“The Nazi program to systematically exterminate the people of the Covenant of Moses one day tragically reached as far as Rome,” Benedict said in an address during his January 17 synagogue visit.
“Unfortunately, many remained indifferent but many, including Italian Catholics, sustained by their faith and by Christian teaching, reacted with courage, often at risk of their lives, opening their arms to assist the Jewish fugitives who were being hunted down,” he added.
The event was the second time a pope had visited the synagogue in Rome.
Still, while Italian Jews applauded that of John Paul II in 1986, Pope Benedict’s visit came amid disagreement about the role of Pius XII, who was pope during the Second World War. Critics accuse Pius of failing to speak out forcefully against Nazi atrocities.
Without mentioning Pius XII by name, German-born Pope Benedict said, “The Apostolic See itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way.”
Many Jewish leaders were upset when, in December Benedict announced the “heroic virtues” of Pius XII as a step towards his beatification, which confers the title of “blessed” and often, but not always, leads to sainthood.
Rabbi Giuseppe Laras, president of the Italian Rabbinic Assembly, announced that in protest at the papal decision, he would not attend Benedict’s visit to the synagogue. Still, Riccardo Di Segni, Rome’s chief rabbi, and Renzo Gattegna, the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, took part in the ceremony.
Before his arrival at the synagogue, Pope Benedict paid his respects at a memorial to the deportation of the Jews of Rome to Nazi death camps in 1943.
In the synagogue, Riccardo Pacifici, president of the Jewish community of Rome, remembered groups of Italian Catholics who, during the Second World
War, helped many Jews, including his family, escape the Nazis.
Still, said Pacifici, “The silence of Pius XII before the Shoah (the Hebrew word for Holocaust) still hurts. Perhaps it would not have stopped the trains of death but he could have sent a signal, a word of extreme comfort, of human solidarity for those of our brothers who were sent to the ovens of Auschwitz.”
The pope, in his address, which followed that of Pacifici, received applause and several standing ovations from an audience that included Italian Muslim
leaders. Pope Benedict told the congregation that the memory of the wartime events, “compels us to strengthen the bonds that unite us so that our mutual
understanding, respect and acceptance may always increase.”
The Second Vatican Council, which took place from 1962 to 1965 and introduced reforms into the life of the Catholic Church, “gave a strong impetus to our irrevocable commitment to pursue the path of dialogue, fraternity, and friendship,” said Benedict.
“The church has not failed to deplore the failings of her sons and daughters, begging forgiveness for all that could in any way have contributed to the scourge of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism,” the Pope told those gathered in the Rome synagogue.
