WWII pope ordered monks to shelter Jews

WWII pope ordered monks to shelter Jews


March 4, 2009



Vatican City - Documentary evidence has been found that Pope Pius XII ordered monasteries to shelter Jews being persecuted by the Nazis, a Vatican prelate said Wednesday.
Peter Gumpel, the late pope’s official advocate in the process to have him beatified, the first step towards canonistation, said the November 1943 order had turned up in a Rome monastery in the archives of Augustinian nuns.
» Click to enlarge image
Pope Pius XII

(AP)




Moves to beatify Pius XII, who has been accused of passivity during the Nazi genocide of Jews, have been criticised within the Roman Catholic Church as well as by Jewish groups.
Gumpel, quoting the papal document on Radio Vatican, said the order belied allegations by critics that written evidence was lacking that Pius acted to save Jews.
It reads: "The Holy Father wants to save his sons, including the Jews, and orders monasteries to offer their hospitality to these persecuted people," according to Gumpel.
The prelate said the pope’s instructions were relayed by priests who visited Catholic institutions, including universities, seminaries, parishes and convents.
Current Pope Benedict XVI has regularly defended his predecessor, who died in 1958, but has so far held off from signing a decree proclaiming Pius’s "heroic virtues," a necessary step in the beatification process which began in October 1967.
In October last year Benedict said that he was studying "seriously" the opening of the archives relating to Pius XII before beatifying him.
The same day Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said that it would be six or seven years before the secret archives were opened because of the large amount of work involved. Catholic critics say Pius’s immediate successor John XXIII is a better candidate for beatification.
WWII pope ordered monks to shelter Jews :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: World

 

If this is true, it is good news. I'd like a confirmation too , as I don't believe eveything at once. I suppose that if there is evidence in the archives for this, it will be published

 

I to would be skeptical of this story given past stories of the Vatican/Catholic church's attitude towards the Jews in ww2.

 

I was also skeptical about Pius XII and his "silence" during WW2, that was until I found what the Israelies themselves thought of both he and his successor Pope John who was the "top man" in Turkey during the war. Under Pius' specfic directions the future Pope filled out visas for Jews to escape via Turkey into the Palistine areas. Then there is this section of a site devoted to this very thing.

While approximately 80 percent of European Jews perished during World War II, 80 percent of Italy's 40,000 Jews were saved…

During the months that Rome was under German occupation, Pius XII, who secretly instructed Italy's Catholic clergy "to save human lives by all means," played an especially significant role in saving thousands of Italian Jews from deportation to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps. Beginning in October 1943, Pope Pius asked the churches and convents throughout Italy to shelter Jews. As a result, although Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and the Fascists who remained loyal to him yielded to Hitler's demand that Italy's Jews be deported, in churches, monasteries and private homes throughout the country Italian Catholics defied Mussolini's orders and protected thousands of Jews until the Allied armies arrived. Although their lives were endangered by helping to save Jews, Italian Catholic Church leaders, from Cardinals to parish priests, hid Jews from the Nazis. In Rome, 155 convents and monasteries sheltered some 5,000 Jews throughout the German occupation. No less than 3,000 Jews found refuge at one time at the Pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, and thus, through Pius' personal intervention, escaped deportation to German death camps. Sixty Jews lived for nine months at the Jesuit Gregorian University, and many were sheltered in the cellar of the Pontifical Bible Institute. Pope Pius himself granted sanctuary within the walls of the Vatican in Rome to hundreds of homeless Jews. Following Pope Pius' direct instructions, individual Italian priests and monks, cardinals and bishops, were instrumental in saving hundreds of Jewish lives.

From:

A Righteous Gentile

Perhaps the reason this "note" has been lost or misplaced for such a long time is that very secrecy which was required caused a great many of them to have been destroyed. This might have easily been in order to protect the Pope from the Nazis' wrath if they had found out what the Church itself was up to; with not only his blessing, but under his order.

I myself was baptized Lutheran, but I married an Irish Catholic and I have a rather different view of the Catholic Church than many of my Protestant fellows.

 

Letter of general Alezandro Luzan to Benito Mussolini: Information from Answers.com

 

This is a bit strange yet interesting.

 

You are partially correct. Mussolini was married to a Jew, her name was Rachele Guidi and she was held in high esteem by the Italians. Do not confuse her with his mistress Claretta Petacci who was executed by partisans with Mussolini.

Mussolini never attacked the Jews of Italy, THAT is why most survived. The assault on Italian Jews began when the Nazis invaded Italy after the allies landed in Sicily. Pope Pius did NOTHING to help the Italian Jews. To "Ask" the Catholic priests to "Assist" when the Jews were rounded up in front of the Vatican was piece of stagecraft.

Further, Pius was one of the first world "Leaders" to sign a pact with Hitler, the "Reichsconcordat" was signed in 1933, long before the pact with Stalin or the "Munich Pact" with Britain in 1938 Nazi Germany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interestingly Mussolini was greatly influenced by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who united Italy,. Garibaldi's marching song was "Va Pensiero", the Hebrew Chorus from Verdi's opera "Nabucco".
historygypsy

 

Careful here on using "Wiki"...let us NOT include that July, 1933 Concordat signed in Rome which appears to "limit" the Nazis. Just like all other Nazi "treaty, and diplomatic promises" it too was ignored by the Nazis as they failed to observe those restrictions/limits as well. It too would be proven "wishful thinking" when it came to Hitler.

By March of 1937, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical entitled "Mit Brennender Sorge" (With Deep Anxiety) in which he denounced the violations of said Concordat by the Nazi state and described the actions of the Nazi government against the Church as "intrigues which from the beginning had no other aim than a war of extermination".

Pius XI later published that the "Mit Brennerder Sorge" encyclical had been actually written by his secretary, Cardinal Pachelli, a man soon to be Pius XII. The often mis-labeled "Hitler's Pope". Let's keep our Pope Pius numbers clear here, XI was replaced by XII in the thiries, thinking of a "Pope Pius" without separating the two can be confusing.