Posted on 02/15/2003 5:47:40 PM PST by MadIvan
Vatican papers offering the first direct evidence that Pope Pius XII tried to help Jews during the Second World War have been discovered by an Italian expert.
The documents undermine critics' claims that Pius - condemned by critics as "Hitler's Pope" - put the interests of Rome first and did not protest about the fate of Jews during the Holocaust.
A letter, signed by the Pope in October 1940 and sent to Giuseppe Palatucci, Bishop of Campagna in southern Italy, instructed him to give money "in aid to interned Jews", to whom Pius also referred in an earlier letter as "suffering for reasons of race".
The bishop was already involved in assisting Jews through his nephew, Giovanni Palatucci, the police chief in Fiume, in north-eastern Italy. Palatucci had distributed false identity papers to 5,000 Croatian Jews, enabling them to leave local internment camps for relative safety in his uncle's southern Italian diocese, an operation that would later lead to the police chief's death in Dachau.
A second letter to Bishop Palatucci in November 1940 contained a cheque for 10,000 lira that was to be used for the "support of Jews interned in your diocese".
Supporters believe that the letters will help to repair the reputation of a man whom the present Pope, John Paul II, is seeking to make a saint but who has been accused of being anti-semitic, culturally Germanophile, rabidly anti-communist and conspicuously silent about the fate of Europe's Jews.
"They appear to give compelling proof that will testify to Pius's attitude towards the Jews," said William Doino, an authority on Pius XII.
"Given the dangers then existing and the reluctance of the Church to put such matters in writing, these letters are remarkable. They establish beyond question that Pius XII took a direct, personal interest in helping Jews [and] did so very early on in the war.
"Numerous authors have maintained that there is no credible written evidence that Pius XII himself ever gave direct orders to assist persecuted Jews. Now, we have that evidence."
Mr Doino believes that other new documents to be released by the Vatican to scholars this weekend will shed light on one of the most controversial figures in the Catholic Church's history.
They cover between 1922 and 1939, when the then Eugenio Pacelli was nuncio to Weimar Germany and later papal secretary of state when Hitler came to power.
Controversy has long dogged Pacelli, the principal architect of the 1933 concordat between Germany and the Vatican which ring-fenced Catholic schooling and public worship in a climate that was hostile to "political Catholicism".
While Britain, France and Italy had already established relations with Germany, the concordat is widely viewed as having conferred "respectability" on the Nazis.
The alleged silence of Pius, who became Pope a few months before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, would later become a stick with which to beat the Catholic Church over its wartime record.
While more than 80 per cent of Italy's Jewish population was rescued, critics of the Church have claimed that individual Italian Catholics acted spontaneously, without aid from Pius XII.
Defenders of Pius XII say he detested the Nazis, signed the concordat to protect German Catholics and put German conservatives who were plotting to kill Hitler in touch with the British, who failed to take much interest in them.
When I post facts, I hear a lot of whining from those like yourself who want history to make their church look better. But the truth is the Catholic church, as an institution, not as individuals, and often in the name of Catholicism, has hurt and killed people, over and over again. Jews, Orthodox, Protestants, and gypsies.....who knows what other groups?
My opinion is that we need to keep you and your leaders from doing it again. And make sure the truth is told when you and your friends try to whitewash it.
Lots of times when I post about Croatia I get freepmail from freepers who just lurked and had known nothing about it till they read what I posted. That's enough to make it worthwhile right there. Your insults are worthless by comparison.....
The Croatian Holocaust was among the most brutal slaughterings in history, the utashe horrified even the Nazis with their brutality and sadism.
The upper caption reads "The Cardinal's Journey to France." The little bottles read "anti-Nazi" and "abominable lies". "Volksfront" is "People's Front".
IIRC, this cartoon was from Himmler's SS newspaper Schwarze Korps, attacking Cardinal Pacelli during his official visit to France. Humanite is the French Communist Party newspaper. It still exists.
The Nazis repeatedly attacked Pacelli while he was a cardinal and while he was Pope. Their internal correspondence showed that they were very worried about him and his influence on German Catholics.
My dad was in Italy during the war, and conditions were unsettled there to say the least. The Germans would "disappear" people or just put them up against the wall and shoot them, and then the partisani would return the favor. (Somewhere my dad has photos (taken with his totally unauthorized camera) of Mussolini and his girlfriend Clara Petacci hanging by their heels from the roof of a gas station in Milan.)
It's very easy for us to sit here in our easy chairs and say that Pope Pius "could have done more" or "didn't do enough."
I believe you miswrote your post, then. You said "these Catholics". I really don't think you meant some particular anti-Semite lost to history. I think you meant every Catholic here who is defending his faith, and the former leader of his faith, from what is, at least in part, an unjustified calumny.
IOW, pal, you're trashing all of us, not any "official deeds of an organization".
It is the "official" deeds of an organization against Jews that were the focus of my posts
I hate to break it to you, but the Holocaust was an "official" deed of quasi-pagan, and venomously anti-Christian and anti-Catholic, nation. There are plenty of qualified Jewish historians who can explain to you that Hitler's anti-Semitism had nothing to do with Catholicism, and in fact had nothing to do -- at least on its surface -- with Judaism as a religion.
can you name even a "group" of Jews that have treated Catholics anything like the 1,900 years that Jews enjoyed the attention of the Catholic church?
I believe we've made it pretty clear -- at "official" levels, BTW -- that grave wrongs have been done, both in the name of the Church and by Catholics doing evil on their own.
That doesn't give you justification to slander us with wrongs we didn't commit. I would also remind you that there is no such thing as "inherited guilt". (Sound familiar?) It's not inherited through blood, and it's not inherited through religious affiliation either. Jews preaching hatred against Catholics because of the Inquisition is not really a big improvement on Catholics preaching hatred against Jews as "Christ-killers".
Wrong. Not extending formal diplomatic recognition is not the same thing as "not recognizing Israel's right to exist".
I suppose you would conclude that the US does not recognize Taiwan's right to exist, hmm, since we don't have formal diplomatic relations with them?
Happens at every Mass, every day, all over the world. Sorry, we've beaten you to that particular punch.
And the truth is that the Orthodox church, as an institution, not as individuals, and often in the name of Orthodoxy, has hurt and killed people, over and over again. Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists ... who knows what other groups?
Maybe you'd like to talk about the 13 Ukrainian Catholic martyrs of Pratulin, shot by the Tsar's troops on the steps of their church for refusing to convert to Orthodoxy? This happened in 1876, BTW. The rest of their village was exterminated, as well; only the men who died protecting their church are formally commemorated as saints.
This particular example of the benevolence of the "Holy Orthodox Tsar" was part of a campaign of -- get this -- forcible conversion to Orthodoxy in the Western Ukraine.
I don't particularly care to dredge stuff like that up. It would be nice if we could forgive and forget. But you don't seem to want to go there.
"Let the one among you who is without sin, cast the first stone."
Nobody said anything about "inherited benefits". We just don't want to see a man -- a dead man, at that, who cannot defend himself -- unjustly calumniated. Because that particular dead man was the (earthly) leader of our faith, an calumny against him calumniates the entire group.
With a little historical reading in the Bible you will quickly discover that those blessings and curses are indeed inherited particularly when considering groups of people or nations.
Divine blessings and curses aren't the same thing as guilt before men and before human courts for crimes committed against men, which is what I was referring to.
Next time you see a Catholic crucifix, note the sign with the letters "INRI" at the top.
INRI = Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum. "Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews".
It is amazing that there is no literature, no discussion, on the role of the Lutheran Church during WW2. As it was the predominant religion in German politics and life, one would think it important. When one raises the subject of the Lutheran church in some of these seminars, many people barely know what it is, and show no interest. Yet they are avid readers of books about the Church and the Holocaust.
In all of the things I've read about Edith Stein, I don't think I've ever seen a reference to her as a "martyr" -- at least in the formal sense from the perspective of the Catholic Church.
What is the basis of her beatification?
Maximilian Kolbe was one such person -- he was one of the first saints canonized by Pope John Paul II in the late 1970s.
And many more, some of whom were recognized and many more who were not.
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