Vatican slams Priest's comments on wartime Pope

(June 20, 2009) The Vatican has condemned as “unjustified and inopportune” a claim by a church official that pressure from Jewish organizations is delaying the beatification of Pope Pius XII, the wartime pontiff who critics say didn't do enough to stop the Holocaust. The German Jesuit Priest Peter Gumpel, who is spearheading Pope Pius' cause, said at a conference in Rome that Pope Benedict XVI was “impressed” by warnings that relations with Jews would be ruined if he put the World War II pontiff on the road to sainthood. Some historians and Jewish groups say Pope Pius didn't do enough to prevent or limit the scope of the Holocaust _the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators. The Vatican insists Pope Pius used quiet diplomacy to try to help Jews. The ANSA news agency quoted Gumpel as saying that in recent meetings Jewish leaders had told Pope Benedict that relations between the Catholic Church and Jews would be definitively and permanently compromised by Pope Pius' beatification. The Vatican quickly issued a statement, saying that it is «exclusively» up to the pope to decide on a beatification, which is the last step before sainthood, and that Pope Benedict «must be left completely free in his considerations and decisions.» «If the pope thinks that the study and the reflection on Pope Pius XII's cause should still be prolonged, this position must be respected without interfering with unjustified and inopportune statements,» the Vatican said. Jewish leaders also criticized the priest's comments, with Rome's Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni denying that Jews were responsible for any delay. Pope Pius' beatification is first of all an internal problem of the church, said Di Segni. It is clearly a complex matter that divides the church itself, he added.