"Judging from the reaction of senior officials of the Catholic Church to criticism of Pope Benedict's remarks in Israel, it is clear that they do not understand that very often the strongest messages come not in what is said, but via what is not said. Sometimes, the oversights take the form of important words left out of speeches.
"For the Pope, an example was his failure to mention by name the Nazis, to characterize their actions during the Holocaust as murder or to satisfactorily acknowledge his own past in his speech at Yad Vashem. But greater than this misstep, cited by Israeli critics in government and the media and defended by a Papal spokesperson who said 'he can't mention everything every time he speaks' is the fact that fueled the calls for a few extra words from the Pope, the fact that haunts his Papacy, the fact that of all the people on earth a man with his background was selected to be Pope.
"As quoted in an AP story by Victor Simpson, Israeli parliament speaker Reuven Rivlin observed, 'The pope spoke like a historian, as somebody observing from the sidelines, about things that shouldn't happen. But what can you do? He was part of them. With all due respect to the Holy See, we cannot ignore the baggage he carries with him.'"
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