Author: Christopher
Lockwood
Publication: The Daily
Telegraph (London)
Date: June 8, 2000
Journalists, it seems,
have a new admirer in the Vatican. But only if they stick to the objective
pursuit of truth.
In a message to thousands
of them last Sunday, Pope John Paul II defined the task of the media as
a "sacred duty", and urged its exponents to dedicate their professional
skills to the good of humanity.
"Because of its vast
influence on public opinion, journalism cannot be guided only by economic
forces, by profits or by partisan interest," he said, addressing the group
at a special audience at the Vatican.
"Journalism must instead
be felt as a task which is in a sense sacred, carried out with the understanding
that the powerful means of communications are entrusted to you for the
good of all".
Journalists, he said,
had to understand that when they carried out their work properly they "render
a precious service to truth itself and therefore to man"
Yet this homily preaching
the value of the search for truth sits rather oddly with the Vatican's
refusal to open up its archives to researchers exploring the relationship
between the Church and the Nazis, who Pope Pins XII notoriously failed
ever to condemn.
Two years ago, in response
to years of demands for records from Jewish organisations, the Vatican
finally handed over 12 volumes of documents.
But, according to Lord
Janner, who beads the Holocaust Educational Trust, they were the wrong
ones. "The material all turned out to be already available. And so much
is missing. We don't have access to any of the records from monasteries
in occupied countries or to the correspondence between the Vatican and
the German government, and no access to bank records," he says.
Requests for additional
documents, detailed in a letter 18 months ago, have not even been replied
to.
Lord Janner is anxious
to give full credit to the Pope for shifting the Vatican's culture of secrecy
as far as he has. "This pope has done more to improve relations between
the Catholic Church and the Jewish people than any other pope in history.
So I am doubly disappointed at the refusal," he says.
Dr Shimon Samuels, of
the Wiesenthal Institute in Paris, takes a stronger line. "We know that
Nazi gold was placed in the Vatican for safe-keeping. But the Vatican is
sabotaging our attempts to write the history of the Holocaust," he says.
"By releasing only handpicked documents, it is strengthening the impression
that there is something to hide."
