Pope Benedict XVI has marked the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Pius XII, the controversial wartime pontiff, by insisting that Pius helped Jewish victims of Nazism and Fascism but did so in a "secret and silent way".

Pope Benedict supports the beatification of Pius XII, the step before sainthood, despite objections from Jewish and other critics. At a mass in St Peter's with cardinals and bishops attending the current Synod of Bishops he said Pius had acted discreetly not out of complicity with Nazism but because "at a complex moment in history" he had realised that to speak out publicly would only make the situation of Jews even worse. As it was Pius had "avoided the worst and saved the greatest possible number of Jews".

He recalled that Jewish leaders had thanked Pius XII in the post war years, including Golda Meir, at the time Israeli Foreign Minister and later Israeli Prime Minister, who on hearing of Pius' death had said Jews were "weeping for the loss of a great servant of peace". She said that during ten years of Nazi terror Pius had "raised his voice in favour of the victims".

Pope Benedict said that unfortunately "the historical debate on the figure of the Servant of God Pius XII" had detracted from an assessment of his pontificate as a whole. He recalled radio broadcasts by Pius in August 1939, when he had sought to avoid war, and Christmas 1942, when he had condemned racial persecution.

Paolo Mieli, the historian and editor of Corriere della Sera, who is Jewish, also defended Pius XII as a "great Pope" in an interview with the Vatican newspaper, L' Osservatore Romano. He said people had been seeking evidence that Pius was to blame for staying silent during the Holocaust since the nineteen sixties "and nothing has come out".

He said it was like criticising President Roosevelt of the US "for not saying clearer things about the Jews'' when in fact a "full awareness" of the Holocaust only emerged decades after the war. ''The widespread belief that Pius XII was an accomplice of the Fuhrer is madness' Mr Mieli said.

In an editorial Gian Maria Vian, the editor of L'Oservatore Romano, said Pius had worked ''in painful and conscious silence, aimed at increasing the efficacy of actions of charity and rescue''. However this week Shear Cohen, the Chief Rabbi of Haifa, the first Jewish leader to attend a Synod of Bishops, said he opposed Pius' beatification, declaring: ''He should not be held up as a model because he did not raise his voice, even if he tried to help us secretly." He said Jews could "neither forgive nor forget" this.