Vatican Commission agrees to disagree on Stepanic

The Catholic News Agency reported on 18 July, on the latest meeting of the international historical commission set up in 2016 to examine the war-time record of Aloysius Stepinac (1898-1960), Archbishop of Zagreb 1937-60.  Readers may remember an earlier post about the commission and some of the areas of concern expressed.  The outcome of this meeting does not appear to have resolved the areas of greatest concern, namely Stepinac's action or inaction regarding the genocidal behaviour of the Ustaše regime in war-time Croatia although the Serbian Orthodox delegation praised Pope Francis for the opportunity to meet and discuss the Archbishop's life and legacy.

Reaction to the commission's work has been generally positive, though some in Croatia have raised fears that the Serbian Orthodox Synod has presented a distorted picture of Stepinac.  

The CNA article:

A commission of Catholic and Orthodox leaders tasked with examining the wartime record of Bl. Aloysius Stepinac concluded their final session last week, agreeing to disagree about the Croatian cardinal’s cause for canonization.

The Secretariat of the Holy See prepared a joint statement, adopted by both sides, at the conclusion of the commission’s sixth and final round of meetings at the Vatican July 12-13.

The document states that the opinions of either side remain unchanged, but also acknowledges that ultimately the competency for approval of the cardinal’s cause falls under Pope Francis.

“It has come to the conclusion that various events, speeches, writings, silences, and views are still subject to different interpretations. In the case of Cardinal Stepinac, the interpretations that were predominantly given by Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs remain divergent,” it states.

It included their thanks to Pope Francis for establishing the commission, which he did in May 2016 after receiving a letter from the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church Irinej, who stated his opposition to the cardinal's canonization.

They also expressed their gratitude for the atmosphere of the discussions which allowed “full freedom of expression.”

“From the commencement of the commission's work, the members were aware that the process of canonization of Cardinal Stepinac was in the exclusive competence of the Pope. They also admit that each Church has its own criteria for the canonization process,” it continued.

The Secretariat of the Holy See, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, accepted the outcome of the commission, which was led by Fr. Bernard Ardura, president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences.

With the conclusion of the commission, the path to the canonization of Cardinal Stepinac is fully open. The proper requisites in place, it is in the hands of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and then will go to Pope Francis for approval. It is believed the announcement of his canonization could take place soon.

Cardinal Stepinac, who is hailed as a hero in Croatia, has been a target of decades-long communist smears and disinformation. Despite this, he was beatified as a martyr by Pope St. John Paul II in October 1998.

Many in the Serbian Orthodox community are deeply skeptical of the cardinal's wartime record. Though one researcher of the period says the facts counter false claims about the beatified cardinal's record.

“What you have is a false narrative created by Soviet agents,” Prof. Ronald J. Rychlak told CNA/EWTN News in 2016.

Cardinal Stepinac was the Archbishop of Zagreb from 1937 until his death in 1960 at the age of 61. In Yugoslavia during the Second World War, the pro-Nazi Ustashe movement came to power under leader Ante Pavelic after the Axis occupied the country.

“Stepinac's sermons against the Ustashe were so strong. They prohibited them from being published, because they were so strong against the Ustashe,” Rychlak said. Instead, his words were secretly printed and circulated and occasionally broadcast over the radio.

He also severely condemned the Ustashe’s destruction of Zagreb’s main synagogue in 1941 and in an October 1943 homily, the archbishop condemned notions of racial superiority.

In 1946, Stepinac was put on trial for allegedly collaborating with the Ustashe’s crimes. The trial drew critical coverage from Western media like Time and Newsweek and protests from those who saw it as a show trial.

Archbishop Stepinac was denied effective representation and only met with his attorney for an hour before the trial. The government’s witnesses were told what to say, and the archbishop was not allowed to cross-examine them.

In 1953, Pope Pius XII made him a cardinal, although he was never allowed travel to the Holy See to be officially elevated. He died in 1960 of an alleged blood disorder, which was said to have been caused by the conditions he endured in jail. Recent tests of his remains by Vatican investigators show evidence he was also poisoned.

In June 2011 Pope Benedict XVI praised Cardinal Stepinac as a courageous defender of those oppressed by the Ustashe, including Serbs, Jews and gypsies.

He said the cardinal stood against “the dictatorship of communism, where he again fought for the faith, for the presence of God in the world, the true humanity that is dependent on the presence of God.”

ADSS 3.1 & 3.2 and the Jews

One of the projects that I have wanted to get started for some time is a systematic reading through of Actes et Documents in order to trace the understanding of the persecution of the Jews, and others, from the beginning of the war until 1945.  To date, I have "dipped" in and out at different points and made reference to documents as I read them or used references to answer particular questions.  I have spent a lot of time on the Slovakian material because of the highly detailed information and its use in tracing the Slovakian government's treatment of the Jews of the Slovakia along with the protests from the Holy See.

I will not look at ADSS 1 (May 1939-August 1940) because it is readily available in English or ADSS 2 (Letters of Pius XII to the German bishops 1939-1945) because of the nature of the letters and the generally circumspect language used.  ADSS 1 also deals mostly with the last-ditched attempts to prevent the war breaking out and then the first twelve months where the focus was principally on Poland and non-Jewish Polish suffering.

Today I wish to begin with Volume 3 - Poland and the Baltic States.  

ADSS 3.1 & 3.2 and the Jews

In this two part volume there are several documents that mention Jews in the context of descriptions of life under both German and Soviet domination. 3.1 covers 1939-1941 and 3.2 1942-1945.  It is essential to keep in mind the vast difference in the application of Nazi policy "in the East" with that of Western Europe.  Not surprisingly, there are few documents that deal specifically with Jewish suffering.  Limited papal representation, poor communication, the threats of constant terror, indiscriminate torture and murder, the presence of the camps and privation of the non-Jewish population as well as the Jews, meant that the vast majority of the documents deal with issues relevant to Catholic survival.  

The documents also reveal the powerful undercurrent of anti-Jewish feeling in some quarters, the persistence of anti-Jewish myths and the pervasive acceptance of "Judeo-Bolshevism" and the myth of a Jewish proclivity to economic avarice and greed.  Reading these texts is sobering; they carry an almost palpable sadness.  Descriptions of life under Soviet and German rule up until June 1941 are similar in many ways, not least of which was the concerted attempt by both sides to obliterate Polish national identity.  Soviet occupation in the Baltic States engaged in a similar policy of "Sovietisation" or what could also be called "Russification".  

Documents that contain direct references to Jews in ADSS 3.1 include: 50; 79; 85; 89; 131; 187; 191; 199.  It is not my intention to post translations of all these texts but to post a summary statement of some of them.  Those documents that are posted entire are done so because of what I believe is there value in contextualizing something of the realities confronting bishops and church leaders.

ADSS 3.1.50: 25 November 1939: Cesare Orsenigo, German Nuncio to Cardinal Luigi Maglione, Secretary of State.  Report on the situation of the Poles under Russian control.  Harassment and fines levied against the clergy.  The Jews are the best able to endure the situation because they have their own school, speak Hebrew and have their own military groups.  (Translation to follow in the next post).

ADSS 3.1.79: 26 December 1939: Andrej Szeptyckyj, Uniate bishop of Lwow, Ukraine to Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, Prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Catholic Churches.  Describes the terrible situation in the diocese under the communists.  Catholic institutions are under the total control of the State.  People are threatened with deportation and death.  Many Jews have arrived in the Ukraine escaping the Germans.  Local Jews are very active in the economic life of the country and are characterized by greed.  (Translation to follow)

ADSS 3.1.89: 7 January 1940: August Hlond, exiled archbishop of Gniezno (Poland) to Cardinal Maglione.  After reporting on the situations of several Polish bishops, Hlond makes the statement that on bishop, Charles Niemira is “generous to all and protective against the Jews who are powerful under the Soviet regime”. (Translation to follow)

ADSS 3.1.131: 5 April 1940: Stanislaw Janikowski, charge d’affaires in Poland to Cardinal Maglione: German propaganda in Poland is attempting to set Christians against Jews especially during Holy Week. (Translation to follow)

ADSS 3.1.187: 6 August 1940: Luigi Centoz, Lithuanian Nuncio to Cardinal Maglione.  Writes about the annexation of Lithuania by the USSR.  Centoz wrote that many Jews were celebrating the annexation.

 

ADSS 3.1.191: 14 August 1940: Centoz to Maglione:  Centoz’s report continued to report on the Soviet annexation.  He wrote of the takeover of the seminary by a communist delegation consisting of four Lithuanians and two Jews.

ADSS 3.1.199: 31 August 1940: Vincent Brizgys, auxiliary bishop of Kaunas to Luigi Centoz now in Rome.  The seminary has been returned to the church.  Brizgys wrote that he was relieved that the new commissar was not a Jew.

Reflections on ADSS Volume 11

I finished reading my way through the "conventional" war as recorded in the Actes et Documents.  Volumes 1, 4, 5, 7 and 11 cover the diplomatic activity of the Secretariat of State of Pope Pius XII throughout the 1939-1945 war.  What follows are a series of thoughts.  They are ruminations rather than any form of academic exercise.

As the editors attempted to find a way through the millions of documents they found that they it would be easier for the purposes of presenting a portrait of the activities of Pius, Cardinal Maglione, Monsignors Tardini and Montini, to name a few, if they divided the material into two distinct sections.  The volumes cited above describe the diplomatic activities of the Holy See, its engagements with governments and government agents: Allied, Axis and Neutral.  The remaining volumes deal with the letters of the pope to the German bishops (2) and Poland and the Baltic States (3 parts 1 and 2).  In order to deal with the Vatican's relief attempts and the growing awareness of the murder of European Jewry, the editors collated their selection of documents in volumes 6, 8, 9 and 10.

What did I learn through a close reading of the "diplomatic war" in Volume 11?

The volume opens in January 1944 and the focus remains firmly centred on Rome until several weeks after liberation in June.  Preoccupation with having the city declared "open" takes up many documents as does the energy spent on enlisting support throughout the Catholic world in the media.  There are some references to the Via Rasella partisan action in March 1944 and hints that point to knowledge of the vicious German reprisals carried out in the Ardeatine Caves.  As the days of German occupation drew to their close, the Vatican was keen to ensure that the departure of the Germans and the arrival of the Allies was orderly.  Apart from the quite reasonable and pastoral concern to preserve the city and its people, there was the fear that communist partisans would take advantage of the confusion and chaos and attempt to seize power.  Pius did not want that to happen.

Once Rome was liberated stories of the French colonial Moroccan troops, the Goumiers, began to circulate.  The Goumiers had a reputation for hard fighting and, more darkly, for taking seriously their belief in their right to rape, loot and pillage.  Thousands of Italian women and girls were savagely raped in the months up to June 1944.  Pius's plea to General Mark Clarke to keep "coloured" troops out of Rome only makes sense if it is a reference to the Goumiers.

Volume 11 also refers to the exit of the Allied diplomats immured in the Vatican and their replacement by the Axis ministers.  Some members of the German embassy were not quick enough leaving their residences in Rome and were arrested by the Allies and interned in Taormina, much to the impotent fury of Berlin.

In August, Cardinal Luigi Maglione, the pope's secretary of state died of heart disease.  Pius took over Maglione's role personally for the rest of his pontificate.

There is mention of the Warsaw uprising in August 1944, always coloured by the growing fear of the Red Army's march westward.  The fear of communism is never far away and it grows in intensity as the war neared its end.  News from Poland, the Baltic States, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia and the eastern provinces of Germany is nearly always "bad".

As France is liberated the nuncio in Vichy, Valerio Valeri returns to Paris to find General de Gaulle is determined to cut all ties with bishops who, in his opinion, collaborated with the Vichy regime of, the now German held, Marshal Petain, including Valeri himself.  Rome attempts to calm de Gaulle to no avail.  When the nuncio in Argentina, Giuseppe Fietta, declined the move to Paris, the role fell to the Apostolic Delegate to Greece and Turkey, Monsignor Angelo Roncalli who sped to France towards the end of 1944.

Gustavo Testa, the representative of the Holy See in Athens, sent several reports describing the descent into civil war once the Germans had left Greece.  It makes for incredibly sad reading.

The last months of the war are described through documents that show the Vatican sensitive to the peace-feelers put out by some Germans and Mussolini's rump-fascist Salo Republic.  There is the positive response to FDR's call for an international body that would work for peace in the world, the genesis of the United Nations.  Pius expressed his happiness to cooperate in such a venture.

Finally, as communication with much of central and eastern Europe ends because of the collapse of nearly all social order, Pius expresses his deep personal sorrow to Eleanor Roosevelt on the death of FDR in mid-April 1945.  The last documents are the pope's telegrams expressing his joy at the liberation and return of peace to Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg - echoing his telegrams to the heads of state of each country in May 1940 when Germany invaded them.

What do these documents show?  On their own, they demonstrate the high volume of accurate information arriving in Rome and being responded to by the Vatican.  They were very well informed.  The texts also show that Rome seized every opportunity to save Rome from the fate that had befallen other European capitals and cities while also demonstrating that no talk of peace from either side would be dismissed.

There are levels of unreality throughout.  The phobia about communism in the west and particularly in Italy was without foundation.  The fear of communism in the east had an historical basis but ignored what was happening in reality.  The Polish bishops quite often found that the Soviet-backed Lublin government needed the help of the Church to rebuild the country for the simple reason that it was the only social institution that had survived five and half years of German occupation.  What the long-term aim of the Lublin politicians was going to be cannot be surmised from these texts and we must be wary of hindsight.  I am not saying the communists were well-intentioned towards Catholicism (or Orthodoxy for that matter) but Stalin did see a difference between the system in Russia and the need for some adaptation outside Russian borders.

There are also developments in understanding as well.  At the beginning of the war, Rome was still suspicious of liberal, popular democracy.  By war's end, democracy was seen as a force for good in the world.  This was no doubt helped through the positive relations Pius enjoyed with FDR and the lived experience of liberation by the United States Fifth Army.  Pius' embrace of the idea of the United Nations was also a major step forward in the Vatican's understanding of its place in the world and its relations with "the world".

All this must now be placed alongside the next phase of my study of ADSS - the victims.  My generally positive assessment of the Vatican's position in liberated Europe in the early summer of 1945 needs to be weighed against its role in working to help and save the millions of people displaced by the war.  This next part of the story will be far more complex and shaded in more hues of grey than the diplomatic war.

Jerusalem Post 27 March: "Why was Pope Pius XII Silent on the Holocaust?"

The main point in this article that I think bears some serious consideration is the emphasis on context. I don't necessarily endorse of all of what Ambassador Lewy argues, but his references to Pacelli's views as a "product of his times" is valuable.

By LISA PALMIERI-BILLIG, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
27/03/2010
Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See regards Pius’s views toward newly established state of Israel as a product of his times.

ROME – The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was viewed by the Vatican “with mixed feelings,” and Pope Pius XII greeted the news by calling for a “crusade of prayer” for “the sacred land” (“terra sacra”), says Mordechay Lewy, Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See.

Lewy made the remarks in a speech in Munich, a transcript of which was published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Friday.

Lewy presents Pius XII (recently moved one step closer toward sainthood by Benedict XVI) as a self-doubting Hamlet, working behind the scenes, who is insecure in his choice of public silence over Nazi persecutions. Lewy recalls several incidents where Pius failed to act against anti-Semitism.

In private conversations, Pope Pius XII/Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli expressed a fear of worsening the situation by speaking out. However, it’s not clear whether this was a realistic or morally justifiable assessment, Lewy says.

Then-cardinal Pacelli’s only objection to Italy’s anti-Semitic laws in 1938 was regarding mixed marriage provisions. He became pope on March 2, 1939, and continued to remain silent after the war in 1946, when approached by Jacques Maritain (at the time France’s ambassador to the Holy See) to publicly condemn anti-Semitism.

While the controversy over Pius’s diplomacy, and the question of whether the Church institutions that opened their doors to thousands of Jewish refugees acted on official orders from the pope remains shrouded in secrecy, Lewy shifts his focus to “no less important issues”– namely, the mentality of Pacelli, seen as a product of his times.

Pius’s attitude reflected the Vatican’s stolid opposition to the founding of a Jewish state, Lewy concludes. According to Lewy the motivations were political, mixed with anti-Judaic theological prejudices common among Catholic society in the pre-war and pre-Vatican Council II era.

“On the day of Israel’s foundation,” says Lewy, “the Osservatore Romano [the official Vatican daily] described the situation as ‘another milestone on the Palestinian Via Cruxis.’ The reference to Christ’s passion was not accidental.”

“The founding of the State of Israel was seen in the Vatican as a Communist-Atheist threat,” says Lewy. “On June 12, 1948, an editorial in the Osservatore Romano stated, ‘The birth of Israel gives Moscow a base in the Near East from which the microbes can multiply and spread.’

“However, opposing demonizing comparisons were also used. The bulletin of the [Catholic] Congregation de Propaganda Fide, at that time, even went so far as to defame Zionism as ‘the new Nazism,’” Lewy said.

Aversion to the Israeli state lasted for decades. As late as 1957, recalls Lewy, Pius’s foreign minister, Domenico Tardini, wrote to the French ambassador, “I always felt that there was no overriding reason to found this state. It was a mistake of the Western countries. Its existence is an immanent factor for the danger of war in the Near East. Since Israel exists, of course there is no possibility for destroying it, but we are paying the price for this mistake day by day.”

This negative attitude, says Lewy, was rooted in a prevailing theology that considered Jews “a deicide people who lost God’s grace and with it their right to the Holy Land. The goal of the Zionist movement was in open contrast to traditional Catholic doctrine.”

A taboo on calling Israel by name lasted for decades, and had some humorous aspects. In 1955, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra performed at the Vatican and L’Osservatore Romano reported a performance “by Jewish musicians from 14 countries.”

Pope Paul VI’s 1964 visit to Israel was a visit to “the Holy Land,” and he did not meet with Israeli leaders.

The current era of bilateral relations with Israel was ushered in during the 1980s by Pope John Paul II, the first pope to speak openly of “the right of the people of the State of Israel to live in peace and security,” initiating the process that led to diplomatic recognition of Israel in 1994.

Regarding the controversy over Pius XII’s “silence” during the Shoah, which was accompanied, however, by the opening of church institutions to Jewish and political refugees, Lewy echoes the repeated calls by Jewish leaders to suspend historical evaluation until scholars have access to the secret archives of the wartime years of Pius’s papacy.

While Vatican officials foresee the opening of these archives within five years, they note that all the pre-1939 documents referring to Pacelli’s nunciate in Germany and his years as Pius XI’s secretary of state are already available.

Lewy confirms the documents’ historical importance, recalling, for example, Pacelli’s research in Munich on “the relationship between Communists and Jews in the 1919-21 Revolution. The stereotype of a fusion between Bolsheviks and Jews could be particularly devastating,” intimating a possible influence on Pacelli’s attitudes.

To optimize historical research on the vast amount of material already available, Lewy suggests a work strategy involving cross-consultations between Vatican and European archives.