News from Around the World

The only thing that would make this better is if it stopped raining here:

You’d have thought this was unexceptional, and would be echoed by all people of good will. Not so. Exception was taken by the Government of Israel, who claimed that the Pope should have condemned recent attacks by Palestinians, and later asserted that the Vatican had a long standing policy of not condemning attacks on Israeli citizens, allegedly demonstrated by “the silences of Pope John Paul II”. Use of this particular wording can only be intended to recall the controversy over whether Pope Pius XII failed to speak up against the Holocaust.