'Nazi' Pope helped Jews flee Holocaust [When Will Apologies to Begin for Smearing Pius XII?]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/30/wisrael130.xml ^ | 1:51am BST 31/03/2007 | By Malcolm Moore in Rome

[Diago]

'Nazi' Pope helped Jews flee Holocaust

By Malcolm Moore in Rome

Last Updated: 1:51am BST 31/03/2007

Pius XII, the wartime pontiff often condemned as "Hitler's Pope", was actually considered an enemy by the Third Reich, according to newly discovered documents.

Several letters and memos unearthed at a depot used by the Stasi, the East-German secret police, show that Nazi spies within the Vatican were concerned at Pius's efforts to help displaced Poles and Jews.

In one, the head of Berlin's police force tells Joachim von Ribbentropp, the Third Reich's foreign minister, that the Catholic Church was providing assistance to Jews "both in terms of people and financially".

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A report from a spy at work in the Vatican states: "Our source was told to his face by Father Robert Leibner [one of Pius's secretaries] that the greatest hope of the Church is that the Nazi system would be obliterated by the war."

La Repubblica, the newspaper that discovered the papers, said they were sent to the heads of the Stasi, after the Second World War.

The revelations they contain will help to clear the name of Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, who has long been criticised for turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. During the war, the British Foreign Office even described him as the "greatest moral coward of our age".

In 1999, John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope suggested that Pius XII, who had been the papal envoy to Germany before the war, was sympathetic to the Nazis.

In addition, an international Catholic-Jewish historical commission, set up by the Vatican, said it was clear that Pius knew of widespread anti-Jewish persecution. However, the commission was forced to disband before it finished its work, and one member said it had run up "against a brick wall" from the Holy See.

In his defence, the Pope always maintained he did not speak out further against the Nazis for fear of putting more people in danger.

Over the years more documents have come to light as the Vatican has opened its secret archives to scholars in an attempt to clear what it sees as a communist-funded smear on Pius's name.

Giovanni Sale, the author of Hitler, The Holy See and the Jews, said Moscow had deliberately funded operations to discredit the Vatican after the war. "I have said for 10 years that the Church fought the Nazis on all fronts," he added.

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[kjo]

The MSM will not even mention this, count on it.

[Ultra Sonic 007]

Ping!

[Running On Empty]

Marking

[AnAmericanMother]

Man, even in an article where new information favorable to Pius XII comes out, the news media STILL manage to slander him.

They omit much information favorable to him, including that it's not only the Vatican that "contends" that the effort to smear him was communist-funded. Soviet archives recently revealed that the SS-child communist who wrote the play that started all the controversy, Der Stellvertreter (1963), was paid for his work by the Soviets.

I have never heard of the British Foreign Office comment, and wonder where it appears. Of course, I would put forth Chamberlain as the "greatest moral coward of the age" rather than the Pope ... but that's just me.

[Nextrush]

The attacks on Pope Pius were disinformation from the Left-Wing anti-Catholic crowd.

[SampleMan]

Curiously, I never hear the Protestant Churches of Europe lambasted for "allowing" the holocaust.

[Bommer]

If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. - John 15:18

I think the Pope knows what anti-Christs he's up against!

[ladyjane]

Curiously, I never hear the Protestant Churches of Europe lambasted for "allowing" the holocaust.

And it is rare that you hear thanks for those who fought to defeat the Nazis.

[NYer]

Catholic Ping List
Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list

[Chode]

Moscow had deliberately funded operations to discredit the Vatican after the war.

and there it is...

[Barnacle]

Either Pius XII was a crappy administrator or he was in favor of the extermination of Europe's Jews at the hands of the Nazis.

And, I suppose that's the reason that the head Rabi of Rome converted to Catholicism after the war.

[Barnacle]

Another thing... It wasn't the Catholic churches in Germany that had had portraits of Hitler hanging on their walls.

No one says anything about that because, it's more fum to attack Catholics.

[ex-snook]

Only Catholics apologize for what they have done.

[Uncle Chip]

After WWII, the Vatican did issue tons of passports to collaborators and Nazis who were intimately involved in the Endlosung, enabling them to leave Europe and find refuge in Latin America, Australia, Canada and even the USA. Adolf Eichmann publicly thanked the Vatican for its efforts to save his scurvy hide. In France, Catholic monasteries were used as hideouts by war criminals like Paul Touvier and Klaus Barbie. Either Pius XII was a crappy administrator or he was in favor of the extermination of Europe's Jews at the hands of the Nazis. His buffoonish supporters cannot have it both ways.

Bingo. The rat lines of escaping Nazi war criminals ran right through Pius XII's Vatican at a time when he had nothing to fear from Adolph and his goons.

[expat_panama]

Either Pius XII was a crappy administrator or...

--and when US troops finally marched into Rome, Gen. Clark had to exclude black troops from the parade per request of Pius XII.  A lot of problems there and nobody's perfect.   Most nazis were Lutheran and Islamic Persia changed its name to 'Iran' to emphasize their Aryan racial stock.   Taking religious groups as a whole, imho the worst track record was that of the atheists and their spiritual leader Joe Stalin. 

[hinckley buzzard]

Curiously, I never hear the Protestant Churches of Europe lambasted for "allowing" the holocaust. And it is rare that you hear thanks for those who fought to defeat the Nazis.

True on both counts. The Lutheran church in Germany was largely silent and acquiesced in the Nazi State. But there was a "Confessing Church" which spoke out against the Nazis. And of course the Lutheran theologian Detrich Bonhoeffer was part of a plan to assassinate Hitler, for which he was imprisoned and ultimately executed by the Nazis.