hitler church money to fight communism.

In Washington, Eugene Fisher, director of the U.S. Bishops’ Secretariat on Catholic-Jewish Relations, was outraged by Hier’s remarks, which he called a “selective reading of history.”

Fisher said he had never heard of the reports about Pope Pius praying for a Hitler victory. The suggestion that Pius gave money to Hitler “sounds patently absurd,” he added.

“This is a matter for many, many Catholics of reverence and it deserves, therefore, not hurtful rhetoric, but an approach of objective scholarship,” Fisher said. “One has to de-escalate a lot of this language.”

But Hier was unbending in an interview shortly before his speech. “They [Catholics] are the ones making an issue of this,” Hier said, by preparing to advance Pius to sainthood. “If this is such a critical period in Catholic-Jewish relations, why don’t they postpone it for another 50 years? Now it’s just adding salt to the wounds. Let them wait.”

Hier added: “If Pius XII is a saint, what is that saying about the historic truth of the Holocaust? That says that saints can be quiet when tens of millions of people, including six million Jews, are gassed.”