Vatican refuses to open war-time files for Nazi hunters

by Viviane Hewitt in Rome ROME, has refused to bow to growing pressure from Jewish Nazi hunters to open up its secret World War II archives, despite renewed allegations over Vatican involvement in the post-war flight of war criminals from justice. Vatican insiders said this week that, though the Pope's patience was being sorely tried by the swelling voices calling from Israel for the files to be opened, there was no way that Rome would change its practice of keeping documents under wraps for many decades. Fr Robert Graham, a Jesuit scholar based in Rome who has researched Vatican history for many years, said he believed the growing allegations suggesting the involvement of leading Catholic figures in helping Nazi criminals escape war trials was "obscene".
"A lot of Jews were helped to get to safe places by the arranging of exit visas, but the Jewish organisations which are alleging 'these things now choose to forget about that," he said.
"It is an insult to the Pope to claim that he would help people who were themselves persecutors of the church. And why should the Vatican change its policy just because of these propogandists?" Fr Graham said he believed the Vatican files would not be opened until well into the next century.
Many observers in Rome believe the allegations are being put about in an attempt to blackmail John Paul into recognising the state of Israel. The Jerusalem Post this week implied that, rather than the Vatican having reservations over whether to recognise the state of Israel, the Israeli government should think again about whether to recognise the Vatican. Israel should not establish formal diplomatic relations with the Holy Sec until it acknowledged the "enormity" of its crimes in regard to the Jewish people and admitted its guilt, the newspaper said. Meanwhile from Barcelona Jewish activists launched further allegations, producing an American intelligence report which they claimed backed up their position. The report described the "escape route" via Rome as the "rat line" and claimed it had helped such Nazis as Joseph Mengele, the so-called "Angel of Death", to flee with an Italian passport. Other leading Nazis not only used Italian passports but were also dressed as priests, the Jewish activists claim.
According to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, three prelates a Croatian, a Hungarian and an Austrian were particularly active in assisting Nazis, The unusually bitter attack against Rome provoked church spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls into making an official statement on the matter.
Pope Pius XII had saved the lives of many Jews during the Second World War, he said, and it was "historically false" to claim that Rome, in collaboration with the Red Cross, helped Nazi criminals to escape Europe to Latin America by the provision of false passports. He said the Vatican had assisted a long list of Jewish organisations during and immediately after the war, and that the Pontifical Commission of Assistance had been set up in order to help refugees.
It was a "falsehood" to claim that the commission had been set up to assist war criminals, said Mr Navarro Valls.
The latest accusations to come from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre are not new in the past, the organisation has claimed many high-ranking Catholics informed the Nazis about convents which hid Italian Jews.
But the number of accusations being made has increased considerably of late. A fortnight ago a book called The Unholy Trinity, which alleges that a network of right-wing Catholic priests set up a network of Nazi escape routes to South America, was published in the US.