Pius 'saved Jews from 1939' claims new book

From Bruce Johnston in Rome
FRESH AND little-known evidence that Pius XII acted without delay to rescue Jews from Nazi persecution, has been revealed in a new book defending the controversial wartime pope.
The volume, The Jews Saved by Pius XII (Gli ebrei saivati cla Pio XII), by Antonio Gaspari, was launched at the weekend amid optimism that new information in favour of Pius could soon be forthcoming.
At the presentation, Fr Peter Gumpel Si, who leads the cause for Pius XII's beatification, and Elio Toaff, Chief Rabbi of Rome, appeared for the first time together in public.
Fr Gumpel said he was hopeful that the case for Pius could be aided by new information which may soon be available.
This included documents from the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the CIA) which only become available this year. Other documents in Britain's Foreign Office archives were yet to be made public, he added.
Mr Gaspari's book was presented in an unlikely venue — Rome's Dermatological Institute.
This was because the book includes a story of how the brothers of the Sons of the Immaculate Conception working there saved 51 Jews during the Nazi occupation, by masquerading them as patients.
The book recalls how, in Rome alone, the Church saved 4,447 Jews from Nazi persecution, and sets out to disprove the accusations levelled against Pius XII in two books, espe
daily John Comwell's controversial Hitler's Pope.
A journalist and author of the best-seller, The Jews, Pius XII and the Black Legend, Mr Gaspari said: "Few know that as early as 1939, Pius XII had created a special department for the Jews in the Vatican information office. This work is referred to in Jewish publications like the Canadian Jewish Chronicle."
He also quoted Gideon Hausner, general prosecutor at Adolf Eichmann's trial in 1961, who said: "The Italian clergy helped numerous Jews and hid them in monasteries, and the Pope intervened personally in support of those arrested by the Nazis."
Among the new documents published is a letter of Pius XII to Sr Ferdinanda (Maria Corsetti) — awarded by the Israeli government with the title "righteous among the nations" — in which Jews are referred to as "beloved children".
Pius XII intervened on several occasions in a personal capacity, through the Vatican state secretariat and its intermediaries, to save the Jews.
The Pontiff personally paid the fares of 1,000 Jews who emigrated to Brazil.
At the presentation, Rabbi Toaff, a past critic of Pope Pius, avoided mentioning him. Instead he praised the wartime parish priests who risked their lives to save him and his family from the Nazis.