Posted on 02/04/2007 9:00:31 PM PST by Dqban22
Pius XII and WWII
KGB intent on linking Pius XII with Nazis, says former spy
Washington DC, Jan 26, 2007 / 04:18 pm (CNA).- A former high-ranking officer with the KGB claims that the Kremlin and the Russian intelligence agency in the 1960s were set on executing a smear campaign against the Catholic Church, and the main target was Pope Pius XII.
In a recent issue of the National Review Online, Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, who eventually defected from the former Soviet bloc, recounts how the KGB and the Kremlin designed the deliberate campaign to portray the Pius XII “as a coldhearted Nazi sympathizer.”
“In February 1960, Nikita Khrushchev approved a super-secret plan for destroying the Vatican’s moral authority in Western Europe,” writes Pacepa. “Eugenio Pacelli, by then Pope Pius XII, was selected as the KGB’s main target, its incarnation of evil, because he had departed this world in 1958. ‘Dead men cannot defend themselves’ was the KGB’s latest slogan.”
The code name for this operation against Pope Pius XII was “Seat-12.”
The KGB used the fact that Archbishop Pacelli had served as the papal nuncio in Munich and Berlin when the Nazis were beginning their bid for power against him. “The KGB wanted to depict him as an anti-Semite who had encouraged Hitler’s Holocaust,” says Pacepa.
To do this, the KGB wanted some original Vatican documents to “slightly modify”. So they called in Pacepa, who was working for the Romanian intelligence service.
Pacepa says he became the Romanian point man. He was authorized to falsely inform the Vatican that Romania was ready to restore its broken relations with the Holy See, in exchange for access to its archives — in order to find historical roots that would help the Romanian government publicly justify its change of heart toward the Holy See — and a one-billion-dollar, interest-free loan for 25 years.
Between 1960 and 1962, the Romanian spy sent hundreds of archival documents connected in any way with Pope Pius XII to the KGB. Pacepa says none of the documents were incriminating in themselves, but they were sent to the KGB in any case.
The KGB used these documents to produce a powerful play attacking Pope Pius XII, entitled The Deputy. It eventually saw the stage in Germany in 1963, under the title The Deputy, a Christian Tragedy. It proposed that Pius XII had supported Hitler and encouraged him to go ahead with the Jewish Holocaust. The German director claimed to have 40 pages of documentation attached to the script that would support the thesis of the play.
The play ran in New York in 1964 and was translated into 20 languages. The play then led to a flurry of books and articles, some accusing and some defending the pontiff.
“Today, many people who have never heard of The Deputy are sincerely convinced that Pius XII was a cold and evil man who hated the Jews and helped Hitler do away with them,” Pacepa writes in the National Review Online. “As KGB chairman Yury Andropov, the unparalleled master of Soviet deception, used to tell me, people are more ready to believe smut than holiness.”
Pacepa says the truth has finally begun to emerge with the canonization process of Pius XII, which was opened by Pope John Paul II.
“Witnesses from all over the world have compellingly proved that Pius XII was an enemy, not a friend, of Hitler,” says Pacepa.
He also refers to the book The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews From the Nazis, by David G. Dalin, which has compiled further proof of Archbishop Pacelli’s friendship for the Jews.
“At the start of World War II, Pope Pius XII’s first encyclical was so anti-Hitler that the Royal Air Force and the French air force dropped 88,000 copies of it over Germany,” he concludes.
That explains a lot doesn't it?
"Every time anyone disagrees with the Catholics they are misinformed."
Nevertheless, you believe some things about the Catholic Church that are simply not true.
It's plausible. The communists knew the power of the theater to change the culture.
"Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks...
Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.
Albert Einstein
Time Magazine, 12/23/40**************************************
The charity and work of Pope Pius XII during World War II so impressed the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, that in 1944 he was open to the grace of God which led him into the Catholic faith. As his baptismal name, he took the same one Pius had, Eugenio, as his own. Later Israel Eugenio Zolli wrote a book entitled, Why I Became a Catholic.
**************************************
"The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas... he is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all... the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism... he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace."
The New York Times editorial
12/25/41 (Late Day edition, p. 24)**************************************
"This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent... Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were lifeless things."
The New York Times editorial
12/25/42 (Late Day edition, p. 16)
You could look it up on Google. Or you could continue making a fool of yourself. Don't let me stop you.
IT IS FOR THE SAKE OF PROCLAMING THE TRUTH.
PIUS XII AND CROATIA
Slovakia and Croatia
According to Ronald J. Rychlak, the slaughters committed against Serbs and Jews are well documented, and the collaboration of some members of the Catholic clergy is rightly condemned but postwar Communist propaganda, now acknowledged by all reputable scholars to have been fabricated, is the original source of the allegations against Pope Pius XII and most of the higher–ranking Catholic clergy in Croatia. The Holy See actually filed several protests and papal interventions against those crimes.
In October 1942, a message went out from the Vatican to its representatives in Zagreb regarding the “painful situation that spills out against the Jews in Croatia” and instructing them to petition the government for “a more benevolent treatment of those unfortunates.” The Cardinal Secretary of State’s notes reflect that Vatican petitions were successful in getting a suspension of “dispatches of Jews from Croatia” by January 1943, but Germany was applying pressure for “an attitude more firm against the Jews.” Another instruction from the Holy See to its representatives in Zagreb directing them to work on behalf of the Jews went out on March 6, 1943.
Croatian Archbishop Alojzij Stepinac, after having received direction from Rome, condemned the brutal actions of the government. A speech he gave on October 24, 1942 is typical of many that he made refuting Nazi theory:
All men and all races are children of God; all without distinction. Those who are Gypsies, black, European, or Aryan all have the same rights. . . . For this reason, the Catholic Church had always condemned, and continues to condemn, all injustice and all violence committed in the name of theories of class, race, or nationality. It is not permissible to persecute Gypsies or Jews because they are thought to be an inferior race.
The Associated Press reported that “by 1942 Stepinac had become a harsh critic” of the Nazi puppet regime, condemning its “genocidal policies, which killed tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and Croats.” He thereby earned the enmity of the Croatian dictator, Ante Pavelic. (When Pavelic traveled to Rome, he was greatly angered because he was denied the diplomatic audience he had wanted.)
On October 13, 1946, when the postwar Communist authorities tried to concoct a case against Archbishop Stepinac, American Jewish leader Louis Braier stated:
This great man of the Church has been accused of being a Nazi collaborator. We, the Jews, deny it. He is one of the few men who rose in Europe against the Nazi tyranny precisely at the moment when it was most dangerous. He spoke openly and fearlessly against the racial laws. After His Holiness, Pius XII, he was the greatest defender of the persecuted Jews in Europe.
Despite the defense, as well as protests from Pope Pius XII, Stepinac was convicted and sentenced to sixteen years of hard labor. Due to protests and indignation throughout the democratic world, and Jewish testimony as to the good work he had done, he was moved to house arrest in 1951. Almost immediately, Pope Pius XII raised him to the cardinalate.
One of the first acts of parliament in the newly independent state of Croatia in 1992 was to issue a declaration condemning “the political trial and sentence passed on Cardinal Alojzij Stepinac in 1946.” Stepinac was condemned, declared the parliament, “because he had acted against the violence and crimes of the Communist authorities, just as he had acted during the whirlwind of atrocities committed in World War II, to protect the persecuted, regardless of . . . national origin or religious denomination.”
Ignoring all the facts, anti-Catholic writer, Daniel Goldhagen, concocted a grossly inaccurate portrait of Croatia by making another outrageous error: “Forty thousand . . . perished under the unusually cruel reign of ‘Brother Satan,’ the Franciscan friar Miroslav Filopovic–Majstorovic. Pius XII neither reproached nor punished him . . . during or after the war.”
Actually, the so–called “Brother Satan” was tried, defrocked, and expelled from the Franciscan order before the war ended. In fact, his expulsion occurred in April 1943, before he ran the extermination camp (April–October 1943). For Pius XII to have punished him “after the war” would have been difficult indeed. Goldhagen must be unaware that this renegade priest was executed by the Communists in 1945.
Many other Croatian priest–collaborators were also punished by the Church (though Goldhagen overstates the number of such priests). All of this is well documented in the archives of the Franciscans, the Croatian archives, and depositions regarding Stepinac’s beatification.
Once again, Goldhagen has attempted to indict Pius by telling the reader the very reverse of the truth. This is explicable only as a premeditated defamation of the wartime Pope and of Catholic people in general.
Ronald J. Rychlak is Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Mississippi School of Law. He is the author of Hitler, the War, and the Pope
I agree with your position. I was just saying that debating with that other individual is a waste of time.
Ah now Im a fool. Name caling is catholic doctrine too is it?
As a matter of fact, pretty much.
It is interesting that many attacks on what we supposedly believe do not address what we in fact are taught. Leaving aside the issue of whether we are mind-number robots dancing to a tune called by puppet masters in the Vatican, we entertain and are not surprised or shocked by the possibility of a Pope making an error or committing a sin.
As the word "infallible" is in fact used by use with respect to Popes, it has to do with statements of a particular form and made in particular circumstances. We do not think he twirls his spaghetti,sips his chianti, or wipes his lips infallibly, and we can (and do) question many of his actions and statements.
Sorry..I dont need anyone explain what the word infallible means.
I do not take your claim of infallibility with respect to understanding the word "infallible" to imply infallibility in any other activity or area whatsoever. The question is not the meaning of the word but the meaning and circumstances of its application. You would rightly complain if I said that you were claiming infallibility in every respect and scoffed at you for doing so. We rightly complain when you say or suggest that we think the Pope is impeccable and infallible in every respect and scoff at us for doing so.
Nope...I scoff at you for thinking the Pope is ever infallible. Impeccable is just as unbelievable.
Well then, it's a good thing we don't believe it, huh?
Enjoy your scoffing.
Dqban22, I don't recall seeing you before on these threads. Thank you for all of your posts on this one.
Not only are you ignorant of this but you are stubbornly ignorant. Strike one and strike two. Will you go for strike three? The windup and the pitch ...
But you said:
All Pius XII did was to save Roman Catholics who were in peril under Hitler, although it was RC who elected Hitler in power in 1933.
**snort**
Oh, and that's another lie, by the way.
As I said, you have a credibility problem.
Though he had good reason to loathe and fear the Communists, Archbishop Stepinac was very swift to dissociate himself from the Pavelic government. He had neither sympathy for no control over the renegade Franciscans who backed the Fascists. For you to post an inflammatory picture without context or commentary marks you as better than an agitator and propagandist. Your choice to toe the KGB line is inexplicable unless you're haunted by some personal or ethnic grudge that you deal with by projecting it all on the Archbishop.
Recently, Nazi archives from Bad Arolson became available. They have shown that Nazis started with arrests of political opponents immediatelly after getting to the power and creating concentration camps much earlier than 1937.
No one in his right mind could even dream that Hitler will attempt to abolish Roman Catholic Church and install pagan cult with a center in Nuremberg as an officila religion of Thousand Year Reich. Yet, he did. We did not know about this until 2006. Political oponents of Nationalsocialists knew that since 1933.
Catolic Party and Von Papen propelled Hitler to power and Hitler made Von Papen a Vice-Chancellor.
On paper, that meant that Roman Catholics are not the enemies of Nationalsocialists, but allies. In reality, Roman Catholics were Hitler's enemies because Hitler wanted to abolish the RC Church. Also, many Roman Catholics could not tolerate Nazi savagery and ended in concentration camps. Von Papen himself fell in grace with Hitler as early as 1934 after his Marburg speech requesting cessation of Nazi savagery on the streets. Papen's associates were killed and sent to concentration camp and he was forced to resign from his post as Vice Chancellor.
The cards were on the table. That is the situation Pius XII had to deal with - to save The RC Church from destruction by Adolph Hitler.
What you lack in credibility, you more than make up in rudeness. You come to smear the Roman Catholic Church and protest that someone is smearing you? LOL
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