Israel asks pope to open up WWII archives

Israel on Sunday asked Pope Benedict to open up the Vatican archives covering the wartime papacy of Pope Pius XII, who has been accused by some Jews of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust.

"I asked the pope to find a way to make it possible to open the archives in the Vatican in order to give some details of the papacy of Pius XII in order to ease tensions between the Jewish people and Catholics," Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom told Reuters at the end of the pope's visit to Rome's synagogue. (Reuters)