did the soviet smear campaign on Pope Pius XII work?

Question

-- as recently revealed by Ion Mihaj Pacepa, former KGB official.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTUzYmJhMGQ5Y2UxOWUzNDUyNWUwODJiOTEzYjY4NzI=

through the KGB department of dis-information.

(!).......please read the article if you would like to answer.

"...Now Moscow wanted the Vatican discredited by its own priests, on its home territory, as a bastion of Nazism.

Eugenio Pacelli, by then Pope Pius XII, was selected as the KGB’s main target, its incarnation of evil, because he had departed this world in 1958. “Dead men cannot defend themselves" was the KGB’s latest slogan."

Answer 1

To a certain extent.

In October 1958 in front of the United Nations General Assembly, Golda Meir, the Prime Minister of Israel, said this of Pope Pius XII at his death :

''During the 10 years of Nazi terror, when our people went through the horrors of martyrdom, the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and commiserate with their victims.''

But recently even Israel seems to have been taken in by the Soviet's Campaign to smear Pope Pius XII.

No serious scholar contests the evidence that Pius XII took direct and indirect measures to save Jews from the Nazi death machine.

At the start of World War II, Pope Pius XII’s first encyclical was so anti-Hitler that the Royal Air Force and the French air force dropped 88,000 copies of it over Germany. Here is a link to the Summi Pontificatus: Encyclical of Pope Pius XII on the Unity of Human Society, October 20, 1939: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_20101939_summi-pontificatus_en.html

Unfortunately the Soviet Union and others had been trying to convince the world that the Catholic Church was pro-Nazi since the death of Pope Pius in 1958. Here are some sources:
+ The KGB made corrupting the Church a priority: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTUzYmJhMGQ5Y2UxOWUzNDUyNWUwODJiOTEzYjY4NzI=
+ The KGB campaign against Pius XII: http://www.the-tidings.com/2007/021607/difference.htm
+ Pius XII and the Jews: http://web.archive.org/web/20010919100700/http://www.weeklystandard.com/magazine/mag_6_23_01/dalin_bkart_6_23_01.asp
+ http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/a/ww2jews.html

See also "The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews From the Nazis" by Rabbi David G. Dalin which has compiled further overwhelming proof of Pope Pius XII"s friendship for the Jews beginning long before he became pope.

With love in Christ.

Answer 2

Couldn't you just sum it up? That's an awful long article to have to weed through to get to Pius XII.

My view on Pius XII....Regardless of how many Jews he saved in the Vatican, something like 30,000, he still should have spoken out against the Holocaust as the world's Spiritual leader. He should have made it plain that any Catholic who participated in aiding the Holocaust, except without grave danger to himself or his family, would be excommunicated, including priest. But there were two reasons, I think, he didn't do it.

First, he was a friend of Hitler's. He met and became friends with him while serving as the Archbishop of Berlin earlier. Second, Catholics had a "thing" about Jews up and until the second Vatican Council. Many believed the Jews were suffering as Christ predicted they would while on his way to his death. If he didn't speak out, as some contend, because he was trying to save the Vatican or Rome from being destroyed I say that saving buildings, no matter how grand or historically relevant, pales in comparison to saving people and keeping both the Pope's and the Catholic Church's integrity intact.

I don't believe that the Soviet Union "smeared" Pius XII in this regard. It's rather common knowledge that he said nothing during this atrocity.

Answer 3

pius xii signed a concordat with adolf hitler, promising to suppress roman catholic criticism of the shoah in return for nazi tolerance for the catholic clergy.

how exactly would one go about 'smearing' such a pile a s**t in the first place.