Vatican ambassador in holocaust service u-turn

The Vatican's ambassador to Israel will attend a Holocaust memorial service at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, reversing an earlier decision to boycott the event, officials said today.

The boycott had threatened to upset fragile relations between Israel and the Vatican.

The Vatican's ambassador, Monsignor Antonio Franco, announced last week that he would skip tonight's event because of a caption at the museum describing the wartime conduct of Pope Pius XII.

The caption next to the picture of Pius in Yad Vashem's museum reads, "even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the Pope did not protest," refusing to sign a 1942 Allied condemnation of the massacre of Jews.

Pius "maintained his neutral position" with two exceptions, the caption says, criticising "his silence and absence of guidelines". The exceptions were appeals to the rulers of Hungary and Slovakia toward the end of the war.

Officials from Yad Vashem, the Vatican's Embassy and the Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed that the ambassador had reversed his decision and would attend tonight's ceremony.