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Volume 3No. 4 www.theamericanmag.com APRIL 20062.

A Monthly fo r Italy and the World

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PIUS' CHILDREN, FXNGTHEDEFICIT, SQUID IN LUINO & COMETH VINITALIAAustria 4.50 Canada 8.50 Portugal. Hungary Forint 1100,00 U.S.A.S4.95

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r u s X II r a r e l y left V atican City,b u t did so after a wartimeA l l i e d bombardment o f Home.

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EFFORTS TO TARNISH THE WARTIME REPUTATION OFPOPE PIUS XII FALL SHORT ON ONE COUNT! FACTSB Y Dimitri Cavalli

I n recent years, th e often-repeated allegations that Pope PiusXII was"silent" during the Holocaust, actively"collaborated" with th e Nazis, an d "didn' t lift a f inger" tohelp the millions of Jews who were deported to the de athcamps have been gradually discredited.Scholars of different nationalities an d faiths, including th e Rev.Pierre Blet, a Jesuit; historia n Ronald J. Rychlak; Rabbi DavidDalin, and Winston Churchi l l biographer M ar t in Gilber t , havepersuasively made the case for Pius XII. Even John Cornwell,th e author of the best-sellin g "Hitler's Pope: The Secret Historyof Pius XII," has withdrawn some o f his more extrem e chargesagainst Pius XII and now admits that Vatican-led efforts savedma ny Jews. Decades of negative publicity, emotional attacks, andwild charges have failed to impress th e Vatican, which is movingforward with plans to beatify the war t ime pope.In December 2004, the pope's detractors, both inside andoutside the C atholic Church , thoug ht they had finally found a"smoking gun" that could permanently derail beatif icationefforts. They accused th e pontiff of refusing to return baptizedJewish children, who were sheltered and protected by Catholicsduring the Holocaust, to their surviving relatives. These latestallegations were swiftly dismissed.But few paid attention.The latest contro versy began on Dec. 28, 2005 wh en Alb erto

Melloni, an Italian scholar and the co-director of the JohnXXIII Center in Bologna, published anarticle in Corriere della Sera reporting theexistence of a 1946 docu ment in which thepope told Monsignor Angelo Roncalli, th epapa l nuncio in France and fu ture PopeJohn XXIII, that the Church should keepcustody of baptized Jewish children. Newsagencies immediately picked up the story,giving it global reach.

"Allegations thatPius orchestratedthe 'kidnapping'of Jewish childrenare false."

A copy of the document that Melloni discovered was leakedto The New York Times and published in translation on its website on Jan. 9. It states that bap tized Jewish children should no tbe turned over to Jewish agencies that would not be able toguaran tee their C hristian upbringing, and that such childrenshould also be withheld, even if their paren ts ask for them. Anotation at the bottom of the document reads that this decision"has been approved by the Holy Father."Some of Pius XII's critics reacted quickly.Abe Foxman, the national director of the Anti-DefamationLeague (ADL), publicly called on the Vatican to stop it s plans tobeatify Pius XII, open its wartime archives and release allbapt ismal records from the war. Alth ou gh he had no evidence ,Foxman wrote a piece in The Palm Beach Post suggesting thatthe Vatican must hav e sent similar instructions to othe r countrieDaniel Jonah Goldhagen, th e author of the notoriously anti-Catholic book, "A Moral Reckoning: Th e Role of the CatholicChurch in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled D u t y of Repair ,"published articles in The New Republic magazine, LondonSunday Times newspaper, and the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretzattacking the Vatican. He also called for an interna tionalcommission to inv estigate how many Jewish children were"kidnapped" by the Catholic Church in Europe.

From th e outset, however, th e story looked suspicious.Evidence in the public record for decades seemed to underminethe controversy. Pius XII himself was onrecord as pledging that the Church wouldreturn Jewish children, baptized or not. InSeptember 1945, Dr. A. Leon Kubowitzky(later Kubovy), the secretary-general of thWorld Jewish Congress (WJC), personallydiscussed the issue with the pope.According to the book, "U nity inDispersion: A History of the World Jewish

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Congress,' ' a collection of the organization'sreports published in 1948, Kubowitzky was"given assurance [by the pope] th at a mosthumane policy would be followed in thisdelicate matter."In March 1946, Pius XII granted an audienceto Chief Rab bi Isaac Herzog of Jerusalem, w howas seeking the return of an estimated 8,000Jewish children living in Catholic institutions inFrance, Poland, Belgium , and the Netherlands. An article inJerusalem's Palestine Post publ ished after th e meet ing reportedthat Herzog "had th e Vatican's promise of help to bring thosechildren back into the Jewish fold."Di d the Catholic Church return the children, as the popepromised?In his 1967 book, "Three Popes and the Jews." the Jewishscholar Pinchas Lapide quotes Kubovy, in 1964, as saying,"I canstate no w that I hardly know of a single case where Catholicinstitutions refused to return Jewish children." In an interview

"Is the noteto Roncalli ahoax? WasMellonideceived?"

published last year in the Israeli newspaperHa'aretz, Serge Klarsfeld, the French Holocausurvivor, Nazi hunter, and autho r, disputed theallegation that the French Church kept Jewishchildren. (As for Melloni, he admitted that hehad no figures on the number of childrenprevented from rejoining their families.)There is evidence that Pius X II himselfintervened in several cases.Author Peter H ellman, in his 1980 book "Avenue of theRighteous," tells the story of Leokadia Jaromirska, a Polish Catholiwoman who saved the life of a Jewish girl and was subsequentlyhonored as a "Righteous Gentile" by the state of Israel. After thewar, Jaromirska wa s unwilling to return the girl to her Jewish fatheJaromirska wrote to the pope, asking his permission to keep custodof the child whom she was raising as Catholic. "She was instructedthe pope to return the child to its father," Hellman writes. In fact, thpope told Jaromirska that it was her duty as a Catholic to return thgirl and to do so in goodwill and friendship.

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Is the papal note to Roncalli a hoax? Was Melloni deceived, asDe r Stern was over the fraudulent Hitler diaries?The Rev.PeterGumpel, a Jesuit, the Vatican official who is serving as theindependent judge for the cause of Pius XII's beatification, told thepress that no copy of the document, which is a 28-linememorandum, exists in the Vatican archives. He added that thememorandum is unsigned, typewrittenin French instead of theVatican's customary Italian,and not produced on Vatican stationery.

Two Italian scholars, Matteo Luigi Napolitano and AndreaTornielli , did some detective work and discovered thememorandum is genuine. Melloni's reporting, however, wasmisleading. The document did not come from the Vatican asreported, but from the archives of the French Catholic Church Melloni omitted this fact . The memorandum was actually

wr i t t en by someone who worked under Roncalli in theapostolic nunciature in Paris and was circulated to the FrenchCa tho l i c hierarchy.According to Tornielli and Napolitano, the memo was draftedin response to an official dispatch dated Sept. 28,1946, that

Monsignor Domenico Tardini, the Vatican's Secretary of theCongregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, sent toRoncalli. (When Roncalli was elected pope in 1958, he appointedTardini th e Vatican Secretary of State.)

An English translation of the complete text of Tardini's letterwas published by John Allen in his column for the NationalCatholic Reporter in mid-January. A comparison of the twotexts shows notable differences in tone, language, and content.Tardini does state that Jewish orphans who lacked means ofsupport and were being cared for by the Church should not bereturned to parties that had no legal right to them. Here, he wasreferring to Jewish relief organizations that would take custodyof th e orphans an d resettle them in what w as still Palestine.Nowhere in his letter does Tardini write that Catholicins t i tu t ions should withhold baptized Jewish children from theirsurviving relatives. After explaining th e Vatican's guidelines,Tardini affirms, "It would be something else if the children wererequested by their relatives."

For reasons that remain unclear, the individual who wrote thememorandum went fa r beyond what th e Vatican had specified.The'allegation that Pope Pius XII orchestrated the "kidnapping"of Jewish children is false.Tw o Catholic historians, Rev. John Jay Hughes of St. Louis andRev. Vincent Lapomarda of the College of the Holy Cross inWorcester, Mass., pointed out that baptismal records are typicallykept in individual parishes. If a parish closes, its baptismalrecords are sent on to the local diocese. It is unlikely thatbaptismal records from any nation ended up at the Vaticandur ing an d after World War II .

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A 1 9 3 7 c a r t o o n f r o m t h e S S w e e k l y D a s . S c h w a r z e K o r p s m o c k i n g P i u s XII.These facts do not mollify Vatican detractors. Since Rolf

Hochhuth turned Pius XII into a villain with his 1964 play, "TheDeputy," th e Vatican finds itself on the defensive in all mattersconcerning Pius. By contrast, charges leveled by critics are notsubmitted to similar scrutiny.B ut Pius detractors ar e facing an uphill task. In February 2003,the Vatican began the process of opening its archives f rom 1933-1945. In his book, "Hitler, la Santa Sede e gl i Ebrei" ("Hitler, theHoly See, and the Jews"), Jesuit priest Giovanni Sale writes thatmany of the documents that have been gradually emerging fromthe archives establish the Vatican's opposition to both Nazismand anti-Semitism.If evidence that establishes Pius XII's guil tisn't found, perhaps critics will turn to alleging that theVaticandestroyed incriminating documents against the pope andfabr icated all theones that exonerate him.

Dimitri Cavalli is an editor and writer in New York City.H e is working on books on Pope Pius XII and Joe McCarthy, the late manager of the New York Yankees.

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