Why didn Pope Pius XII speak out against the holocaust?
The record of the Vatican in relationship to the Holocaust is one of the great moral failures in history, one from which the Catholic Church itself has yet to recover,” writes columnist James Carroll in The Boston Globe. To back up his point, he lists the following historical data: “1929, The Lateran Pacts between Mussolini and Pius XI give the Vatican freedom and money, and they give needed prestige to Mussolini. [1933], The Vatican signs a Concordat with Hitler, his first international success, 1935—Mussolini invades Abyssinia. Catholic bishops bless Italian troops, 1939—Mussolini decrees an end to the rights of Jews in Italy. The pope says nothing 1942—The pope receives reports from Italian army chaplains about the extermination of the Jews. In his Christmas message, he bemoans the fate of ‘unfortunate people’ killed because of their race, but he does not mention Hitler, Germany or the death camps. Once again, the word ‘Jew’ is not used, 1943—Germans begin to round up Jews in Italy,
