Church of Spies: The Pope’s Secret War Against Hitler by Mark Riebling Basic Books, New York, 2015 375 pages, $29.99. Ronald J. Rychlak Pope Pius XII and the Nazis: far too many writers have wandered into this fascinating subject without bringing anything new to the table. Many of the late pope’s critics have simply repeated information [...]
Sister Margherita Marchione November 2008 The career of Eugenio Pacelli ended when people were awakened in Rome soon after dawn, Thursday the 9th of October 1958. Pius XII died at 3:51 a.m., in a plain white iron bed, overhung with a white canopy, in his room on the second floor of the Papal villa in Castelgandolfo, [...]
Dr. Richard C. Lukas November 2008 Most people had never heard of the tiny, blue-eyed lady until she passed away at ninety-eight years of age in Warsaw on May 12, 2008. Those who were aware of her inspiring story knew that she was a moral giant. Irena Sendler had been raised a Roman Catholic by a [...]
ad published in the New York Times October 9, 2008 On page 11 of Catalyst, we reproduced the ad honoring the legacy of Pope Pius XII on the 50th anniversary of his death; this ad appeared in the October 9 edition of the New York Times.
Ronald J. Rychlak (Catalyst, 3/2007) Eugenio Pacelli became Pope Pius XII in 1939, after having spent nine years as Cardinal Secretary of State. Prior to that, he had been the Vatican's representative in Germany. During his lifetime, Pius XII's opposition to Hitler was well known. Nazis condemned him, Jews thanked him, and rescuers identified him as [...]
by Sister Margherita Marchione, Ph.D. (Catalyst 10/2006) Sister Margherita Marchione is the author of several books on Pope Pius XII, the latest being Crusade of Charity: Pius XII And POW's 1939-1945. Below the portrait of Pope Pius XII in the Israeli Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem, there is a statement which is contrary to the truth and is [...]
by Sister Margherita Marchione, Ph.D. (Catalyst, 6/2006) Recently, a Jewish group invited me to speak. When I mentioned that my topic would be Pope Pius XII, I was informed that it would not suit their needs: “My chairman thought it would open up the wounds of a few holocaust survivors in our group who lost mothers, fathers, [...]
by Eugene J. Fisher (Catalyst 4/2006) Patrick J. Gallo, editor, Pius XII, the Holocaust and the Revisionists: Essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, 2006. 218 pages. PB. NP. Sister Margherita Marchione, Crusade of Charity: Pius XII and POW's(1939-1945). New York: Paulist Press, 2006. 284 pages. Ronald J. Rychlak, Righteous Gentiles: How Pius XII and the Catholic Church saved Half [...]
by William Doino, Jr. (Catalyst 9/2005) Every day, the secular media bombards us with the idea that the Catholic Church is a backward, repressive institution, unfair to its own members and prejudiced against those outside its communion. Is it any wonder that so many Jews, and other non-Catholics—not to mention "anti-Catholic Catholics" ignorant of their own [...]
by William Doino, Jr. (Catalyst 4/2005) Eight years ago this month, the New Yorker magazine published a spectacularly long article entitled "The Silence." Written by the resigned priest James Carroll (now a columnist at the Boston Globe), it argued that the doctrine of papal infallibility and the Church's insistence "upon the primacy of Jesus as a means to salvation" [...]
