If sunlight is the best cleaning agent, shade and time are good foggers. News recently appeared that Pope Pius received a letter from a German Jesuit in December 1942 in which he denounced the killing of Jews and the Auschwitz extermination camp.
After 81 years it seemed new. Before December 1942, the Holocaust passed through the Vatican at least ten times and the Pope remained silent.
In October 1941, Pius 12 received a report from the Apostolic Nuncio of Bratislava about the massacre of Jews. The Pope met the nuncio in Turkey and asked him if his silence was a mistake. The prelate was Angelo Roncalli, who was to be his successor as John 23.
In February 1942, 20 days after the Nazi meeting that ushered in the “Final Solution,” Hitler announced that “the Jews will be liquidated for at least a thousand years.”
In September 1942, the Brazilian ambassador to the Vatican, Hildebrando Pinto Accioly, joined with colleagues from the USA, England, France and Poland and called on Pius 12 to protest. Did nothing.
Pius 12 died in October 1958 at the age of 82. Heavily embalmed, he suffered a rare decomposition process, exploded, was reassembled and put back on.
Pope Pacelli’s doctor, who presided over the embalming, was a charlatan who shortly afterwards was selling photographs of the patient’s agony.