Villains of the Vatican : Mail & Guardian Online

Nog 'n bydrae tot die Moslem-debat wat deur Benedictus XVI se opmerkings ontketen is.

Popes have only officially been infallible since 1870. The tradition, however, stretches back much further, and is part of Catholicism’s eternal efforts to depict its leader as a holy man with a hotline to heaven; someone who is head and shoulders -- in matters of faith and morals -- above the rest of us, as we fall prey to secular whims, sexual urges and the blandishments of the devil.

So each new incumbent is, in theory, as good as hand-picked by God. Which, unfortunately, means that even God himself is not infallible. For some of the men he has anointed have, like Benedict XVI, a habit of saying or doing the wrong thing, especially when it comes to their relationships with other faiths.

The most controversial pope of modern times was Pius XII, who took over in 1939 and was labelled “Hitler’s pope’’ by those who accuse him of turning a blind eye to reports of the Holocaust. He did so, they claim, in the firm belief that it was better for the church to sup with a dictator who killed six million Jews than it was to condemn him and risk seeing him replaced by “godless’’ communists. Try as it might, the Vatican has still not managed to find a decent gloss to put on Pius’s actions, though, like his 19th-century predecessor Pius IX, who described Jews as “dogs who bark in the street’’, he is on the fast track to canonisation.