Pope Praises Pius XII

[Historian]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101121/ap_o..._pope_pius

A new front page news item for the masses!

ROME – A Holocaust survivors group has voiced dismay over Pope Benedict XVI's assertion in a new book that wartime pontiff Pius XII was a "great righteous" man who saved more Jews than anyone else.

Benedict's "comments fill us with pain and sadness and cast a menacing shadow on Vatican-Jewish relations," said Elan Steinberg, vice president of American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, in an emailed statement late Saturday.
Some contend Pius didn't speak out enough against mass deportation and killing of 6 million Jews by Germany's Nazi regime and its collaborators.

In "Light of the World," to be published on Tuesday, Benedict lavishes praise on Pius, who progressed down the Vatican's road to possible sainthood when the pope last year formally hailed his predecessor's "heroic virtues."
He notes pleas from Jewish groups and historians that sainthood efforts be put on hold until the Vatican opens up its archives on the 1939-1958 papacy. The Vatican says the documents, which Benedict says number in the "hundreds of thousands," will be opened up to scholars when archival work is ready, likely in a few years.

I wonder why anyone expected him to do anything while his priests were being killed and his nation invaded?

[dark lancer]

Modern papal critics only lament that Pius XII didn't mouth off to Mussolini and Hitler enough to get the Vatican pounded to dust.

[Unum Sint]

What was that about a "stiff neck people?" 

[JayneK]

Where are all the demands from Fisheaters that the Pope be silent on matters that the media will portray negatively? 

[Cetil]

Modern papal critics only lament that Pius XII didn't mouth off to Mussolini and Hitler enough to get the Vatican pounded to dust.

Truthfully, Pius XII lodged many a protest with the Nazis. Von Ribbentrop stated at Nuremberg that he had a desk full of protests from the Vatican. Here's a pile of stuff in the subject: http://www.ptwf.org/projects/education/P...Videos.htm

C.

[Revixit]

Modern papal critics only lament that Pius XII didn't mouth off to Mussolini and Hitler enough to get the Vatican pounded to dust.

Truthfully, Pius XII lodged many a protest with the Nazis. Von Ribbentrop stated at Nuremberg that he had a desk full of protests from the Vatican. Here's a pile of stuff in the subject: http://www.ptwf.org/projects/education/P...Videos.htm

C.

Thanks for the link, Cetil.  There is a lot of information there and I look forward to exploring it.


Pope Pius XII has been the victim of historical revisionists with an anti-Catholic agenda.  They want us to believe that Pius did nothing for the Jews when in fact he and Catholic clergy and laity saved tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis, risking their own lives in the process. 

Pius spoke out against the Nazis as much as he dared; it was a very difficult situation because criticism of the Nazis might lead them to commit even greater atrocities.  On 2 August 1942, Jews and Catholics in the Netherlands were rounded up and sent to transit camps, then to concentration camps, in an act of retaliation against the letter of protest written by the Dutch Roman Catholic Bishops against the pogroms and deportations of Jews. 

From what I have read in various sources, I believe this letter was read to all Catholics at Mass in the Netherlands the Sunday just before the Nazi retaliation.  St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who was born Edith Stein, youngest child of a large Jewish family, and her sister Rosa, also a Discalced Carmelite, were among those taken into custody on 2 August.  They were taken to Auschwitz on 7 August, probably gassed on 9 August.  This is the URL to the Vatican's page on St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, which details those events as well as others of her life:

http://www.vatican.va/news_services/litu...in_en.html

or

http://tinyurl.com/o9s6q


Pope Pius XII arranged to hide Jews in the Vatican and at Castel Gandolfo, he paid for feeding them, he got the word out that clergy and laity should shelter and aid Jews however they could, that priests should give them falsified baptismal records -- make baptismal records for them without actually baptizing them.  For a pope held prisoner in Vatican City, surrounded by troops, I think his efforts were both effective and courageous. 

People show their ignorance, and stupidity as well, when they ask why Pope Pius XII didn't excommunicate Hitler and Mussolini.  Neither "great leader" would have cared a whit about being excommunicated since neither was a true Catholic.  What if he'd threatened to excommunicate all who served in the Nazi or Fascist armies?  Can anyone seriously believe that they would have all ceased to fight?  Every man would know that there would be plenty of men who would continue to fight and those men would also be used to make up firing squads to shoot those who refused to follow orders? 

It's ridiculous to think that very many Fascist and Nazi soldiers would have been willing to be martyred for their faith, even if their faith was very strong.  Most people don't have that much courage and would have told themselves the war would soon end and they could put it all behind them.  Even men who had the courage to die for their faith would have known that if the Nazis and Fascists won the war, they'd be remembered as traitors and their families treated badly for years, perhaps for several generations.  The families of men who came from large cities might have escaped being stigmatized but all the rest would bear a mark of shame unless they moved far from their hometowns and perhaps also changed their names.

The lies against Pius are well disproven by the fact that after the war the Chief Rabbi of Rome, having seen a true Christian in the person of the Pope, became a Catholic and took Eugenio as his baptismal name.  Pius XII, of course, was born Eugenio Pacelli.

[Cetil]

Amen, Revixit! Check out the Powerpoint program there it's terrific. It is a story that needs to be told again and again for Pius XII was truly righteous. People don't realize he had to measure his public words carefully because they could result in the deaths of innocent people.
He was not an inaccessible austere figure and did not grow up in an exclusively Catholic environment. He had a close Jewish friend in high school, Guido Mendes and was a regular visitor to the Mendes' house. Later he assisted the family as they fled to Palestine. When Mussolini passed anti Jewish laws , Pius hired some of the unemployed Jewish scholars to work at the Vatican. One of these was Roberto Almagia, a brilliant cartographer. Pius'  record was sterling and some day he will get the full recognition he deserves.

C.