Vatican

Vatican City, Sep 9, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- The wounds inflicted by the coronavirus crisis will only be healed if we put the common good first, Pope Francis said at his general audience Wednesday.

“A virus that does not recognize barriers, bord… […]

Denver Newsroom, Sep 9, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- Scholars of Pope Pius XII have countered claims that the wartime pope and the Catholic Church hierarchy were complicit in a controversial post-war custody battle over two Jewish orphans who were baptized Christians in France, then hidden from their relatives.

Researcher William Doino Jr. told CNA a recent article on the topic in The Atlantic is “both flawed and misleading, because it misrepresents and cites out of context a small portion of the newly released archives to advance a one-sided view of Pius XII– and omits key documents and evidence which contradict the article’s main allegations.”

He responded to historian David I. Kertzer, writing in The Atlantic, who has claimed that the archives have now revealed “the central role that the Vatican and the pope himself played in the kidnapping drama.”

“The Vatican helped direct efforts by local Church authorities to resist French court rulings and to keep the boys hidden, while at the same time carefully concealing the role that Rome was playing behind the scenes,” Kertzer wrote Aug. 27.

Those claims have also drawn criticism from Matteo Luigi Napolitano, professor of history of international relations at Italy’s University of Molise said in L’Osservatore Romano Sept. 3.

“Things are obviously much more complex if we look at the Jewish sources,” he said. “The Rabbinate wanted to maintain dialogue with the Vatican, while other organizations would have gone to the clash, to be exploited on the media level.”

The archives on Pope Pius XII’s pontificate were opened in 2020 for only four days before being closed again due to coronavirus restrictions. Napolitano said scholars have only had about forty days’ worth of work on the new material.

Napolitano is thus critical of the claims of Kertzer regarding the wartime papacy of Pius XII and the Finaly brothers controversy.

In February 1944, agents of the Gestapo arrested a refugee Jewish Austrian couple, Fritz and Annie Finaly, in a French village. They were transported to Auschwitz and killed. Their children, three-year-old Robert and two-year-old Gerald, were taken in by a Catholic woman, Antoinette Brun, who ran a foundling home in Grenoble.

Brun began the legal process to adopt them in 1945, when she learned their parents had been killed. At the same time, the boys’ relatives sought to take custody of them. An aunt from New Zealand asked the boys be sent to her, but Brun resisted. In 1948, she baptized the boys, making them Catholic in the eyes of the Church.

A custody struggle ensued, with both religious and national elements, citing the father’s reported desire to have his sons brought up in France, the boys’ reported desire to stay with Brun, calls to have the boys brought up Christian, and calls to return the boys to their family.

When courts said the boys should be placed with their relatives, the boys were taken by friends of Brun and hidden near France’s border with Spain.

Brun, a Catholic nun who helped her, and several Catholic clergymen were arrested.

“Several arrests were made, and the Church got some bad press. Contrary to what the critics claimed, however, the Catholics involved were not acting on behalf of the institutional Church,” said Ronald Rychlak, a law professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law and an expert on the history of Pius XII and the Nazis in the Second World War, wrote in an essay he sent to CNA in late August.

“When she was asked by the press about her Catholicism, Brun said she ‘didn’t give a fig for the pope.’ Bishop Alexandre Calliot of Grenoble took to the radio airwaves to demand that anyone with information about the missing boys contact the authorities. One of the first to comply was a priest in Spain who reported on their whereabouts.”

Doino characterized Brun as “a renegade Catholic.”

“She and a small group of collaborators evaded Church officials at every turn, after they demanded she return the children to their Jewish relatives,” he told CNA.

Doino pointed to an article he co-authored with Rychlak for Inside the Vatican Magazine’s a January-February 2005 issue, which used primary source documents and first-hand testimonies to disprove a claim he helped refuse to return baptized Jewish children to their surviving family members after the Second World War.
 
He told a Polish Catholic woman to return a baptized child to its father, saying it “was her duty as a Catholic not only to give back the child, but do it with good will and in friendship,” said Doino, who recommended Peter Hellman’s 1980 book Avenue of the Righteous.
 
Rychlak said Pius XII approved an agreement negotiated between Cardinal Pierre-Marie Gerlier of Lyons and the chief rabbi of Paris: the children would go to their relatives in France, but would be allowed free choice of religion. The pope approved this despite some leading advisors who wanted to reject any agreement in which Catholic children would live in a Jewish home.
 
In Kertzer’s telling, a Vatican document from Catholic sources in Grenoble appeared to describe positively Brun’s refusal to return the children.
 
Napolitano, however, said that Jewish sources show that the Bishop of Grenoble and the Archbishop of Lyons both worked with the judicial authority to track down the brothers after they were concealed in Spain.
 
Jewish sources reported that “the French clergy have already intervened with the Spanish clergy and that they are on the point of taking the children home.”
 
Napolitano said Vittorio Segre, press officer at the Israeli Embassy in Paris during the controversy, shows a “much more complex picture.”
 
In Segre’s account, the embassy officer said it is “logical to assume that there was support from the Vatican” for the agreement of Cardinal Gerlier through the former secretary of Charles de Gaulle, who was charged with tracking down the Finaly brothers.
 
According to Segre, there was “never a conflict between the Catholic Church and the Jewish community.” De Gaulle’s former secretary “worked in complete freedom, without encountering obstacles in the hierarchies.”
 
“There were difficulties, but they came from a much lower level,” said Segre.
 
While Kertzer’s essay claimed that relevant documents were now reported for the first time, Rychlak compared his work to a 2004 controversy in which the New York Times reported on a document from a French archive purporting to show Vatican authorization for church authorities not to return “hidden” Jewish children to their families if they had been baptized.
 
“To those of us who had studied the work of Pius XII, the directive immediately seemed suspicious, and for good reason,” Rychlak wrote. “The real directive, dated October 23, 1946, and authorized by Pope Pius XII, was quickly found in the Vatican archives. It was quite different from what had been reported in the news.”
 
“The directive told the rescuers to return these children, baptized or not, to blood-related relatives who came to get them,” Rychlak said. “Over and above that, if no relatives survived to reclaim the children, and if individuals or organizations unrelated to the children now wished to adopt them or transfer them to a new environment, each request was to be examined on a case-by-case basis, always with a sense of justice for the child, and with a sense of what their parents would have wanted for them.”
 
“This directive is perfectly in line with Judeo-Christian compassion and responsibility. It is also very probative of Pius XII’s mindset on these issues,” he said, saying this is far better evidence than internal memoranda.
 
Kertzer said other newly revealed documents justify repeated claims that Pius XII had been persuaded “not to speak out in protest after the Germans rounded up and deported Rome’s Jews in 1943.” He claimed memoranda was “steeped in anti-Semitic language.”
 
“The silence of Pius XII during the Holocaust has long engendered bitter debates about the Roman Catholic Church and Jews,” he said, repeating a claim long disputed by the Pope’s defenders.
 
For Kertzer, one piece of evidence is a December 1943 memo from Monsignor Angelo Dell’Acqua, an official in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, about whether it was right to openly and officially protest mistreatment of Jews by Germans. Kertzer interpreted the memo as a sign of anti-Semitism and Church silence.
 
However, Napolitano said the note came just two months after the Oct. 16, 1943 Nazi raid on Rome’s Jewish ghetto, which resulted in over 1,000 Jews being deported to Auschwitz.
 
Vatican officials objected to that raid, but were also aware of the danger of reprisals from the Nazis. Napolitano cited the diary of Slovakian ambassador Karl Sidor, which said: “On the orders of the Holy Father, more than one hundred Jews and Italian officers are hidden in the Jesuit Generalate. Likewise, Jews with their entire families are hidden in every convent. The Holy Father provides for their nourishment. Money and food arrive from the Vatican. This is very important news. This is the way the Vatican is dealing with the Jews.”
 
Documents from the Pius XII papacy, Napolitano said, come in the context of Church efforts “not to compromise the network of aid that had been activated throughout Rome to ensure that Jews and wanted people of all kinds escaped arrest and deportation.”
 
“It does not seem that Kertzer takes this into account,” Napolitano wrote in L’Osservatore Romano.
 
He also faulted Kertzer’s depiction of Dell’Acqua as an anti-Semite, given that the priest was a close collaborator with Pope John XXIII, who would not have named him a bishop and apostolic nuncio to France “if he had the slightest suspicion of his anti-Semitic inclinations.” Similarly, Paul VI, another pioneer in Catholic-Jewish relations, would not have elevated Dell’Acqua to the cardinalate.
 
“These are logical discrepancies that Kertzer does not resolve,” said Napolitano. “But history, like nature, does not allow for leaps.”

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Vatican City, Sep 8, 2020 / 01:30 pm (CNA).- The Vatican has decreed that Fr. Francis Mary of the Cross Jordan, founder of the Salvatorians, will be beatified May 15, 2021, at the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. 

Cardinal Angelo Becciu,… […]

Vatican City, Sep 8, 2020 / 07:30 am (CNA).- A book publishing conversations between Pope Francis and Carlo Petrini, the founder of the Slow Food organization, highlights the pope’s emphasis on dialogue with others.

Petrini, 71, is a well-known … […]

Vatican City, Sep 8, 2020 / 06:30 am (CNA).- Attacks on churches in France are back to their “normal” level following a nationwide lockdown, according to an organization led by young Catholics. 

A spokesperson for the group Prot&egrav… […]

Vatican City, Sep 8, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis paid tribute Monday to a cardinal whose life was intertwined with that of St. John Paul II.

The pope said in a telegram Sept. 7 that Cardinal Marian Jaworski would be remembered as an “ex… […]

Vatican City, Sep 7, 2020 / 05:15 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the Bishop-elect of Duluth, Minnesota, Michel J. Mulloy, after an accusation that he abused a minor in the 1980s surfaced in early August.

Mulloy, 66, was appoin… […]

Vatican City, Sep 6, 2020 / 05:45 am (CNA).- Pope Francis implored Catholics Sunday not to gossip about one another’s faults, but instead to follow Jesus’ directive on fraternal correction in the Gospel of Matthew.

“When we see a mistake, a defect, a slip of a brother or sister, usually the first thing we do is go and tell others about it, to gossip. And gossip closes the heart of the community, disrupts the unity of the Church,” Pope Francis said in his Angelus address Sept. 6.

“The great talker is the devil, who always goes about saying the bad things of others, because he is the liar who tries to disunite the Church, alienating brothers and sisters and unmaking community. Please, brothers and sisters, let’s make an effort not to gossip. Gossiping is a plague worse than COVID,” he told pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square.

Pope Francis said that Catholics need to live out Jesus’ “pedagogy of rehabilitation” — described in chapter 18 of the Gospel of Matthew — “if your brother sins against you”.

He explained: “To correct a brother who has done wrong, Jesus suggests a pedagogy for rehabilitation … articulated in three steps. In the first place he says: ‘point out the fault when the two of you are alone’, that is, do not air his sin in public. It is about going to your brother with discretion, not to judge him but to help him realize what he has done.”

“How many times have we had this experience: someone comes and tells us: ‘But, listen, you are wrong in this. You should change a little in this.’ Perhaps at first we get angry, but then we are grateful because it is a gesture of brotherhood, of communion, of help, of recovery,” the pope said.

Acknowledging that at times this private disclosure of another’s fault may not be received well, Pope Francis pointed out that the Gospel says not to give up but to seek the support of another person.

“Jesus says: ‘If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses,’” the pope said.

“This is the attitude of recovery that Jesus wants from us,” he added.

The third step of Jesus’ pedagogy of rehabilitation is to tell the community, that is the Church, Francis said. “In some situations the whole community gets involved.”

“Jesus’ pedagogy is always a pedagogy of rehabilitation; He always tries to recover, to save,” the pope said.

Pope Francis explained that Jesus expanded upon existing Mosaic law in going on to explain that community intervention may be insufficient. “It takes a greater love to rehabilitate a brother,” he said.

“Jesus says: ‘And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.’ This expression, seemingly so scornful, in reality invites us to put the brother in God’s hands: Only the Father will be able to show a greater love than that of all brothers and sisters put together … It is the love of Jesus, who had embraced the tax collectors and Gentiles, scandalizing the conformists of the time.”

This is also a recognition that after our human attempts may fail, we can still entrust our brother who is in error to God “in silence and prayer,” he added.

“Only by being alone before God can the brother face his own conscience and responsibility for his actions,” he said. “If things don’t go right, prayer and silence for the brother and sister who is wrong, but never gossip.”

After praying the Angelus, Pope Francis greeted pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square, including the newly arrived American seminarians living at the Pontifical North American College in Rome and women with multiple sclerosis who completed a walking pilgrimage from Siena to Rome along the Via Francigena.

“May the Virgin Mary help us to make fraternal correction a healthy practice, so that in our communities ever new fraternal relationships, founded on mutual forgiveness and above all on the invincible power of God’s mercy, may be instilled,” Pope Francis said.

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Vatican City, Sep 5, 2020 / 05:20 am (CNA).- The Vatican announced Saturday that Pope Francis will sign the third encyclical of his pontificate in Assisi on Oct. 3.

The encyclical is entitled Fratelli tutti, which means “All Brothers” in I… […]

Vatican City, Sep 4, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- Cardinal Pietro Parolin told Lebanese Catholics at a Mass in Beirut Thursday that Pope Francis is close to them, and praying for them, during their time of suffering.

“It is with great joy that I find myself among you today, in the blessed land of Lebanon, to express to you the closeness and solidarity of the Holy Father and, through him, of the whole Church,” the Vatican’s Secretary of State said Sept. 3.

Parolin visited Beirut Sept. 3-4 as the representative of Pope Francis, a month after the city experienced a devastating blast which killed nearly 200 people, injured thousands, and left thousands without a home.

The pope has called for Sept. 4 to be a universal day of prayer and fasting for the country.

Cardinal Parolin celebrated Mass for around 1,500 Maronite Catholics at the Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon, a major pilgrimage site in the hills of Harissa, north of Beirut, on the evening of Sept. 3.

“Lebanon has suffered too much and the past year has been the scene of several tragedies affecting the Lebanese people: the acute economic, social and political crisis which continues to rock the country, the coronavirus pandemic which has worsened the situation and most recently, a month ago, the tragic explosion of the port of Beirut which ripped open the capital of Lebanon and caused terrible misery,” Parolin said in his homily.

“But the Lebanese are not alone. We accompany them all spiritually, morally and materially.”

Parolin also met with Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun, a Catholic, in the morning of Sept. 4.

Cardinal Parolin brought the president greetings from Pope Francis and said that the pope was praying for Lebanon, according to Archbishop Paul Sayah, who is responsible for external relations for the Maronite Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch. 

Parolin told President Aoun that Pope Francis “wants you to know that you are not alone in these difficult times that you are experiencing,” Sayah told CNA.

The Secretary of State will conclude his visit with a meeting with Maronite bishops, including Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai, the Maronite Catholic patriarch of Antioch, during lunch Sept. 4.

Speaking via phone from Lebanon the morning of Sept. 4, Sayah said that the patriarchs have a deep appreciation and gratitude to the Holy Father for his closeness “in such difficult times.” 

“I’m sure today [Patriarch Rai] will express those sentiments to Cardinal Parolin face-to-face,” he noted.

Commenting on the Aug. 4 Beirut explosion, Sayah said “it’s a huge disaster. The suffering of the people… and the destruction, and the winter is coming and people will certainly not have the time to rebuild their homes.”

Archbishop Sayah added, however, that “one of the beautiful things about this experience is the influx of people volunteering to help.”

“Young people especially have really flocked in the thousands into Beirut to help, and also the international community which has been present offering assistance in various ways. It’s a good sign of hope,” he said.

Cardinal Parolin also met with religious leaders at the Maronite Cathedral of St. George in Beirut. 

“We are still shocked by what happened a month ago,” he said. “We pray that God may render us strong to care for every person who was affected and to accomplish the task of rebuilding Beirut.”

“As I arrived here, the temptation was to say that I would have liked to meet you in different circumstances. I said, ‘no,’ however! The God of love and mercy is also the God of history and we believe that God wants us to accomplish our mission of caring for our brothers and sisters in this present time, with all its difficulties and challenges.”

In his homily, delivered in French with Arabic translation, Cardinal Parolin said the Lebanese people can identify with Peter in the fifth chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel.

After fishing all night and catching nothing, Jesus asks Peter “to hope against all hope,” the Secretary of State noted. “After objecting, Peter obeyed and said to the Lord: ‘but at your word I will let go of the nets… And having done so, he and his companions caught a great multitude of fish.’”

“It is the Word of the Lord which changed the situation of Peter and it is the Word of the Lord which calls today the Lebanese to hope against all hope and to move forward with dignity and pride,” Parolin encouraged.

He also said that “the Word of the Lord is addressed to the Lebanese through their faith, through Our Lady of Lebanon and through Saint Charbel and all the saints of Lebanon.”

Lebanon will be reconstructed not only on a material level, but also on the level of public affairs, according to the secretary of state. “We have every hope that Lebanese society will be based more on rights, duties, transparency, collective responsibility and the service of the common good.”

“The Lebanese will walk this path together,”  he said. “They will rebuild their country, with the help of friends and with a spirit of understanding, dialogue and coexistence that has always distinguished them.”

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