Vatican Beatifies Anti-Semitic Pope
The beatification of Pope Pius IX has again revealed the deeply ingrained
anti-Semitism within the Catholic Church. Pope Pius IX, who reigned from
1846 to 1878, was one of two former pontiffs beatified by Pope John-Paul
II on September 3 in a ceremony attended by thousands of pilgrims in St
Peter's Square.
Beatification is the last step before bestowing sainthood. It was carried
out despite widespread criticism by Jewish organisations and liberal Catholics
of Pius IX's anti-Jewish record. On the eve of the ceremony hundreds of
Rome's Jews and Catholics protested against the beatification in a candlelight
vigil.
Pius IX was renowned for his frequent anti-Semitic speeches. In one
address, he is said to have called Jews "dogs of which there are too many
present in Rome, howling and disturbing us everywhere". In 1848 Pius IX
forced the Jews of Rome back into the old ghetto to which they had been
confined for centuries, and in the following year, he enacted racial laws
against them. Jews were banned from public hospitals, prevented from giving
evidence against Christians in papal courts and excluded from all institutes
of secondary and higher education. Israeli
historians say that these laws were the forerunners of fascist dictator
Benito Mussolini's race policies.
Leading British church scholar Professor Owen Chadwick said that the
nineteenth-century pontiff's record "verges on the criminal". In one case,
which caused an international outcry at the time, Pius IX personally ordered
the forced kidnap and baptism of a six-year-old Jewish boy, Edgardo Levi
Mortara in 1858.
Pius IX was known for his extreme conservatism. He condemned 80 propositions
as "erroneous", including socialism, liberalism, communism, rationalism,
progress and modern civilisation in general.
Catholic conservatives say that Pius IX, who had the longest reign of
any Pope, should be celebrated for his "heroic values" in standing up against
the creation of a secular Italy
and as "a model of Christian life".
The decision to proceed with Pius IX's beatification comes after the
Catholic Church was forced to suspend that of Pope Pius XII, known as "Hitler's
Pope". According to John Cornwell, a former seminarian and research fellow
at Jesus College, Cambridge and author of Hitler's Pope: The Secret History
of Pope Pius XII, the wartime Pope displayed a "secret antipathy towards
the Jews".
Cornwell spent six years researching information in the Vatican archives
on Eugenio Pacelli, as Pius XII was known before his election. He had originally
intended his book to defend Pope Pius XII against criticism that he had
not done enough to stop the Holocaust. Instead he had uncovered evidence
that amounted to a "wider indictment".
As the papal envoy in Munich in 1932, prior to his becoming Pope in
1939, Pacelli considered the Jews to be part of a Bolshevik plot to destroy
Christendom and agreed to sanction the Vatican-German Concordat of 1933
that aided Hitler's rise to power. In doing so, he cleared the way for
Hitler's "Final Solution" to continue. "He was Hitler's pawn. He was Hitler's
Pope," said Professor Cornwell.
Although the Vatican was forced to quietly suspend plans for Pius XII's
sainthood due to widespread opposition from Jewish groups and others, the
Catholic Church has defended his record. During a television interview
about Pius XII's wartime role, Archbishop Sambi said that the Vatican had
taken the view that public condemnation of the Holocaust would only have
made matters worse. "I am convinced that a strong condemnation would have
increased Hitler's persecution of the Jews. I justify totally what he did
to save many Jews."
At the end of the war, the Vatican aided the escape of hundreds of Nazis
from Europe by issuing them with false Red Cross passports. The so-called
"rat line" involved a network of European monasteries used to harbour war
criminals. These were spirited out of Germany
and the former Nazi occupied territories to Latin America. Mass murderers
like Adolf Eichmann, Klaus Barbie and Ante Pavelic were delivered to the
port of Buenos Aires disguised as priests. As in the case of Barbie, some
went on to become expert advisers to Latin American dictatorships in techniques
of repression and torture perfected by the Third Reich.
Last year the Pope had designated the new millennium as a "year of purification"
for the Church. The Vatican issued a 14-page document, We Remember, A Reflection
on the Shoah, meant as an "act of repentance" for its wartime record. During
the papal pilgrimage to Israel in March, the Pope had placed a note in
the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, asking God's forgiveness for the past sins
of his Church, and committing Catholics to future brotherhood with Jews.
French bishops issued an apology for the Church's support for the collaborationist
Vichy regime and the Spanish Church was said to be asking for "forgiveness"
for its support for the fascist Franco before, during and after t
