On Wednesday, ‘Radio Vatican’ reported that a 1943 document found in a convent in Rome bolstered church contentions that Pope Pius XII tried to save Jews from the Nazi onslaught during World War II. Some historians and Jewish groups contend that the wartime pontiff did not speak out publicly against the Holocaust, while the Vatican insists that the late pope used quiet diplomacy to help Jews. The radio station reported the discovery of a note, kept in a cloistered monastery near the Colosseum, which allegedly lists the names of 24 people who were taken in by the nuns "in accordance with Pius' desire."
The note is dated November 1943. The previous month, more than 2,000 Jews were rounded up in the Rome’s Old Ghetto and deported to the Nazi death camps while the Italian capital was under German occupation. Only about 100 Jews survived and later returned to Italy.
Peter Gumpel, a German Jesuit who has been spearheading efforts for beatification for Pius, told the radio station that he had obtained the document from nuns based in the convent. Gumpel claimed that the lists provided "further confirmation that can be useful against those who persistently want to denigrate Pius XII and thus attack the Catholic church."
Beatification is the last formal step before sainthood. Israeli officials and Jewish groups have said that as long as Vatican archives on Pius' papacy remained closed to researchers, the question over what the pontiff did or did not do to save Jews remained unresolved. Last year, Pope Benedict XVI, insisted Pius had worked quietly behind the scenes to save as many Jews as possible. He has expressed hope the path for sainthood could move ahead, but also reportedly agreed to consider freezing the process until the Vatican's wartime archives are open to researchers.