It is no secret that the current Pope (the real one) was a member of Hitler Youth (though they are now trying to deny it or play it down) and he grew up in Germany during the Holocaust. He has also made a number of questionable decisions regarding our people including reinstating a prayer that calls for Jews to be converted and allowing a Cardinal who is a known Holocaust denier to be reinstated. On the other hand, he visited a shul in Germany and Auschwitz and he visited Park East Synagogue when he was in NY last year (where Rabbi Schneier greeted him with "Thank G-d we both survived"). I would say he has done a lot in the way of reaching out to the Jewish community and trying to make a mends for thousands of years of persecution.
He is currently in Israel and this morning he spoke at Yad Vashem. Some in Israel including Reuven Rivlin, the speaker for the Knesset and Rabbi Lau, himself a Holocaust survivor, are upset that his speech was not forceful enough in condemning the Holocaust and he did not mention the Nazis or Germans by name.
The question I have is this, after many thousands of years we finally have normalized relations with the church, and by normalized I mean they are, currently, not killing or persecuting us and not outwardly trying to convert us. In fact, Rabbi Metzger supposedly got the Pope to agree to stop missionary activities on Jews. In light of this, is it necessary to make a big deal about the language that the Pope used while visiting Yad Vashem? Does it diminish in anyway the fact that the Pope has in the past condemned the Holocaust and its atrocities?