'Hitler's Pope' saved thousands of Jewish lives - Telegraph

By Simon Caldwell - 06 Jul 2010

Pope Pius, who was labelled “Hitler’s Pope” because of his silence during the Holocaust, may have arranged the exodus of about 200,000 Jews from Germany just three weeks after Kristallnacht, when thousands of Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps.
The claim was made by Dr Michael Hesemann, a German historian carrying out research in the Vatican archives for the Pave the Way Foundation, a US-based inter-faith group.
He said that Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli – the future Pius XII – wrote to Catholic archbishops around the world to urge them to apply for visas for “non-Aryan Catholics” and Jewish converts to Christianity who wanted to leave Germany.

Continue reading ‘Hitler's Pope’ saved thousands of Jewish lives – Telegraph

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The term ‘Hitler’s Pope’ comes from John Cornwell’s anti-Pope Pius XII book ‘Hitler’s Pope’ published in 1999. At the time certain media outlets (ABC) heavily promoted the book. Since then much of Cornwell’s book has been debunked. Ken Woodward, writing in Newsweek, stated that Hitler's Pope has "errors of fact and ignorance of context [that] appear on almost every page.

On a positive note, Cornwell has now changed his position on Pope Pius XII. In his book The Pontiff in Winter (2004), p. 193, Cornwell says:

“ I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following 'Hitler's Pope', that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans.”

However it has been asked that given Cornwell has changed his position on Pope Pius XII why has he not withdrawn his book, or at least altered its hateful title?

Of course there’s plenty of money to be made in promoting lies and hate against the Catholic Church just ask Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

Image courtesy of Ambrosius007

Holocaust Denial, Lifting of Excommunication, and the Media gets it Wrong Again.

From Pave the Way -

On the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council Pope Benedict XVI used this occasion to lift the ban of excommunication, which was generated when  Archbishop Lefebvre ordained four Bishops in direct violation to a papal order not to do so issued by Pope John Paul II. It was this act of defiance against the Papal order that generated the excommunication. After the announcement of the lifting of the ban was made on January 21, 2009  a video interview of one of the Bishops, Richard Williamson, surfaced where he quite plainly denied the holocaust impact on the Jewish people and stated that not one Jew perished in any gas chamber. This Holocaust denial set off a firestorm of protests and negative remarks, which created a temporary rift in Jewish Catholic relations.

Unlike  many of the interreligious organizations Pave the Way Foundation did not issue a protest or a press release of condemnation but instead set out to find out the truth of this action.

Continue reading at Pave the Way Foundation

The Righteous Gentile – Pope Pius XII

Thanks to Gerard Charles Wilson.

Is the Black Legend at last dissolving?

Many Catholics, clerical and lay, have worked tirelessly for years to defeat the Black Legend. The Black Legend is the story that Pope Pius XII, regarded as a living saint in the 1950s, did little or nothing to save the Jews from Nazi murder. The legend grew from The Deputy a play by a German author in 1963 and thereafter propagated enthusiastically through the decades in all manner of books, newspaper and magazine articles and television programs. One of the most reprehensible books that developed the Pius XII anti-Semite and Nazi complicity theme was Hitler's Pope, by a self-proclaimed Catholic, John Cornwell.

Despite the work done to clear Pius XII's name, it seemed to many of us that little headway was being made to defeat what we knew to be the greatest calumny of the twentieth century. We knew that not only was Pius XII innocent of the charges, but that he was the very opposite both in deed and belief. Anti-Semitism and Nazism were abhorrent to him, and he did all that was in his power to save as many Jews from Hitler's extermination plans as he could.

But there has been a change, a change so great that it now looks like the Black Legend is dissolving. If it is, it is happening in no small part due to the efforts of an American Jew, Gary Krupp, of the Path the Way Foundation (http://www.ptwf.org/index.htm).

In a number of interviews and written pieces, Gary Krupp says that he 'grew up hating Pius XII, believing him to be an anti-Semite and a Nazi collaborator.' Through a 'providential' set of circumstances, related in an article in Galus Australis (Jewish Knight defends Pope XII), he became exposed to documents and oral histories that told a very different story. He said, 'my eyes were opened to a reality that was literally shocking. My emotions went from shock to anger. We discovered that we have been deceived by those whom we trusted for historical accuracy – that is, the scholars and historians.'

It was the beginning of a tenacious and feverish search for supporting evidence and documentation. In the four years since, he has uncovered literally thousands of documents demonstrating the calumny of the Black Legend, for which there is increasing evidence that the Soviet KGB was its originator.

I want to sincerely thank and pay tribute to Gary Krupp and the Pave the Way Foundation for the work they have done and are doing in undoing a terrible injustice. Immediately below are links to an interview with Gary Krupp and an eye-opening power point display which I strongly urge the reader to follow.

Gary Krupp interview on EWTN on the research of Pope Pius XII

Is Pope Pius XII a Righteous Gentile or Hitler's Pope? Watch this 56 minute narrated Power Point then you decide

More at GerardCharlesWilson.com

Pius XII image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Galus Australis » Jewish Knight Defends Pius XII

There are perhaps three million Jews who are alive today because of Pius XII's secret but direct intervention, writes Gary Krupp, a Jewish Papal Knight.
Continue reading at Galus Australis