La Nación is an Argentine newspaper comparable in many respects to the Daily Telegraph in the UK. It’s serious, well produced and right wing in a respectable old money kind of way. In today’s edition it carries a brief story from an anonymous special correspondent in Rome which reports on a speech by Pope Benedict XVI exalting the memory of his predecessor Pope Pius XII.
Referring to moves to canonize the latter, the story opens its concluding paragraph in the following way,
Although the process began in 1965 it has been delayed as a result of pressure from sectors of the Jewish community.
Wow! The power of the Jews is really even more limitless than we had imagined, reaching into the very depths of the Curia and delaying, all on its own and without the intervention of any other factor, the canonization of Pius XII for more than four decades.
It couldn’t possibly be that the reasons for the delay include the grave doubts held by many Catholics about the attitudes and activities of Pius XII during the Second World War, could it? No definitely not, it’s just been the pressure from the Jews.
Costa-Gavras film “Amen” takes place during the years of accelerated Holocaust efforts. It focuses on Kurt Gerstein’s futile attempts to bring the knowledge to the outside world and especially his failure to puncture the Pope’s rare capacity for staying in a state of graceful denial despite the howling of beasts all around him.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280653/
Oh good grief, Hollywood qua truth, now there’s an overripe theme. Costa-Gavras’s ‘Amen’ is based upon Rolf Hochhuth’s ‘The Deputy,’ itself a fundamentally mendacious, malicious screed in five acts. (Hochhuth himself has recently - c. 2005 - defended and praised Holocaust denier David Irving.) The following is an extended excerpt from Rabbi David Dalin’s “The Myth of Hitler’s Pope,” commenting upon Costa-Gavras’s film adaptation ‘Amen,’
“… in the case of ‘Amen,’ there was a deliberate falsification of established historical fact in order to preach an anti-Catholic message.”
[…]
“In the movie, Gerstein and the fictional Father Fontana travel to Rome, hoping for an audience with the pope. They arrive when the Nazis are rounding up Roman Jews and deporting them to Auschwitz. Father Fontana meets with Pius, (portrayed, as in Hochhuth’s play, as an avaricious, cold-hearted Nazi collaborator and anti-Semite), and seeks to persuade him to intervene … When the young Jesuit priest fails to convince the “silent” pope to take immediate action, he places a star of David on his clerical garb and joins the Jews of Rome, who are rounded up and deported to the death camp. … Gerstein subsequently tries to meet with Pius XII, who callously refuses to grant him an audience. Not long thereafter, a horrified and disillusioned Gerstein commits suicide.
“While this plot line of the movie is interesting, it is completely untrue. As Ronald J. Rychlak has pointed out, “the real Kurt Gerstein never met with the papal nuncio in Berlin, nor did he ever claim to have done so.” … Similarly, the real Gerstein was never turned away by Pope Pius XII in Rome; in fact, he never made it to Rome and died in a French military jail.
“Ronald J. Rychlak rightly concludes that while ‘Amen’ claims to have “historical honesty, its thesis, its facts, and its promotional materials run counter to virtually every historical discovery that has been made since Hochhuth wrote ‘The Deputy’”"
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As to the roundup of Jews in Rome, referred to in the above excerpt, Dalin also notes in an earlier chapter,
“Several Jewish scholars have spoken out in Pius’s defense in response to the new attacks … Michael Tagliacozzo, the foremost authority on the Nazi roundup of Rome’s Jews - and a survivor of that roundup himself - has strongly defended Pius’s role during the Nazi occupation of Rome, documenting that Pius himself was instrumental in saving the lives of close to five thousand Roman Jews who, at the pope’s instructions, were sheltered within the Vatican and in the numerous monasteries and convents in Rome. … The relevant Italian Holocaust archival documents clearly prove, Tagliacozzo says, that Pius XII’s protests and actions were decisive in rescuing 80 percent of Rome’s Jews.”
To put it in understated terms, a great deal more could be said, including a sizeable scholarly bibliography of volumes that would counter the numerous slanders and libels against Pius XII, including volumes from Jewish scholars/academics such as Tagliacozzo and Dalin.
I would agree that Pius XII saved many lives during WWII and his name after his election is no accident, taken from his beloved mentor,Achille Rati, aka Pius Xi. He continued this Pope’s policies and wrote the enycyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, the only one in German, under the name of PIUS XI. Iwas a strong denunciation of Anti Semitism . Pius XII was consistently a Judeophile and defender of the Jews.
The evidence is overwhelming and I also have a blog of articles and comments to substantiate this.
Pius XII failed to save the Jews. He also did not speack out against what was being done to them. Hemne8ther condemed Hitler or the Nazi atroticies. How can any Catholic call him saint?
As if the Vatican would take in consideration Jewish opinions! As if the Jews could in any way prevent the Vatican to canonize Pius XII. As Rome’s chief rabbi Riccardo Di Segni states, the Vatican is very free in choosing whom it wants to present as an example of highest morality. And many catholics as I am (or was) fully agree.
The only fear of the Vatican is the reaction of the catholic world, to loose its own fidels, and the author of the above article knows that very well. But he prefers to blame the Jews.
It’s also a further offense to the Jews, as it implies that they are not grateful to their “greatest benefactor” (and of course the Vatican is so humble to lock the proofs of these great benefits in its secret archives … ).