How do you solve the problem? Return to pre-conciliar days is a good start. Vatican II, Newpopes canonize their own!
Vatican officials will look you straight in the eye and say that decisions about naming saints are never driven by politics, but the truth is that those assurances, plus a Euro, will get you a cappuccino at a bar across from St Peter’s Square. Anyone with eyes can see that politics often enters the picture, especially with regard to how fast or slow a case moves.
Nowhere is that clearer than with Pope Pius XII, the Pontiff during World War II whose record on the Holocaust remains a flash point in relations between Jews and Catholics. Conventional wisdom holds that the Vatican is convinced Pius XII deserves a halo, but is going slow out of deference to Jewish sensitivities.
One oft-made argument is that no judgment should be reached until the Vatican’s archives from the war years are completely open, so researchers can explore what Pius knew and when he knew it.
From a purely political point of view, however, there’s a strong case for a highly counterintuitive conclusion: the best thing for Catholic-Jewish ties would be to canonise Pius XII tomorrow.
Perhaps no Catholic figure of the 20th century has been the object of more heated debate than Eugenio Pacelli, the given name of the Pontiff who reigned from 1939 to 1958. The vast literature makes up what wags call the ‘Pius Wars,’ referring to polemical exchanges between the Pope’s critics and his defenders.
The former argue that Pius stayed silent because he preferred to protect the Church’s institutional interests. Defenders say the Pope was discreet in public in order not to make things worse, but behind the scenes he saved scores of Jewish lives. A sainthood cause for Pius began shortly after his death.
In the meantime, three Pontiffs who came later have leapfrogged past him: John XXIII and John Paul II are now saints, and Paul VI will be beatified in October.
Pope Francis recently has sent different signals about his own thinking. Aboard the Papal plane coming back from the Middle East, he said there’s been no miracle for Pius XII and that ‘the process is slow.’ Last week, the Pope gave an interview to the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia and issued a stirring defence of his controversial predecessor, among other things claiming that 42 babies were born during the war years to refugees hiding in Pius’ own bedroom.
Francis also said that opening the archives ‘will bring a lot of light,’ perhaps a hint he believes waiting until then is the prudent course. (Opening any state’s archives is a time-consuming process, but officials have said it could come as early as next year.)
Full story: Sainthood only way to end row between Jews, Catholics over Pius XII (The Boston Globe)
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