JERUSALEM (AFP)---Pope Benedict XVI drew sharp criticism from some Israelis on Tuesday who accused the German-born pontiff of lacking warmth and failing to show sufficient sympathy for victims of the Holocaust.
The pontiff on the first day of his visit to Israel on Monday denounced anti-Semitism, said the Holocaust should never be forgotten and prayed at a memorial for the victims of the Nazi genocide.
But critics pointed out the pope failed to ask forgiveness for the Holocaust and insisted he displayed no emotion as he delivered his speech at the Yad Vashem memorial to the victims of the Nazi genocide.
"All that was asked of you was to say a short, authoritative and moving sentence. All you had to do was to express regret. That's all we wanted to hear," the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot daily said in an editorial.
"After all, it is claimed that you appointed to your Church a priest who denies the Holocaust and as a boy, you were a member of the Hitler Youth," the newspaper said.
Parliamentary Speaker Reuven Rivlen was equally critical, saying he did not attend the Yad Vashem ceremony "just to hear historic descriptions or the fact that the Holocaust took place.
"I came as a Jew wishing to hear a request for forgiveness from those who
caused our tragedy, and these include the Germans and the Church, but
regretfully, I heard nothing of this," the Maariv daily quoted him as saying.
Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, who heads the Yad Vashem council, pointed out that Benedict's predecessor John Paul II spoke of the millions of Jews murdered by the Nazis.
"The current pope replaced the word 'murdered' with the word 'killed,' and the identity of the murderers went completely unmentioned," Laus said in an editorial in Maariv.
Lau also pointed out that John Paul had expressed regret for the Holocaust during his 2000 pilgrimage to Israel, when he also visited Yad Vashem.
"Unfortunately, I heard no similar statement in (Benedict's) speech."
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 John Paul II was a formidable actor while Benedict XVI is insipid. But both have the same message: the Holocaust did not originate from the millenia-old anti-Judaism of the Church but from a pagan ideology -- Nazism.
Former ambassador Sergio Minerbi, an Israeli expert on relations with the Vatican. |
The Vatican dismissed the criticism, with spokesman Federico Lombardi insisting at a news conference that Benedict "never, never was a member of the Hitler Youth" and that he had spoken of the Holocaust and his German origins "on numerous occasions."
The pope had already stirred controversy among Jews before his visit to Israel for backing the beatification of his wartime predecessor Pius XII despite claims the Nazi-era pope failed to speak out against the Holocaust.
Benedict again came under a torrent of criticism in January when he lifted the excommunication of British bishop Richard Williamson and three other ultra-conservative bishops in what he called a "discreet gesture of mercy."
"Whatever he does he will always be criticised," said Rabbi David Rosen, the Israel Chief Rabbinate's official in charge of inter-religious dialogue.
"Those who attack him here don't understand anything about the Church and the changes that occurred within it," he told journalists.
Before he was pope, Benedict, then called Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, travelled to Israel on several occasions to work on the completion of an accord reached in 1993 to establish diplomatic ties between the Vatican and Israel.
Sergio Minerbi, an Israeli expert on relations with the Vatican, said "John Paul II was a formidable actor while Benedict XVI is insipid. But both have the same message: the Holocaust did not originate from the millenia-old anti-Judaism of the Church but from a pagan ideology -- Nazism."