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Pope Pius XII: Thou shalt not return Jewish babies to surviving parents.
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners December 31, 2004 |
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The Vatican instructed the Catholic church in France not to return baptized Jewish children to their families after the Holocaust, according to a letter dated November 20, 1946, published Tuesday in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
Many such children had been placed by Jewish parents in the Church's care to protect them from deportation by the German. After the war, the Pope instructed that they should be returned to surviving parents only if they had not been baptized.
A letter containing these instructions was sent by the Papal Holy Office to Angelo Roncalli -- who later became Pope John XXIII -- who was at the time Pius' representative in Paris. Roncalli had a reputation for favoring Jews during his previous service as the Holy See's envoy to Istanbul. In Paris he helped many Jews escape to the Jewish State in formation. He reportedly disobeyed Vatican instructions by helping to return Jewish minors to their families.
Roncalli's methods in defying the papal orders are not detailed in the diaries. However, one of the first things he did when he became pope in 1960 was to place a repudiation of anti-Semitism on the agenda of the Second Vatican Council.
"Please note that this decision has been approved by the Holy Father," the Vatican letter emphasizes, referring to Pope Pius XII.
Pius sought to restrict the number of children the church returned to their families by, among other things, ordering that baptized children "may not be entrusted to institutions that are not in a position to guarantee them a Christian upbringing."
According to Pope Pius, Jewish orphans were to be treated as "fair game" for the Church to convert. "Regarding those children who no longer have parents and for whom the Church has been responsible, it is not advisable that they be abandoned by the Church itself or entrusted to persons who have no rights whatsoever over them ? unless they are able to take responsibility over themselves. This obviously applies to children who have not been baptized."
On July 19, 1946, he sent a letter to the chief rabbi in Israel, Isaac Herzog (father of Israeli president Haim Herzog), in which he gives him permission "to use his [Roncalli's] authority so these children can return to their original environment."
Amos Luzzato, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, reacting to the revelation, said that "The documents indicate that the Vatican completely ignored the Holocaust and murder of Jews. There is a sticking to theological arguments as though this were an ordinary situation, when in practice these children were not entrusted to churches to convert to Christianity but to save them from murder."
The publication of the letter to Roncalli is expected to make it difficult for the Vatican to ignore accusations that Pius did little to combat Nazi persecution of Jews and even helped Nazi war criminals to evade justice. They may hamper the campaign by current Pope John Paul II to lay the groundwork for beatifying Pius XII.
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