Vatican to apologise for sins of 2,000 years
By Bruce Johnston in Rome
THE Vatican has prepared a document in advance of the Millennium asking
for pardon for its "sins" over 2,000 years, including outrages perpetrated in
God's name during the Crusades.
The document is said to analyse "acts of violence and repression" prohibited
by the Church's teachings but committed by its institutions. The writing is
intended as the basis of a request for pardon which the Pope will pronounce
at a solemn Mass in Rome on March 8 next year.
But the document and its list of "wrongs", which includes the burning of the
stake of the Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola in 1498, the Czech
religious reformer Jan Hus in 1415, and the philosopher Giordano Bruno in
1600 is not final. Next week, a draft will be examined by an international
commission of experts chosen by the Pope. Their findings will be passed to
the pontiff, who will use it to create the request for pardon he will make to the
world.
Last March, the Vatican produced a document on the Holocaust, as part of
its "examinations of conscience" ahead of the Millennium, which is also a
Jubilee or Holy Year. That said the Church "deeply deplored" the "fault and
error" of many Christians in the wartime treatment of Jews, and admitted that
its own "anti-Judaism" had helped to foment the Holocaust. But it avoided any
admission of collective guilt, and exonerated Pope Pius XII of claims of
anti-Semitism or that he remained silent in the face of such horrors.
The Pope's desire to proclaim a mea culpa for the Church's misdeeds in order
to cleanse its conscience as it enters the new Millennium is well-known. But
this is the first time the Crusades have been mentioned among the Church's
"wrongs," the list of which was yesterday being called "2,000 years of
horrors". |
