I probably shouldn't give Gorge Bush ideas, but are the torture chambers
still functional there in the basement of the Vatican?

In article <aN2dnf0PsapFO23cRVn-2A@look.ca>,
"pedro martori" <pedro1940@progression.net> wrote:

On January 9, the New York Times ran a story about an article in an Italian
newspaper that claimed to have uncovered a 1946 document that implicates Pope
Pius XII in a scheme not to return baptized Jewish children (who were hidden
from the Nazis during the Holocaust) to their parents after the war. Since
its publication, the controversy has exploded.


Catholic League president William Donohue spoke to this issue today:


"The document that was the source of the New York Times piece says that Pope
Pius XII personally approved the decision not to return Jewish children who
had been sheltered by Catholics during the war. But there are many problems
with this interpretation. As first pointed out by Rev. Peter Gumpel in Rome,
the document was unsigned, did not appear on Vatican stationery and was
written in French, not Italian. Even more convincing is what has been
learned subsequently.


"Thanks to Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli of Il Giornale, the original
document in question has now been identified. To begin with, the document
never originated in the Holy See: the text bears the seal of the apostolic
nunciature of France. And not only does the document not say what it has
been alleged to say, it says the very opposite! To wit: It expressly says
that the children who were sheltered by Catholic institutions should be
returned to their original Jewish families. In the event Jewish
organizations, as opposed to Jewish families, sought custody of the children,
that was to be handled on a case-by-case basis.


"Zenit, the international news agency that covers the Vatican, learned that
the origins of the document extend to a letter written in 1946 by Isaac
Herzog, chief rabbi of Jerusalem, to Pius XII. In it, Herzog thanked the
pope for helping Jews during the Holocaust and for sheltering 'thousands of
children who were hidden in Catholic institutions.' He then requested that
these children be returned to their original families. Which, as we now
know, is what happened.


"In short, what the critics of Pius XII are suffering from is a heady dose of
Rathergate: they willingly took the bait and now look rather foolish."


Thomas McArdle
Director of Communications
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
450 Seventh Ave
New York, NY 10123
(212) 371-3191
(212) 371-3394 (Fax)
www.catholicleague.org
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