More about Pius XII: "much ado about nothing".

Rome -- This was the comment of Jesuit Father Peter Gumpel about the latest controversy surrounding Pope Pius XII, for whose beatification cause he is postulator. What was the issue?

In the December 28, 2004, edition of the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera, Professor Alberto Melloni of Bologna University discussed a document supposedly written in 1946 in the Vatican, instructing that Jewish children who were baptized while in the custody of Christian parents during the Nazi occupation of France should not be allowed to return to their families and communities. The publication produced heated discussion among Jewish critics of Pius XII and Catholic commentators. Some observers said that it dealt a serious blow to Pius XII's chances for beatification.

According to Corriere della Sera, the document, signed by an official at the Holy Office and "approved by the Holy Father," was sent as an instruction to Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, then apostolic nuncio to France and later Pope John XXIII. In August 1946, some French bishops had asked Nuncio Roncalli for instructions on how to resolve the situation of these Jewish children. Roncalli sent a letter to the Vatican Secretary of State asking for instructions, and was answered by Monsignor Tardini, secretary of the relevant congregation.

Professor Melloni's contention was that Pius XII transmitted to Nuncio Roncalli through the Holy Office "chilling orders" not to send saved Jewish children to Jewish organizations or return them to surviving parents, if they had been baptized. Melloni did acknowledge that the future John XXIII did not heed the orders from Rome and favoured the return of minors housed in French convents.

What is the truth?

First, the document never came from Rome at all. It was found in Church archives in France, written in French, and actually a summary of what should be done with Jewish children whose parents and family were deceased and who, therefore, were now abandoned.

The real instructions during the war to bishops and priests about Jewish children hidden in Catholic institutions were not to baptize them, and to return them to their rightful families as soon as possible.

In March 1946, Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, addressed a letter to Pius XII saying, "The Jewish people very much remember with profound gratitude the help given by the Holy See to the people that suffered the Nazi persecution." The Rabbi gave profound thanks for the thousands of children who were hidden in Catholic institutions. The Rabbi requested that these children be returned to the Jewish people. Herzog emphasized how Pius XII had worked to banish anti-Semitism, and concluded with an invocation: "God willing, may history remember that when everything was dark for our people, His Holiness lit a light of hope for them."

Archbishop Loris Capovila, secretary of the then-nuncio in France, said in the daily Avvenire on January 4, 2005 that the "attitude of the French Church and of Nuncio Roncalli was unequivocal: to save the lives of defenceless children, to give them safety with Catholic families who could care for them as their own children, and to return the little ones to their original families once the latter had come forward."

On January 28, the American Coalition for Jewish Concerns in New York announced that it would sue the Vatican within a week unless the Holy See opened its archives relating to Jewish children during World War II. Vatican archivists were not impressed.

Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights President William Donohue pointed out that in 1964 Dr. Leon Kubowitzky, an official of the World Jewish Congress, had said: "I can state now that I hardly know of a single case where Catholic institutions refused to return Jewish children".

Donohue added, "But there is another issue here. The bullying tactics of the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, led by Rabbi Avi Weiss, are a disgrace."