I've been pointing this out for years -- Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church saved hundreds of thousands of Jews during WWII. That is more than any other group or organization, prior to the much delayed liberation of the concentration camps at the end of the war. What records were available indicated that Hitler viewed Pius as an enemy -- and that Pius spoke out about and acted on behalf of the Jews more loudly than any other world leader.

Now there is more evidence to confirm that.

Pius XII, the wartime pontiff often condemned as "Hitler's Pope", was actually considered an enemy by the Third Reich, according to newly discovered documents.

Several letters and memos unearthed at a depot used by the Stasi, the East-German secret police, show that Nazi spies within the Vatican were concerned at Pius's efforts to help displaced Poles and Jews.

In one, the head of Berlin's police force tells Joachim von Ribbentropp, the Third Reich's foreign minister, that the Catholic Church was providing assistance to Jews "both in terms of people and financially".

A report from a spy at work in the Vatican states: "Our source was told to his face by Father Robert Leibner [one of Pius's secretaries] that the greatest hope of the Church is that the Nazi system would be obliterated by the war."

La Repubblica, the newspaper that discovered the papers, said they were sent to the heads of the Stasi, after the Second World War.

The revelations they contain will help to clear the name of Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, who has long been criticised for turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. During the war, the British Foreign Office even described him as the "greatest moral coward of our age".

Those who have promoted the blood libel against the Pope are those who hate the Catholic Church, and wish to present it as always on the wrong side of history. They are not even above lying to do it. Will the documentary evidence that contradicts their claims stop the slander of a great and saintly pontiff?

H/T Captain's Quarters

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