What Religion Means (a post surprisingly not about the definition of religion)

The Vatican has moved forward with the second of four official steps in the canonization process of Pope Pius XII. The (now officially) Venerable Pius XII has had his heroic virtues confirmed by the papacy.

Pope during World War II, Pius' relationship with antisemitism and the Holocaust is complicated. Although the Church helped some individual Jews during the Holocaust, the Vatican remained politically neutral, and some statements denied that anything was amiss with the increasing number of antisemitic laws and actions the Nazis were responsible for. Though Pius was informed no later than 1941 of deportations of Jews (which led to mass murder), the Vatican did not take a public stance on deportations until 1944 (shortly after which deportations ceased). After the war, Pius XII was involved in holding to a 1946 document stating that baptized Jewish children who were orphans because of the Holocaust should stay in the custody of their Catholic caregivers.

I recognize that Pope Pius XII's history is complicated. I fail to understand the Vatican's surprise at reactions from the Jewish community to this development. A defensive statement from the Vatican on the issue:

Moving Pius toward sainthood “is in no way to be read as a hostile act towards the Jewish people, and it is to be hoped that it will not be considered as an obstacle on the path of dialogue between Judaism and the Catholic Church,” Father Lombardi wrote.

Right. Jews are supposed to ignore Pius XII's silence in the face of evil and failure to intervene to prevent further harm in order to maintain "dialogue" with a Church wanting to call him saintly. Furthermore, Catholics are supposed to ignore his flaws and see that his virtues are "heroic." To add insult to injury, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, issued a statement saying that the beatification process evaluated the “Christian life” of Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, and not “the historical impact of all his operative decisions.”

What? To me, this reads, "He was a good Christian, even if he wasn't a good person." If that is even possible, saints should exemplify the intersection of good Christian and good person. I, for one, maintain that the purpose of religion in the modern world (whatever that is) is to establish a mode for the individual to better hirself and hir community. If being a good Christian doesn't make you a good person, then what is the point? (Asks a Jew.) If being a good Christian implies being a good person, as it should, then anyone being promoted for official sainthood should fit inside the good-person box. For the Vatican to admit that Pope Pius XII might fall short, yet still advance him on the path to sainthood puzzles me.