A historian has examined Vatican secret archives pertaining to World War II, and it shows the degree to which the Vatican opposed the anti-semitism of the Nazi Regime.
Cardinal Tardini's, the Vatican foregin minister ,wrote in his diary that Pope Pius XI was determined to oppose the 1938 anti-Jewish laws of the Nazi Regime....
Entries "showed the great firmness of Pius XI. He wasn't afraid" to oppose both fascism and Nazism, said Chenaux, who is a professor of church history at the Pontifical Lateranense University in Rome and a biographer of wartime Pope Pius XII.
Many scholars and researchers had predicted the archives would yield fresh evidence that Pius XI took a harsher stance against the German and Italian regimes at the end of his papacy.
Initially, the pope had been supportive of far-right regimes, considering them a bulwark against liberal secularism and communism, which were viewed by the church as attacking traditional national and family values.
But by the mid-1930s, Pius had realized the dangers of totalitarianism, due to
the growing persecution of Jews and minorities, said Emma Fattorini, a contemporary history professor at Rome's La Sapienza University who is also studying the newly released files.
The archive is starting to yield insights into the church's reactions to the growing persecution of Jews in Europe.
SOURCE
Check out the Big Blue Wave Message Board
