Last year I wrote about Pope Pius XII and the atrocious smear campaign that has been at work against the great man’s reputation since the early 1960s. I wrote then what I had written in books and columns over the years that the man who was pontiff during the Second World War was a saintly and heroic opponent of Nazism who hid and saved Jewish people, did all that he could to resist the Holocaust and was thanked by the Jewish community and revered by its leader in Israel and the Diaspora. Then came the scurrilous and seldom seen play The Deputy and allegations by enemies of the papacy — inside and outside of the Church — that Pius was a collaborator and an enemy of tolerance and decency.

Mine is a relatively unimportant voice compared to the roars of Jewish historians such as Sir Martin Gilbert and Rabbi David Dalin, who for years have been trying to explain to the Jewish, Catholic and greater world that we’ve got it horribly wrong about Pope Pius and — important this — that it’s all part of a wider attempt to discredit Catholicism. Bad Pope, bad Church, bad Catholics. Now it seems that the message may, just may, have got through.

German historian Dr. Michael Hesemann has been carrying out research in the Vatican archives for the Pave the Way Foundation, a U.S.-based inter-faith group. Many people thought, or perhaps hoped, that he would prove the Pope’s indifference to Jewish suffering. In early July, however, newspapers throughout the world, and even some in Canada, were obliged to report his conclusions that Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) arranged the flight of 200,000 Jews from Germany as early as 1938. This was before the Holocaust as we know it had been initiated and while most governments were still denying that German persecution of the Jews was anything more than a nasty but passing phase.

Hesemann states that Pacelli wrote to Roman Catholic archbishops around the world and urged them to apply for visas for “non-Aryan Catholics” and Jewish converts to Christianity who wanted to leave Germany. “We believe that many Jews who were successful in leaving Europe may not have had any idea that their visas and travel documents were obtained through these Vatican efforts,” said Elliot Hershberg, chairman of the Pave the Way Foundation.

And then comes the punchline. “Everything we have found thus far seems to indicate the known negative perception of Pope Pius XII is wrong.” Sorry Mr. Hershberg but who exactly had this negative perception and why hadn’t they paid attention to the volumes of material produced for a decade now by Catholic and Jewish historians alike proving the Pope’s nobility and the work of so many Catholics to help the Jewish people? Of course there were collaborators who considered themselves Catholic and Catholics who failed to live up to their faith, but as a whole the Church and its adherents did far more than any other group to save the victims of the pagan madness of Hitler and his atheist gang.

But this prejudging of Catholicism is not confined to the history of the 20th century. The assumed position today appears to be that the Church is guilty unless it can prove otherwise, and this includes everything from abuse scandals to silly movies about secret codes. I suppose it’s a sign of perverse and paradoxical respect. Those who hate the Church so much do so not because the Church doesn’t matter but because it matters more than anything else on Earth. We’re not vanilla, not bland, not to everybody’s liking. Not, as some would like us to be, the theological version of the Rotary Club — no offence to Rotarians intended. The Catholic who utters the “We better not, it might offend someone” line might have an easier time of it but those who prefer the real thing, the Catholic thing, are facing a great deal of persecution these days.

The world admits it got it wrong about Pope Pius XII. Now for it to understand that it may have got it wrong about the Roman Catholic Church in general. Miracles do happen. Hey, it’s what the Church has been telling us for 2,000 years.

Michael Coren Michael Coren is a well-known columnist, author and T.V. broadcaster. Coren’s web site is www.michaelcoren.com .

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