Posted on 03/03/2015 8:41:16 AM PST by Alex Murphy
VATICAN CITY, March 3 (Reuters) - A new Italian film that attempts to defend wartime Pope Pius XII against accusations he turned a blind eye to the Holocaust has been panned by the Vatican as well as Catholic and Jewish media.
"Shades of Truth" is the account of a fictional present-day American journalist who starts off as a critic of Pius and changes his mind after research in Israel, Rome and elsewhere in Europe.
[SNIP]
After a screening on Monday near the Vatican, the film, which calls Pius "the most misunderstood person of the 20th century", was universally panned.
The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said the film, which its director Liana Marabini wants to show at the Cannes festival this year, was "naive", "lacking credibility" and a "frankly clumsy attempt" at defending the wartime pontiff.
The Italian Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana said the film would hurt Pius's already fragile reputation because it was overly apologetic and not sufficiently based on historical documents that defend him.
Pagine Ebraiche, the online paper of Rome's Jewish community, called it "a blundering soap opera of dubious quality, filled with stereotypes".
It also faulted the film for a scene in which the journalist dreams he sees Pius wearing a yellow Star of David on his white cassock, like the patch the Nazis forced Jews to wear.
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Jewish groups have asked the Vatican to freeze the process that could lead to sainthood for Pius until all wartime archives are fully opened to historians, saying Catholic-Jewish relations could be harmed if the process moved ahead.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
....The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said the film, which its director Liana Marabini wants to show at the Cannes festival this year, was "naive", "lacking credibility" and a "frankly clumsy attempt" at defending the wartime pontiff....Pagine Ebraiche, the online paper of Rome's Jewish community, called it "a blundering soap opera of dubious quality, filled with stereotypes". It also faulted the film for a scene in which the journalist dreams he sees Pius wearing a yellow Star of David on his white cassock, like the patch the Nazis forced Jews to wear.
Jewish interest ping!
Pope Pius XII was actually a good friend of the Jews, and he helped save many of them from the Nazis.
Perhaps this film is, as the article suggests, naïve and badly made, and doesn’t make a proper case of defending him against the leftist, anti-Catholic slimes who lied about him. Or perhaps it’s just one more lie.
Or a bit of both.
Don’t know about the film, but it is true that Pius XII gets a bad rap. His reputation suffers mostly because of retaliation for traditional RC Jew-hate, not because Pius XII’s conduct was reprehensible.
Many leaders, including Jewish ones, faced similar dilemmas when their public words could be used to justify the murder of thousands held hostage by Nazi occupation.
Many Nazis were helped by the catholic church to escape to Argentina. Google Vatican rat lines.
Exactly. Pope Pius XII gets a bum rap in history. He did in fact help save hundreds of thousands of Jews during WWII. The best book on this topic that I have read:
The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis. By Rabbi David G. Dalin.
Highly recommend it!
Don’t get me wrong. I’m well aware of RC’s institutional Jew-hate, including hiding Nazis. It’s just that the treatment of Pius XII is unfair. It’s much, much harder to defend FDR’s actions than it is to defend the Pope’s.
Actually, I always think it’s “traditional” dislike of homosexual behavior. All of this Pius nonsense came to a head in the 1960s with the play The Deputy. This play is catnip to crazy Catholic-hating gay men.
Interesting.
Thanks to Pius XII order to try to help the Jews, more than 800,00 were saved by the Catholic Church. A fact recognized by all the founders of Israel.
Jewish historian Richard Breitman has written five books, one on the Holocaust and another on Nazism. He is, up to this day, the only person authorized to study the OSS secret documents of U.S. espionage during WWII. The Italian newspaper “Corriere della Sera.” interviewed him on June 29, 2000. In the article, Breitman not only confirms the role played by Pius XII in defending and safeguarding the persecuted during the Nazi regime but he also found “the Allied silence on the Holocaust surprising. Their first testimonies are from the end of 1942…” He also remarked that the documents denoted how the Nazis considered that the Vatican was in the side of the Allies. (10)
The reaction of the US, French and British governments at that time, and even later, when knowledge of the concentration camps existed, were certainly not in solidarity for the persecuted Jews. In the middle of the genocide, Britain closed the doors of Palestine to the Jews. The U.S. government accepted a total of 10,000-15,000 Jewish refugees throughout the war – a truly scandalous statistic.
During and immediately after the war, Pius was well regarded by the Jews, and hated by Hitler. Only after his death did the Soviets make a great effort to discredit and edit revise the history of this pope.
This effort was galavanized by The Deputy a 1963 play by Rolf Hochhuth. However, Rolf was a communist and much of the play was likely written by the Soviets.
Read Disinformation by Pacepa if you want the real story.
If you go into gay enclaves like Chelsea or even a certain town at the Jersey Shore, the bookstores and homes are full of copies of The Deputy. That’s when I learned of the seething hatred of gay men for The Catholic Church.
Meaning you went into these "gay enclaves" yourself, shopped at their bookstores and visited with them in their homes?
Documents recovered more recently from Nazi Germany and the Russian KGB files have put the lie to the The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: (An Interview with Rabbi David G. Dalin).
Madame Marmelstein ... I award you the post of the day!
You wouldn’t be speaking of Cape Gay would you?...oops,I mean Cape May
Ocean Grove - another enclave. The days of Ocean “Grave” are over!
The bad rap has nothing to do with whether or not he helped the Jews escape from Hitler. He gets a bad rap because he was a Conservative who did all he could to put down the “progressives” in the Catholic Church.
His body was not yet in the ground before Roncali called a Council to “open the doors”, letting in the heresies that followed. Bugnini, Kung, Greeley, liberation theology, etc. all had their part in the new church. Montini continued the assault on orthodox Catholism; his elevation to sainthood a mockery. Wojtyla did little to stem the tide.
One can see what the progressives in the Catholic Church and what it has become and see parallels to today’s political Acimera.
The Vatican has long defended the great Pius XII. One day he’ll be a canonized Saint.
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