#papistry

"The fact is that the Pope’s silence is defeating its own purpose because it is destroying his prospects of contributing to peace." Francis Osborne to Bridget McEwen, July 31, 1942, regarding how Eugenio Pacelli, Pius XII, remained silent during Germam atrocities in World War 2.

"In  his  weekly  public  audience  the  Pope  had  “delivered  three long, eloquent, but to my mind very tedious, lectures on the relations between  master  and  servants. One might  have  thought  that  the  relations between  the  German  occupiers  and  the  populations  of  the  occupied countries offered a more suitable and more urgent subject of discussion and advice." Francis Osborne to Bridget McEwen, August 25, 1942

The failure of  Pacelli to take a lead in issuing a warning to the Jews of  Europe, once the enormities were known, cannot be underestimated. The point has been summarized by Guenter Lewy: "A public denunciation of the mass murders by Pius XII, broadcast widely over the Vatican radio and read from the pulpits by the bishops, would have revealed to Jews and Christians alike what deportation to the East entailed. The Pope would have been believed, whereas the broadcasts of the Allies were often shrugged off as war propaganda."

President Roosevelt sent a personal representative to plead with Pacelli to say something clear about the extermination of the Jews.

Francis Osborne to Cardinal Secretary of State that the Vatican, “instead of thinking of nothing but the bombing of Rome should consider their duties in respect of the unprecedented crime against humanity of Hitler’s campaign of extermination of the Jews.”