The newly discovered letter, written by a German Jesuit to Pope Pius XII’s personal secretary, suggests that the pope knew of Hitler’s atrocities but chose to remain silent.
The church sitting by idly while atrocities go on?NEVER! /s
Come on, cut them some slack. They definitely don't sit idly by all the time. Sometimes they actively participate or even instigate!
Brought to you by the same people who brought you the "spider network"!
That's generous, some clergy actively participated.
Miroslav Filipović also known as "Brother Satan" was a military chaplain and Franciscan friar. He was expelled from the Franciscan order during the war for his participation, but it didn't stop him wearing the robes, which he even wore to his execution. He was the Chief Guard of Jasenovac concentration camp, the third largest in Europe, which killed up to 100k people. It was run by the Ustaše who were very involved with the Franciscans. There were forced conversions too in the camp, even if the local Bishop didn't approve and actively had participating priests arrested. Even the Nazis thought Jasenovac was too cruel.
The Pope later gave the Ustaše leader protection at the Vatican and helped him to flee to Argentina. He knew. They all knew. The Vatican was even sued in California for it and the looted gold the Ustaše took to the Vatican is probably still there too.
More info on the Catholic Church's relationship with the Ustaše
If their god objected that much, he could've intervened right?
He didn't.
Not condoning this at all, but could it be because the Vatican was literally surrounded by Hitlers biggest ally and thought it would be unwise to provoke the Axis?
No reason not to come out with this information afterwards though.
The new pope and Mussolini essentially rose to power together, forming an alliance. The church’s open embrace of the Fascists was critical to the government’s power and to ending the enmity between the church and secular authorities.
The pope was also jaw-dropping antisemitic. Jews did not have many friends in the Catholic Church.
The Vatican embraced the nazis before mussolini did, and the fact that cardinals were directly involved with the rat lines shows it can't just be about immediate threat. The reichskonkordat doesn't just precede the pact of iron BTW, it precedes the Stresa front. Mussolini was openly contemptuous and opposed to Hitler when it was signed.
The Catholic Church was also friendly with Franco's fascist Spain.
So, the Church was actually surrounded by friends.
The catholic church was deeply tied with the fascists movements of the time. They weren't threatened, they were allies
Pretty big discovery. Not that it was widely assumed that the pope must've known, but having actual black on white proof is very important for the historical record.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A letter found among the private papers of Pope Pius XII suggests that the Holy See was told in 1942 that up to 6,000 people, “above all Poles and Jews,” were being killed in furnaces every day at Belzec, a Nazi death camp in Poland.
Though news of the atrocities being perpetrated by Hitler was already reaching Pope Pius XII’s ears, this information was especially important because it came from a trusted church source based in Germany, said Giovanni Coco, a Vatican archivist who discovered the letter.
The document, which was made public this weekend by the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, adds to the evidence that some scholars say shows Pius knew about the Holocaust as it happened.
“There was concern about what could happen to Catholics in Poland, in Eastern Europe, in the Third Reich, all those territories under Nazi control where it was difficult for the church to intervene,” he said.
The letter entreats the Vatican to be cautious in making the information it provides known “because if it emerged that it came from the German church, the persecution would become fiercer in Germany than it already was,” Mr. Coco said.
Mr. Sarfatti, whose most recent research focuses on documentation from 1942, identified by some scholars as “the bloodiest year of the Holocaust,” said the Holy See received reports that year about the atrocities from innumerable sources: priests returning to the Vatican from trips, local clergy, papal nuncios, politicians from occupied countries, citizens, Jewish groups and rabbis.
The original article contains 999 words, the summary contains 250 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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the point isn't that we didn't know before, the point is now we can actually prove the pope knew about the concentration camps.
Which changes … what?
Probably didn't want to draw attention to the 13,000 Jews they were sheltering in the Varican
My impression is that the Church wasn't of one mind about whether fascism was cool. On the one hand, Mussolini was their bro. On the other, they had decided racism wasn't cool already sometime before that point.
I think that number might be high, though, Wikipedia suggests hundreds, which is reasonable considering how big a place it is.
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