Boston, Mass., Apr 16, 2012 / 19:04 pm
A Harvard professor's claim that Vatican leadership intentionally helped Nazi war criminals escape to South America after World War II relies on erroneous sources and misinterprets events, argues Catholic author Ronald J. Rychlak.
“The combination of sloppy work and over-the-top charges provides a textbook example of how a verifiably false account can be reported as fact in the mainstream media,” Rychlak said in the April 2012 issue of the Catholic League’s newsletter The Catalyst.
Rychlak, the associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Mississippi, has authored two books on Pope Pius XII’s actions during World War II. He critiqued Harvard Divinity School professor Kevin Madigan’s essay “How the Catholic Church Sheltered War Criminals,” published in the December 2011 issue of the neoconservative magazine Commentary.
Madigan contended that the Pontifical Aid Commission supplied “crucial aid in sheltering Nazi war criminals.” The commission, he claimed, viewed itself as “a sort of papal mercy program for National Socialists and Fascists.”