Posted on 08/22/2003 10:37:27 PM PDT by churchillbuff
Newly discovered U.S. diplomatic documents including a confidential memo written by the future Pope Pius XII indicate that whatever the pontiff's failings to publicly confront Adolph Hitler, he came to privately believe that compromise with the Nazi regime was "out of the question."
A year before Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli — the future Pius XII — cautioned against compromise in a 1938 memo intended for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a U.S. diplomat reported that Pacelli had described Hitler as "an untrustworthy scoundrel" and "a fundamentally wicked person."...[snip]
Even the pontiff's critics said they were intrigued by the revelations. Rabbi Marvin J. Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, called the documents "very interesting" but all the more puzzling when held up against Pius' failure to publicly condemn the Holocaust.
"When he had an opportunity to practice what he preached, that Nazism is so terrible he ducked and wouldn't do it," Hier said.[snip]
A second document was found by Gallagher in June at Harvard University among the papers of U.S. diplomat Jay Pierrepont Moffat. One of the documents, written by U.S. Consul General Alfred W. Klieforth, recounted a 1937 meeting he had with Pacelli in Rome.
"His views, while they are well known, surprised me by their extremeness," Klieforth wrote. "He said that he opposed unalterably every compromise with National Socialism [Nazism]. He regarded Hitler not only as an untrustworthy scoundrel but as a fundamentally wicked person. He did not believe Hitler capable of moderation, in spite of appearances, and he fully supported the German bishops in their anti-Nazi stand."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Anyone who expected otherwise was naive.
Luckily there aren't any vengeful Catholics who want to open up an "inquiry" as to whether the Jewish leaders of the 200s could have "prevented" the slaughter of Christians in Rome by "speaking out" against Nero.
The amount of pettyness and spite against Pius XII never ceases to amaze me.
What was Pius XII supposed to do, send his Palace Guards to fight Hitler's SS troops? Pius XII is credited with saving more than 800,000 Jews during WWII, and the slander against this great man and great pope is disgusting.
None other than Albert Einstein, a Jew, publicly stated in the N.Y. Times that the Vatican "was the only voice in Europe speaking out against the Nazi regime". Israeli Prime Miniser Golda Mier personally wrote to the Pope after the war and thanked him for his efforts in saving so many Jews. The Cheif rabbi of Rome, Rabbi Zolli, converted to the Catholic Church, became a priest, and took Pope Pius XII's name for his own. At the start of WWII there were approx. 400 Palatine Guards in the Vatican. By the war's end the number of Guards grew to 1,600. The additional 1,200 were Jews in disguise. Pius XII hid thousands of Jews in his personal residence at Castel Gandolfo during the war, and when the Nazis found out they bombed his residence and killed an estimated 500 Jews who were hiding there at the time. Pius XII set into motion huge underground programs to help smuggle Jews to America, by forging fake baptismal records for them. He also sent secret directives to have Jews hidden in all Catholic seminaries and convents in Poland. For his efforts, thousands of Catholic priests and nuns were murdered by Hitler's thugs in the concentration camps of Poland and Germany.
When the local Bishop in Austria did speak out against Hiter and the Nazis, they immediately rounded up all the nuns in the Catholic Convents who had Jewish sounding names, (including Edith Stein, now SAINT Edith Stein), and put hundreds of them to death. So much for attacking Hitler head on with verbal diatribes that only enraged him all the more and caused thousands of unneccessary deaths.
At one point, Rabbi Zolli came to Pius XII and told him that the Nazis threatened to kill hundres of Roman Jews unless he could raise $100,000. He could not raise the money so he went to Pius for help. Pope Pius XII then ordered all the gold in the local Churches to be melted down into gold bars and given to Rabbi Zolli. This great deed of love saved hundreds of Jews, and helped cause Rabbi Zolli to convert to the Catholic Church.
I could go on and on, and tell you that the Berlin Newspaper condemned Pope Pius XII upon his election because he "was fanatically anti Nazi". I could tell you that the Vatican was completely surrounded by Nazi paratroopers during WWII, and that Pius XII had no worldly power to resist them. I could even tell you rabbid anti-Catholic liars to go jump in a lake. Oops, I just did.
Film Financed by Vatican Saved Jews During War
Planned Delays Helped Spare 300 From the Nazis
ROME, AUG. 20, 2003 (Zenit.org).- A 1943 movie commissioned by a Vatican-controlled center helped to save the lives of 300 people, many of them Jews, during the Nazi persecution.
Vittorio de Sica, one of the great Italian film directors of the 20th century, directed "The Gate of Heaven." The movie was directly commissioned by the Vatican when Pius XII was Pope.
On Tuesday the newspaper Il Corriere della Sera reported that two films are now being made about the story behind the wartime movie. Christian de Sica, Vittorio's son, will star in one of them.
The person responsible for the film on behalf of the Vatican was Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Paul VI, the paper said.
De Sica and the Holy See had the production of the film last longer than planned, to give refuge to some 300 people who were contracted as extras.
The film's set was installed in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, which territorially belongs to Vatican City. Those working in the film lived there.
Seeing the huge number of those employed and the length of the film, the furious Lieutenant Pietro Koch entered the sacred enclosure on the night of Feb. 3-4, 1944, and hauled off 60 suspects.
Actors -- professional and improvised -- were sheltered in the basilica during the March 3, 1944, bombings, which took place on Rome's Via Ostiense.
The secret agreement between De Sica and the Vatican was that the film would not end "until the Germans left Rome," Il Corriere della Sera revealed.
De Sica accepted the official commission given to him by the Catholic Cinematographic Center so that he would not have to work for the Italian Fascist government which, together with Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, tried to establish a film production center in Venice.
Vittorio de Sica (1901-1974) produced 35 films and received an Oscar for five of them, including "Bicycle Thieves" (1948). Sophia Loren and Richard Burton starred in his last film, "The Journey."
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