The pope wrote that the condemnations of Jesus Christ came from the “aristocracy of the temple” in Jerusalem and from the “masses” who acclaimed Barabbas instead of Jesus — not from “the Jewish people as a whole”.
Extracts from the book, the second volume of a biography of Jesus Christ, were published by the Vatican’s official Osservatore Romano daily on Thursday.
The World Jewish Congress in a statement praised the pope “for unequivocally rejecting the argument that the Jewish people can be held responsible.”
Congress head Ronald Lauder said: “2,000 years after the event it really was high time that the head of the Catholic Church made a clear statement on this.
“It sets an important marker against anti-Semitism in the Church,” he said.
“Jews suffered from brutal persecution and anti-Semitism because Christians held them collectively responsible for the killing of Jesus Christ, even though he was himself a Jew and was crucified by the Roman rulers,” he added.
Marco Politi, a Vatican expert at Italian daily Il Fatto, said the pope’s words were “a positive signal for the Jewish people, showing that Benedict XVI absolutely does not consider the gospels as a basis for any anti-Judaism.”
Tensions between Judaism and Catholicism have been high for centuries because of Catholic blame of the Jews for Christ’s death.
A Vatican Council in the 1960s that exonerated the Jews failed to end tensions, which have resurfaced in recent years under Benedict’s papacy.
In 2007, the pope reinstated a “prayer for the conversion of Jews”.
The following year he infuriated the Jewish community with a decision to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop, Richard Williamson.
There have also been Vatican moves to sanctify World War II-era pope Pius XII, whose public silence on the Holocaust has been widely criticised.
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