Rome – The Vatican on Wednesday unveiled secret documents aimed at showing controversial pope Pius XII’s attention to the persecution of the Jews and promised the full archives would be opened soon.
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The documents are part of an unprecedented exhibition in Rome of rare Vatican archives spanning centuries of history and include a report from a papal envoy on the conditions inside seven internment camps in southern Italy.
Another document is a letter from a formerly interned rabbi in 1942 who thanks the then head of the Roman Catholic Church for sending aid to the camp including clothes and linen.
A third document is from former Jewish detainees who met with the pope for an audience in 1944 and expressed their gratitude for his support.
Very nice. No surprise that the German Pope wants to sanitize Pacelli’s indifference with documentation of his scattered acts of kindness and charity during the Holocaust. I know that he saved thousands, but there were MILLIONS more he could’ve saved with the Vatican’s vast wealth and influence at his disposal.
Let’s see what else the Secret Archive produces. I hope they also display all of the pleas for help that he ignored or worse yet, willfully denied.