Vatican Stays to Hear Iranian President's Anti-Semitic Diatribe in Geneva

It was really disappointing, but not at all unexpected, to hear that while other civilized diplomats walked out when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lapsed into his (utterly ironic) anti-Semitic tirade at the UN Geneva conference on racism, the Vatican's boys stayed to listen. According to the AP story, "Ahmadinejad dropped Holocaust denial from speech,"

Ahmadinejad's accusation that the West used the Holocaust as a "pretext" for aggression against Palestinians still provoked walkouts by a stream of delegates including representatives of every European Union country in attendance. But others, including those from the Vatican, stayed in the room because they said he stopped short of denying the Holocaust.

The walkout came after Ahmadinejad accused Western nations of complicity in violence against Palestinians surrounding the foundation of Israel.

The original text of his speech said, "Following World War II, they resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless on the pretext of Jewish sufferings and the ambiguous and dubious question of Holocaust."

The notion that, "the Vatican stayed in the room because they said he stopped short of denying the Holocaust" is not at all credible in light of the Bishop Williamson affair and should have been questioned by the AP.

The Vatican rehabilitated the Bishop within the church hours after he publicly denied the Holocaust on television. Vatican actions show that they support Holocaust deniers while at the same time Vatican words claim they do not. Such dissonance is the stuff which erodes an entity's credibility.