This is point two of three found over at NewsBusters. While the other points are important, this is one I have been confronted with quite a bit in the past that I wish to post here in order to add to the readers and mine learning curve and accessibility: It is in regards to a Maureen Down article in the New York Times:

Dowd also repeated the oft-heard anti-Catholic lie that Pope Pius XII, the World War II-era pontiff, “remained silent about the Holocaust as it happened.”

This grossly false tale has been roundly debunked repeatedly:

In a December 25, 1941, editorial, the New York Times wrote, “The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas… he is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all… the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism … he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace.”

An August 6, 1942, headline in the New York Times read, “Pope is Said to Plead for Jews Listed for Removal from France.”

In his book, Three Popes and the Jews, Israeli diplomat and scholar Pinchas Lapide has asserted, “The Catholic Church under the pontificate of Pius XII was instrumental in saving lives of as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands.” Lapide adds that this “figure far exceeds those saved by all other Churches and rescue organizations combined.”

Michael Tagliacozzo, “the foremost survivor on the October 1943 Nazi roundup of Rome’s Jews” and “a survivor of the raid himself,” said Pius’ actions helped rescue 80 percent of Rome’s Jews. Said Tagliacozzo, “Pope Pacelli was the only one who intervened to impede the deportation of Jews on October 16, 1943, and he did very much to hide and save thousands of us.” (Rabbi David G. Dalin, p. 83)

In the June 21, 2009, edition of the Boston Globe, Mordechay Lewy, Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See, is quoted, “It is wrong to look for any affinity between [Pius] and the Nazis. It is also wrong to say that he didn’t save Jews. Everybody who knows the history of those who were saved among Roman Jewry knows that they hid in the church.”

So much for Dowd’s claim of Pope Pius XII “remaining silent.” There have been scores of books, research papers, and articles (list 1, 2) that outline what Pope Pius XII really did during World War II.

…(read more)…