The Vatican recently issued a document saying Christians did not do enough to stop the extermination of six million Jews in World War II. But it defended Pope Pius XII against charges that he did not speak out against the Nazis during the Holocaust. Jewish organizations were angered, saying the Vatican’s 14-page document, We Remember, a Reflection on the Shoah, did not go far enough to condemn Pius’ silence.
On March 22, 1998, the Philadelphia Inquirer carried an article summarizing Pius’ 1942 Christmas message in which he lamented the cruelties of war, but failed to even mention the Nazis. Wladyslav Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish government-in-exile at that time, wrote to Pius: “My people…implore that a voice be raised to show clearly and plainly where the evil lies. Today…the Apostolic See must break silence.” As was written in the Inquirer, “Pius did not.”
But while Jews, Christians and political analysts bicker over what Pius said, or did not say, and whether or not Pope John Paul II should apologize, the overwhelming majority cannot see the big overview. Is it because they are not willing to face the truth?
After the Vatican released its document, Phil Baum, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, lamented the Vatican’s reluctance to “impose moral culpability on some leading church authorities…who were either indifferent or in some casesactually complicitin the persecution of Jews.”
Mr. Baum believes some Catholic authorities may have been “actually complicit” in the Jewish persecution and slaughter. In other words, the church was somewhat allied with Hitler and the Nazis.
The Pope and other Catholics were more than just being silent during the war. All we have to do is look at what the Catholic Church was doing at the end of World War II. Let’s view the whole picture.
I would like to give you some quotes from the most frightfully shocking book I have read in years. It involves Germany, Croatia and the Vatican. The book, Unholy Trinity, was written by Mark Aarons and John Loftus in 1991. Aarons and Loftus were interviewed by Larry King on CNN after the book’s release. Notice what they wrote (emphasis mine): “It is absurd to believe that 30,000 fugitive Nazis escaped to South America on the few U-Boats remaining at the end of the war, or that they all made their own travel arrangements. Modern popular culture has presented the escape of the Nazis in an adventurous, almost romantic light. The most popular Nazi smugglers are ODESSA and Die Spinne, although other mysterious groups are also mentioned from time to time. But in the main these stories owe more to the fertile imagination of script writers and novelists than to historical research and accuracy.
“The truth is much more ordinary, almost mundane. It is all the more shocking as a result. For whatever successes ODESSA achieved, they were mere amateurs at Nazi-smuggling when compared with the Vatican. Draganovic’s Ratline [name given to the Vatican’s smuggling operation] was truly professional, ensuring that many guilty war criminals reached safe havens. Often they did not end up in the remote jungles of South America, but settled instead in Britain, Canada, Australia and the United States” (p. 88).
This is the big overview that most in the press refuse to see. And so, people will go on and on arguing over what one pope didn’t say, and what another should have said. But almost no one wants to look at the facts!
The Croatian Connection
In July of 1997, a United States Treasury document was published accusing the Vatican of hoarding Holocaust gold for the Croatian Nazi puppet regime during and after World War II. The Vatican dismissed the accusation as ridiculous. But then, when pressured by Jewish organizations to open their archives (which have been closed for 100 years) to dispel rumors of Nazi sympathies, the Vatican refused. Why? Could it be that they have something to hide? In Unholy Trinity, Aarons and Loftus say they do have something to hide! Consider this lengthy excerpt from their book, and then ask yourself, are people really getting the big overview today?
“Many [Serbs] had been dispatched using extremely medieval methods; eyes had been gouged out, limbs severed, intestines and other internal organs ripped from the bodies of the living. Some were slaughtered like beasts, their throats cut from ear to ear with special knives. Others died from blows to their heads with sledgehammers. Many more were simply burned alive…. [Croatian leader Ante] Pavelic also knew that the Holy See looked on Croatia as ‘the frontier of Christianity’; a special relationship between Croatia and the Pope extended back to 700 a.d.
“Apart from this strong historical connection, Pavelic was also aware that Pius XII and his senior advisers held extremely charitable opinions of his militant Catholicism. During the war Pavelic had forcibly converted tens of thousands of Serbian Orthodox under penalty of death. In fact, the atrocities were already underway at the very moment Pius XII received the Poglavnik [Pavelic’s title] in private audience in late April 1941.
“The Pope’s own attitude towards the murderous Ustashi leader was more than benign neglect. When Pavelic asked for another audience with the Holy Father in May 1943, he was assured by Secretary of State Magilone that ‘there were no difficulties attached to the Poglavnik’s visit to the Holy Father except that he could not be received as a sovereign.’ Pius himself promised to give Pavelic his personal blessing again. By this time, the Holy See possessed abundant evidence of the atrocities committed by his regime….
“Pavelic’s record was well known. On one occasion a visiting Italian Fascist journalist had been granted an interview with the Poglavnik [his office]. Noticing what appeared to be a large bowl of oysters, he had asked Pavelic whether they were from the Dalmatian coast. He was shocked when the dictator replied that they were forty pounds of Serbian eyes sent to him by his loyal Ustashi….
“U.S. intelligence received even more sensational information from their confidential source, who claimed that ‘Pavelic holds frequent secret meetings with Monsignor Montini [later became Pope Paul VI], the Under Secretary of State of the Holy See….’
“‘Disposal,’ of course, meant escape, and the Holy See was the perfect ‘fall guy’ to shoulder the blame for smuggling Pavelic. The Vatican had the most to lose if he was handed over to the Communists. Soon after he helped Vajta [a Nazi] to leave Rome, [U.S. special agent William] Gowen wrote a final report: Pavelic’s contacts are so high and his present position is so compromising to the Vatican, that any extradition of [Pavelic] would deal a staggering blow to the Roman Catholic Church….
“By mid-1947, William Gowen had already recommended that America should ignore the Vatican’s protection of an even more notorious Nazi mass murderer. As will be seen in the next chapter, he justified this because of the Holy See’s contribution to the anti-Communist cause. After the publicity surrounding Hudal it may have been expected that the Vatican would become more circumspect. But Vajta was not the last of the Vatican’s Nazi scandals. The worst was yet to come. For fugitive Nazis, all roads led to Rome….
“Ante Pavelic was once again allowed to disappear into thin air. The names of his high level contacts inside the Holy See’s bureaucracy are still highly classified. As seen earlier, at least one U.S. intelligence source believed that it was Monsignor Giovanni Montini, the Pope’s Under Secretary of State for Ordinary Affairs, and later Pope Paul VI.
“Cecelja was well informed about those he sent down the Ratline to Rome and on to their new homes. ‘Some of them were high ranking ministers and civil servants,’ he admitted. Further, he was certain that Draganovic had the approval of the Vatican for his work, claiming that the Holy See had asked him to take care of a broad based emigration of Central European ‘refugees.’ Draganovic ‘was fully empowered by the Holy See and was in charge not only for Croatians, but for everybody,’ he emphatically declared in his taped interview” (pp. 69, 71, 73-74, 78, 85, 95).
Aarons and Loftus understand the important history between Croatia and the papacy, dating back to a.d. 700. The Catholic Church has been involved in mass murder since a.d. 514, when the first Holy Roman Empire began. Fifty million people were killed during the Inquisition alone. This church has more to hide—or repent of—than any other institution in the history of the world!
A church either represents the true God or it is a false church. And because a church supposedly represents God, it must be held very accountable. It certainly is by God, if not by man. Read Jeremiah 23 and Ezekiel 34 to see how severely God judges rebellious pastors.
The most terrifying history by far is coming in the very near future. It is time we understand the truth. Write for our free reprint The Holy Roman Empire—if you have the courage to face the truth—to get the big overview. The worst mistake you can make is to refuse to understand.