I am Catholic, and am often critical of the Pope, but I think this is a bit unfair. The man is old., he is 82. You cannot expect him to give some great speech when he probably has a hard time reading his speeches, he is speaking in a non-native language, and is 82!
The Pope has received some legitimate criticism about how he treated a Bishop who had been excommunicated. But I think this is unfair:
The speaker of Israel's parliament accused German-born Pope Benedict on Tuesday of showing detachment from Jewish suffering in the Nazi Holocaust, adding to criticism that has marked his Holy Land pilgrimage.
The pontiff, described by one Israeli newspaper columnist as coming across as "restrained, almost cold", prayed at Judaism's Western Wall and visited Islam's Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem holy sites at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Citing Benedict's teenage membership in the Hitler Youth and German military service, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin berated the pope over his address on Monday at Israel's memorial to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
"He came and told us as if he were a historian, someone looking in from the sidelines, about things that should not have happened. And what can you do? He was a part of them," Rivlin told Israel Radio.
The Pope was just a boy at the time, and he had no choice. I think Bill Maher making a joke about it is fine, but having an actual politician use this this is stupid and hurtful. There are plenty of things to blast the Pope on, but this one is unfair.
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