Under the heading “skullduggery,” the Jesuit weekly, America, in its current issue dencunces editorially as “a last-minute dirty trick” and a “fraud” the efforts made by some Catholic circles to influence the prelates at the Ecumenical Council to vote down the Church declaration which was finally adopted and promulgated, absolving the Jews of the charge of killing Jesus and deploring anti-Semitism.
According to America, copies of a “crudely written pamphlet appeared mysteriously in St. Peter’s Basilica” on the day the final vote had been scheduled on the declaration. The pamphlet called on the prelates not to vote for the declaration “because it would betray Christianity to the Jews.”
The Jesuit weekly reports, however, that at least a half-dozen of the purported signatories to that appeal had not given permission for the use of their names. “To complete the travesty,” states America, “it has now been discovered that three of the Italian organizations on the list do not even exist.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.