NEW EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR OF POPE PIUS

By a Special Correspondent
EVIDENCE has come to light this week that Pope Pius XII, as Cardinal Paeelli and Vatican Secretary of State. wrote the text of Pope Pius XI's encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, which denounced Nazism.
Together with this comes confirmation that his decision to refrain from a specific condemnation of the persecution of the Jews was influenced by a plea from a Polish bishop. suffering under the Nazis. who begged him to avoid making things worse for the Nazi victims by public pronouncements.
In an article in the Rome review Vila, Mgr. Paganuzzi. Secretary or the Vatican Chamberlain's office, reveals that he was present when, on the eve of the publication of Mit Brennender Sorge, Pius XI showed it to the late Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich and another German Cardinal.
When they praised it, Pius XI pointed to Cardinal Pacelli and said: "Thank him; it is all his work."
Mgr. Paganuzzi also recounts the story of his journey to Cracow during the Nazi occupation of Poland. He had brought despatches from Rome for the then Archbishop Sapieha, who read them and at once burnt them in the stove. The Archbishop then said this: "Thank the Holy Father, Monsignor. No one is more grateful
than we are for the Pope's interest in us. But there is no need for any exterior manifestation of his love and interest in our trouble, for this would only increase them.
"Don't you realise that if these (documents) were found in my house not all the heads of all the Poles would suffice for the reprisals which the Nazi Ciauleiter Frank would order . .
"It is natural that the Pope should think of us, but what is the use of saying the Pope is grieved. that the Pope condemns, if that is merely going to make things much worse."
BISHOP WIENKEN
At Limburg last week, Dr. Hans Hefelmann, on trial for 73.000 -mercy killings" under the Hitler regime. alleged that the late Bishop Wienken of Meissen offered -toleration" of the mercy killing programme if it were modified, hut did so without the authority of the rest of the hierarchy.
He also said. however, that the protests of the Catholic and Protestant leaders. especially Cardinal Von Galen. eventually bore fruit. The "T 4" project, the mercy killing of the mentally and physically disabled. was stopped, though killings of feeble-minded and deformed children went on.
Vatican spokesmen have made it clear this week that the Church could not tolerate so-called mercy killing under any circumstances. Cardinal Frings at' Cologne has told newsmen: "I myself knew Bishop Wienken from 1905 when we studied together at Innsbruck and I know he was a thoroughly religious man. I hold it impossible that he could ever have made such an offer. which would not be compatible with the Church's teaching."
PROSECUTOR
Meanwhile in Limburg, a representative of the prosecuting attorney also said that Hefeimann's accusations against the late prelate were false. He said evidence to this effect would be introduced later at the trial.
This week, Auxiliary Bishop Johannes Neuhaeusler of Munich and Friesing and a former prisoner of the nazi concentration camp at Dachau, showed newsmen documents proving that in 1934 the German Bishops, in a letter to the German Ministry of
Justice, had pointed out "the incompatibility of euthanasia with Christian moral law". Bishop Neithaeusler also noted that the late Adolf Cardinal Bertram of Breslau protested to the Nazi authorities in 1940 in the name of the German Hierarchy against their euthanasia proposals.