Iran’s regime-linked Mehr News Agency is blaming Pope Benedict XIV’s resignation on “Zionists.” Iran has in recent years blamed Zionists for homosexuality, the drug trade, film, and the Olympic logo — and more seriously for fabricating evidence that Iran had sought to murder the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. on American soil — and now it’s the Pope’s resignation:
But perhaps examination of Vatican-Zionists (especially, Israel) would shed light to some dark corners of the Pope’s resignation. Jewish Zionist organizations did not reacted in specific manner to Pope’s resignation and only sent diplomatic messages. The reality is that despite the veneer of normalcy in Zionism and Vatican relations, Pope Benedict XVI was not another Judas for the Israelites, a thing that angered and frustrated the Zionists.
The paper goes on to claim that the Pope was targeted for, among other things, embracing Holocaust deniers. The reference is to a 2009 controversy revolving around the readmission to the Church of previously excommunicated bishop Richard Williamson, who had minimized the scope of the Holocaust and denied that gas chambers were used in the Nazi extermination camps.
The Vatican responded to outcries from Jewish groups and German officials — including those from German Chancellor Angela Merkel — by repeatedly and explicitly condemning anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, and by calling on Williamson to retract his statements. Rome emphasized that it had been unaware of Williamson’s views on the Holocaust when it lifted his excommunication, which had originally been imposed due to issues unrelated to Holocaust denial, and an expert on Church theology and politics clarified that “the excommunication can be lifted because he is not a heretic, but he remains a liar.” Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev commented that “when the highest moral authority of the Church states that Holocaust denial is unacceptable, that is a vital message for the entire world.”
The Vatican’s emphatic rejection of Holocaust denial was left unmentioned in the Mehr News Agency article. Iran is routinely criticized by the international community for its Holocaust denial, which watchdog groups have highlighted as a rhetorical and political pathway to engaging in genocide. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, while in Tehran in 2012, slammed the Islamic republic on the issue.
Benedict’s resignation was marked by expressions of warmth for the pontiff from American Jewish community leaders, Israeli Jewish community leaders, and Israeli officials.
[Photo: Giuseppe Ruggirello / Wiki Commons]
