{"id":3836,"date":"2009-12-28T20:14:04","date_gmt":"2009-12-28T20:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/12\/defending-pius.html"},"modified":"2009-12-28T20:14:04","modified_gmt":"2009-12-28T20:14:04","slug":"defending-pius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/12\/defending-pius.html","title":{"rendered":"Defending Pius"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Jewish writer and researcher is defending<\/a> the now-venerable pope’s record on the Nazis: <\/p>\n

\nGrowing up Jewish in Queens, I never dreamt I would be defending the man I once believed to be a Nazi sympathizer and an anti-Semite. But my work since 2002 with my wife, Meredith, and the Pave the Way Foundation has led me to this point.<\/p>\n

We founded Pave the Way to identify and eliminate nontheological obstacles between religions. Thus, despite our early prejudices, we decided to investigate the papacy of Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli), one of today’s greatest sources of hurt between Jews and Catholics.<\/p>\n

\"pope_pius--300x300.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>After years of research in documentary evidence and eyewitness testimony, what we found shocked us. We found nothing but praise and positive news articles concerning Pius’ actions from every Jewish, Israeli and political leader of the era who lived through the war.<\/p>\n

A few articles in the postwar era suggested that he should have done more to confront the Nazis — but it wasn’t until 1963, in the wake of the fictitious play “The Deputy” (written five years after Pius died), that accusations began flowing that he had failed to act, that he was a cold-hearted Nazi sympathizer who couldn’t care less about the Jewish people.<\/p>\n

The evidence strongly suggests this was part of a KGB-directed and -financed bid to smear Pius, a Soviet disinformation campaign meant to discredit the Catholic Church, which at that time was profoundly anti-Communist.<\/p>\n

In any case, the facts simply don’t match what so many have come to believe about Pius.<\/p>\n

It is unquestionable that Pius XII intervened to save countless Jews at a time most nations — even FDR’s America — refused to accept these refugees. He issued false baptismal papers and obtained visas for them to emigrate as “Non Aryan Catholic-Jews.” He smuggled Jews into the Americas and Asia. He ordered the lifting of cloister for men and women to enter monasteries, convents and churches to hide 7,000 Jews of Rome in a single day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He goes on to enumerate several examples of Pius’ generosity toward the Jewish people — some of which I’d never heard about. Read more here.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Jewish writer and researcher is defending the now-venerable pope’s record on the Nazis: Growing up Jewish in Queens, I never dreamt I would be defending the man I once believed to be a Nazi sympathizer and an anti-Semite. But my work since 2002 with my wife, Meredith, and the Pave the Way Foundation has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pope","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\nDefending Pius - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/12\/defending-pius.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Defending Pius - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Jewish writer and researcher is defending the now-venerable pope’s record on the Nazis: Growing up Jewish in Queens, I never dreamt I would be defending the man I once believed to be a Nazi sympathizer and an anti-Semite. 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