Times: Pope Benedict Stops Sainthood for Pius and Won't Visit Israel

The Yad Vashem museum displays a photograph of Pope Pius XII with a caption that says he recognized the Nazi regime and did nothing to condemn its racism, anti-Semitism and extermination of Jews.

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Bizarre connections fog the minds of the present Vatican leaders.

Benedict stopped the sainthood process for Pius - because of the Jews? This claim is bizarre beyond words.

The man cringed before the Nazis. He was no hero. He watched the Holocaust unfold from his Vatican window. He was so utterly "silent" and "secret" about saving Jews that no sainthood ever should or could be bestowed on him.

The Vatican knows saints. The Vatican invented saints. Not every pope was a saint. The Vatican should admit that by dint of his own actions, by any objective estimate and evaluation, Pope Pius was not a saint.

But according to the story in the Times, the actions of the Vatican on this subject are beyond bizarre.

Are they now blaming the Jews for crucifying Pope Pius?

More utterly bizarre according to the report: The Vatican suddenly demands that a plaque criticizing Pius be removed from the Israeli Museum Yad Vashem!

Without doubt, the Church is not served by the strange actions this Pope and his minions.

What now? A leader who acts in a bizarre and erratic fashion ought to resign. Will Benedict resign? Can a pope resign?

Controversy Over Pope Pius Continues
By RACHEL DONADIO

ROME, Italy — Tensions heightened this weekend between the Vatican and Israel after a Vatican official said that Pope Benedict XVI had halted the beatification of Pius XII, the pope during World War II, for fear of repercussions from Jewish groups.

The official, the Rev. Peter Gumpel, a Jesuit priest who is directing beatification efforts, also told the ANSA news agency on Saturday that the pope would not visit Israel until a plaque criticizing Pius was removed from Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust museum.

Pius, who was pope from 1939 until his death in 1958, has been criticized as not doing enough to speak out against deportations during the Holocaust. On Sunday, Italian newspapers carried front-page interviews with a former leader of the Italian Jewish community, Amos Luzzatto, who said beatifying the pope would “open up a wound that will be difficult to heal.”

Last year, the Vatican passed a decree recognizing Pius’s “heroic virtues,” a key step toward sainthood, but Benedict has not yet approved the decree. Earlier this month, Benedict said Pius had worked “secretly and silently” to save Jews and that he hoped the beatification “can proceed happily.”

After the Rev. Gumpel’s remarks this weekend, Vatican spokesmen took pains to ease the situation.

Benedict’s spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi, said the pope was still studying the decree. “It isn’t right to submit him to pressures on one side or another,” he said. “He needs the time he thinks necessary to reflect further.”

Fr. Lombardi said the Vatican had raised its displeasure with Israel over the plaque at Yad Vashem, but that it wasn’t “the determining factor” in whether the pontiff travels to Israel. He said the security and political situation were more significant. In 2000, Pope John Paul II became the first pope to visit Israel. In his three years as Pope, Benedict has not yet taken that step.