Letter from St. Edith Stein asked pope to condemn Nazism
By CINDY WOODEN, Catholic News Service From THE RECORD, Louisville, KY 2/27/03
Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, St. Edith Stein - a Catholic convert from Judaism who was soon to enter a Carmelite convent - wrote to Pope Pius XI asking him to condemn the Nazi ideology.
The saint, who died at the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz in 1942 and was canonized in 1998, wrote to the pope April 12, 1933, saying the whole world was 'waiting and hoping that the church of Christ would make its voice heard.'The letter, which St. Edith Stein referred to in other writings, was published for the first time in German and Italian newspapers Feb. 19 after scholars were given copies of the original from the Vatican Secret Archives.
An official of the archives confirmed that the letter was one of the hundreds of documents involving Vatican-German relations before World War II opened to scholars Feb. 15.
The idea of writing an encyclical against Nazi ideas contrary to the faith had been discussed at the Vatican and at least one draft was written, but Pope Pius died in 1939 without completing and publishing it.
Jesuit Father Pierre Blet, the Vatican's leading expert on World War II, said in 1999 it would have been a mistake to publish the draft because while it condemned anti-Semitism it also recognized the rights of a state to take certain measures against Jews.
St. Edith Stein wrote to the pope, "As a daughter of the Jewish people, who through the grace of God has been a daughter of the Catholic Church for 11 years, I dare to express to the father of Christianity that which is worrying millions of Germans."
She said the behavior of Hitler and his supporters betrayed "total contempt for justice and for humanity, not to mention love of one's neighbor."
For years- the leaders of national socialism have preached hatred of the Jews. Now that they have come to power and armed their followers - among them known criminal elements - they are reaping the fruit of the hatred sown," she wrote.
Some Jews, she said, had committed suicide following a boycott of Jewish-run businesses.
St. Edith Stein told the pope while it was possible to say those who killed themselves were weak, part of the blame must go to those who pushed them to the breaking point as well as to those who remained silent.
"For weeks not only the Jews, but thousands of Catholic faithful in Germany - and, I believe, throughout the world - have been waiting and hoping that the church of Christ would make its voice heard against such an abuse of Christ's name," she wrote.
She called the Nazis' "idolatry of race" nothing other than "an open heresy."
And, she said, "this war of extermination of Jewish blood" should outrage Christians because Jesus, his mother and his disciples were Jews.