The New York Times reports: “ROME — Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday addressed for the first time the uproar over his decision to rehabilitate a Holocaust-denying bishop, expressing solidarity with Jews and strongly condemning Holocaust denial.” The whole story is here.
UPDATE: Now this. Probably not going to make anything better. Couldn’t this whole thing have been avoided?
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday: “Never mind the Da Vinci Code — what about Michelangelo’s secret messages? On the 500th anniversary of the artist’s first climb up the ladder in 1508 to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling, a new book claims he embedded subversive messages in his spectacular frescoes — not only Jewish, Kabbalistic and pagan symbols but also insults directed at Pope Julius II, who commissioned the work, and references to his own sexuality.”
A fascinating story (here), and one that’s entirely plausible. The work of Michelangelo has captivated me for more than two decades — ever since standing at foot of the magnificent David, craning my neck for hours staring at the Sistine ceiling and reading multiple volumes about his life and works. He was a tortured genius, a man whose peerless talent was matched only by his otherwise joyless existence. Given his choice, the 3.5 years he spent painting the Sistine ceiling he gladly would’ve spent carving marble — the greatest passion of his artistic life before he was 30. But he had no choice. The tyrannical Pope Julius II made the artist a virtual indentured slave in demanding he paint the Sistine ceiling. Michelangelo’s early panels on the ceiling farthest from the altar wall are actually mediocre — the figures too small, the scenes too crowded. He never truly enjoyed fresco painting, but he soon mastered the extraordinarily difficult medium to produce one of the greatest works of art of all time.
Writing in Forbes.com, columnist Melik Kaylan evaluates the long-held criticism of Pope Pius XII as doing too little to speak out against Nazi atrocities and (as I concluded through my own research) found it lacking. The WWII pope’s journey to canonization continues at the Vatican. Kaylan’s compelling commentary is here.
Excerpt: “In truth, Hitler hated Pius and Pius deplored both National Socialism and Communism, as countless extant documents show. He struggled against both incessantly, but the Soviets outlasted him, and their revenge has endured even in the West, giving rise to a dubious branch of Holocaust studies devoted entirely to blackening Pius’ reputation. It’s worth citing a few incontestable instances of Pius’ interventions on behalf of Jewish lives:
1. The issuing of 1,600 visas per year from 1939 to 1945 for Jews to escape from Europe to the Dominican Republic. 2. Out of some 8,000 Roman Jews, some 7,000 survived by taking refuge in Vatican buildings. 3. In Hungary, the Church gave an estimated 80,000 certificates to Jews showing they were baptized Catholics to exempt them from harm. 4. The church helped countless thousands to escape to Romania; some 360,000 Jews would leave for Israel from Romania up to the year 1965.”
