A leading Catholic editor told a Melbourne University audience today that he wished the late Pope Pous XII “had found it possible as a matter of judgment to have publicly denounced the slaughter of Jews” by the Nazis “as a matter of principle.”
B.A. Santa maria, editor of the Catholic Journal, a lay periodical, added that it would have made him personally “more tranquil” about the policy of the Vatican if the late Pontiff had condemned the murder of Jews. His lecture before a capacity audience in the university’s B’nai B’rith Hall was arranged by the University’s Jewish Students Society.
Mr. Santa maria also asserted that the charge of Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus was “a moral wrong which should have been done away with many years ago. It is historical humbug.” He added that the “hoary old attitude of so many Catholics in past ages that the Jewish race is in some way collectively responsible for the death of Jesus and that this in some way justifies anti-Semitism in historical nonsense and moral rubbish.”
He told the University audience that this attitude “ought to have been fought long ago by the Catholic Church precisely in the way in which the Ecumenical Council proposes to fight it now.” He added that it was completely unnecessary for Jews “to shout gratitude” for that action “because we are belatedly doing what is right.”
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.
