Israeli ambassador backpedals on wartime pope comments

(RNS) After strong criticism from the Jewish community, Israel's
ambassador to the Vatican backpedaled from his praise of the
controversial wartime Pope Pius XII for his "actions to save the Jews"
during the Holocaust.

"Given the fact that this context is still under the subject of
ongoing and future research, passing my personal historical judgment on
it was premature," Ambassador Mordechay Lewy said in a statement on
Sunday (June 26).

Lewy had said many Catholic institutions in Rome hid Jews from the
occupying Germans during the mass arrests on Oct. 16, 1943, which led to
the deportation of more than 1,000 people to Auschwitz.