Pope speaks at Holocaust observance

VATICAN CITY, Jan. 27 (UPI) -- Pope Benedict XVI, at a Holocaust memorial in Vatican City, prayed Wednesday "that such tragedies can never happen again."

The pope, speaking on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, condemned anti-Semitism in all forms and spoke of "countless victims of a blind racial and religious hatred, who underwent deportation, imprisonment and death in those aberrant and inhuman places," ANSA said.

"May Almighty God illuminate hearts and minds so that such tragedies can never happen again," the pope prayed.

A recent papal visit to the Rome synagogue was seen as taking Catholic-Jewish dialogue forward, even though some Jewish leaders boycotted the event because of a recent move toward sainthood of wartime Pope Pius XII, ANSA said.

Many of Rome's Jews appeared to welcome the visit, though some still say the pope should address the wartime record of Pius XII, still criticized for not publicly condemning the Holocaust. There was controversy in December when the Vatican named Pius XII as 'venerable', the second of four stages in the process of sainthood.

Since becoming pope in 2005, Benedict has worked to lessen tensions between Jews and Catholics with condemnations of holocaust denial and committing to himself to Catholic-Jewish relations, ANSA said.