A Vatican envoy’s decision to
boycott a Holocaust memorial ceremony is “inappropriate and
insulting,” the Anti-Defamation League said.
Monsignor Antonio Franco, the
Vatican’s envoy to Israel, is not attending next week’s commemorations at Yad
Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, because of a photo caption that says of
Pope Pius XII: “Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the
Vatican, the pope did not protest.”
The Vatican is currently pushing
for the pope’s canonization. “”I consider this picture in that place
and the caption that accompanies it unfair and something that disturbs my
feelings and the feelings of Catholics all over the world,” Franco told
the Guardian newspaper in explaining his decision to boycott the ceremony a
first, according to Yad Vashem.
“While we understand
Archbishop Franco’s displeasure about the photo caption, his decision to
boycott the entire Holocaust Memorial Day ceremonies is unnecessarily insulting
and unbecoming,” said Abraham Foxman, ADL’s national director and a
Holocaust survivor. “The photo caption may be inappropriate and too
judgmental, but it does not justify the Vatican’s refusal to participate in
Israel’s national observation of Holocaust Memorial Day.”
