Once again, Holy Father, demonstrating character.
Once again, Holy Father, demonstrating character.
Pius XII saved 860,000 Jews at one time or another. That is if you believe Jews like Pinchas E. Lapide (an Israeli diplomat!) and Jeno Levai. Israel doesn’t believe Jews apparently.
No-one should go to Yad Vashem until it stops being a mockery of itself. Pius XII saved over 860,000 Jews from the concentration camps. Yad Vashem has betrayed its own purpose by spouting this alternate, revisionist version of history.
Israel is about to attack Iran because Iran is about to upgrade its air defenses.
Israel does not want to make MORE ENEMIES at this point.
I think there should be a place of honor for Pope Pius XII in this museum.
Israel should do that while asking for help in its upcoming attempts to halt Iran's nuclear weapons programs...
Catholic ping!
In a just and honest world, Pius XII would need a forest to pay him tribute.
To add some detail to the raging debate above about the definition of the word holocaust. A dictionary definition follows :
1. a great or complete devastation or destruction, esp. by fire.
2. a sacrifice completely consumed by fire; burnt offering.
3. (usually initial capital letter) the systematic mass slaughter of European Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II (usually prec. by the).
4. any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life.
Good for him. Why on earth should he be expected to endorse a lie?
The Pope should denounce the lie as what it is, an attempt by socialists to create hatred between Jews and Catholics.
Pope Pius XII and the Jews
SR. MARGHERITA MARCHIONE
[...]
Opening the cloister
Since this encounter, I’ve been striving to write from my heart a “manifesto” for justice. Pope Pius XII, through ecclesiastical channels, instructed priests and nuns to shelter any Jew who knocked on their doors. When I learned about this, and about the Vatican’s network to provide false identification papers for Jews and other refugees, I decided to publish these facts.
For several years Pope Pius XII did not leave the Vatican, where he was concealing many Jews. Every corner of his estate at Castelgandolfo, his summer home, also was occupied by them. According to Father Robert A. Graham, S.J., the editor of World War II Vatican documents, word spread from the Vatican for Religious to open the doors of convents and monasteries to protect Jews. Directives were only given orally because, under the German occupation, all archives were subject to Gestapo raids.
This was an extraordinary Vatican command because until this time convents and monasteries were considered cloistered. Very strict regulations existed that prohibited the laity from entering these cloistered areas. In those days one’s own parents were nor allowed to enter the private quarters of a convent or monastery. Neither was anyone else. However, when Jews and other refugees needed sanctuary, the regulations were suspended.
For fifty years, books have been published, films have been produced, lectures have been given, but few people have defended Pope Pius XII. In his time, people from different parts of the world insisted that the pope publicly condemn the Nazis. But to the very end, Pius XII was convinced that, should he denounce Hitler, there would be serious and devastating retaliation.
Evidence shows that he was right. Bishop Jean Bernard of Luxembourg, an inmate of Dachau from February 1941 to August 1942, declared that “whenever protests were made, treatment of prisoners worsened immediately.” Because of the pope’s prudence and courage, many more lives were saved. If Pope Pius XII had protested, not only would he have been unsuccessful in halting the destruction, but he might have caused a great deal of additional damage to the thousands of Jews hidden in the Vatican, in convents and monasteries, as well as to the Church in German-occupied Europe. Nazi policy sought the extermination not only of Jews but of certain non-Jewish peoples as well. The thousands of Jews hidden in convents and monasteries would have been sent to concentration camps along with those who were trying to save them.
[...]
The testimony of Dr. Joseph Nathan, who represented the Hebrew Commission, is remarkable. At the end of World War II, he addressed the Jewish community and expressed heartfelt gratitude to those who protected and saved Jews during the Nazi-fascist persecutions. “Above all,” he stated, “we acknowledge the Supreme Pontiff and the religious men and women who, executing the directives of the Holy Father, recognized the persecuted of their brothers and, with great abnegation, hastened to help them, disregarding the terrible dangers to which they were exposed.”
At Pope Pius XII death in 1958, Golda Meir sent an eloquent message: “We share in the grief of humanity. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the pope was raised for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace.” Like these heroic witnesses of the Holocaust we must all respond openly and seek the ideal of sainthood, regardless of our different races, religions and ethnic backgrounds. We must have love for one another, hope in the integrity of future generations, and faith in the Almighty Father of us all.
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0004.html
That museum needs to take down that slanderous banner.
Let us please, please remember that by November 1943 at least two thirds of the Jews who were going to die at the hands of Nazis were ALREADY DEAD.
This note from Pius XII should be seen as a pathetically weak, late, quiet and ineffective response to a monstrous evil which had already murdered many millions, while the Vatican said little or nothing.