Search
Close this search box.

Hikind Launches Petition Opposing Sainthood for Pope Pius XII


hikind21.jpg“In 1933, the future Pope Pius XII, then-Eugenio Pacelli was negotiating the Reich Concordat between the Vatican and Hitler. As Cardinal Secretary of State, Pacelli, formulated a treaty with Hitler, which left German Catholics without a democratic party. German’s Catholic populace, the largest in Europe, saw the concordat engineered by Pacelli as the Vatican’s endorsement of the Nazi Party. It is a moral outrage to consider this man for sainthood,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn). Pope Benedict XVI has recently created a committee in the Secretariat of State to investigate Pope Pius’ actions during the Holocaust. “Until Pius’ role during the Holocaust is fully revealed, there should be no further consideration of sainthood.”

Hikind has launched a petition drive to collect thousands of signatures of Holocaust survivors opposing the beatification of Pius, to be presented to Pope Benedict XVI on his historic visit to New York in April 2008. The petition states: “We, the undersigned, survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, call upon you, Pope Benedict XVI to indefinitely suspend the beatification process for Pope Pius XII until secret World War II Vatican archives are declassified and fully examined. We assert that if Pius XII is truly saint-worthy, the full record of his actions during the Holocaust should finally be made known. The Vatican should have nothing to hide regarding the inaction of Pius XII.”

Hikind is reaching out to communities throughout the U.S. to collect the signatures. Hikind urges, “If you would like to join this historic project please contact my office at 718-853-9616.”

“The historical consensus is that Pius XII abided by and enabled the murder of millions of Jews at the hands of the Nazi machine. After the concordat was signed with Hitler on July 14, 1933, the Nazi Cabinet minutes of the meeting verify that Hitler said the agreement advanced an atmosphere of confidence which would be ‘especially significant in the struggle against international Jewry.’ Hitler could not have hoped for a more unequivocal endorsement and blessing for the Final Solution,” Hikind asserts.
 
When Pacelli was made Pope in 1939, the Vatican protocol ignoring the Nazi policy against Jews throughout Europe continued. In June 1941, when the French Vichy government enacted laws modeled after the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws, the Pope ignored appeals by French bishops to denounce the laws, stating that they were not in contravention of Catholic dogma. Pacelli knew about death camps from the outset of their creation in 1941 and yet refused to condemn the mass killings of Jews. If Pius had denounced the Nazis, that could have emboldened Europe’s Catholics to resist and rise against Hitler’s tide. ln December 1942, Pius XII refused to sign on the Allied declaration condemning the Final Solution.

“The Jewish community has resisted inserting themselves in Vatican affairs, however this is a matter of historical significance. My parents survived the Holocaust. My mother survived Auschwitz, while her mother and sister perished in the gas chambers. Survivors know firsthand the perfidious reality of what the Vatican did not do during the Holocaust. How different history could have been if Pope Pius had risen to the moral imperative. The Pope could have stopped Hitler in his tracks at one of a dozen junctures. He chose not to.”



27 Responses

  1. Why dosn’t Hikind mind his own business. He is baiting the gentiles and creating deep resentments for involving himself in internal Catholic Church affairs, which are none of his business. We will all suffer from this!

    Edited By Site Moderation Panel.

  2. Who cares if the goyim make one more antisemite in to an idol for themselves to worship? Nothing new there! Look at their list of “saints”, most of them were considered saintly because they persecuted Jews.

  3. I have a great amount of respect for Dov Hikind (he was there for my family when we needed him),but on this issue I think he should back away! As #1 says it is an internal Catholic Church issue and although his heart is in the right place… his actions here are out of line. Mr. Hikind…save your energy for other issues, we do need you!!

  4. Does this petition, signed by Jews, amount to a validation by Jews of Catholicism and their traditions? May it not be better to ignore it? Should the Poskei Hador be consulted before creating such a document?
    Just a thought.

  5. Hikind is right, of course, but he is absolutely 100% wrong. We are in golus still and should not be doing anything to make the aino yehudim hate and resent us more that they do already. What do the headlines in Rome look like? Jew dictates to Church….

  6. DM – I started writing repsonses to this story several times and deleted each before hitting the submit key.

    I did not think that my words adequately expressed what I wanted to say. you captured it perfectly!

  7. Do the Xtians now get to vote on who the next Gadol Hador is? Maybe they can help us resolve some of the Rebbeshe yerusha issues.

    C’mon, Dov, leave it alone!

  8. It really makes no sense to care about who they make into saints. For example, there about a hundred saints who became canonized because they were murdered by Jews. There are between three and ten thousand saints, who cares if they add a former Pope.

    On October 16, 1943, the Nazis rounded up many Jews in Rome, the city of the Vatican. The Pope’s Secretary of State claimed to have met with the German ambassador and asked nicely that they not take the Jews. By the end of the meeting, von Weizsacker wrote back to Berlin, “The Pope ‘has not allowed himself to be carried away making any demonstrative statements against deportation of the Jews, he has done all he could, not to prejudice relationships with the German government.”

  9. By protesting the “sainthood” of Pope Pius XII, we are attaching importance to the “sainthood” of all the other “saints”.

  10. Thank you, mdlevine,

    I would hate to create a document signed by thousands of Jews that show how important the Catholic Saints are to us. They were almost all, strong antisemiten anyway.

  11. Hikind better watch himself. He is touching dangerous territory and some serious consequences might follow his dumb initiative. Why in heavens name does it bother him or anyone if they name that pope a saint? I mean, if you are a practicing catholic and this bothers you , you have a right to protest. But as a jew it is meaningless to you who is considered a saint and who is not. Look, they consider yoshke to be a saint and more than that and he was responsible for all the pogroms and anti semitism ever since so Dov dear, are you going to protest that too?
    Give me a break and get a life.

  12. Rav Mechel..
    He is vying for some publicity and it is a ‘brocho lvahtolo’ trying to knock some sense into him.
    let’s just hope that we don’t end up suffering from his narishkeiten.

  13. The church is built on Jewish blood. Pograms, Crusades, Holocaust, etc. Xmas is a bloody day in Jewish history. There entire religion is built on violence against Jews.

  14. Dov Hikind has been , and continues to be a fighter for causes important to us. He knows what he’s doing and is very well connected. if he feels this is important, we should back him.
    In a way, he is Da’as Torah. b/c the gedolim didn’t say not to vote for him.

  15. Gishmak in Lakewood-I agree. Dov Hikind is Daas Torah.In fact I one time had him over for shabbos and he said such beautiful vertlach that blew my mind! We should thank him for the wonderful work he does for Klal Yisrael.

  16. Yeshivish Hocker:
    Thank you! Honestly I had thought you were a narrow minded yeshiva guy who couldn’t understand the good work of askanim such as reb Dov.
    Although i never had reb Dov to a Shabbos seudah, i once saw him at a pro israel rally in New York. I was proud of him then, and continue to support him.

Leave a Reply


Popular Posts