The Vatican backed off a threat to boycott a Holocaust memorial event in Israel
Krzysztof Cierpisz
Vatican won't shun Yad Vashem event
The Vatican
backed off a threat to boycott a Holocaust memorial event in Israel. The Holy
See announced Sunday that its ambassador to Israel, Archbishop Antonio Franco,
would attend
the evening inauguration of Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes'
Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem despite an earlier threat to stay away from the
event.
The Vatican has been irked by a picture in a new wing of the
Jerusalem museum that shows its wartime pope, Pius XII, with a caption saying
that he "abstained from signing the Allied declaration condemning the
extermination of the Jews" and "maintained his neutral position
throughout the war."
Yad Vashem issued a statement in response to the protest
urging the Vatican to open its wartime archives and offering to change the
picture caption on Pius if new evidence comes to light indicating resistance to
the Nazi genocide.
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/101180.html