MORE CATHOLIC THAN THE POPE.

Researcher: Wartime pope's anti-Nazi stand was strong in 'private' contacts (Frances D'Emilio, AP, 8/21/03).

Pope Pius XII, accused by some historians and Jewish leaders of not speaking out against the Holocaust, expressed strong anti-Nazi views in private talks with diplomats, a Catholic magazine said Thursday, citing a newly released document. . . .

Pacelli, then Vatican secretary of state, gave Kennedy a report denouncing Nazism because it attacked 'the fundamental principle of the freedom of the practice of religion,' Gallagher wrote, quoting from the report.

Pacelli also reportedly told Kennedy that the church felt 'at times powerless and isolated in its daily struggle against all sorts of political excesses from the Bolsheviks to the new pagans arising from the 'Aryan' generations.'

He assured the ambassador that any political compromise with the Nazis was 'out of the question.' . . .

Gallagher also found a report filed the year Pacelli became pope. In it, the U.S. consul general in Berlin, Alfred W. Klieforth, described a three-hour meeting in 1937 with the future pope. Pacelli, the diplomat wrote, "regarded Hitler not only as an untrustworthy scoundrel but as a fundamentally wicked person."

Klieforth further noted that the cardinal "did not believe Hitler capable of moderation, in spite of appearances, and he fully supported the German bishops in their anti-Nazi stand."

Picture Cardinal Pacelli lecturing Ambassador Kennedy unsuccessfully about the evils of Nazism. Then smile. Posted by David Cohen at August 21, 2003 4:18 PM