ROME (CWNews.com) - Critics of Pope Pius XII's role during World War II have said a sheaf of documents found in a Rome flea market show the Pontiff ignored reports of Nazi atrocities sent to him by a British envoy.
The London Times newspaper said this week that Francis D'Arcy Godolphin Osborne, British Minister to the Holy See during the war, gave the Pope a daily report of atrocities taken from Allied broadcasts starting in 1940. Critics say the Pope's "silence" during the war gave comfort to Nazis in their genocide of the Jews.
However, defenders of the Pope said the discovery of the papers, while remarkable, do not undermine their defense. The Holy Father spoke out in Christmas Eve homilies during 1941 and 1942 against the exterminations and Israel, after the war, planted a forest of 400,000 trees in the Negev desert in memory of the Pope, one for each Jew they claimed were saved by his actions.
Sir Martin Gilbert, a British historian and a Jew who wrote a recent book on the Holocaust called "Never Again," said many Christians stood against the Nazis, including those of the highest levels in the Church. He cautioned critics not to confuse the old practice of "Christian anti-Semitism" that has been repudiated by the Church with the Holocaust, which had been "carried out by people who were hostile to Christian values."
Catholic World News Service - Daily News Briefs