The Centre Party(Catholic) supported the dictatorship of Hitler!
Vatican helped many nazis and ustashi after the war .; Ratlines and ODESSA....
bishop Hudal, Draganovic etc.
The very old RED tune. Boring. Facts please, not factoids. I found a novel from the Stalin times - very long (1000 pages or so) and the language that defends this 'piece of art' from being read. However there were some illustrations: guys in Nazi caps with hakenkreuz shaking hands with ugly mugs in cardinal's hat and patting big fat cigar smoking capitalist, and another with bishop having blood on his hands. Wow, thriller.
Pope never supported Hitler. If you found some facts denying it, please be specific and share with us and don't disseminate memes. If he was very cautious in open attacking Nazis it was to protect laymen from regressive measures. However:
- in 1934 in the Christmas Eve sermon Pope condemned Nazi,
- in 1935 after Nuremberg statutes were imposed Vatican Radio broadcast a plea to pray for persecuted Jews.
- the Pope's encyclical "Mit brennender sorge" read in 11500 parishes in Germany - Goebbels in response noted in his diary "Now priest must learn our order and tenacity".
- 1938 during meeting with pilgrims from Belgium Pope said: "Antisemitism is unacceptable, we are all Semites spiritually".
- in 1938 cardinal Initzer of Vienna said something positive about Nazis and he was immediately forced to correct it publicly.
- in January 1940 Pope made an instruction for Vatican Radio to show
horrible excesses of uncivilized tyranny against Jews and Poles . "Jewish Advocate" - newspaper of Boston wrote about this broadcast as
an open condemnation of German crimes made by Nazis in Poland stating
that they were insulting moral conscience of the mankind.
The fact is that Catholic clergymen and Catholic laymen saved more Jews than any other institution, organization or state. And the clergyman paid the price. Thousands were imprisoned even archbishops and bishops, many died - 20% of Polish clergymen were executed or killed in Konzentrationlagers (in some Western Polish bishoprics more than 50%) and Polish bishops Kozal & Goral died in KZ.