ADL Upset That The Vatican Won't Appear At Memorial Libeling Pope Pius XII

The Anti-Defamation League is upset that the Vatican's ambassador to Israel, Archbishop Antonio Franco, will not be attending Israel's memorial to the Holocaust due to the false presentation of Pope Pius XII as having failed to save Jews from the Nazis.

The Anti-Defamation League called the announcement by Archbishop Antonio Franco, the Vatican's ambassador to Israel, that he would not take part in a Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem "inappropriate and insulting." Franco said he would avoid the memorial on Monday due to a photo caption in one exhibit, which he says accuses Pope Pius XII of ignoring the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust.

While I generally support the state of Israel, I think that the ADL should keep in mind that this isn't a situation of one silly caption on one little picture. Israel's official Holocaust memorial is falsely portraying one of the former leaders of the Catholic Church as a individual who paid little to no attention to the slaughter of Jews by Nazi Germany. That is a major insult to the Vatican, and to Catholics everywhere, and it should not be shocking that Archbishop Franco will be devoting his time to tasks other than smiling and nodding at an event where a Pope of the Church is being libeled.

It must be noted that Pope Pius XII and the Holy See helped to save hundreds of thousands of lives during the Nazi reign of terror, and that Pope Pius XII said that he was not more vocal because of concerns that his speaking out publicly would cost more lives than it would save. In fact, recent revelations continue to exonerate Pope Pius XII.

A report from a spy at work in the Vatican states: "Our source was told to his face by Father Robert Leibner [one of Pius's secretaries] that the greatest hope of the Church is that the Nazi system would be obliterated by the war."

La Repubblica, the newspaper that discovered the papers, said they were sent to the heads of the Stasi, after the Second World War.

The revelations they contain will help to clear the name of Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, who has long been criticised for turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. During the war, the British Foreign Office even described him as the "greatest moral coward of our age".

Pope Pius XII did not ignore the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust, and the ADL needs to get their collective heads wired to their collective tails. There are bigger fish to fry out there, Mr. Foxman, and there is no reason for you to start burning bridges with those who will work with you against Iran and others who pose a much greater threat to you and your existence than one ambassador who won't attend a single function.

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