Pope Pius XII knew of Nazi Holocaust atrocities, letter suggests

A newly revealed letter from the Vatican archives means that World Battle II-era Pope Pius XII was conscious 1000’s of Jews had been being killed in fuel chambers in occupied Poland, undercutting earlier Vatican arguments justifying the pope’s wartime silence on the Holocaust.

Following a long time of stress from Jewish organizations and historians, the Vatican in 2020 opened its secret archives on the wartime pope, who headed the Catholic Church from 1939 to 1958. Pius XII has since change into probably the most controversial pontiffs for not publicly condemning the Nazis in the course of the battle, with critics dubbing him “Hitler’s Pope.” Others, together with the Vatican, have argued his diplomacy saved lives partly by stopping a Nazi backlash.

A newly unveiled doc has added gasoline to the talk. It’s a German letter despatched by a German Jesuit member of the anti-Nazi resistance, Father Lother Koenig, and addressed to the pope’s trusted non-public secretary Rev. Robert Leiber. Within the letter dated Dec. 14, 1942, Koenig wrote that as much as 6,000 folks, “above all Poles and Jews,” had been dying day-after-day in “SS-furnaces” on the Nazi-run Bełzec focus camp in what was then occupied Poland. Reported this week by Italian each day Corriere Della Sera, the letter was found by Vatican archivist Giovanni Coco, who described it as additional proof of a circulate of specific and detailed information on Nazi crimes to the Holy See.

From March to December 1942, about 450,000 Jews, principally from Poland, had been killed on the Belzec focus camp, in accordance to the web site of the museum and memorial in Belzec.

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The pope who thought he may negotiate with Hitler

Within the years since Pius XII’s papacy ended, critics have scrutinized his motion, or supposed inaction, in the course of the battle. Holocaust survivors have lobbied to freeze his sainthood course of.

When the hundreds of thousands of pages within the Pius archives had been opened in 2020, Pope Francis mentioned the Church was “not afraid of historical past” and that Pius’s papacy had “moments of grave difficulties, tormented choices of human and Christian prudence, that to some may seem as reticence,” based on PBS.

In his 2022 e book “The Pope at Battle,” historian and anthropologist David Kertzer argued that Pius put the Catholic Church forward of ethical management, fearful that hostility towards Hitler may trigger the nations to interrupt with the church. Pius XII had additionally initially thought he may negotiate with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and mood Nazi hatred with diplomacy, the creator wrote. Whereas the pope acted fastidiously amid preliminary considerations that Axis powers might finally management Europe, Pius XII by no means modified his method at the same time as proof, and pleas for the Vatican to take a stand, mounted.

“As an ethical chief, Pius XII should be judged a failure,” the historian wrote.

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