JEWISH GROUP SLAMS BEATIFICATION OF PIUS IX

PARIS, (CWNews.com) - The European Jewish Congress criticized Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church on Monday for beatifying Pope Pius IX, labeling the 19th century pope as strongly anti-Jewish.

The group called Pius "the pope of obscurantism" and said the beatification was an obstacle to dialogue between Christians and Jews. They also claimed the beatification tarnished Pope John XXIII who was also beatified on Sunday.

"The Vatican is sowing confusion and trouble among participants in the Jewish-Christian dialogue," the Congress said in a statement. "Pius IX remains in the memories of Jewish communities the Pope of the forced transfer of Rome's Jews into the ghetto," said the statement, which accused Pius IX of "culpable intransigence" in the kidnapping of a Jewish boy from his parents.

Edgardo Mortaras was six years old in 1858 when papal police took him from his home in Bologna and took him to a Rome school to be raised as a Catholic, after they had been informed the boy had been secretly baptized without his parents' knowledge. The pope made him a personal ward and the boy later became a Catholic priest. Pius IX was pope from 1846 to 1878.

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