The beatification of Pope Pius XII.

In the summer of 2008 the Vatican Congregation for Saints announced that it had completed its documentation on the spiritual life of Pope Plus XII and unanimously recommended that the Church proceed with his beatification. However, as of today, November 2008, Pope Benedict XVI has not yet signed the Decree of Heroic Virtues, necessary for the process to proceed. Meanwhile, Jewish groups are opposing the move. On November 6, 2008, the weekly Canadian .Jewish News, for example, reported that beatification had "likely been postponed." Is this then another stalemate in the 45-year old duel about the place of Pope Plus XII in history?

It is now clear that those who accuse Plus XII of "having done little or nothing" for the Jews during World War II have closed their eyes to the truth. They will not acknowledge that these accusations have been demolished. They will not look at the evidence, and whenever they hear his name mentioned, they get out the knives.

The most recent occasion came in mid-September when a Jewish-Catholic group, Pave the Way Foundation, under the leadership of Jewish-American entrepreneur Gary Krupp held a three-day symposium in Rome. They brought and discussed a large collection of documents refuting the idea that Pope Plus "did nothing" to help the Jews, an idea firmly fixed in the mind of a number of Jewish, agnostic, and anti-Church scholars.

Then in October, Haifa's Chief Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen, invited to speak during the Bishops' Synod on the Bible, discovered that Pope Benedict intended to honour Plus XII during the Synod (on the 50th anniversary of his death, October 10). He criticized it right away.

The two events led a group of international scholars to demand more study (on Oct. 21), as they have done in the past, and induced the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, meeting with Pope Benedict in Rome on October 30, to do the same.

The controversy moved on to a plaque at the Yad Vashem holocaust museum in Jerusalem, placed there in 2005. It states that Pius XII "had recognized the Nazi regime," and that even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, "he did not protest." In France, the main Jewish organization denounced the plan to put Pius on the road to sainthood because the Pope's "silence" was "too shocking." (Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 08). In Israel a photo montage appeared -and one day later disappeared--of Benedict XVI with a swastika displayed on his chest. Elsewhere, the old charge that the Vatican was deliberately keeping its archives closed to prevent scholars from finding the truth, was trotted out once more. (The archives are closed because it will take another 5-7 years to catalogue the 16 million items concerning Pius' long pontificate). And in New York, an American gathering of Jewish Holocaust survivors announced a global campaign to lobby Vatican ambassadors to Pope Benedict to put the sainthood process for Pius on hold (National Post, Nov. 11).

Meanwhile, the Jewish population, whether in or outside Israel, knows nothing about the defence of Pope Pius or, for that matter, about any efforts that Catholics have undertaken with respect to Jews. It simply never gets reported or discussed.

As for the Symposium in Rome, it was addressed by Benedict XVI who commended the group's efforts and vigorously defended Pius XII. In his homily at Mass, he united himself with the faithful who are looking towards Pius' canonization (Toronto Star, Oct. 10). Later on, Benedict praised Pius XII for his major contributions to the study of the bible and his learned addresses on many subjects. Pope Benedict is also getting weary of the accusations and the protests after all these years (John Thavis, CNS, "Vatican calls for time-out on Pius XII pressure" (Catholic Register, Nov. 2, 08).

The continued Jewish shrillness is even beginning to cloud over the usefulness of the Catholic-Jewish liaison meetings. Catholics seek dialogue on religion and theology; but the regular Jewish spokesmen, on the other hand, seem only interested in issues which can be "lobbied" and treated as "political". This directly interferes with the efforts to bring about understanding and cooperation.

The September symposium re-enforces the work of a number of Catholic scholars whose books have appeared over the last ten to fifteen years. Some of these are discussed in the article entitled "Are the Plus wars over? (They should be)," in this edition, pp. 13-18. The evidence is that the notion that Pius XII "did nothing" for the Jews during the Second World War is untenable and flatly contrary to the facts.

FATHER

ALPHONSE DE VALK, CSB, EDITOR