POPE Benedict’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land on Tuesday veered into controversy over his past when the Vatican, stung by Israeli criticism, denied and then acknowledged his membership in the Hitler Youth during World War II.
The conflicting accounts came in response to Israeli leaders who faulted the German pontiff for not acknowledging, in an address at the Holocaust Memorial on Monday, that he had witnessed Nazi terror as a conscript in the youth movement and the German army.
Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s chief spokesman, felt compelled to declare that the pope, growing up as Joseph Ratzinger in Bavaria, “never, never, never” belonged to the Hitler Youth. Later he backtracked, conceding what Ratzinger, then a Roman Catholic cardinal, told an interviewer for his 1997 biography: that his membership in the movement had been compulsory.
The confusion highlighted the Vatican’s defensiveness over Benedict’s words at the Yad Vashem memorial, where the 82-year-old pontiff declared that Hitler’s extermination of Jews must ‘never be denied, belittled or forgotten’ but did not use the word Nazi or German. The Vatican’s bumbling response risked reopening a chapter of the pope’s life, discomforting to Israelis that many had considered closed.
Benedict ignored the issue as he pressed ahead on Tuesday with what he called a ‘journey of faith’. He was warmly welcomed as he traversed Jerusalem’s ancient, stony paths from Muslim and Jewish holy sites to an outdoor Mass for several thousand Catholic worshipers, urging followers of all three faiths to dwell on their common origin and overcome centuries of conflict.
Israeli media were filled with criticism of what some called a banal and emotionless speech on the Holocaust.
Commentators faulted him for avoiding questions of responsibility for the slaughter of six million Jews, Christian anti-Semitism and indifference, and his own wartime experience.
“The pope spoke like a historian, as somebody observing from the sidelines, about things that shouldn’t happen,” Israeli Parliament speaker Reuven Rivlin said on Israel Radio. “But what can you do? He was part of them.
With all due respect to the Holy See we cannot ignore the baggage he carries with him.” The criticism prompted Father Lombardi to deny Benedict’s Hitler Youth membership. Later, in retracting the denial, he said he was trying to counter reports that Benedict was an enthusiastic Nazi.
“He enrolled involuntarily into the Hitler Youth, but he had no active participation,” Lombardi told reporters travelling with the pope.
In the 1997 biography, Salt of the Earth, Ratzinger said he was registered against his will in the Hitler Youth by his seminary and had no connection to the group after ending his religious studies. He was later conscripted into the German army, at age 16, for what he called ‘relatively harmless’ infantry duty for 13 months till September ’44.
According to historical evidence, he shared his family’s anti-Nazi views and never joined the Nazi party.
In theological writings as a cardinal, he acknowledged that hatred felt by many Christians for the Jews over the centuries had contributed to the Holocaust. Some Israelis said they expected him to reassert that position before Holocaust survivors at Yad Vashem and to apologise on behalf of the Catholic church.
Lombardi said: “He does not have to repeat every time, in every speech, all the points he has made in the past about the tragedy of the Holocaust. ... It is not possible.” Some Jewish leaders came to Benedict’s defence. Yona Metzger, chief rabbi of Israel’s Ashkenazi Jews, said he was certain that Benedict subscribed to Pope John Paul II’s sweeping lament at Yad Vashem nine years ago for Christian acts of persecution against Jews. Others said Benedict’s presence at the memorial and his rejection of Holocaust denial mattered most.