As the Roman Catholic Church continued to battle a sexual abuse crisis, Pope Benedict XVI spent Friday evening watching a movie. And not just any movie: a biopic about wartime Pope Pius XII, one of the most contentious figures to haunt his 5-year-old papacy. Many Italian Jews say Pius did not do enough to help stop the deportation of Jews during the Holocaust. Benedict has said that Pius worked 'secretly and silently' to help save Jews. In an official statement released by the Vatican on Saturday, Benedict praised the movie, 'Under the Roman Sky,' as 'useful and stimulating.' He said it could help younger generations understand a chapter of history they had not witnessed, adding that Pius 'knew how to orient the church toward the horizon of the third millennium.' The screening, at the pope's summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, outside Rome, where Benedict has been resting since Easter, comes as the Vatican continues to respond to criticism that it did not act swiftly to remove priests were who were pedophiles from its ranks. But the screening also comes amid a complex subplot in the sexual abuse crisis in which defenders of Benedict have sought to associate him with Pius and have likened criticism of the Vatican's handling of the sexual abuse crisis to anti-Semitism. In an interview last week, the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, denounced what he called 'unjust attacks' on Benedict and compared criticism of the church for its handling of sexual abuse to 'the offensive against Pius XII for his actions during the last World War.' According to Italian news reports, the Pius XII biopic depicts him as working tirelessly to urge Italian Catholic institutions to help hide and save Italian Jews during the Holocaust. In a visit to Rome's main synagogue in January that helped calm the waters after Vatican-Jewish tensions, Benedict said that during World War II, 'the Apostolic See itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way.' But many Jewish groups and independent scholars disagree and have been calling on the Vatican to open the archives of Pius' papacy to scholarly scrutiny. The Vatican has said it will take at least six more years to process the material. The film about Pius was produced by Italy's RAI state broadcaster and has not yet been released. The audience included cardinals, Italian television executives and journalists, Italian news media reported. 