Free Republic

Yesterday “TheBlaze” published an interview with Romanian Lt. Gen Ion Pacepa, a discussion which arose around the publishing of his work, “Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism.” Pacepa is a defector to the United States, but not just any run-of-the-mill defector. He is the highest-ranking Soviet intelligence officer to ever defect. He crossed over back in 1978 and was given political asylum by then President Jimmy Carter. He has made a practice since that time to write in defense of freedom while living his life under threat of assassination, hiding out...

MANCHESTER, England (CNS) -- U.S. and British diplomats discussed exerting pressure on Pope Pius XII to be silent about the Nazi deportations of Hungarian Jews, according to newly discovered documentation. The British feared that the wartime pope might make a "radio appeal on behalf of the Jews in Hungary" and that in the course of his broadcast would "also criticize what the Russians are doing in occupied territory." Sir Francis D'Arcy Osborne, the British ambassador to the Vatican, told an American diplomat that "something should be done to prevail upon the pope not to do this as it will have...

It was a Vatican announcement guaranteed to spark controversy. "With this decree the Pope says that Pius XII is a person that we have to admire, recognize as a model of Christian virtues, and it is very, very important that the church gives officially this appreciation of this important pope that we know was guiding the church in very difficult times." said Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi. The move by the sitting Pope, Benedict XVI, brings the controversial World War II pontiff, Pius XII, a step closer to sainthood, despite persistent allegations from historians and Jewish groups that he did...

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican has condemned as "unjustified and inopportune" a claim by a church official that pressure from Jewish organizations is delaying the beatification of Pope Pius XII, the wartime pontiff who critics say didn't do enough to stop the Holocaust. The Rev. Peter Gumpel, a German Jesuit who is spearheading Pius' cause, said at a conference in Rome that Pope Benedict XVI was "impressed" by warnings that relations with Jews would be ruined if he put the World War II pontiff on the road to sainthood. Some historians and Jewish groups say Pius didn't do enough...

ROME, JUNE 16, 2009 (Zenit.org).- New evidence published today by the newspaper of the Italian bishops gives more credence to the belief that Adolf Hitler had planned to either kidnap or kill Pope Pius XII. It has long been conjectured that Hitler had ordered the SS commander in Italy, General Karl Wolf, to seize the Vatican and take the Pope. Dan Kurzman wrote about it in his 1997 book "A Special Mission: Hitler's Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius the XII," which is based on interviews with Wolf himself. Wolf's accounts, however, could never be verified.

When one approaches the figure of Pius XII "free from ideological prejudices", one must recognize his "courageous and paternal dedication" to saving, wherever possible, the greatest possible number of Jews, which included working "secretly and silently". A congress organized by the Pave the Way Foundation 50 years after the death of Pope Pacelli gave Benedict XVI the opportunity to recall the "historical truth" about Pius XII's efforts to save Jews, which were recognized after the war by many Jewish figures, including 80 delegates of concentration camp survivors. "So much has been written and said" about Pius XII, the pope noted,...

JERUSALEM -- The Vatican and Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial got into a public spat Thursday over the wartime conduct of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi genocide, threatening to upset fragile relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish state. Separately, church officials announced new developments Thursday in the Vatican's case to make Pius a saint. A massive dossier on Pius' virtues -- some six volumes of 3,000 pages -- was handed over to a panel of bishops and cardinals earlier this month to study, they said. At issue in the Yad Vashem-Vatican dispute is a photograph of...

In keeping with the solemnity of the Yom Kippur holiday, though, I spent my time after services reading David Dalin's new book The Myth of Hitler's Pope. It's a short book but in just a very few pages succeeds (or so it seems to me) in proving that Pope Pius XII has been horribly traduced by his many critics. There are spots where Rabbi Dalin's enthusiasm gets the better of him. I think it is hard to deny that the Vatican willingly cooperated with antidemocratic forces in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. And Dalin's own evidence makes clear that...

Exploding the myth of ‘Hitler’s Pope’ By George Weigel A year or so ago, my friend Liz Lev, the best English-speaking guide in Rome, was taking a group of American tourists through St. Peter’s Basilica. Seeing the bronze statue of Pope Pius XII, one of the tourists said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “Oh. Hitler’s Pope.” As Liz remarked later, that Pius XII was some sort of anti-Semitic crypto-Nazi had become the common wisdom. Whence this preposterous calumny? Although the Pius Wars were launched in 1963 by Rolf Hochhuth’s mendacious play, The Deputy, it...

Leave it to the New York Times. On the eve of Pentecost, the birthday of the church, this Catholic-baiting newspaper opened its op-ed page to a venomous anti-Catholic rant by Arthur Hertzberg, "a visiting professor of the humanities" at New York University. Hertzberg slandered no fewer than three popes. Not only did the church of Pius XII remain "silent while Europe's Jews were murdered," he alleges, the church of John Paul II taught Catholics that the "sin of letting the Holocaust happen at its doorstep need not haunt the church ..." As for Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he...