Documents released by the Vatican last Friday revealed that during the last years of World War II it opposed the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine and that its policy of public silence on the plight of the Jews under Nazism was an effort to avoid endangering its quiet diplomacy on their behalf. The declassified wartime Vatican papers, titled “The Holy See and the Victims of the War, January-December 1943,” showed that Luigi Cardinal Maglione, the then Vatican Secretary of State, expressed grave concern over the efforts of Zionism.
In a letter to the Vatican’s Papal Nuncio in Washington, Amleto Cicognani, Cardinal Maglione wrote: “If Palestine fell under the rule of the Jews, it would give birth to new and grave international problems and make the Catholics of the world unhappy. It would cause righteous complaints of the Holy See and would poorly reciprocate the charitable concern that the Holy See has had and continues to have for non-Aryans.”
“It is true,” the letter continued, “that at one time Palestine was inhabited by the Jews. But how can you historically justify a criterion of bringing people back to those territories where they were 19 centuries ago?” It is not difficult, the letter noted, “if one wants to build a Jewish homeland, to find other territories more fitted for the purpose; but Palestine, under Jewish predominance, would cause new and serious international problems.”
SAW ISRAEL AS A UTOPIA
In a message to Msgr. William Godfrey, the Papal legate in London, Cardinal Maglione wrote that “The Holy See has never approved the plan to make Palestine a Jewish homeland.” In another message to Msgr. Godfrey, he stated that Roman Catholics had special historic rights to the holy places and venerated the Holy Land. “Therefore, the Catholics’ religious feelings would be injured and they would justly fear for the rights if Palestine belonged exclusively to the Jews,” Cardinal Maglione said.
The Vatican documents also showed that similar concern was expressed by Msgr. Angelo Roncalli, then Papal Nuncio to Turkey and later Pope John XXIII, in a letter to Cardinal Maglione in which he wrote that helping Jews reach Palestine “produces some uncertainties in my spirit” because it did not seem “good taste” that this charitable work should help, or appear to help, “in the realization of the messianic dream.” He added: “It is quite certain that the reconstruction of the Kingdom of Judah and of Israel is only a utopia.” Msgr. Roncalli, during his tenure as envoy to Turkey, helped Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution reach Palestine.
On the plight of Jews under Nazism, the documents revealed that the Vatican was worried in 1943 that the Nazis might invade the Vatican and kidnap Pope Pius XII. Nevertheless, the documents show that the Vatican protested strongly on Oct. 16, 1943 when 1027 Jews were arrested by Nazi troops in the ghetto of Rome and transported to death camps in northern Italy.
The documents also include dozens of reports from outside Italy on the killing of Jews by the Nazis and pleas for the Pope to speak out. In addition they reveal dozens of messages from the Vatican saying that it was doing everything it could diplomatically for the Jews. Critics of Pope Pius contend, however, that he failed to act in any decisive manner after the mass arrests in Rome.
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