FALSE!!! The Catholic Church DIDN’T side with Hitler. That is a slander. Rather, Pius XI issued his 1937 encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge. The encyclical was written in German and not the usual Latin of official Roman Catholic Church documents. Secretly distributed by an army of motorcyclists and read from every German Catholic Church pulpit on Palm Sunday, it condemned the paganism of the National Socialism ideology.[78] Pius XI credited its creation and writing to Pacelli.[79]
******It was the first official denunciation of Nazism made by any major organization and resulted in persecution of the Church by the infuriated Nazis who closed all the participating presses and “took numerous vindictive measures against the Church, including staging a long series of immorality trials of the Catholic clergy.”[80]********
Summi Pontificatus was the first papal encyclical issued by Pope Pius XII, in October 1939 and established some of the themes of his pontificate. During the drafting of the letter, the Second World War commenced with the German/Soviet invasion of Catholic Poland—the “dread tempest of war is already raging despite all Our efforts to avert it”. The papal letter denounced anti-semitism, war, totalitarianism, the attack on Poland and the Nazi persecution of the Church.[153]
The Chief Rabbi of Rome Elio Toaff, said: “Jews will always remember what the Catholic Church did for them by order of the Pope during the Second World War. When the war was raging, Pius spoke out very often to condemn the false race theory.”
“The Church, under the Pope’s guidance, had already saved the lives of more Jews than all other churches, religious institutions and rescue organizations combined...” Hitler biographer John Toland
On 17 September 2009, Pave the Way Foundation nominated Pius XII to be listed as Righteous Among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. The foundation’s efforts produced some 3,000 original documents and photos on the life of Pius XII and his work to save Jews during World War II.
Pinchas Lapide documents conclusively the extraordinary relief and rescue efforts conducted by Pius XII and his diplomats during the Holocaust. Through his country-by-country analysis of Papal efforts to rescue European Jews throughout Nazi Europe, Lapide demonstrates, beyond any reasonable doubt, that “the Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all other churches, religious institutions and rescue organizations put together.”
On the day of Pius XII’s death in 1958, Golda Meir, Israel’s Foreign Minister, cabled the following message of condolence to the Vatican: “We share in the grief of humanityWhen fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace.”
Care to reconsider your statement?
To be honest, however, numerous Catholic officials did side / symnpathise with Hitler prior to the actual outbreak of WWII. See the thread The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany: an exhaustive survey of John Toland's biography of Hitler for details.
Thank you for telling the truth to some of these closed-minded folks on this thread.