THE HOLOCAUST

My dear people of God,

Our Holy Father made the headlines when he lifted the excommunication for four Bishops of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, which is not in union with the Holy Father. This lifting of the excommunication does not unite them with Rome, but is one step that could lead to that unity. The Holy Father is trying to reach out to this Society to bring them back into unity, and so he took a first step, but he was not aware that one of these Bishops minimized the full extent of the Holocaust.

The Holy Father a few days after learning of this Bishop minimizing the Holocaust recalled in his general audience on January 28 the suffering of Jews during World War II. He stated that the Holocaust should stand as a “warning to everyone against forgetting, denying or minimizing” evil. Benedict XVI also condemned the horror of the Holocaust especially for the Jewish people, both in his visit to a German synagogue in 2005 and in his visit to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in 2006.

This is a good occasion to remember that the evil of the Nazi Regime touched not only our Jewish brothers and sisters, but almost every ethnic group in Europe and every Religious group. Millions of Christians also died at the hands of the Nazi Regime. Many people are not aware of Hitler’s special hatred of the Catholic Church. Seven hundred Polish priests were shot and over 3,000 Polish priests were sent to camps where 2,600 of them died. By the day of liberation, 2,720 priests, brothers and seminarians had been incarcerated in Dachau alone, with over 1,000 of them dying there. In February of 1944, 162 French priests were arrested by the Gestapo and 123 of them were killed before they reached any camp. The International Tribunal at Nuremburg stated that 780 priests died of exhaustion in the quarries of Mauhausen alone. Countless other priests and Protestant ministers also suffered the same fate because of their “political’ views.

Let us never forget the horror of the holocaust. The Nazi Regime was a horror and travesty especially for the Jewish people, but also a horror and travesty for all of humanity. We must learn from the past. There is no place in our present day for racism, bigotry and hatred. There is one God and that God is Father of us all, regardless of race or religion or citizenship. We are all brothers and sisters to one another. Let us remember, and let us pray. May God bless you all very, very much.