More evidence exonerates Pius XII

From the Guardian

***


Pius XII has long been vilified as "Hitler's pope", accused of failing publicly to condemn the genocide of Europe's Jews. Now a British author has unearthed extensive material that Vatican insiders believe will restore his reputation, revealing the part that he played in saving lives and opposing nazism. Gordon Thomas, a Protestant, was given access to previously unpublished Vatican documents and tracked down victims, priests and others who had not told their stories before.

The Pope's Jews, which will be published next month, details how Pius gave his blessing to the establishment of safe houses in the Vatican and Europe's convents and monasteries. He oversaw a secret operation with code names and fake documents for priests who risked their lives to shelter Jews, some of whom were even made Vatican subjects.

Thomas shows, for example, that priests were instructed to issue baptism certificates to hundreds of Jews hidden in Genoa, Rome and elsewhere in Italy. More than 2,000 Jews in Hungary were given fabricated Vatican documents identifying them as Catholics and a network saved German Jews by bringing them to Rome. The pope appointed a priest with extensive funds with which to provide food, clothing and medicine. More than 4,000 Jews were hidden in convents and monasteries across Italy.

During and immediately after the war, the pope was considered a Jewish saviour. Jewish leaders – such as Jerusalem's chief rabbi in 1944 – said the people of Israel would never forget what he and his delegates "are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters at the most tragic hour". Jewish newspapers in Britain and America echoed that praise, and Hitler branded him "a Jew lover".  [And yet those who were not born in that era are his most arduous critics!]

However, his image turned sour in the 1960s, [In the 1960s!!!] thanks to Soviet antagonism towards the Vatican and a German play by Rolf Hochhuth,The Deputy, which vilified the pope, accusing him of silence and inaction over the Jews. It was a trend that intensified with the publication of Hitler's Pope, a book by John Cornwell.  [The same author who wrote a biased assessment of the pontificate of John Paul II.]

However, as the Vatican's secretary of state before the war, the future pope contributed to the damning 1937 encyclical of Pius XI, With Burning Anxiety, and, as Pius XII he made condemnatory speeches that were widely interpreted at the time – including by Jewish leaders and newspapers – as clear condemnations of Hitler's racial policies. Due to the Vatican's traditionally diplomatic language, the accusation that Pius XII did not speak out has festered.  [Those who do not know "diplomatic language" are people who are used to straight talk.]

Professor Ronald J Rychlak, the author of Hitler, the War and the Pope, said: "Gordon Thomas has found primary sources … He has tracked down family members, original documentation and established what really was a universal perception prior to the 1960s. He's shown what the people at the time – victims, rescuers and villains – all knew: that Pius XII was a great supporter of the victims of the Holocaust."

Asked why the Vatican had not made the new material available until now or, where stories were known, disseminated them more widely,Thomas said: "The church thinks across centuries. If there's a dispute for 50 years, so what?"

William Doino, a Vatican historian, described Thomas's research as "unique and groundbreaking". He spoke of the book's new insight, for example, into Hugh O'Flaherty, an Irish priest: "Everybody has always praised [O'Flaherty] because he helped Jews and escaped POWs. They made a movie about him, The Scarlet and the Black, with Gregory Peck. However, they always say he was acting on his own authority and that Pius was either aloof or not giving him anything. Gordon has spoken extensively with O'Flaherty's family, who gave him private correspondence and told him that O'Flaherty said that everything was with Pius XII's co-operation."

The book also tells the story of Vittorio Sacerdoti, a young Jewish doctor who was able to work in a Vatican hospital, inventing a fictitious deadly disease that deterred Germans from entering. Dozens of fake patients were taught to cough convincingly.

Thomas interviewed Sacerdoti's cousin, who recalled that as a child she was one of those patients – "feeling there was nothing wrong with her, yet having to cough regularly in the ward".

The Vatican is so excited by The Pope's Jews that it is supporting a feature documentary film being planned by a British producer who has bought the rights to it.

Allen Jewhurst, who has produced documentaries for BBC TV'sPanorama, said that, with more than a billion Catholics worldwide, interest in the story is huge. [Imagine the interest of the anti-Catholics as well!] After a meeting with two cardinals at the Vatican, he and Thomas now hope to get exclusive access to the archives. "This will, hopefully, be a definitive film," said Jewhurst.

Thomas, who also wrote the book Voyage of the Damned, about Jewish refugees, recalled: "The Vatican people said, 'How wonderful, the truth out at last'."

"The Pope's Jews: The Vatican's Secret Plan to Save Jews from the Nazis" is published by The Robson Press on 7 March

***

And yet critics were insisting that Pius should have made a public condemnation of Nazism.  Would that be prudent?

Would you risk losing more lives and properties for that public condemnation?

Never knew that you need to be a loud mouth when playing chess or poker.

Geez!

Pius XII helped the Jews; British Gov't didn't

New York Post article, Dec. 28, 2009.  Author is a Jew.

Courtesy of Newsmax.com


***

Newly discovered wartime British intelligence documents appear to show that the Vatican under Pope Pius XII was instrumental in helping fund the Allied war effort that ended the Holocaust and won victory over the Nazis.  [Where are those naysayers when you need them, huh?  Oops!  Wrong wish! Ha!]

The findings, based on systematic British secret service interceptions of financial transactions of the main financial agencies of Vatican City from 1941 to 1943, reveal that at the onset of the Second World War, the Vatican rapidly moved its securities and gold reserves from areas under threat of Nazi occupation to the United States and thereafter used them to help the Allies combat Nazism and provide aid to the worldwide Church suffering from war.  [Will the United States provide the documents to prove the movement of these securities and gold reserves? Nahhh.  What would the USA benefit from defending the defender of life and enemy of abortion and (spoiled) women's rights?]

It was a strategy that was fundamentally important to victory over the Nazis, claims Patricia M. McGoldrick of London's Middlesex University, who published her findings in a December 2012 article entitled “New Perspectives on Pius XII and Vatican Financial Transactions during the Second World War.”

The article appeared in the December edition of “The Historical Journal”, a quarterly of the University of Cambridge.

The protagonist of the story is Bernardino Nogara, an astute financial advisor and networker extraordinaire, who established close ties with large U.S. and British banks. A member of the board of directors of the Banca Commerciale Italiana and a friend of the Ratti family to which Pope Pius XI (Achille Ratti) belonged, Pius XI appointed Nogara as financial advisor to the Holy See in 1929.

The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano reported Jan. 30th that Nogara’s financial planning was “fundamentally important to the Allies' victory over the Nazis and Fascists in World War II.” His strategy, it added, “concerns millions of dollars invested in the largest banks of the U.S. and Great Britain, by which persecuted churches and exhausted peoples were given aid.” Those banks included JP Morgan, National City Bank of New York, Morgan Grenfell and Barclays.

The documents, preserved in the British National Archives, concern intercepts of the activities of the Vatican's main financial institutions: the Special Administration of the Holy See (A.S.S.S.) and the Institute for Works of Religion (I.O.R.), or Vatican Bank. [There are documents!]

McGoldrick explains that what is learned from these accounts is that at the onset of the Second World War the Vatican “rapidly moved its securities and gold reserves from areas under threat of Nazi occupation to the United States, made the United States the financial hub from which it funded and administered its global church, and had, at any one time, over $10,000,000 invested in the US economy.”

[Here are the killer questions!]

She poses the question that if, as Pius XII’s detractors argue, the Pope and the Vatican were sympathetic to Nazi Germany as a bulwark against Bolshevism, then why did they allow the Vatican’s assets to be transferred to the banks of the democracies, and why did they do so in the early years of the war when it seemed certain, as they themselves believed, that Germany would win? “Would it not have made more sense, and been more commensurate with their alleged political leanings, to have invested these resources instead in the then growing and profitable German economy?,” McGoldrick asks.

She further reveals documented evidence that shows British unwillingness to provide humanitarian aid to suffering Jews. [See?  There is evidence that the Brits don't want to support the Jews!] When Pius XII tried to organize large shipments of flour to Rome, where the Pope was already providing over 100,000 hot meals a day, many to Rome’s Jewish community, and even attempting to import food from Argentina and Spain through Italy and Greece, the British blocked the initiatives on cost grounds.

It led the Vatican Secretary of State to send a comment to the British ambassador to the Holy See saying: “The Holy See always replies in the affirmative; it is the British Government who reply in the negative.” In the end, a way was found to funnel assistance to Rome’s Jewish community through the Vatican, McGoldrick adds.

Much of the Vatican’s money was intended to support the Churches in difficulty — missions, nunciatures, seminaries and dioceses on all continents. There was also a privileged channel for Europe — to bring relief to the persecuted churches during the Nazi occupation, where Catholic schools, monasteries and churches were closed or confiscated, youth organizations and Catholic publications suppressed, and many priests and religious arrested and interned in concentration camps. For them, the IOR maintained a separate account at the Chase National Bank of New York, the findings show.

The documents also reveal that after 1939, through Nogara and his contacts in Washington and elsewhere, the Vatican invested heavily in U.S. Treasury Bills, in large manufacturing companies and technology, companies such as Rolls Royce, United Steel Corporation, Dow Chemical, Westinghouse Electric, Union Carbide and General Electric.

McGoldrick says Pius XII was well aware of these investments and goes so far as to speak of "a torrent of Vatican money" flowing directly into “Sherman tanks, B52 bombers, and well equipped GIs who defeated the Nazi regime and ended the bestial murders of the Holocaust forever.”

If the “weight of investment counts,” the author says, “Vatican money was clearly behind the Allies.”

L’Osservatore Romano cautioned that it is “too early” to make precise budgetary analyses of the documents. “The financial history of the Second World War is a ‘terra incognita’,” it said, that “few have begun to explore [and] much of the material has yet to be discovered and studied.”

But it added that it’s already possible to see enough “to make us abandon hasty judgments and ideologized visions in the reconstruction of the facts.”


***

And the critics, lamentably most of them Jews who were not even born during the Holocaust, are the most rabid critics of Pius XII!

As I have constantly posted about the case of Pius XII, the burden of proof lies with his critics.

Pope Pius XII went under cover to save Jews

Rome, Italy, Nov 4, 2011 / 06:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Jewish New Yorker who has made it his life’s work to clear the name of Pope Pius XII of being anti-Semitic believes the wartime pontiff actually went undercover to save the lives of Jews in Rome.

Gary Krupp came across the evidence in a letter from a Jewish woman whose family was rescued thanks to direct Vatican intervention. 

“It is an unusual letter, written by a woman who is alive today in northern Italy, who said she was with her mother, her uncle, and a few other relatives in an audience with Pius XII in 1947.”

Next to Pope Pius during the meeting was his Assistant Secretary of State, Monsignor Giovanni Montini, the future Pope Paul VI.

“Her uncle immediately looks at the Pope and he says, ‘You were dressed as a Franciscan,’ and looked at Montini who was standing next to him, ‘and you as a regular priest. You took me out of the ghetto into the Vatican.’ Montini immediately said, ‘Silence, do not ever repeat that story.’”

Krupp believes the claim to be true because the personality of the wartime Pope was such that he “needed to see things with his own eyes.”

“He used to take the car out into bombed areas in Rome, and he certainly wasn’t afraid of that. I can see him going into the ghetto and seeing what was happening,” says Krupp.

***

Read more of this amazing story here.

***

PS:  Where are the Pius XII bashers, eh?  Proof please!

In the meantime, let me shout this!

SANTO SUBITO!!!

More evidence Pope Pius XII saved a lot of Jews!

From the Brisbane Times

***

POPE PIUS XII, the controversial wartime pontiff, may have saved thousands of Jewish lives by secretly securing visas so they could escape Nazi Germany, a historian says.

Pope Pius, who was labelled ''Hitler's Pope'' [now this is derogatory!  The nutcase who wrote this is an ex priest who went to the same literary school as Dan Brown majoring in conspiracy theories.] because of his silence during the Holocaust, may have arranged the exodus of about 200,000 Jews from Germany just three weeks after Kristallnacht, when thousands of Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. [Now this is the more important part in this paragraph rather than that stupid label!]

The claim was made by Dr Michael Hesemann, a German historian carrying out research in the Vatican archives for the Pave the Way Foundation, a US inter-faith group. [it is composed more of Jews who are fair-minded!]

He said that Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli - the future Pius XII - wrote to Catholic archbishops around the world to urge them to apply for visas for ''non-Aryan Catholics'' and Jewish converts to Christianity who wanted to leave Germany.

Elliot Hershberg, the chairman of the Pave the Way Foundation, said: ''We believe that many Jews who were successful in leaving Europe may not have had any idea that their visas and travel documents were obtained through these Vatican efforts. [Possibly descendants or relatives of these survivors are now Pius haters! Possibly.]

''Everything we have found thus far seems to indicate the known negative perception of Pope Pius XII is wrong.'' [We know that already.  CNN and NYT need to know this.]

Pius XII was criticised for failing to explicitly denounce the Holocaust or the Nazi regime or to excommunicate Hitler. [What the?!@%#$^&  That demon stopped going to Mass or receiving the sacraments at an early age and is even engaged in witchcraft and divination!  The Nazis fed on the occult!]

Dr Hesemann says that additional evidence suggests that the visas would have been given to ordinary Jews desperate to escape persecution.

''The fact that this letter speaks of 'converted Jews' and 'non-Aryan' Catholics indeed seems to be a cover,'' he said.

The appeal from Cardinal Pacelli, then the Vatican's secretary of state, was dated November 30, 1938 - 20 days after Kristallnacht, the ''night of broken glass''.

Cardinal Pacelli was able to ask for the visas because the 1933 concordat he signed with the Nazis provided protection for Jews who converted. [Pacelli is really a diplomat and a statesman!]

In December, Pope Benedict XVI placed Pius one step closer to sainthood when he declared him ''venerable'', meaning he lived a life of ''heroic virtue''. Two miracles are needed to canonise him as a saint and the Vatican is investigating at least one.

***

As I have posted before, the burden of proof is on the side of the Pius XII haters.

Here's the deal:

We Pius XII supporters will find evidence that the pope did something to save the Jews.

Now you Pius hater prove to the world that Pius did NOTHING to save the Jews as you always say.

Rabbi criticizes media for attcks against the Pope!

Now this something!

Save this article as a cache of evidence to support the Pope against those who are biased towards him if you ever get the chance to have some friends talk about the sex abuse scandal and the purported "silence" of the Pope.

***

Carlstadt, N.J., Apr 7, 2010 / 03:05 am (CNA).- In an interview with CNA on Tuesday, Rabbi Jack Bemporad [pictured at left] commented on the recent media onslaught concerning the Holy Father, calling the coverage “one dimensional” and saying that the depiction of the Church in the media has not been given “proper context.” [Will the media pick this up?  I doubt it.]

Rabbi Bemporad, director of the New Jersey-based Center for Interreligious Understanding, was recently quoted as a lone voice in an Associated Press article in which other Jewish leaders denounced the papal preacher, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, for his comments likening the media depiction of the Church to anti-Semitism.

In the AP article released on April 2, and in a follow up interview with CNA, Rabbi Bemporad defended the papal preacher. Although the rabbi believes Fr. Cantalamessa used a “poor example,” ultimately, the preacher's “point is correct.”

What the preacher intended to indicate through his homily, Rabbi Bemporad said, was that “you can't collectively condemn the church for what some priests and some individuals in the Church may have done.”

[Here is what the AP article said.  Excerpts about the rabbi only are reprinted here.

"Others were more sympathetic to the Catholic church. Rabbi Jack Bemporad, director of the New Jersey-based Center for Interreligious Understanding, said the church and Benedict are unquestionably under attack.

Comparing anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism was "a little bit of an exaggeration," he said. But Bemporad said he understands what the preacher was driving at: The Jewish community has often been accused and its people even murdered for things for which they bore no collective or even partial responsibility.

"It would be nice," he said, "if there was a little charity and understanding in all this instead of taking someone who is down and kind of stomp on them."]

Addressing those who have criticized Pope Benedict in recent days, Rabbi Bemporad stated that “you've got to have a sense of compassion, charity, and saying 'how can we help you do this properly?' Instead of condemning him and saying, 'See, you're not doing enough.'”

“We're so quick to judge, we're so quick to condemn,” he stressed. “There's no charity, there's no compassion, no sympathy, and no, by the way, self-criticism.”

A lot of sex abuse involving children is going on, the rabbi noted. “It's not simply a Catholic problem.” [BINGO RABBI!  BINGO!!!]

“I do think that the pope is trying to do the best he can,” he added.

The rabbi also took a jab at the media coverage of the Pope, calling it “very one dimensional” and charging that many of the reports have not placed Vatican actions “in the proper context.”

“The tragedy of the media,” Rabbi Bemporad stated, “is that it has a capacity to educate, instead what it does is cater to the worst element in human beings. The most voyeuristic element.”

“We shouldn't be so quick to grab at headlines which are virulent, and in my opinion, hysterical,” he asserted.

The New Jersey rabbi also praised Pope Benedict for his efforts in helping advance the relationship between the two faiths, saying the pontiff has “tried to be a friend” and has done whatever he can “to show the close relationship between Catholics and Jews.”

“All I am asking for is charity,” and “that we should think about how we can help one another not condemn one another,” said the rabbi.

World War 2 Vatican documents go online!

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 25, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Vatican announced today that official documents spanning more than 40 years are now available online.

The entire collection of the of the Actae Sanctae Sedis (A.S.S.) and of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis (A.A.S.) -- i.e., the official Acts of the Holy See from 1865 to 2007 -- are now available in pdf format.

Also available is a multi-volume collection of acts from World War II, (Actes et documents du Saint-Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale), published by order of Paul VI starting in 1965, and edited by a specialized group of four Jesuit historians.

The project of putting the information online was supported by the New York-based Pave the Way Foundation.

A statement from Pave the Way noted the collection -- with its more than 9,000 pages -- describes the contents of 5,125 documents that are still not catalogued in the Vatican Secret Archives, and consequently, still not open to the public. These documents have been at the heart of controversy as researchers seek to settle debate over the role Pope Pius XII played in saving Jews from the Holocaust.

Gary Krupp, president of the Pave the Way Foundation, said the research project is "extremely important."
"To date, most of the research done in this area has been selective in nature. By opening these documents up for worldwide study, we hope to bring the truth of this controversial period to light," he said.

The foundation enlisted Israeli photographer Ardon Bar-Hama, whose work includes the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Codex Vaticanus, in order to deliver the highest quality fully searchable digital images of the documents.

Elliot Hershberg, chairman of the Pave the Way board, observed, "We felt that it was necessary to open these records, which are certainly not a substitute for the full opening of the war year archives. However, together with Pope Benedict XVI’s ordering of the opening of the Secret Archives up to 1939, we now have a clearer historical picture of the secret actions of Pope Pius XII and his attitude towards the Jewish people, his hatred of Hitler, and his secret work to defeat the Nazi regime.”

***

Here is the direct link:  www.vatican.va/archive/atti-ufficiali-santa-sede/index_en.htm

To all you anti-Pius XII and anti-Catholic %#$%@&*, here is your chance to look for something to incriminate the Church and Pius XII.  Good luck because we all know you will find, NOTHING!

Another Jew comes to the defense of Pius XII

Rome, Italy, Mar 4, 2010 (CNA).- Joseph Roth was a famous novelist and Austrian Jewish journalist who produced most of his works in exile due to the Nazi invasion of his country. Days after the inauguration of Pius XII as Pontiff, Roth praised his election and remarked that the new Pope was an “enemy of the pre-apocalyptic beasts” of Nazism that were governing Germany. [This is a Jew who lived during those times.  Remember, how people who are far from the actual people and events are, most of the time, the "loud mouths", those who think they know-it-all, as if they lived the actual times, these pseduo historical scholars ala Dan Brown?  You get the picture right?  Happens in our church too for those who like to say things like "But that is how early Christians used to worship.  Does Chupungco ring a bell?]

On Wednesday, L'Osservatore Romano (LOR) published text by Roth written in March 1939 for the 

"Österreichische Post," the Austro-Hungarian monarchy’s newspaper that was printed in Paris.

The article recounted Roth's experience of being in St. Peter's Square on March 12 for the papal inauguration. “The new Pope has been crowned and thus in the middle of the year, a new year, a new decade begins. Judging by his physical characteristics and posture ... this Pope seems to represent, with a zeal that has self-renunciation as its bastion, and a capacity to renounce what is a given, one of the oldest ideals of the Church, the diplomatic spirit, which can never be abdicated,” Roth wrote.

In the same article, the Jewish writer, who in his younger years signed his work as “Joseph the Red,” for his closeness with Communism said, “The (Nazi) pre-apocalyptic beasts who now dominate politics are already alluding to their true motives for persecuting the Church. He (Pius XII) is the only one who really hurts them. What’s more, those who were not afraid of the Pope before are now afraid of this one.”

The LOR article explained that this writing by Roth constitutes “an unusual apology for Catholicism, from the point of view of someone who is immersed in an endless escape and is seeking the help of the oldest institution.” The article has a few lines “celebrating the diplomacy of the Pope” who was also the Apostolic Nuncio to Germany when he “signed the Concordat and 50 statements of protest sent to the National Socialist government because of its repeated violations.”

Roth also wrote articles for the "Österreichische Post" that were critical of Marxists biases and of the superficiality of several Vatican observers.

Other books by Roth include, “The Flight Without End,” and “The Rebellion.” His most famous work is “The Radetzky March,” which follows a family during the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

***

Again...the burden of proof shifts to those who are rabidly anti-Catholic and therefore anti-Pius XII

Incorrect date spurs more anti-Pius XII rhetoric

ROME, FEB. 2, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Pope Pius XII was again in the news this week, as researchers presented two documents that were interpreted as putting the Pope in a negative light regarding his response to the Holocaust.

As ZENIT reported Monday, a brief document was presented as a new find dated Oct. 19, 1943. The document is a telegram from American diplomat Harold Tittmann on his meeting with the Pope. [He wrote a book about his time spent in the Vatican as a diplomat.]

The document does not mention the Oct. 16 raid on the Jews of Rome, wherein more than 1,000 of the city's Jews were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz. [There is a reason for this and it will be explained later.]

Given that Tittmann's report does not mention the raid (though theoretically it had happened just three days before), and instead reports Pius XII's concern about Communists in Rome and his desire to keep the Eternal City in peace, headlines reported the Pope's "indifference" to the Holocaust. [Here is the stupid Western media ganging up on a dead guy and twisting historical facts just to advance their anti-Catholic rhetoric.]

However, there is a basic problem.

In a statement sent to ZENIT, Professor Ronald Rychlak of the University of Mississippi explains that Pius XII could not have expressed concern about the roundup of Roman Jews because it hadn't happened yet.

Rychlak is the author of "Hitler, the War, and the Pope." [You can buy it here.]

He explained: "The transcribed message to Washington from Harold Tittmann is dated Oct. 19, but this is a mistake. Vatican records show that the meeting between Pius and Tittmann took place on Oct. 14."

"In fact, L'Osservatore Romano of Oct. 15, 1943, reported on page one -- top of the first column -- that Tittmann was received by the Pope in a private audience on Oct. 14, 1943.

"Apparently a handwritten '14' was misread as a '19' when the documents were typed. The Pope did not mention the roundup of Jews because it had not yet happened!" [See how a misinterpretation of a handwritten number sends the anti-Pius zealots into a frenzy?  See what difference that makes?]

Rychlak noted that what the Pope did express to Tittmann was his concern "that a group of Communists would commit a violent act and this would lead to serious repercussions. Of course, he proved to be exactly correct the following spring."

Moreover, though the Oct. 14 document was presented as a new find, historians were already aware of it because it was published in 1964, with the incorrect date.

It is in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) collection, in Volume II of 1943, on page 950.

In his blog, Andrea Tornielli, Vatican expert of the Italian daily "Il Giornale," points out that the researchers who presented this "new document," Giuseppe Casarrubea and Mario Cereghino, have already made such "revelations" in the past.

"In October of 2008," he reported, "they presented as unpublished a document to use it against Pius XII (it was also referred to by ANSA [news] agency) and later they had to apologize."

***

I was thinking of writing something as a reaction to this but I came upon this online review of the book Inside the Vatican and I would like to share this with everybody.


"After reading this book one clearly sees the absurdity of the "Hitler's pope" myth - for the Allies there was no question whether the pope was pro-Hitler or not. [True.  If indeed the Pope were sympathetic to the Nazis, why, after the war, was he not tried or even questioned.  He could have answered all of these attacks against him, from anti-Catholic media, to anti-Catholic Jews.  Why on earth would Golda Meir even pay homage to him when the pope died?  For Pete's sake.]  There was no argument (as there is today) on where the sympathies of the pope lay. The idea of the pope being on friendly terms with Hitler would have seemed sheer nonsense to anyone at the time, to such a degree that anyone who would have suggested thus during his pontificate would have probably been suspected of being either vehemently anti-Catholic or even communist (communists certainly had good reason to smear the reputation of the pope). If it were true that he was on friendly terms with Hitler, it would have seemed utterly strange for him to shelter POW's who managed to sneak into the Vatican (as it is reported in the book). But it did not seem strange to anyone at the time, rather it seemed logical, given that everyone knew Pius to be strongly anti-Nazi. This book raises the question: who should be trusted as a source for judging Pius XII, those who lived with him at the time of his pontificate who are all in universal agreement on the goodwill of the pope and on his anti-Nazi stance, or those who came later who have judged the pope through calumnies and twisted facts. [Just as I have been raising against the anti-Pius zealots.  They have no historical proof!  Nothing but Dan Brown evidence!] The answer is clearly evident to those who wish to know the truth of the matter. In conclusion, this book is an invaluable source for any serious historian who is interested in learning more about the Vatican during WWII and the whole "did Pius do enough to help the Jews" question.


Need I say more?

But these books.  Don't waste your money on John Cornwell's or Dan Brown's.

Pius XII defended in Israeli paper

JERUSALEM, FEB. 1, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Similar to a defense of Pope Pius XII by French scholar Bernard-Henri Levy, American writer Dimitri Cavalli has published an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in the same vein.

Cavalli hails from New York where he is writing a book on Pius XII. His articles have been published in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times; L'Osservatore Romano reported on the Haaretz report today.

In that piece, Cavalli asserted that the "campaign against Pope Pius XII is doomed to failure." [I am praying.]

"[H]is detractors cannot sustain their main charges against him -- that he was silent, pro-Nazi, and did little or nothing to help the Jews -- with evidence," Cavalli contended. [As I have mentioned before, the burden of proof shifts to Pius XII'2 detractors.  They can't show evidence other than demanding the opening of the Vatican Archives pertaining to Pius XII.]

The author said the proof that exists shows the contrary.

He noted that in 1933, when Cardinal Pacelli [the future Pius XII] was still secretary of state, he "instructed the papal nuncio in Germany to see what he could do to oppose the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies."

The author also points out that Pope Pius XI's 1937 encyclical "Mit brennender Sorge," which was drafted by Cardinal Pacelli, was considered by the Germans as a "security threat."

Then, Cavalli continued, when Cardinal Pacelli was elected Pope on March 2, 1939, "[o]n March 4, Joseph Goebbels, the German propaganda minister, wrote in his diary: 'Midday with the Fuehrer. He is considering whether we should abrogate the concordat with Rome in light of Pacelli's election as Pope.'" [Is this Hitler's pope when in fact Hitler was one of those who was not happy of Pacelli's election?]

Moreover, Cavalli continued, "During the war, the Pope was far from silent."

And, he asserted: "Unlike many of the Pope's latter-day detractors, the Nazis understood him very well.

"After studying Pius XII's 1942 Christmas message, the Reich Central Security Office concluded: 'In a manner never known before the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order. ... Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.'"

"Pick up any book that criticizes Pius XII, and you won't find any mention of this important report," Cavalli reflected.

The author reiterated that during the War, representatives of the Pope "frequently ordered the Vatican's diplomatic representatives in many Nazi-occupied and Axis countries to intervene on behalf of endangered Jews."

And he observed that until the Holy Father's death in 1958 "many Jewish organizations, newspapers and leaders lauded his efforts." He cited in this regard a 1944 letter to the papal nuncio in Romania, from Alexander Shafran, chief rabbi of Bucharest. [As I also said before, anti-Catholic rhetoric is always done when the guy is already dead and unable to defend the one being attacked.]

Cavalli concludes, saying, "Perhaps only in a backward world such as ours would the one man who did more than any other wartime leader to help Jews and other Nazi victims, receive the greatest condemnation."

***

I can't find this in any other media organization except Zenit.  Probably because it is pro Pius.

It is probably against their editorial policy to print news that is against Catholicism.

Jesus of Nazareth 2

Courtesy of CNA

Vatican City, Jan 20, 2010 / 09:12 pm (CNA).- After meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in a private audience, American Rabbi Jacob Neusner, prolific writer, professor and expert in Judaism, told L'Osservatore Romano newspaper about his history with the Pope. He also mentioned that the Holy Father confided to him that the second volume of Jesus of Nazareth is complete.

The two met privately on Monday at the Vatican for 20 minutes, which the Rabbi Neusner called a "great gift" and said was "time enough for a nice meeting between two professors." During this encounter, the Pope chose to reveal to him that the second volume on Jesus is ready for the press.

The American rabbi was in Rome to take part in Catholic-Jewish dialogues following the Pope's visit to the Synagogue of Rome. He's no stranger to the environment, having dedicated his life to the scholarly study of Judaism, including how it interacts with Christianity and Islam.

Rabbi Neusner has written various treatises addressing inter-religious subjects. In fact, so impressive was his 1993 treatise "A Rabbi talks with Jesus" that then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that it was "the most important novelty in the last decade for Jewish-Christian dialogue," a review which the Rabbi published on the inside cover of the book.

The next contact between the two came in 2007 when Pope Benedict XVI dedicated several pages in his first volume on Jesus of Nazareth to the Rabbi's treatise, which concerns Christ's teaching of the beatitudes on the mount.

Excerpt of Pope's address to the Roman Synagogue

Here in this place, how could we not remember the Roman Jews who were snatched from their homes, before these very walls, and who with tremendous brutality were killed at Auschwitz? How could one ever forget their faces, their names, their tears, the desperation faced by these men, women and children? The extermination of the people of the Covenant of Moses, at first announced, then systematically programmed and put into practice in Europe under the Nazi regime, on that day tragically reached as far as Rome. Unfortunately, many remained indifferent, but many, including Italian Catholics, sustained by their faith and by Christian teaching, reacted with courage, often at risk of their lives, opening their arms to assist the Jewish fugitives who were being hunted down, and earning perennial gratitude. The Apostolic See itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way.

***

Papa Benny's way of telling those who are so into the anti-Pius XII polemics...

You can read the full discourse here.
Hah!