Much has been and continues to be made over the Vatican’s efforts to canonize Pope Pius XII who is accused of doing little or nothing to aid those that suffered at the hands of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. Why should they when he is essentially a coward and a scumbag?

Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958), better known as Pope Pius XII, was on the fast track to canonization but now may have been derailed, at least temporarily, by a new book. The book goes further than any before in accusing Pius XII of failing to condemn the Nazi annihilation of Jews or to take action that might have ameliorated the plight of European Jewry in World War II.

France’s main Jewish organization warned Friday that efforts to make wartime Pope Pius XII a saint would deal "a severe blow" to relations between Catholics and Jews.

"Pope Pius XII, worried about burning his bridges with Germany, never made a clear statement denouncing the `singular monstrosity of the extermination of millions of Jews.

The Jewish community and the Catholic Church have a longstanding dispute over the pope’s wartime record, which Jews hold was, at best, one of benign neglect and Catholics maintain was morally exemplary. Now author John Cornwell has exacerbated tensions by supporting the Jewish view of the pope’s failures and attributing them for the first time to anti-Semitism.

Had a Jewish scholar written this book, it probably would have garnered far less attention. Cornwell, however, is an award-winning journalist and author, and senior research fellow at Jesus College at Cambridge, who set out to write a book sympathetic to Pius XII but was shocked by what he discovered in secret Vatican archives.

`The most damning example is Pacelli’s role in negotiating a treaty with German dictator Adolf Hitler known as the Reich Concordat. The agreement essentially said Hitler would allow the Vatican to maintain a measure of religious control over the churches in Germany in exchange for German Catholics staying out of politics. The result was that German Catholics (and later Catholics in occupied countries) who might have protested Hitler’s policies remained silent at the Vatican’s instructions. Hitler saw the agreement as "particularly significant in the developing struggle against international Jewry."

The pope did act behind the scenes on occasion. In the later stages of the war, Pius XII also appealed to several Latin American governments to accept the "emergency passports" of several thousand Jews. The church also answered a request to save 6,000 Jewish children in Bulgaria by helping to transfer them to Palestine.

Defenders also point to his one public statement as evidence of his concern for the Jews however it conspicuously fails to mention the word "Nazi" or "Jew." WHAT A COWARD!

It is obvious that the Pope was attempting to do what all cowards do and that is he tried “to save his face and his ass at the same time” which never works.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Putting aside this particular effort to canonize this particular Pope, I need to make a statement on the idea of elevating any mortal man or woman to the status of “sainthood.” It is an absurdity to think that by following the “3 Stages of Canonization” that a once fallible human being is now entitled to public veneration and capable of interceding for people on earth. Hard to believe, especially when many of saints were once low-life scumbags!
*** The Lang Report will elaborate further on this subject in a subsequent article on the “absurdity of sainthood.”