Backing Hitler

In 1933 a concordat between Germany and the Vatican was signed. Article 16 of the concordat stipulated that each bishop of the Catholic Church, before taking office, must take an “oath of loyalty” to the Nazi regime. And Article 30 required that a prayer be said “for the welfare of the German Reich and its people” after every High Mass.⁶⁶

On September 17, 1939, over two weeks after Germany invaded Poland, the German bishops issued a joint pastoral letter in which they said: “In this decisive hour we admonish our Catholic soldiers to do their duty in obedience to the Führer and be ready to sacrifice their whole individuality. We appeal to the faithful to join in ardent prayers that the Divine Providence of God Almighty may lead this war to blessed success and peace for our fatherland and nation.”⁶⁹

In the summer of 1940 Catholic bishop Franz Josef Rarkowski said: “The German Volk [People] . . . has an untroubled conscience . . . It knows that it is fighting a just war, one born of the necessity of a people’s self-preservation.”⁷⁰

In 1937 Spanish Catholics were urged by many of their clergy to support the movimiento of General Franco against the Second Spanish Republic. Now, however, bishops and priests, displeased with the Franco regime, recently asked “pardon” for the Church’s backing of his movimiento.⁷⁴

Roman Catholic bishops in Britain recently said: “It will not do merely to condemn the use of violence against authority since evidently those in authority may be guilty of worse violence.”⁷⁶