Wednesday’s unsigned statement ”” a rare case of the Vatican’s diplomatic arm furthering earlier remarks by the pope himself ”” not only showed an age-old institution grappling with the 24-hour news cycle. It also seemed to be a clear indication that the Vatican was facing nothing less than an internal and external political crisis.
The day before, in a rare criticism from the head of a government, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called on the pope to clarify his position on the Holocaust, saying his previous remarks had not been sufficient.
Several prominent figures in the German Catholic Church joined in the criticism, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops also issued a statement condemning Bishop Williamson.
But the statement from the Vatican Secretariat of State seemed to go a long way toward calming the uproar. The chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, praised it, saying Wednesday that the Vatican had “clarified in an unequivocal way that every form of anti-Semitism should be condemned.”
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NY Times: Vatican Move on Bishop Exposes Fissures of Church
Wednesday’s unsigned statement ”” a rare case of the Vatican’s diplomatic arm furthering earlier remarks by the pope himself ”” not only showed an age-old institution grappling with the 24-hour news cycle. It also seemed to be a clear indication that the Vatican was facing nothing less than an internal and external political crisis.
The day before, in a rare criticism from the head of a government, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called on the pope to clarify his position on the Holocaust, saying his previous remarks had not been sufficient.
Several prominent figures in the German Catholic Church joined in the criticism, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops also issued a statement condemning Bishop Williamson.
But the statement from the Vatican Secretariat of State seemed to go a long way toward calming the uproar. The chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, praised it, saying Wednesday that the Vatican had “clarified in an unequivocal way that every form of anti-Semitism should be condemned.”
Read it all.