Papal decree on Pius XII dubious

Pope Benedict XVI has proclaimed Pope Pius XII eligible for beatification, an important step on the way to sainthood. Manuel António Pina points in the daily Jornal de Notícias to Pius's controversial silence during the Second World War: "Silence can have contradictory meanings. It can mean approval or rejection. It can mean astuteness or ignorance. … It can be discreet or deafening. The silence of Pope Pius XII on the Holocaust was deafening. As long as the Catholic Church continues to refuse access to the Vatican's archives from the Second World War period we won't know to what extent this silence was approval. But that someone who was seen by so many as a moral reference signed the Reich Concordat with Nazi Germany and remained silent while millions of people - many of them Catholic - were sent to the gas chambers is disquieting. And it's also disquieting that a German pope with a controversial past has now decided to declare him 'venerable', which is half way to canonisation. Unfortunately the history of the Church is full of such worrying acts."

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