Timid: Pope Pius XII (Photo: Getty Images)
Posted on 07/03/2022 10:58:27 AM PDT by Paal Gulli
A new book sets out damning evidence about the conduct of Pope Pius XII during the Second World War Julie Carbonara
BY Julie Carbonara
June 30, 2022 09:06
Pope Pius XII, who presided over the Catholic Church during the Second World War, has always divided opinion: was he a Nazi sympathiser who did little to save the Jews? Or has he been wrongly vilified? Only the documentation hidden away in the Vatican archives could provide a definite answer.
It looked as if the truth would remain buried forever until the Church decided to open up the archives to scrutiny in 2020 — files that this week have been made available online. David Kertzer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning US historian who specialises in books that explore the fraught relationship between the Vatican and Jews, was there when the doors first opened.
His latest book, the result of two years of intensive work, The Pope at War shows how the Pope did nothing to stop the Holocaust. Instead he pandered to the Nazis and their allies and secretly met Hitler’s emissary, Prince Phillipp von Hessen. The Pope’s sole concern, the archives revealed, was to protect the German Catholic Church, which had been targeted by the Nazis. Another powerful motivator was the direction of the war: in the first few years the Axis powers were storming from victory to victory so the Pope — for the good of the Church, as he saw it — decided to side with the likely winners....
(Excerpt) Read more at thejc.com ...
Just like herpes, the Pope Pius/Nazi conspiracy theorists never go away for good.
Put your faith not in man but God.
Interesting piece, thanks for posting.
I was struck by this part “Many Pius XII supporters have maintained that had he spoken out about the Holocaust, he would have made the situation worse but Kertzer finds that hard to imagine.”
I too find it hard to imagine.
The’re vomiting up KGB communist propaganda, whether they realize it or not.
Pius believed in "shut the hell up and save lives". 688,000 Jews not murdered by the National Socialist German Workers' Party agree.
At this point in history, it’s clear that Pius XII is simply being slandered.
Something wrong with Kertzer, who is obsessed with Pius XII.
Not this sh*t again.
Aside from protecting some people in the area near him in Italy, what we can fairly state is that he sure didn’t rise to the occasion in a proper Christian fashion.
“Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” 1 John 3:18
“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.: James 3:1
There WERE some Christian clerics (including some Roman Catholic priests) who did speak up and visibly seek to save lives. A good quick example will suffice:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/martyrs/dietrich-bonhoeffer.html
The Dutch bishops tried publicly opposing the roundup of Jews. The Nazis’ response was to accelerate their deportation program and to start killing converts from Judaism that they had previously spared.
https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/the-bishops-who-defied-the-nazis
Pacelli worked behind the scene to rid Europe of Hitler. He approved plans by German, anti nazi, officers to assassinate Hitler.
abundant evidence shows that church efforts throughout Europe to hide Jews or provide them with papers to enable their escape enjoyed the explicit support of Pius.
I will stick with William Shirer’s account in the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
Yes, Jewish historians seem to be obsessed with Pius XII. They ignore the fact that the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli (né Zoller) took the pope’s name, Eugenio, when he converted to Catholicism after the war, so great was his admiration for all he had done for the Jews.
Should have done more. As FDR should have. Incredible what happened in WWII, the Japs too. Are we really going to let this happen again? Seems like it could happen.
Aside from protecting some people in the area near him in Italy, what we can fairly state is that he sure didn’t rise to the occasion in a proper Christian fashion.
The Israeli diplomat Pinchas Lapide credited Pius XII with saving hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives during World War II. (The specific citation provided on Wikipedia gives a range of at least 700,000, with an upper bound of 860,000.)
A particularly telling section with regards to why Pius XII was not more outwardly vocal, preferring instead to work in more clandestine fashion (underline is emphasis mine):
Pius XII followed the Dutch Roman Catholic hierarchy’s plan to name the Jews explicitly in their condemnation of Nazi deportations and intended to issue a similar statement himself. The Nazis threatened to arrest more Jews. The Dutch Reformed Church agreed not to protest openly but the Roman Catholic hierarchy issued, in May 1943 [sic; the pastoral letter in question was actually issued in April 1942, but was publicly reported on by the Jewish Telegraph Agency in May 1942], their famous protest against the deportations. The Nazis then launched an all-out offensive against Jews (except those who had converted to the Dutch Protestant Reformed Church). Ironically, it was the Dutch hierarchy’s letter of open condemnation which led to the arrest and execution of Edith Stein, the Jewish Roman Catholic nun and philosopher.
The news of the increased persecution reached Pius XII. His own protest was due to go into L’Osservatore Romano that very evening but he had the draft burnt saying “If the protest of the Dutch Bishops has cost the lives of 40,000 people, my intervention would take at least 200,000 people to their deaths.” (See II Seitimanale, 1 March 1975, p.40.) Such was the result of openly naming the Jews; more death from vain gestures.
Kertzer doesn’t have any books about FDR abandoning Jews, or socialist/communist Jews abandoning fellow Jews because they were traditional (religious).
Easy (and dirt cheap) to say from 75+ years on ... Meanwhile, educate yourself on the Soviet communist propaganda effort to smear the memory of Pius XII.
YOU save 688,000 people from a genocidal maniac, with no army to back you up ... then come and talk.
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