In 1941, for example, after being asked by French Marshal Henri Philippe Petain if the Vatican would object to anti-Jewish laws, Pius XII answered that the church condemned racism, but did not repudiate every rule against the Jews. Ketzer said the secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress, Léon Kubowitzki, met with the pope on September 21, 1945, to ask him to publicly denounce anti-Semitism and to ensure that Jewish orphans whose parents were killed in the Holocaust that were living in Catholic countries be returned to the Jewish community. October, 2000; Similarly, the attempts of Jews to escape from Europe to South America were sometimes thwarted by the Vatican. The Church also answered a request to save 6,000 Jewish children in Bulgaria by helping to transfer them to Palestine. Roosevelt’s envoy to the Pope, Myron Charles Taylor, then sent it to the Vatican. Mankind owes that vow to the innumerable sorrowing host of mothers, widows and orphans who have seen the light, the solace and the support of their lives wrenched from them. The Pope knew about the Nazi extermination campaign as early as 1942 after he received a letter with a detailed account of atrocities in Nazi-occupied Poland on September 27, 1942, which had been routed from the Geneva office of the Jewish Agency for Palestine to its New York office. Clearly, Pope Pius XII is warning against the danger of trying to restore the Mass to its original form, because to do that is to forget that the Holy Spirit enlightened the first Christians about the true significance of the Mass, its relationship to Calvary and the Real Presence. I knew them all. “Pope Pius XII Reported to Have Spent Personal Fortune on Saving Jews,” JTA, (May 4, 1966). It was not until two months after the deportation of Rome’s Jews, however, that he drafted a statement which said there was no need for the measures taken against the Jews because they were already kept in their proper place by Italy’s racial laws. The Vatican was willing to loan 15 kilos, an offer that eventually proved unnecessary when the Jews obtained an extension for the delivery.(19). (31), In 2006, an Israeli scholar, Dina Porat, discovered correspondence between Haim Barlas, an emissary of the Jewish Agency sent to Europe to save Jews in the 1940s, and Giuseppe Roncalli, who later became Pope John XXIII. Leiber also maintained that Pus suspended clausura rule to allow nuns, brothers, and father to hide Jews. In a tortured interpretation of this statement, Napolitano argues that equating Jews and Gentiles was important and offended the Nazis. The Vatican condemned Hitler’s race laws in a 1937 encyclical, but many of the German bishops supported his foreign policy. Furthermore, since Pius XII was the mastermind behind “Mit brennender Sorge”, an encyclica so dangerous to the Nazis that they retaliated immediately and swiftly, and his predecessor Pius XI had refused to meet Hitler 1938, when the latter visited Rome, there was no reason for Hitler to hope that the pope had changed his mind, especially since Hitler wanted to destroy the church. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 197. Peter Carlson, “A Diplomat's Diary,” Washington Post, (April 22, 2004). Bertone noted that Pius XII cautiously approved of the theory of evolution, and that he remains the pope who beatified and canonized the highest percentage of … Historians point out that any support the Pope did give the Jews came after 1942, once U.S. officials told him that the allies wanted total victory, and it became likely that they would get it. (20) Publicly, the pope stayed silent. Mankind owes that vow to those numberless exiles whom the hurricane of war has torn from their native land and scattered in the land of the stranger; who can make their own the lament of the Prophet: “Our inheritance is turned to aliens; our house to strangers.”, If there really was a screening, he said, “an attempt at detailed research by examining each of the people concerned, it would have required at least a dozen German-speaking priests. Just a week after opening, the archives were closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak; nevertheless, seven German researchers from the University of Münster who did gain access to the huge archives had already found material supporting critics of the Pope’s wartime behavior. Pope Pius XII’s (1876-1958) actions during the Holocaust remain controversial. He knew what the Nazi party stood for, and was elected Pope in 1939 having said very little about Adolf Hitler’s ideology beyond a 1935 speech describing the Nazis as “miserable plagiarists who dress up old errors with new tinsel.” Pacelli told 250,000 pilgrims at Lourdes on April 28, “It does not make any difference whether they flock to the banners of the social revolution, whether they are guided by a false conception of the world and of life, or whether they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult.” He believed National Socialism was “profoundly anti-Christian and a danger to Catholicism.”(1), Even as Cardinal, Pacelli’s actions regarding Hitler were controversial. 11. Moreover, Kertzer notes, the pope wanted good relations with the Germans to protect Vatican City and the Germans believed remaining respectful toward the pope had propaganda value. The pope said he would consider the statement on anti-Semitism, but never made one. Pope Pius XII did do enough to help Jewish populations during World War II. The Pope did act behind the scenes on occasion. A strong message that the then Cardinal Pacelli made public, explaining how the world was moving towards a progressive distance from faith. 35. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1136. On March 10, 1946, the chief rabbi of Palestine, Isaac Herzog had an audience with the pope and asked him to publicly call on priests across Europe to disclose the location of the Jewish orphans. 27. In Rome, at that time, every kind of paper and information could be bought. After decades of Jewish groups and historians asking the Vatican to open its archives to allow them to see all the documents related to the pope and the Holocaust, Pope Francis announced on March 3, 2019, that they would be made accessible in March 2020. (27). Increasingly, with the evidence of their own experience, local and world Jewish representatives learned to turn to the pope for help. The Kremlin’s framing of Pius XII began on June 3, 1945, when Radio Moscow insinuated that Pius XII was Hitler’s pope. The March 2 unsealing of the archives of Pope Pius XII, the controversial World War II-era pontiff whose papacy lasted from 1939 to 1958, has been awaited for … The German radio monitoring services decoded the broadcast and went ahead with the plan. Further information was received on September 18, when an Italian businessman reported to Montini, who was later to become Pope Paul VI, about the liquidation of the Jewish ghettos in Poland. Efraim Zuroff, “Questions Remain Regarding The Opening Of Vatican WWII-Era Archives,” Jerusalem Post, (March 4, 2019). For more than a decade, 20 members of the Vatican’s archives department have been organizing Pius XII’s files, which include records of all Papal decrees, encyclicals and Vatican diplomatic correspondence. One of the most remarkable of phenomena in recent years has been the revival of the controversy over the role of Pope Pius XII during the Second World War, and, specifically, over that pontiff’s stance with regard to Hitler’s effort to exterminate the Jews. Pius XII gave his permission to send coded radio messages warning papal nuncios in Brussels and The Hague of the plot. Joan Gralla, WJC Says it Has New Evidence Against Pius XII, Reuters, (January 11, 2001); Since the murderous assault on Poland, utterly devoid of every semblance of humanity, there has been a premeditated and systematic extermination of the people of this nation. As noted above, Cardinal Montini subsequently advised that the Americans should be informed the Holy See “had heard about the harsh treatment of the Jews,” but could not confirm the reports’ veracity. Roncalli forwarded the report to the Vatican, which had claimed it did not know about the report until October. No Jews, it said, remained alive in eastern Poland. “Reassessing Pope Pius XII's Attitudes toward the Holocaust,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, (October 2009). A letter from Konrad von Preysing, Bishop of Berlin, that proved that the Pope was aware of the situation as early as January of 1941, particularly caught the attention of the commission. The Second World War, p. 59. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 176. Herzog again wanted the pope to publicly ask that all the orphans be released. This diminished the influence of the Catholic Center Party and the Catholic Labor unions. Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 315. Just as the first reports about documents in the archives were released, a report likely to raise new questions about the pope was issued by Germany’s council of Catholic bishops. Monday’s opening of the Vatican archives covers the period of the Holocaust and is an important moment in Jewish-Christian relations. The Pope’s indifference to the mistreatment of Jews was often clear. (4a) This, however, was hardly the condemnation of the persecution of the Jews that was hoped from him. In return, the Church agreed to separate religion from politics. But Christ is all and in all’” (Colossians 3:10, 11). On October 16, 1943, the Nazis arrested 1,007 Roman Jews, the majority of whom were women and children. Israel Pocket Library, Holocaust, p. 134. Historians offer many reasons why Pope Pius XII was not a stronger public advocate for the Jews: A fear of Nazi reprisals, a feeling that public speech would have no effect and might harm the Jews, the idea that private intervention could accomplish more, the anxiety that acting against the German government could provoke a schism among German Catholics, the church’s traditional role of being politically neutral and the fear of the growth of communism were the Nazis to be defeated. At times, he tried to help the Jews and was successful. At that time, the pope did nothing to save practicing Jews. 32. He was the first to hold the position after the signing of the Lateran treaties, which established the Vatican City State in order to As Pope, he had three official positions. What finally compelled him to do so was a study of the recent books about Pope Pius XII, and particularly those assailing his conduct during the Holocaust. Bishop Preysing of Berlin did the same, at least twice. Not only did Pius XII publicly condemn Hitler's murderous ideology, and Nazi war crimes against Jews and many others — the Holy See was among the earliest world leaders to do … Pius did not speak out effectively after Germany overran Poland and the restrained remarks that did come from the Vatican about the oppression of the Catholic Poles ceased after Germany protested. He entered the Secretariat of State for the Vatican in 1901, became a cardinal in 1929 and was appointed Secretary of State in 1930. 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