Catholic church during the Second world war

Role of the the Vatican

The Pape Pie XI had denounced the Nazisme in the Encyclique MIT brennender Sorge the March 21st 1937. This text, written in German (made extremely rare for an encyclical) and read with the mass in all the churches of Germany, stresses at least as much persecutions whose are victims the catholic priests that on those of the Jewish community , and very clearly condemns any dicrimination related to the race. Some show these “many diplomatic precautions of expression” to deteriorate its legibility.

Whoever takes the race, or populates it, or the State, or State forms it, or the agents of the capacity, or any other fundamental value of the human community - all things which hold in the terrestrial order a place necessary and honourable - whoever takes these concepts to withdraw them this scale of values, even religious, and the divinise by a worship idolatric, that one reverses and distorts the order of the things created and ordered by God: that one is far from the true faith as a God and of a design of the life answering this faith

The Nazi S started in reprisals of violent repressions. Hundreds of arrests of priests and monk (whose 304 deportations with Dachau), the exile of monseigneur Sproll, the confusion of évêchés of Munich, Rottenburg and Freiburg-in-Brisgau took place.

The attitude of its successor Pie XII secretary of Magpie XI which took part like such in the work group formatting the encyclical MIT brennender Sorge , is the subject of a burning polemic.

The adversaries of this pope reproach him for being insufficiently committed against the Nazism and the Antisémitisme, to have even guaranteed by its silence the intrigues Nazis. It would have wished not to endanger the Church of Germany by too distinct standpoint.

At the time of its message of Christmas 1939, Pie XII showed clearly the attacker of the Poland. Following this message, the episcopate Polish required of him to moderate its remarks by fear of reprisals.

The Vatican is not however the only one to be itself expressed tardily on the Shoah. Including to the Allied , the program Night and fog was made public only at the end of the war. The information on this subject filtered only gradually. It is only during the summer 1944, that Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, escaped from Auschwitz-Birkenau, forward a detailed report/ratio to the Vatican and the allies.

However as of March 1942, Mgr Burzio, apostolic delegate with Bratislava, announce the deportation of: 90000 Slovak Jews , energy “with an unquestionable death”. December 9th of the same year, a document announces Ghetto S and the existence of camps Polish “where the deprivation of food and an extremely heavy work quickly leads many people to death. ”. Pie XII himself referred there in its broadcast message of Christmas. In May 1943, the Vatican is informed of the existence of death camps. Pie XII evokes the subject in her speech of June 2nd in front of the Sacré College. In the same speech, he refuses to speak more precisely “in the interest even about the victims, in order not to make their situation more serious and unbearable contrary to our intentions”.

The interventions of the Vatican were carried out in fact by the means of the national clergies and of the Nonce S. the steps of Mgr Rotta to Budapest and of Mgr Burzio to Bratislava, for example, thus made it possible to save several hundreds of thousands of Juif S. When on October 16th, 1943, the Jews of Rome were raids, Pie XII asked her Secretary of State to convene the ambassador Ernst von Weizsäcker. The found compromise was to exchange the silence of the pope against the dead halt of this raid. So thousands of Jews were thus saved, nearly a thousand of Jews already raids died in Auschwitz.

Its defenders point out that its direct action and indirect would have made it possible to save between: 700000 and: 860000 Jews, and that several Jewish institutions thanked it on different occasions for its acts.

Thus several Juifs representatives defended the action of Pie XII. With its death, Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, declared: “during the decade of terror Nazi, when our people underwent a terrible martyr, the voice of the pope rose to condemn the persecutors and to call upon pity towards their victims. ”. More recently, in 2001, large the Rabbi of New York, David Dalin, declared: “He was a large friend of the Jews and deserves to be proclaimed “Just among the Nations” because he saved many of my co-religionists According to certain statistics, at least: 800000. ” In connection with the same events, Albert Einstein affirmed: “the Catholic church was the only one to raise the voice against the attack carried out by Hitler against freedom. ”

The capuchin Marie-Benoit (Pierre Péteul) succeeds in saving approximately: 4000 Jews. This rescue of the Jews by the Father Marie-Benoit, activity for which it was, to be honoured later, by Yad Vashem, of the title of “Juste of the Nations”, was accomplished with the unconditional support of the Pope, in the moral plan and the financial plan. July 16th, 1943, the Father Marie-Benoit had met Pie XII and it spoke in praise of the personal encouragements and the support that this one lavished to him, as its own testimony shows it, preserved at Yad Vashem. In 1976, the Father Marie-Benoit reiterated his praise of Pie XII publicly, at the time of the centenary of his birth, for what it had achieved in favor of the Jews.

Criticisms towards the action of Pie XII and the Catholic church popularize in 1963 with the satirical part the Vicar , of which the film Amen. of Costa-Gavras was drawn in 2001. This film is based on a satirical part rather than on a work of historian.

The March 16th 1998, the Vatican published the document: We remember - a reflection on Shoah under the direction the cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy. This document in particular tries up to what point to analyze the prejudices antijudaïques of many catholics could influence the position and the role of the Church during the Second world war.

The Catholic church of Germany

Attitude of the national Churches of the occupied countries

Generally, the whole of the European episcopates had to manage a difficult relation vis-a-vis the collaborator governments.

France

The “national revolution” of the “French State”

In France, the Roman hierarchy saw in the Régime of Vichy the end of a Third Republic lived like fundamentally hostile and appreciated the come to power of the marshal Pétain. This one wanted to restore “the moral order” around some values of which the family and the religion; “Work, Family, Patrie” were her currency. The Individual freedoms were removed, the offense of opinion reappeared as well as the Censure. Laic primary school education systematically was dismantled and denounced by violent press campaigns like a major person in charge of the defeat. The teacher training schools teachers were closed, the congregations found the right to teach, the denominational schools were reinstated in state education and again subsidized by the “French State” (France having ceased being a Republic), the religious instruction was restored in primary school education, the liberalized constitution of the religious orders, and the Église recovered the goods which had been confiscated to him by the law of 1905.

Around Pétain the enemies of IIIe République gathered: the militants of the French Action for which the fall of the parliamentary mode was greeted, according to the term of Charles Maurras, like “divine surprised”, the followers of the theses of Salazar, trade unionists tried by the Corporatisme, of the industrialists haunted by the memory of the Popular front of 1936, and clerical concerned of rechristianiser France, a whole mobility lends to support a “strong government”.

The first statute of the Jews, which dates from France October 3rd, 1940, does not cause reaction on behalf of the Parliament of the cardinals and Archevêque S. the bishops accept it without approving, even if: The statute which a State works out must take as a starting point the rules by justice and charity, not to be animated of a spirit of hatred or political revenge.

In 1943, the Catholic church however managed to prevent the systematic denaturalisation of the French Jews. During the occupation Nazi of France, one of the ideologists of the National-Catholicism supporting the French State of Pétain was Jean Ousset.

In March 1943 with Lille, the cardinal Liénart declared in connection with STO: I do not say that it is a duty of conscience to accept the obligatory service of work .

In spite of the courageous standpoint of certain priests and even of the participation of some in the various movements of the Resistance, the episcopate and the French high clergy had as a whole only rather formal reactions when they were not favorable to the mode of Vichy. That did not prevent many Christians resulting from popular environments to be engaged in their heart and conscience, and the social Christians resulting from the Syndicalisme took an active part in Resistance, it was for example the case of the network “Release-North”.

Protests of some bishops

As of 1933 the archbishop of Toulouse Jules Saliège made known his hostility towards the Nazism. In 1939, it denounces racism. However, the clergy lines up under the banner of the mode petainist, like the majority of the population.

Pass the antijuives laws (see in particular French Antisémitisme)

It will be necessary to await 1942, so that, vis-a-vis the intensification of the exactions of the mode, certain bishops start to protest.

It was still the case of the cardinal Jules Saliège in free zone, on August 30th 1942. This one (which will become Compagnon of the Release) had publicly expressed its indignation about the deportation of Jewish French.

Other episcopal protests follow: they will not have the same repercussion. One will note:

that of the Suhard cardinal who carried a message of protest to the Pétain marshal on behalf of the whole of the cardinals and archbishops;
that of Mgr Théas, bishop of Montauban, on August 26th 1942;
that of Mgr Delay, bishop of Marseilles, which was rewarded later by a medal for right;
that of the Gerlier cardinal who recalled, in the name of the French clergy: that all the men are brothers and that: current anti-semites measurements are a contempt of human dignity ;
that of Mgr Moussaron bishop of Albi;
that of Mgr Vanstenberghe, bishop of Bayonne.

It seems that these protests which came from the not-occupied zone were not imitated in occupied zone.

Current attitude of the Church

In 1989, the cardinal Decourtray placed the files of the diocese of Lyon at the disposal of a commission of historians chaired by Rene Rémond in order to make the light on ecclesiastical protections from which Paul Touvier could profit.

The Episcopal conference of France read a “declaration of repentance”, with Drancy on September 30th 1997.

Croatia

In Croatia, the Catholic church encouraged the creation of the State Oustachi and preserved close contacts with the mode of Ante Pavelic. At the end of the war this one with found refuge with the college San Girolamo degli Illirici of Rome . A report/ratio of September 12th 1947 of the American intelligence services soldier affirms:

The contacts of Pavelic are so high and its current location if compromising for the Vatican, that any extradition of the subject would strongly destabilize the Catholic church .

The franciscain Krunoslav Draganović was a member of the movement oustachi. At the end of the war it set up, since the Vatican, a network of exfiltration, named ratline by American, which allowed Pavelic, as with several other criminals, to take refuge in South America.

Alojzije Stepinac, archbishop of Zagreb during the Second World war, was béatifié by Jean-Paul II in 1998. This beatification with raised an important controversy, because this one had been condemned in 1946 for facts of collaboration by the mode of Tito. For many catholics however, this charge, coming from an authoritarian regime which repressed their religion, is unfounded. They point out that the cardinal took several times position against the exactions of the mode and that it protected from the orthodoxe , of the Juif S and the gypsy S.

Netherlands

In July 1942 the bishops of the Netherlands make read in all the churches a letter condemning unjust treatment and without mercy reserved with the Jews . In reaction, German off-sets towards the camps of dead the Jews converted with the Catholicism, of which the philosopher Edith Stein.

Slovakia

Of 1939 with 1945, M {{gr.}} Tiso is president of the country. It protects the Jews converted with Catholicism in front of the deportation. The Slovakia cease to off-set her Jewish citizens towards the Third Reich when it arises that the camps are not “of work” or “of concentration” but well “of extermination”.

See too

Repentance on the relationships to the Judaism

External bonds

Pie XII must be regarded as “Juste among the Nations” according to the rabbi Davin Dalin, of New York.
Article on Pie XII Article in English of the site Yad Vashem, Valley of right, Israel)
the article of the review '' It is alive! '' of January 1998
the Vatican, the anti-semitism of the Thirties with the rescue-recycling of the torturers the attitude of the Vatican during the last world war. (Annie Lacroix-Rice)

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