Posted on 12/19/2009 5:10:49 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The controversial wartime pope accused of failing to openly condemn the Holocaust has moved a step closer to sainthood, the Vatican has confirmed.
Pope Pius XII will be declared venerable after the current pontiff Pope Benedict XVI approved a "heroic virtues decree", the first of three stages before canonisation.
To be declared venerable, a church investigation has to conclude that the person in question lived a life of exemplary holiness and heroic virtue. There must be nothing in the dead person’s writings that enables these characteristics to be challenged.
Pope Benedict has also agreed to declare his predecessor Pope John Paul II venerable, just four years after his death, it has been announced.
Jewish groups had asked the pope to delay the process for Pius XII until further World War Two archives could be studied. He reigned from March 1939 until his death in 1958, and opponents claim he failed to explicitly speak out against Hitler or openly offer support to Jewish people.
Both Jewish and Catholic scholars have complained that Vatican archives on Pius XII are only fully accessible for the years up to 1939. It is understood the Vatican has said the 16 million files relating to Pius XII's 19-year reign will not be ready for public viewing until 2014 at the earliest.
“We are saddened and disappointed that the pontiff would feel compelled to fast-track Pope Pius at a point where the issue of the record, the history and the coming to a judgment, is still wide open,” said Abraham Foxman, a Holocaust survivor and the director of the US-based Anti-Defamation League.
The Vatican has maintained that Pius XII worked behind the scenes during the war, fearing that any direct intervention may have worsened the situation for both Jews and Catholics.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
“insufferable preachiness”
How true.
And it never achieves its aims.
And look at what that tiny change seems to reveal: “I’M not the one who needs to decrease, THEY are.”
:-)
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