Vatican: Pope tried to help Jews

A high-ranking Vatican official said that Pope Pius XII worked behind the scenes to help Jews persecuted during the Holocaust.Some have said that Pius did not do enough, even accusing him of being anti-Semitic. But the Vatican’s second-in-command said Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, attempted to save Jews by recruiting them for the Vatican security force, Reuters reported.Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state, made the comments at the presentation of a new biography about Pius.Bertone said Pius decided not to speak out more forcefully against the Nazis because he felt it would only provoke them against Catholics and Jews, and acted “within the limits of circumstances imposed on him.”The plan to save Jews by offering them jobs as Vatican guards did not
materialize, Bertone said, because the Nazis and their Italian fascist
allies demanded information about the men, including their race.About a thousand Roman Jews were put to death in Auschwitz. Irish Catholic families saved hundreds.Historians and the Anti-Defamation League have called on the Vatican to declassify World War II-era documents to help settle concerns about Vatican actions during the Holocaust.