Vatican Reverses Course
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
JERUSALEM (AP) – The Vatican’s ambassador to Israel will attend a Holocaust memorial service at the Yad Vashem museum, reversing an earlier decision to boycott the event, officials said Sunday.
Vatican officials had said they would skip the Sunday event because of a caption at the Holocaust museum describing the wartime conduct of Pope Pius XII.
The caption next to the picture of Pius reads, “even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the pope did not protest.”
The boycott had threatened to upset fragile relations between Israel and the Vatican.
Officials from Yad Vashem, the Vatican’s Embassy and the Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed that the ambassador, Monsignor Antonio Franco, would attend.
