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Friday, March 29, 2024

Time for the Vatican to Come Clean; Release WWII Files

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In addition to exploring Pope Pius XII’s possible collusion with the Nazis, what the smoking gun here seems to be are Vatican records that are associated with their eponymously named bank that was established during World War II.

As the world watched the most historic trip made to the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by Pope Francis I last week, one wonders why the Vatican believes that a simple photo-op and a brief conversational exchange between the pontiff and aging Holocaust survivors is sufficient in vanquishing the Roman Catholic church’s moral obligation to come clean about their relationship with the Third Reich.

Since the culmination of World War II and in the ensuing years, evidence was gathered that indicated that the Vatican had accumulated detailed records of the war and its alleged dealings with Hitler’s Germany as well as the other Axis powers.

Over the decades, innumerable requests have been made that the Vatican’s disclosed wartime files be opened to historians and researchers. To say that the Vatican has been reluctant to do so would be a colossal understatement.

As a matter of fact, the Vatican has unabashedly stonewalled such formal requests from interested parties, research institutes and academia at large. In a recent op-ed piece that appeared in the New York Times, prolific author Gerald Posner (“God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican”), noted that “the Vatican is the only country in Europe that refuses to open all of its World War II archives.”

Back in 2002, the Vatican, then succumbing to international pressure to respond to criticism that Pope Pius XII (who reigned during the nightmarish Holocaust years) made half-hearted and negligible measures to condemn and try to stop the Nazi slaughter of Europe’s Jews. As such the top brass at the Vatican pledged to open some of its clandestine archives the following year.

This too was tantamount to nothing more than an empty gesture. The LA Times reported that Seymour D. Reich, who was at the time, the Jewish coordinator of both Catholic and Jewish historians had called the partial opening of the files a disappointment. He said the documents that were promised to be tendered for public consumption could answer no more than two of the panel’s 47 questions about Pius’ authentic attitude toward the Holocaust.

Pope Francis sites the Lateran Pacts, which is a 1929 agreement between the Vatican and Rome as a reason that files had not been previously disclosed. The agreement called for the sequestration of files.  According to Mr. Posner’s op-ed piece,  however, the agreement gave full sovereign rights to the Vatican, making it a de facto state of its own. This agreement does not keep the Vatican under Rome’s dominion but rather invests it with its own autonomy. So, for all intents and purposes, the Vatican has always had the authority to release the files. All that is required is a papal decree.

In addition to exploring Pope Pius XII’s possible collusion with the Nazis, to us, what the smoking gun here seems to be are Vatican records that are associated with their eponymously named bank that was established during World War II. Reports indicate that the Vatican Bank endured numerous scandals. Citing Mr. Posner once again, he said in his NYT op-ed piece: “Those documents could resolve conclusively how much business the Vatican did with the Third Reich, as well as the extent of insurance company investments that yielded enormous profits from life insurance policies of Jews sent to Auschwitz, which I uncovered in my own reporting.”

This statement rather jibes with the response that Pope Francis gave to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achranot in 2014. He said of releasing the secret files: “Because of the time that has passed since World War II, I see no problem with opening the archives the moment we sort out the legal and bureaucratic matters.”

Now those words speak volumes. Not only have two years passed and the files haven’t moved an inch from the Vatican but how can we interpret the pontiff’s declaration that we have to “sort out the legal and bureaucratic matters.” Is the Vatican expecting legal imbroglios to emerge if such files were disclosed?

Upon closer scrutiny of historians and the critical probe of the public eye, does the Vatican expect more polemical issues and other sundry scandals and controversy to arise? Does the Vatican wish to have history solemnly record that its legacy has been permanently etched as a collaborator or even co-conspirator with the Holocaust and the mass murder of Jews?

Lest we forget that Nazi officials did not escape from Europe after the war unassisted.  An ongoing debate has raged over the decades to whether war criminal smuggling networks were manned by independent Nazi sympathizers or whether the professional program may have had the Vatican’s blessings.

Folks, we’re dealing with real dynamite here in terms of igniting potential controversy for the already beleaguered Catholic Church. You would think they had enough humiliation after the blockbuster film “Spotlight” was flashed across the silver screen.

The Vatican minds at work seem to want to err on the side of caution and continue to withhold factual documents that could send them spiraling in the PR arena once again.

For the sake of the religious tenets that you purportedly hold so dear, we beseech the Vatican to reconsider your inherent unwillingness to disclose the truth; no matter how painful it may be.

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