Friday, January 04, 2008
JEWS OPPOSING CANONIZATION OF POPE PIUS XII
“Pius’s record during the Holocaust is fraught with controversy. Historians claim he could have and should have prevented the slaughter. In 1933, the future Pope Pius XII, then-Eugenio Pacelli was negotiating the Reich Concordat between the Vatican and Hitler. As Cardinal Secretary of State, Pacelli formulated a treaty with Hitler, which left German Catholics without a democratic party. Germany’s Catholic populace, the largest in Europe, saw the concordat engineered by Pacelli as the Vatican’s endorsement of the Nazi Party. It is a moral outrage to consider this man for sainthood,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn). Pope Benedict XVI has recently created a committee in the Secretariat of State to investigate Pope Pius’s actions during the Holocaust. “Until Pius’s role during the Holocaust is fully revealed, there should be no further consideration of sainthood.”
Hikind has launched a petition drive to collect thousands of signatures of Holocaust survivors opposing the beatification of Pius, to be presented to Pope Benedict XVI on his historic visit to New York in April 2008.
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