Posted on 11/08/2005 5:40:59 AM PST by NYer
A MANCHESTER historian has claimed that Pope John Paul II was Jewish.
Yaakov Wise says his study into the the maternal ancestry of Karol Josez Wojtyla (John Paul II's real name) has revealed startling conclusions.
Mr Wise, a researcher in orthodox Jewish history and philosophy, said the late Pope's mother, grandmother and great-grandmother were all probably Jewish and came from a small town not far from Krakow.
The Pope was a priest and cardinal archbishop in the Polish city before his election to the papacy.
Mr Wise said: "According to orthodox Judaism, a person's Jewish identity is passed down through the maternal line. I saw a photograph of the Pope's mother and I showed it to people who didn't know who she was.
"They all said she looked Jewish. So I started doing more investigations about her background."
Although he believes the Pope's father was an ethnic Pole, he thinks that John Paul's mother Emilia Kaczorowski - Emily Katz in English - was Jewish and that she was the daughter of Feliks Kaczowski, a businessman from Biala-Bielsko in Poland. Katz is a common surname amongst East European Jewish families.
Emilia's mother, the Pope's grandmother, was Maria Anna Scholz. Scholz, or Schulze, is also a common surname among Jews, as is Rybicka, or Ryback, which is the surname of the Pope's great-grandmother Zuzanna.
All the names or their variations appear on gravestones in the old Biala Jewish cemetery, as does the surname of Felik's mother Urszula Maklinowska. Mr Wise said: "The Pope's ancestry has been researched by an American historian.
"But nobody has traced the family name through the Jewish community and, as Jewish historian, I have access to information that a non-Jewish historian wouldn't know about.
"I'm not making any firm conclusions, but what I'm saying is that there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to say that he was Jewish.
"The Pope's mother married out of the Jewish community to wed a Catholic. Her children were born and raised as Catholics and the Pope was baptised. It would shed light on why the Pope had to go into hiding from the Nazis in November 1940.
"If he had been a pure ethnic Pole this would not have been necessary.
"It would also explain why this Pope in particular felt a strong desire to improve relations between the Church of Rome and the Jewish people."
Works for me... even better.
Not in front of the goyim!!!!!
This should give the conspiracy nuts some good fodder.
Wish we would have known sooner so then we'd all have a good reponse to "Is the Pope Catholic?"
Ein schande for de goyim!
Interesting, but flawed theory. My mother has a Jewish maiden name. They came from Czechoslovakia, but several generations earlier, her great-great-great (whatever) grandfather worked - and lived - on a farm owned by a Jewish family. He took their name because he had a permanent home on their land. So, although he was ethnically Czech, and religiously Byzantine Catholic, my mother's family had a Jewish surname.
This could be the case with the pope's mother's family.
That said, it would only increase the stature of John Paul to find out he had Jewish blood.
;-)
ROFL!
<< Works for me... even better. >>
Amen - Me too!
Blessings - Brian
BUMPping
He was probably a winemaker too, Zeller Schulze Katz.
Now, is it possible that some of Wojtyla's ancesters were Jewish? Of course and who cares? But that his mother was actually a practicing Jew who "married out" to a Catholic is so preposterous as to fail the stuck-on-stupid test. There'd be nothing bad about his having had a Jewish mother--as a Catholic I'd be pleased as punch if it were true. But what makes it preposterous is that he certainly would have known it and his father certainly would have known it and people around him certainly would have known it and we wouldn't be waiting for this dipstick sensationalist "researcher" to try to make a buck off of it. The "researcher" unspoken calumny is that Wojtyla hid his mother's identity, was ashamed of it, was, like all Catholics, dontcha know, a self-loathing anti-semite etc. This is a poison piece.
Could there be Jewish "blood" several generations back? Of course, but this guy has made no case for it. And he's using "Jewish" in a purely racial (racist?) way. Wherever in Wojtyla's family tree Jewish members might be found, at some point several generations before he was born, it's clear that they became practicing Catholics. The breathlessness with with media gloms on to something like this when having "Jewish" blood several generations back is no big deal in areas like Poland is silly. If it could be shown that his grandmother or great uncle or grandfather or mother were observant Jews, that would be significant but this guy has made nothing even close to an argument for that.
When I referred to covering up a putative Jewish background, I didn't have in mind hiding from the Nazis, though that of course could have been significant had he been of relatively direct Jewish background. I was thinking more of the common accusation that Catholics hate Jews and won't admit to having "Jewish blood" and certainly would never have elected a pope who was part Jewish, so, of course the sinister Catholics covered it up and John Paul the Great was really a hypocrite and closet Jew-hater etc. who on the surface spouted all this lovely Jewish-Catholic touchy-feely stuff but underneath was seething at the stigma he carried. That's where I see this "discovery" leading and that's why I argued that whatever else this guy was, a self-loathing secret Jew he was not, that if his mother or close ancestors were practicing Jews, it would have been known and if non-practicing ethnic Jewish blood several generations back is all we are talking about, who cares, which means the author is a self-promoting sensationalist.
I'm kind of with you on this one. It's great if it's true but I think it's a big stretch.
This comment sticks out too:
..."It would shed light on why the Pope had to go into hiding from the Nazis in November 1940.
"If he had been a pure ethnic Pole this would not have been necessary."...
The church was heavily persecuted by the Nazis in Poland. More than 1,000 priests were murdered at Dachau alone. He had to hide because he was a seminarian.
Thank God for Karol though, whatever his ethnic origin.
Yup, thank you very much.
This is the key sentence and it should have been placed at the beginning of the article and not at the end.
In summary, this geezer isn't sure, but thinks he might have been Jewish.
Whatever.
BS. He was black.
Seriously this article is not even funny.
photo of Emilia Wojtyla as a young woman
decide for yourself, if you like. JPII looked like her, and he looked very Polish, but she does look a little different somehow. Not that it really matters. Bless her for being the mother of such a son.
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