West of Delancey: Late condemnation
Comments: 11
Now that the movement to elevate WWII Pope Pius XII to sainthood has taken another step toward realization, I wanted to share excerpts of a letter I wrote in 1992 to Archbishop Edward Nowak, Secretary of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, delineating my opposition. Following receipt of my correspondence, the Archbishop informed me that the letter had been read and passed on to the Postulator of the Cause of Canonization of Pius XII.
“During his pontificate, the most horrific war known to mankind was fought, a war in which fifty million people lost their lives. During that war, the Nazis unleashed their diabolical plot to murder all the world’s Jews. Indeed, they succeeded in exterminating six million - one-third of the entire Jewish population.From the outset of the conflict to its conclusion, Pope Pius XII sat on the throne of St. Peter in stony silence, as the trains carrying millions of unsuspecting victims criss-crossed Europe en route to the gas chambers.
The overwhelming body of scholarly evidence from Jewish and non-Jewish sources, including the released Vatican documents on the Second World War, shows that Pius XII was perhaps the best-informed leader on what was really happening in Europe at the time. Yet, not once did the supreme Pontiff muster the courage to condemn the Nazis publicly!Not once did the Pope lift his voice in unequivocal terms to protest the deportations and murder of the Jews, as the Archbishop of Ponlouse or the Bishop of Montauban did in France, as Bishop Giuseppe Placido Nicolini did in Italy, or Father Bernard Lichtenberg did in Germany, or as Bishop Apor of Gyor did in Hungary, all putting themselves at much greater risk than Pope Pius XII.
In fact, when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, Pius XII was jubilant and said a novena for the total victory of the Fuehrer’s armies, a sentiment he was still invoking as late as 1943, even though that was tantamount to endorsing Hitler’s entire extermination policy (given the fact, well-known in 1943 at the Vatican, that the Nazis followed up all their military campaigns by deporting and murdering all the Jews).Some defenders of Pius XII often cite this paragraph from his 1942 Christmas speech:
“This is a vow that mankind owed to the innumerable exiles whom the hurricane of war has torn from their homeland and scattered abroad. This is a vow that mankind owes to the hundreds of thousands of people who, though no fault of their own, and sometimes only on grounds of nationality or origin, are destined for death or slow deterioration...”Let us compare that ambiguity with the same Pius XII’s decisive denunciation of the euthanasia program against the infirm and mentally handicapped, which he refers to in his pastoral letter of June 1943:
“We see the bodily deformed, the insane and those suffering from hereditary disease, at times deprived of their lives, as though they were a useless burden to society. This procedure is hailed by some as a new discovery of human progress, and is something that is altogether justified by the common good. Yet what sane man does not recognize that this not only violates the natural and divine law written in the heart of every man, but flies in the face of every sensibility of civilized humanity? The blood of these victims, all the dearer to our redeemer, because deserving of greater pity, ‘cries to G-d from the earth.’”The distinction is quite obvious, by forcefully condemning euthanasia, the pope could anticipate finding a responsive chord among the German people, but to publicly defend the Jews would be an act of courage that was beyond the capacity of Pope Pius XII.
The sad truth is that only at the end of 1943 and early 1944, when most of the Jews had already been murdered, and when it was abundantly clear to the entire world that Nazi Germany had lost the war, only then did Pius XII entertain the notion of saving Jews. (It was for his belated efforts in 1944 that Chief Rabbi Herzog, among others, would later thank him.)The tragic irony is that had Monsignor Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (the future John XXIII, universally respected by the world Jewish community and also a candidate for Canonization), who was then immersed in rescue efforts trying to save the Jews from his post in Turkey, been pope at the time, then the Vatican most certainly would have vigorously protested Adolf Hitler’s policies!
Even senior Church officials such as Cardinal Tisserant knew the truth about Pius when he wrote:“I am afraid that history may be obliged in time to come to blame the Holy See for a policy accommodating to its own advantage and little more...and that is extremely sad...above all when one has lived under Pius XI.”
The successor to Cardinal Faulhaber, in Germany, Cardinal Julius Doepfner, in a sermon commemorating Pope Pius said:“The retrospective judgment of history provides every ground for the view that Pius XII should have protested with greater firmness.”
The heroic priest, Father Salvatore Rufino Niccacci, who was among those who risked their lives to provide safe haven for 300 Jews in Assisi, wondered of Pius:“Isn’t his role as the spiritual leader of the Church more important than his role as politician or head of state?”
For me, personally, your Eminence, granting sainthood to Pius XII desecrates the memory of my ancestors and the millions of martyrs, by allowing the world to think that a saint was enthroned nearby, in Rome, while they were being taken to the crematoria without even an echo of a protest.Perhaps there were saints in those terrible years, but the historical record shows that Pope Pius XII was not one of them.”
For more information on this issue, go to www.wiesenthal.com
|
| Comments: |
About this blog West of Delancey
Simon Wiesenthal Center founder and dean Rabbi Marvin Hier writes on important international issues of the day.
Search this blog |
| Archives |
Combined feed for all JPost.com blogsAll Categories
Most Popular Posts
|
Recent Comments
|
