Osservatore Romano, the official organ of the Vatican, published a front page article asserting that Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII acted to aid Jewish victims of the Nazi persecution.
The article emphasized that Pope Pius XI had been outspoken in his condemnation of Nazi-Fascist racial doctrines, particularly in a speech in July 1939, to students at the College for the Propagation of the Faith. In that speech, Pope Pius XI stressed the “moral perversity of racist ideology, the sea of hatred among peoples and the unjust discrimination between citizens of the same country,” and he deplored Mussolini’s decision to imitate Nazi Germany’s racial policies.
The article said that the speech had been denounced by leading Nazis as “a declaration of war against National Socialism by political Catholicism.” Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels was quoted as having declared that the Pope “discussed a political issue which must not interest him. The Jewish race has recently found its preferred defender in the Vatican press.”
In citing the Goebbels’ statement, Osservatore Romano today emphasized that “thus by admission of the Nazi-Fascist press, the firmest defender of the Jews during the war waged against them in that period was the Vatican. The Catholic Church considers such accusations as a title of glory.”
The article also declared that on July 10, 1939, Pope Pius XI ordered, one month before his death, that a message be sent to all North American Cardinals, accompanied by his personal letter, asking their “militant” intervention to assist refugee Jewish scientist and scholars.
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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.
