Hitler Sought Papal Kidnapping

"When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror,
the voice of the pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was
enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the
tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace."

Golda Meir
October 9, 1958


One of the great lies of the last half-century has been the accusation that Pope Pius XII stood by silently while Hitler murdered the Jews. While nothing could be further from the truth, that lie is repeated by Jews, anti-Catholic bigots, and secular Leftists in an attempt to defame the man's memory and delegitimize Catholicism. Yet even a cursory examination of the record shows that to be untrue.

Now we have one more piece of evidence to refute the charge.

Elements of alleged plots to abduct the Pope during Germany's occupation of Italy have already emerged in the past from some historians, but Avvenire's full-page report said its details were new.

Avvenire said Hitler feared the Pope would be an obstacle to his plans for global domination and because the dictator wanted to eventually abolish Christianity and impose National Socialism as a sort of new global religion.

The newspaper said a plot that was codenamed Operation Rabat had originally been planned for 1943 but was not carried out that year for unspecified reasons.

It said that in 1944, shortly before the Germans retreated from Rome, SS General Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff, a senior occupation officer in Italy, had been ordered by Hitler to kidnap the Pope.

According to the newspaper, Wolff returned to Rome from his meeting with Hitler in Germany and arranged for a secret meeting with the Pope. Wolff went to the Vatican in civilian clothes at night with the help of a priest.

The newspaper said Wolff told the Pope of Hitler's orders and assured him he had no intention of carrying them out himself, but warned the Pontiff to be careful "because the situation (in Rome) was confused and full of risks."

Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini had already fallen and set up a German-backed puppet regime in northern Italy. The German occupation of Rome was in its dying days. Allied forces were advancing on the capital, which they liberated on June 5, 1944.

As a test of Wolff's good faith, Pope Pius asked for him to free two Italian resistance leaders who had been condemned to death. Wolff arranged for them to be released, the paper said.

Now does that sound like Pius XII was "Hiler's Pope," or perceived as a supporter of National Socialismby that Satanic philospohys main proponent? Or does it sound more like he was, as the New York Times called him after his radio address on Christmas Day, 1942, "a lonely voice crying out in the silence of a continent" speaking out against "the exile and persecution of human beings for no reason other than race or political opinion"? Would Hitler have ordered such a kidnapping if Pius was a collaborator in the Final Solution? The answer should be obvious to those who are honest.