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.
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