A courageous Christian statement

Franciscan Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa's lecture at an academic conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday raised many expectations among the organizers. Pizzaballa, who bears the title Custos of the Holy Land - keeper of the holy sites - is the first senior church figure to agree to address an Israeli conference on the Church and the Holocaust in an official capacity.

Pizzaballa did not disappoint those who expected to hear strong, straightforward statements. He said the Church had failed to shape the conscience of believers because so few of them chose to object to the Nazi atrocities against the Jews. He expressed remorse for what he called "the failure of large parts of Christian tradition" to deal with the image of the Jews and Judaism. This failure, he said, prepared the ground for modern anti-Semitism.

The novelty in his address was not reflected only in the focused and unequivocal way in which the statements were made, but also in the implied but unprecedented criticism he directed against "leaders in the Church, including senior ones, who did not confront the Nazi regime courageously and in the evangelical spirit."

In 1963, Rolf Hochhuth published "The Deputy," a hard-hitting, controversial play charging that Pope Pius XII had known about the Nazi extermination of the Jews, but remained silent. The play triggered off a broad public debate, which has strengthened in recent years due to the process to beatify Pius XII.

The Holy See has taken pains to remove itself from any public statement on the delicate subject. In 1998, the Vatican published "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah" - an apologetic document expressing deep sorrow for the believers' treatment of Jews throughout history, but refrained from accepting any responsibility for preparing the ground for Nazi anti-Semitism and for what happened in the Holocaust.

In 1999, the Vatican appointed a Jewish-Catholic committee of historians to investigate the Church's role in the Holocaust. The committee managed to conclude that Pius XII knew about the extermination of the Jews, before it broke up without completing its work, after its requests to receive vital documents from the Vatican's archives were rejected.

Pizzaballa, who prides himself on his fluent Hebrew, was born in Bergamo, Italy, the home of his revered Pope John XXIII. That same pope had initiated the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, whose concluding statement in 1965 Nostra Aetate created a historic theological revolution in the Catholic Church's attitude toward the Jews.

It is to be regretted that the Vatican has so far refrained from taking a courageous stand regarding its conduct during the Holocaust and everything associated with its acts or shortcomings in view of the Jews extermination. It is to be hoped that Father Pizzaballa's statements at the end of Holocaust Day in Tel Aviv harbinger a change, which is long overdue, in the Vatican's position.