Has the Papacy ever preached anti-Semitism? Was Pius XII a Nazi collaborator?

Great Debates
1

I have read several books (including David Kertzer’s books The Popes Against the Jews and The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara and the extremely controversial Hitler’s Pope by John Cornwell) that make both of these claims, and critical reaction to their conclusions among the scholarly community has been mixed. I am very interested in what others WHO HAVE SOME LEVEL OF KNOWLEDGE (RATHER THAN JUST HEATED EMOTIONS) ON THE TOPIC feel about the findings, particularly the issue of Pius XII.

I’m interested in a historical debate rather than a religious one, and while I’m not Catholic (or Christian) myself I should add that I do not blame current Catholics for the sins of the past anymore than I blame current Protestants for the anti-Semitism of Martin Luther. What I am more interested in is the motives for the anti-semitism that led to the Holocaust and to whether Pius XII was more of a resistance hero or war criminal, or somewhere in between, or, like Lodz Judenrat leader Chaim Rumkowski, a little bit of both.

As you can tell by the number of posts I’ve left, I’m not a troller, but I’ll probably be largely silent in this as my intention is to learn rather than to speak and I don’t feel qualified to speak on the issue. Please whenever possible recommend readings (particularly those that are well documented) and while I realize this is an incendiary topic, please be nice- no general or unnecessary slurring of Catholics, academics, Protestants, polemicists, agnostics or combinations thereof and above all NO WITNESSING to the evils or glories of Catholicism.

A thousand thanks-
Uriel Sampiro

2
  1. Yes in the past it has,

(St) Simone of Trent was the only blood-libel 'victim to be inserted into the Roman Martyrology after being alleged murdered in Jewish rituals (d.1474, the trial of his alleged murderers, whose confessions were obtained by torture was reviewed by the pope in 1478, but found no objections and St S. entered the R. Martyrology in 1588 after miracles were reported at his shrine). His cultus though was suppressed in 1965. Also the shrine of St William of Norwich (a twelve year old apprentice tanner allegedly crucifed by Jews), though his cultus was never offically approved, was a popular one in the Middle Ages.

(source: The Book of Saints which is edited by Dom Watkins on behalf of the Benedictine monks of Ramsgate)

  1. The main thing that the Catholic church could be accused of with regards to the holocaust is inertia.

The Catholic Chrch under Pius XI steadily increased it’s condemnation of the Nazis, including a March 1937 encyclic in which Pius XI condemned those who worshipped the idols of race, people or state. Though of course he had already entered into a concordat with Germany in 1930, but as the papal ambassdor, later to become Pope Pius XII, keenly pointed out the vatican were still very much against totalitarian ideology and it was only a diplomatic treaty.

It is further evident that they were not in league with the Nazis when Pope Pius XII in 1940 unequivocally condemmed the Nazi’s ‘euthanasia’ policy (after the Bishop of Berlin had eneterd into negoiataions with the Nazis to save mentally ill Catholic priests which led him to be disowned by Cardinal Faulhaber and the Pope to state his position unequivocally.

3

Hold on, I think it wasa inaacurate to put the (St) infront of Simone of Trent as I don’t think formal canonization proceedings were ever stareted.

4

There were, indeed, popes who publicly spoke out against the Jews. One of the worst, (in terms of actions) was Paul IV, 1555 - 1559, who took the idea (from several European cities) of isolating the Jewish community, and created the Roman Ghetto, then promulgated rules to create more throughout Catholic Europe, while simultaneously banning Jews from many trades and professions. (Since he had not published a great deal of hatred of Jews before his elevation to the papacy, it might be possible that he was suffering dementia and was influenced by others in the papal court–he also killed the reconciliation between England and Rome, based on a personal feud with Cardinal Pole, elevated his incompetenet nephew to a position of power in the church, and alienated most of the people and powers of Europe with his many harsh edicts. None of that excuses the horror he perpetrated, however.

Regarding Pius XII, here are four separate views presented on the Jewish Virtual Library website:
How to Manufacture a Legend: The Controversy over the Alleged Silence of Pope Pius XII in World War II by Robert A. Graham, S.J.
A Question of Judgment: Pius XII & the Jews By Dr. Joseph L. Lichten
Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust By Shira Schoenberg
860,000 Lives Saved - The Truth About Pius XII and the Jews by Fr Dermot Fenlon

5

While the Papacy may not have openly preached anti-semitism, it did give direct and indirect aid to fascism. Croatian Nazi priests like Father Dragonovich helped Nazi war criminals escape to South America via the “ratlines.”

http://www.pavelicpapers.com/documents/army/text/ar0002.txt

http://papacyuncovered.homestead.com/files/Modern_Day_Papal_Crimes/Croatian_Holocaust/Wartime_Ustasha_Treasury_at_Rome.htm

The Ustasha were responsible for the Yugoslavian holocaust. Their leader was Pavelic, a Catholic priest.

"In Croatia and elsewhere these Clerical fascists registered
Jews in preparation for deportation to the gas chambers. In
Latvia and Lithuania clerical fascist priests oversaw the
mass executions of thousands of Jews and Communists. The
Croatian Ustasha leader Pavelic, himself a Catholic Priest,
proclaimed Croatia a “pure Catholic state,” and presided
over the extermination of 700,000 Serbs, 40,000 Jews and
25,000 Gypsies.

One of the most important post-war leaders of the
Intermarium was an Ustasha leader named Monsignor Krunoslav
Dragonovich. During the war Dragonovich worked as a
“relocation official” personally responsible for sending
tens of thousands of Serbs, Gypsies, Jews and others to
their deaths. He fled to a Vatican sanctuary in 1944. After
the war Dragonovich ran some of the most infamous ratlines
of all time. Not only did he organize the escape of Ante
Pavelic and other leading Ustashi, but he is perhaps best
known for organizing the protection and resettlement of
numerous Nazi SS leaders including Klaus Barbie “the Butcher
of Lyon.”

http://www.srpska-mreza.com/library/facts/Lituchy.html

After the war, the Vatican threatened to excommunicate communists, effectively shifting politics to the right. This does not demonstrate anti-semitism, but rather anti-communism. I suspect the catholic church’s dislike of communism has to do with the fact that they compete for the same constituency, the poor.

6

Actually, as noted earlier, some popes were clearly anti-semitic. However, the statement that “it [the papacy] gave. . . aid to fascism” needs to be clarified. The “ratlines” that were used to get Nazis out of Europe were not created with the intention of helping Nazis escape, but for the purpose of helping large numbers of Displaced Persons escape ravaged Europe. Once the channels were established, fascist sympathizers within the church very clearly used them to help fleeing Nazi. However, in the midst of the chaos following WWII, it is unlikely that the pope actually reviewed the several hundred thousand passports and travel papers, personally, and it was not difficult for pro-Nazi Catholics in authority to help their Nazi associates join the exodus. (Among the earliest ratlines was the movement established by Father Marie- Benoit in Southern France. It was quite successful in helping Jews escape Europe, despite being hampered by a higher church official, (whether prompted by true anti-semitism or by a too scrupulous regard for canon law, I do not know), who interfered because the Jews being issued Catholic passports were not really converting to Catholicism.)

As to favoring the Nazis, Pope Pius XII explicitly rebuked the French right-wing cardinals who called for a joint Nazi/Occupied Nations crusade against the “godless” U.S.S.R., telling the French that the Nazis were by far the worse evil–and this from the man who spent most of his papacy preaching against the communists.

7

Um, Ante Pavelic, aka “The Butcher of the Balkans” was many things.

However, a Catholic priest was NOT one of them.

8

You are correct , Guin, he was not a catholic priest. But according to your cite,

"Pavelic flees Zagreb on 15 April, avoiding detection and escaping overland to Austria, from where travels to Rome. He is reported to be living in the city under the protection of the Catholic church and with the knowledge of the Allied occupational forces, who fail to arrest him even though they are provided with credible information on his whereabouts.

On 12 September 1947 the American Counterintelligence Corps office in Roman reports that “Pavelic’s contacts are so high, and his present position is so compromising to the Vatican, that any extradition of Subject would deal a staggering blow to the Roman Catholic Church.”

Early in 1948 Pavelic moves to a monastery near Castel Gandolfo, 25 km southeast of Rome, where he lives disguised as a priest. Later the same year Vatican operatives smuggle him to Buenos Aires in Argentina, where he revives the Ustase movement (now called Hrvatska Drzavotvorna Stranka) and acts as a security adviser to Argentine dictator Juan Perón. "

That is damning enough for me. And this, from the Army CIC file on Pavelic:

http://www.pavelicpapers.com/documents/pavelic/ap0021.html

“Hi [sic] is living on Church property under the protection of the Vatican, at Via Giacomo Venezian No. 17-C, second floor. On entering the building you go along a long and dark corridor. At the end of the corridor there are two stairways, one to the left and one to the right. You must take the right. On the right the rooms are numbered 1,2,3, etc. If you knock once or twice at door No. 3 an unimportant person will come out. But if you knock three times at door No. 3, door No. 2 will open. It leads to the room where PAVELIC lives, together with the famous BULGARIAN terrorist Vancia MIKOILOFF and two other persons.”

He was not a catholic priest, but traveled disguised as a priest and stayed on church property under the protection of the vatican. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…

But in all fairness to what you and Tom posted, it seems that when the Vatican figured out what he was up to, they kicked him out of San Girolamo. And it appears it was the CIC who let him escape.

9

Quote:
http://www.globalnetexec.com/renew2000.htm
POPE JOHN PAUL II … Born in Wadowice, Poland on May 18, 1920; REAL NAME - “Karol Josef Wojtyla”; The son of a retired army officer and a school teacher. He studied literature and philosophy and later was a playwright and poet…
Wojtyla secretly studied theology during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Some evidence reported by a former United States Intellegence Officer provides that young Wojtyla was a salesman of the poison gas to the Nazis that exterminated Jews in world war II. By age 36, Wojtyla had become a trained philosopher with two doctorates and a professor of ethics. But when it was leaked that he was behind some of the poison gas sales to the Nazis, fearing for his life he conveniently decided to become a priest in the Roman Catholic church.

I’ve heard this crime attributed to the current pope in various texts. Does anyone have any concrete info on this?

10

akrako1, just how reliable is that site?

11

Here is ABCnews bio on the pope. If he was active in a group try to get jew out of Nazis hands it seems strange that he would sell the gas that killed them.

12

I have no idea how reliable that site is. I originally read of the Pope/Zyklon B connection years ago in “Behold A Pale Horse” by William Cooper. The above link was the only one I could find with a quick google. I’m hoping someone else has come across some other reference to this during their research.

As far as his ABCnews BIO - there could be a little fudging of the facts. I’m sure ABC got the info from Vatican PR folks. It’s recently come out (much to Poland’s dismay) that a good amount of the extermination was carried out by Poles, and not Nazis. A Catholic could have helped the Jews, but he could just as easily done nothing, or collaborated.

13

“Hitler’s Pope” was a friendly defense of the pope – the title is very misleading – Piou Xlth and Piou Xllth endorsed, publically, in the Vatican Press, the killing of the Jews. Go to the library and look for yourself – the evidence is overwhelming –

14

The evidence is overwhelming that Pius XII left a muddied trail of missed opportunities and opportunites siezed to save the Jews, that he spoke out bravely on some occasions and remained curiously silent on others. Someone looking at the evidence can come to different conclusions regarding his actions: he was brave or cowardly when surrounded by the Nazi empire; he was too bound by the dictates of diplomacy (particularly papal diplomacy at it had evolved in the 19th and early 20th centuries); he was not sufficiently forceful on an issue he actually did believe in.

However, he certainly took enough actions to indicate that he was never supportive of the massacres carried out by the Nazis. That he did not do enough to oppose them can be argued.
However, to claim that Pius XI was anything other than a complete and resolute opponent of Hitler, the Nazis, and everything they stood for, much less that he actually championed their cause, is either blithering idiocy or the most contemptible of lies.

15

akrako1,

Karol Wojtyla was ordained as a priest in 1946, after beginning his studies for the priesthood in 1942. Given that the first experimental use of Zyklon-B gas was at Auschwitz in September 1941, this is a definite problem with the chronology in the cited page. Also, the extreme anti-Catholicism and downright lunacy of other claims on the page (e.g., Hitler was a secret Jesuit) would indicate an agenda somewhat at odds with historical fact.

The apparent source for this claim is Behold a Pale Horse by William Cooper, yet another in the long line of Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory books.

16

Minor correction/clarification: I meant to say that Behold a Pale Horse is the original source for this allegation, as akrako1 had already mentioned the book.

17

If it’s overwhelming please cite it. You may well be thinking of the Protestant Nazified ‘Reich Church’.

As I said in my first post the evidence points to inertia not collision.

18

We could ask Bill Cooper where he got the information, except he was gunned down by Maricopa County sheriffs right after he claimed on his web page that the CIA was behind 9/11. No conspiracy, just a coinkidink.

19

Apache County. And it probably was a coincidence. I mean, Cooper had been accusing aliens, Catholics, freemasons, the illuminati, Zionists and whoever else you can think of of trying to take over the world for years. He was also extremely anti-government and swore that he wouldn’t be “taken alive” by them. He also, at the time of his death, had an outstanding warrant against him on an aggravated assault charge. The theory that he resisted arrest and committed “suicide by cop” isn’t that far fetched.