Thursday, January 28, 2010

Spy vs. Spy

Source

NCR reporter Tom Hoopes relates a few details he picked up from two Vatican experts about Ven. Pius XII's efforts to thwart Nazi abuses and atrocities.

* The Nazis considered the Catholic Church in general and the pope in particular threats to their regime.

* The Catholic hierarchy and clergy were monitored closely by the Nazi secret police through the use of informants, phone taps, and mail surveillance. One effort involved establishing a phony seminary and filling it with seminarians who were actually German agents.

* In the winter-spring of 1939-40 Pius deliberately served as a channel of communications between London and the German resistance inside the German army and intelligence service.

* In Rome's Central Synagogue there is a bronze memorial plaque mounted near the entrance from Israeli Premier Golda Meir thanking the Vatican for saving Jews from Nazi persecution.

* According to Israeli Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and diplomat Pinchas Lapide, Pius XII was repsonsible for saving over 700,000 Jews, and perhaps as many as 860,000.

The Nazis are "in reality only miserable plagiarists who dress up old errors with new tinsel. It does not make any difference whether they flock to the banners of social revolution, whether they are guided by a false concept of the world and of life, or whether they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult."
- Cardinal Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII), in Lourdes, France, 1935

1 comment:

Mary L. said...

Hi Sean,
My kid visited the Holocaust Museum in the DC area last year and was able to correct her public school history teacher when he stated (incorrectly) the Catholic Church supported the deportation (and elimination)of Jews from Germany. She explained that the museum displays directed contradicted that statement, and the Lutheran church had that official policy which only changed post WWII. She also referred the teacher to the Bishop of Nebraska's website
http://users.binary.net/polycarp/piusxii.html

A nice site with good references, hope you enjoy it.
Oh, the teacher never publically apologized for his error or corrected his position for the class.
Mary