The Vatican sought to defend Pope Francis on Tuesday after he sparked fury in Ukraine by praising Russia’s imperial rulers — a history President Vladimir Putin has invoked to justify his ongoing war.

The Kremlin delighted in the controversy, which stemmed from comments the pontiff made to a group of young Russian Catholics urging them to see themselves as the heirs of a “great” empire.

“Don’t forget your heritage. You are the descendants of great Russia: the great Russia of saints, rulers, the great Russia of Peter I, Catherine II, that empire — educated, great culture and great humanity,” he told them in St. Petersburg by live video Friday.

  • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    To say the Catholic church and they pope supported Nazism is a bit of a stretch. The Nazi Party was anti religious in ideology. They were very brave protests from within the church and contrary to the current pope the did dismiss the regime and even the anti Jewish stance.

    Did Pius XII do enough, seen the circumstances of what he knew and his power? Not at all. Even the Catholic network get used for protecting nazi wat criminals. So there’s enough the church managed to screw up. And I don’t want to be an apologist, the institution stank back then, too.

    But there was at least some verbal resistance, which was braver back then, as the pope actually lived in occupied territory.

    • r_wraith@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      To say the Catholic church and they pope supported Nazism is a bit of a stretch.

      They may not have actively supported the Nazis the whole time, but all in all I would count them as supporting, rather than opposing or being neutral. The main goal they worked for in Germany during the Third Reich was to legally secure their special institutional rights.

      The Nazi Party was anti religious in ideology.

      As any totalitarian thought system must see other such systems as competitors, National Socialism too saw Religions as a competittion and began working to supplant it as soon as it was entrenched enough in Germany. Before that though, Hitler took care to be especially friendly with the Catholic Church, even praising them as “the most important factor in sustaining our nations identity” in his Declaration on Governmenance in March of 1933. Even late in the war, Hitler always declared himself sent and guided by Divine Providence, without going into detail about which god or gods he was refering to.

      Did Pius XII do enough, seen the circumstances of what he knew and his power? Not at all. Even the Catholic network get used for protecting nazi wat criminals.

      Agreed. And he and his Church never got punished for that.

      But there was at least some verbal resistance, …

      By the Catholic Church as a whole mainly from 1930 until the NSDAP was given power and Hitler showed himself to be friendly to the Catholic Church and again after the German Government failed to honor parts of the “Reichskonkordat” (a contract that assured the Church many of its institutional rights and which richly compensated it for anything it did loose and which is still in force today) but evern then only in the form of one Encyclica by the Pope mostly denouncing the loss of adherence to Catholic/Christian Dogma in Germany and only in one part denouncing the Nazi Race Theory. Aside from that, there was only resistance by singular priests.

      … which was braver back then, as the pope actually lived in occupied territory

      … from September 1943 until April 1945. At which time and with their already overstreched ressources no “sane” German commander would have dared attacking the Pope directly and risking public uprisings in most European (occupied and unoccupied) countries.

      • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        evern then only in the form of one Encyclica by the Pope mostly denouncing the loss of adherence to Catholic/Christian Dogma in Germany and only in one part denouncing the Nazi Race Theory.

        Which is more than the current pope has done regarding the Ukrainian invasion, which was my general point.

        Aside from that, there was only resistance by singular priests

        This is underselling it a bit, there was quite a lot resistance from priests to the episcopal level (The Netherlands, Vichy France)

        I don’t think our opinions differ too widely. My point is that the current pope could certainly do better, even compared to the low point set by Pius XII.

    • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      In some ways, researchers have found more contradictions than clear answers. At the same time Catholic rescuers were helping Jews, some of those same people were also helping Nazis. The Catholic Church worked to win clemency for convicted Nazi war criminals after the war. “The justification given for aid to Nazi war criminals was Christian love and mercy,” says Brown-Fleming, whose research focuses on this effort. “I’m finding that the Holy See wanted to show gratitude for the protection of the city of Rome during the occupation of Rome under the Nazis in 1943. Some German generals later convicted in the Nuremberg Trials had helped to defend property and valuable art and tried to avoid damaging Vatican property and cultural treasures in Rome.”

      https://time.com/6270677/catholic-church-holocaust-documents/

      Also, look into the vatileaks, they found that some in the vatican were funding the nazis.

      • SCB@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        So not the Church then, and then the Church did the most Christian thing possible and advocated forgiveness?

        Yeah, they’re just monsters.