Claims from the Pope’s official spokesman that he was never in the Hitler Youth caused a storm of outrage yesterday.
The declaration, which came during a hugely sensitive visit to Israel, contradicts Benedict XVI’s own admission that he was in the Nazi organisation.
The Pope had already angered Israelis with his speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
In his remarks, he had failed to go any further than to say that the cries of Jewish victims ‘still echoed in our hearts’.
Reuven Rivlin, speaker of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, said this was inadequate considering the Pope’s activities in the Second World War.
It was while defending Benedict from this attack that Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi made his bizarre outburst.
He said the Pope had been a member of the anti-aircraft units that many youths were drafted into in the last two years of the war but had not been in the Hitler Youth.
‘The Pope was never in the Hitler Youth, never, never, never,’ he insisted.
Mr Rivlin described the Pope as a ‘ German who joined the Hitler Youth and… a person who joined Hitler’s army’.
He added: ‘The Pope spoke like a historian, as somebody observing from the sidelines, about things that shouldn’t happen. But what can you do?
‘He was part of them. We cannot ignore the baggage he carries with him.’
Israeli newspapers were filled with criticism of the Pope, with survivors saying he should have apologised on Monday for ‘Catholic indifference’ toward Jews.
In Salt Of The Earth, a 1996 book of autobiographical and religious reflections, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said he was automatically enrolled into the Hitler Youth.
Asked if he had been a member, he said: ‘At first we weren’t, but when the compulsory Hitler Youth was introduced in 1941, my brother was obliged to join.
‘I was still too young, but later, as a seminarian, I was registered in the HY. As soon as I was out of the seminary, I never went back.’
He said he served on anti-aircraft batteries and was conscripted into the German infantry late in the war.
Last night, Damian Thompson, editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald, said: ‘The Pope’s brief and enforced membership of the Hitler Youth is a matter of historical record.
‘Lombardi’s comments simply beggar belief. He should immediately be sent packing to an obscure country parish, where no doubt he will announce the wrong times of mass in the newsletter.’
Last night Father Lombardi revised his initial statements to say: ‘He [the Pope] was enrolled involuntarily into the Hitler Youth but he had no active participation.’
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