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.
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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.
Benedict reveals in the book that he “ordered an inspection of the unpublished archival records, because I wanted to be absolutely sure.” The “records confirm the positive things we know, but not the negative things that are alleged.”
“The decisive thing is what he did and what he tried to do, and on that score, we really must acknowledge, I believe, that he was one of the great righteous men and that he saved more Jews than anyone else,” Benedict said, offering perhaps his most sweeping praise of Pius’ papacy to date.
But Steinberg contended that that assertion “is categorically contradicted by the known historical record.”
Neither Benedict nor Steinberg cited numbers.
An Israeli diplomat, Pinchas Lapide, wrote in 1967 that Pius and the Catholic church should be credited with saving between 700,000 and 860,000 Jews from certain death. Holocaust scholars dismiss the figure as guesswork.
If Pius becomes a saint, that would create an “unfathomable breach” in Catholic-Jewish relations, Steinberg said. “Pius’ silence during the Holocaust was a profound moral failure,” he said.
Benedict reiterated the Vatican position that protesting publicly against the Germany occupiers of Rome would have endangered the lives of Jews who were sheltered in convents and monasteries.
The entire issue is disputable because there were instances of Jews being saved in Catholic monasteries including my nephew A’H but the Catholic Church between 1945 and 1950 actively and knowlingly aided the escape of war criminals
The Pope could have publicly spoken out against the deportation of the Jews from Rome in 1943, but he chose to be silent.
this pope was a damn nazi, records prove it, why are these people surprised? legally he can be tried in Israel as a Nazi but they wouldn’t dare (hey do you guys have any lawyers in Israel you can ask about this?
here: ” The Sunday Times
April 17, 2005
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In 1937 Ratzinger’s father retired and the family moved to Traunstein, a staunchly Catholic town in Bavaria close to the Führer’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden. He joined the Hitler Youth aged 14, shortly after membership was made compulsory in 1941.
He quickly won a dispensation on account of his training at a seminary. “Ratzinger was only briefly a member of the Hitler Youth and not an enthusiastic one,” concluded John Allen, his biographer.
Two years later Ratzinger was enrolled in an anti-aircraft unit that protected a BMW factory making aircraft engines. The workforce included slaves from Dachau concentration camp.
Ratzinger has insisted he never took part in combat or fired a shot — adding that his gun was not even loaded — because of a badly infected finger. He was sent to Hungary, where he set up tank traps and saw Jews being herded to death camps. He deserted in April 1944 and spent a few weeks in a prisoner of war:
The only Jews that the Pope save were those who converted to Catholocism. Reast “Into That Darkness” by Gitta Sereny. She interviewed the priest responsible for saving converted Jews. In fact, to make sure that they had actually converted he tested them by making them recite a Catholic prayer because he did hot want to save unconverted Jews.
No 4 I was in Buchenwald with meshumidim and they were worst off than I. I at least knew who I was and in our block there was an occasional minyan and they were bewildered and lost
Far worse was the postwar role of the church when two bishops in Rome working with the Spinne funneled war criminals to South America. The bishops one an Austrian and the other a Croatian
Actually, it was Bishop Hudal that ran the “ratline” as it was known. He procured Red Cross passports, funds and aliases for Eichman, Stangl, Rolf, Barbie, Mengel and others.
These popes (And other clergy.) don’t get married…they’re sinners…G-d said to be ‘fruit full and multiply.’ This applies to everyone.
Anything they say is suspect…vanity, vanity, all is vanity.
They’re whole religion is ‘mickey mouse’ based.
(At least they believe in something.)
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