Representing Jewish Communities in 100 Countries Across Six Continents
Representing Jewish Communities in 100 Countries Across Six Continents
04 March 2010
Bishop Sergio Pagano, the prefect of the Vatican’s Secret Archives, has said it would take five years before the archives on the pontificate of war-time Pope Pius XII are cataloged and opened to historians. An estimated 16 million documents on Pius XII, who was pontiff of the Catholic Church from 1939 to 1958, are kept in the Vatican’s archives.
Jewish organizations, including the World Jewish Congress, and Catholic scholars have repeatedly called on the Vatican to open the secret archives covering the World War II period to clarify the role Pope Pius XII played during the Holocaust. Critics accuse him of turning a blind eye to Jewish suffering; the Vatican and other supporters say he worked behind the scenes to save Jews.
Recently, Pope Benedict XVI sparked controversy when he recognized the “heroic virtues” of his predecessor, one of the preconditions of beatification and later sainthood.
Pagano said the Vatican would be willing to open its archives immediately since there was nothing to "fear" from them, but the documents still had to be numbered, conserved, registered and ordered before they could be made accessible.
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I am confussed??? The World Jewish Congress sent the Vaican a donation after the war as a thank you for Pope Pius XII efforts during the war to save Jewish lives and was hailed by their Prime Minister and many individual Jews whom he and the Church were able help up until the release of the fictional German created play "The Deputy" in 1964. Now, all of a sudden the World Jewish Congrres seems to have developed a case of amnesia. I think the WJC needs to look into their own documented past before demanding anything from the Vatican.
Mr. Gadye, your argument would be more compelling if you would correctly identify the pope you are lambasting. Eugenio Pacelli became Pope Pius XII. I will not argue that Pius XII was a saint; however, accusations of compliance and anti-Semitism are equally unfounded. Concerning John Cornwell's book "Hitler's Pope," it is certainly not considered to be an authoritative source on the topic. Many critics have questioned the reliability of his research, and Cornwell himself has admitted that his work lacked balance and insight. (Economist, December 2004) The controversy over the figure of Pius XII is understandable, but the debate is by no means settled.
According to John Cornwell, the senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, England, in his book, " Hitler's Pope". [As a young Vatican lawyer, Pacelli, (Pope Pius XI) collaborated in redrafting the Church's laws in such a way as to grant future popes unchallenged domination from the Roman center. These laws were called the Code of Canon Law... As papal nuncio in Munich during the 1920's Pacelli found a successful negotiating partner for his Reich Concordat in the person of Hitler. This treaty authorized the papacy to impose the Church law on German Catholics and granted generous privileges to Catholic schools and the clergy. In Exchange, the Catholic Church in Germany, its parliamentary party , and its many hundreds of associations and newspapers "voluntarily" withdrew, following Pacelli's initiative, from social and political action. The abdication of German political Catholicism in 1933, negotiated and imposed from the Vatican with the agreement of Pope Pius XI, ensured that Nazism could rise unopposed by the most powerful Catholic community of the world.. As Hitler himself boasted in a cabinet meeting on July 14, 1933, Pacelli's guarantee of nonintervention left the regime free to resolve the Jewish question. According to the cabinet minutes, "Hitler expressed the opinion that one should only consider it as a great achievement. The concordat gave Germany an opportunity and created an area of trust that was particularly significant in the developing struggle against international Jewry." The perception of papal endorsement of Nazism, in Germany and abraod, helped seal the fate of Europe. See pp. 6-7.
It is clear and there is much evidence that Pope Pius XI endorsed the destruction of the Jews by the German Reich in addition to turning his eyes when innocent Roman Jews were rounded up and send up to the death camps. The Vatican has has many catacombs and places to hide people. Pope Pius XI did nothing to save his fellow Romans. He was no saint and should never be given Sainthood by Pope Benedict.
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