Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski: "The Pope is Mad!"

The American Jesuits by Raymond A. Schroth

Pp 129-130

In 1938, as La Farge concluded a fact finding tour of Western Europe, including Germany and Czechoslovakia, Pope Pius XI stunned him by calling him to a secret meeting at Castel Gandolfo. La Farge had sent him a copy of his new book, Interracial Justice; now the pope wanted him, “as if you yourself were the Pope” to write an encyclical on racism and fascism, including anti-Semitism. When LaFarge informed Ledochowski, the general exclaimed, “The Pope is Mad!” afraid that a condemnation of Germany would strengthen Stalin. For three months LaFarge assisted by a German priest-economist, settled in the Paris residence of the Jesuit magazine Etudes and, pushing himself to the point of collapse, wrote he encyclical.

Called Human Generis Unitas, the first 75 pages, written by his coauthor Father Gustav Gundlach, repeated ideas from previous encyclinals on the unity of the human race. La Farge’s 50 pages on totalitarianism, racism, and anti-Semitism were sharper. He condemned Nazism as contrary to natural law, and concerning the United States, condemning lynching and the public distinctions based upon race. Although he said racial segregation caused harm, he backed off from an absolute condemnation, allowing for “social separations” where “brotherly love and prudence” might require it. Anti-Semitism, he said, was “totally at variance with the true spirit of the Catholic Church.” But he worried about “misguided” Jews who were attracted to communism.

On September 20, for personal reasons that are not clear, LaFarge delivered the manuscript not to Pius XI but to Ledochowski, who sat on it for months, in effect suppressing it; and there is no evidence Pius XI even saw it before he died on February 10, 1939. When Pius XII issued Summi Pontificatus (the Unity of Human Society) in October, LaFarge looked in vain for his ideas on racism. The best he cold ger was the greeting to blacks in Sertium Lactitiac.

http://books.google.com/books?id=LOO_AtFbXbkC&pg=PA123&lpg=PA123&dq=Ledochowski+th+Pope+is+Mad&source=web&ots=s3xikTjGE4&sig=zqv4O8yEqG2bP5xjkt_mjrYCehA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA124,M1

Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski: Trust in him had turned out to be misplaced

From the Catholic Church and the Holocaust p4

The Pope was expecting the draft of an encyclical on racism which he had commissioned in August (Humani Generis Unitas - The Unity of Humankind). Unbeknownst to the pope, one of the draft's authors, American Jesuit John LaFarge, had already delivered it to the general of the Jesuit Society, Wladimir Ledochowski. When the co-author of the draft, German Jesuit Gustav Gundlach, attempted to find out why the draft had not been forwarded to the Pope, Ledochowski gave him no explanation and told him that he need not concern himself with the matter any further! Nonplussed and disillusioned, Gundlach wrote to LaFarge expressing his fear that the draft had fallen victim to Vatican intrigue occasioned by Pius XI's approaching death, adding that his deep trust in General Ledochowski had turned out to be misplaced.

LaFarge and Gundlach decided finally to bypass their superior, Ledochowski 12 This strategy worked but the manuscript eventually did not reach the pope's desk until weeks or days before his death in February 1939. With Pius too ill to make whatever changes he felt necessary before publishing the encyclical, it ended up as unfinished business. Immediately after the pope died, the manuscript disappeared.

Wlodimir Ledochowski's Job Opening Circumstances

Wlodimir Ledochowski's Death Timing

Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski- LaFarge Document 'Too Strong & Provoking'

From National Catholic Reporter, March 8, 1996

ENCYCLICAL MIGHT HAVE CHANGED THINGS
BOOK RECALLS ATTEMPT TO DECRY '30s RACISM

By MICHAEL J. FARRELL [NCR senior editor]

The allegation that the Catholic church stayed silent in the face of Hitler's World War II Holocaust refuses to go away. Its most lethal expression, Rolf Hochhuth's play, The Deputy, concentrated its accusations on Pope Pius XII.

Novelist Albert Camus also complained: "For a long time I waited for a voice to be raised in Rome. It appears that this voice was raised, but I swear to God that millions of men, myself included, did not hear it." The Vatican's many defenders respond that the church did all it could under the circumstances, and that what it did was considerable.

A new book published in France in 1993 recalls a tantalizing chapter of that murky history � the encyclical that never happened.

In June 1938, as Hitler tightened the screws on Europe, the old and ailing Pope Pius XI asked an American Jesuit, Fr. John LaFarge, to write an encyclical condemning racism and anti-Semitism.

LaFarge, an editor at America, had long been an outspoken opponent of racism in the United States. His several books included Interracial Justice and The Catholic Viewpoint on Race Relations. In a private audience in Rome, the pope encouraged LaFarge: "Say simply what you would say if you yourself were pope." The pope also bound LaFarge to secrecy.

LaFarge, 38 at the time, a direct descendant of Founding Father Ben Franklin on his mother's side, enrolled the help of two other Jesuits from Europe, Frs. Gustave Gundlach and Gustave Desbuquois. They produced an encyclical in two months in the summer of 1938. While the other two wrote the background material, LaFarge concentrated for the most part on the crucial areas of racism and anti-Semitism. The encyclical-to-be was titled Humani Generis Unitas ["The Unity of the Human Race"].

In late September 1938, LaFarge submitted the text to his Jesuit superior general, Fr. Wlodimir Ledochowski. The latter is reported to have said the document was "too strong and provoking." Ledochowski, a Polish count with, some said, anti-Semitic inclinations of his own, withheld the encyclical from the pope. Instead, he asked a Rome scholar, Fr. Eurico Rosa, to tone it down. Rosa, however, was ill, and was dead within three months.

Crucial time was passing. A turning point was Kristallnacht, Nov. 9-10, a night of pogroms when Jewish shops were widely and brutally vandalized and Jews were beaten and killed. Some Holocaust students claim that the silence � particularly on the part of the churches � that followed this outrage was all the hint Hitler needed that he could scapegoat the Jews with impunity.

LaFarge's papers indicate that Ledochowski held on to the encyclical draft for several months. Finally, LaFarge wrote directly to the pope, who then ordered Ledochowski to produce the document without delay.

The encyclical reached Pius XI Jan. 21, 1939. It remains unclear whether the pope read it before his death Feb. 10, 1939. Sources say his successor, Pius XII, did read the draft. It was never published, but it is said the pope borrowed from it for his own first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, although he steered clear of LaFarges's stronger sections on antiSemitism.

The central thrust of LaFarge's document was an attack on racism: "Not a few decisive documents of Catholic faith and morals are ignored by racists, such as the doctrine of the human person, of free will, of the union of man's body and soul and, finally, of divine grace not only as to its efficacy but also as to the mode of its operation."

While some commentators claim the encyclical, if published, might have slowed if not stopped Hitler's rampage, others say it would have set him on a collision course with the Vatican and endangered in particular the lives of Germany's Catholic bishops.

Meanwhile, as the war and its atrocities took their course, LaFarge kept his secret as did his collaborators. There were many references, for the most part oblique, to the project among LaFarge's papers. LaFarge died in 1963 at age 83. His papers were moved to Woodstock College in New York in 1970 and remained undisturbed until a Jesuit seminarian, Thomas Breslin, while researching LaFarge's life, found them.

In 1972, Breslin, who had resigned from the Jesuits, read that Rome's Cardinal Eugene Tisserant had charged that Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had arranged the assassination of Pius XI to prevent him from denouncing fascism. The Vatican denied not only that Pius XI had been murdered but that there had ever been a LaFarge encyclical.

This denial caused Breslin to contact the National Catholic Reporter and insist on the existence of the encyclical. In a recent telephone conversation, Breslin told how, during morning meditation, he first solved the mystery of the missing encyclical. References to Fisher Senior, he figured, applied to Pope Pius XI; references to Fisher Junior to Pius XII.

Supplied with LaFarge's documents, NCR ran the story, Unpublished encyclical attacked anti-Semitism, Dec. 15, 1972. Word of the encyclical was immediately picked up by other media worldwide.

Then, just as quickly the story died � until 1993, when France's Editions La D'ecouverte published L'Encyclique Cachee de Pie XI: Une Occasion Manquee de l'Eglise face a l'Antisemitisme [Pius XI's Hidden Encyclical. A Lost Opportunity for the Church Vis-a-vis Anti-Semitism]. Written by two Belgian scholars, Benedictine Fr. Georges Passelecq and Jewish historian Bernard Suchecky, with scholarly annotations by Breslin, it tells the history of the illfated encyclical.

An English translation by Harcourt Brace /Harvest Books is planned for publication in late 1997.

Pius XII, on becoming pope, moved quickly, by Rome standards, to promulgate an encyclical of his own to condemn fascism. Summi Pontificatus, described by The New York Times as "a powerful attack on totalitarianism and the evils [the pope] considers it has brought on the world'" was published Oct. 28, 1939.

The Times report continues: "It is Germany that stands condemned above any country or any movement in this encyclical � the Germany of Hitler and national socialism."

Breslin, a historian who now teaches at Florida International University, believes adamantly that the encyclical should have been published. It would especially "have braced the Italians," he told NCR. To the suggestion that publication would merely have provoked Hitler, he replied: "How much are you [the church] prepared to let other people pay so that your operation will continue to be OK? ...... I am more confident today that a strong stand by the church would have confused and confounded the Nazis rather than the opposite."

Instead, said Breslin, "the church came to the conflagration with a bucket of water."

Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski- Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies- Continued

Wlodimir Ledochowski S.J.

From Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies

In any event, after some fifteen years the two researchers finally did beat a path to Breslin's door, and obtained the original NCR material, some sixty two documents in all. While some pieces of the puzzle are still missing, probably still locked away in Vatican archives, Passelecq and Suchecky now felt they were in a position to complete their analysis and present the "hidden" encyclical. Its full text, or at least the French language version of the document, published as an appendix to their book, conveys a somewhat different message that may have expected.

To begin, the draft encyclical is long-- nearly a hundred pages, in the French text -- written in the highly opaque language and triumphlist tone that characterized such pronouncements, faithfully reproducing Pius XI's characteristically tedious, repetitive, and even clumsy written expression. 39

Plunging into highly obtrusive discussion of doctrine and religious authority, the draft encyclical came to the Jews only after devoting more than half of its text to other matters, most importantly, the impact of modernity of humanity in general and on the Catholic understanding of race in particular. Missing from the document -- as indeed from all encyclicals of the era -- was reference to anything concrete: states, movements, policies, or leaders.

Intended to speak to the ages, to be received by princes of the church and accepted by generations of the faifful, the document deliberately exchewed the specifics of the here and now.

The starting pont of the draft was a lamentation about the state of the modern world, an important theme of twentieth-century Catholic discourse, memorably articulated in Pius XI's encyclical Quadragesimo Anno if 1931. The contemporary world was in a state of confusion and disorder, and the Church had an obligation to try to set things right. Human society was atomized and divided. Spirituality was in decay. Secularism was on the advance.

Industrialization tore masses of people loose from traditional environments. Materialism, private property, and private ambition had created a modern Tower of Babel. People looked too much to the state and bureaucracies to solve their problems. The result was a drift to totalitarianism, whether revolutionary or reactionary. Over all hung the threat of a war that would bring new catastrophe. "Our modern society is ill," said the draft, and modern panaceas only made matters worse. 40

Against the upheavals of modernity, the draft encyclical asserted fundamental principles. At the bottom lay the notion of the unity of humanity, based upon a human nature common to everyone-- a truth proclaimed with the full religious authority of the Church. All men were brothers, joined together for the redemption of he world. Racism negated these truths and thus assailed the universal values of morality and religion. Claiming that humanity was divided into superior and inferior races, racism contradicted truths about the fundamental unity of the human personality and destroyed the basis for human society. To be sure, there were differences among races, but such differences arose from environmental conditions (conditions du milieu), and were not innate, as racists claimed. 41

Rather then setting race over another, as sometimes was the case in colonialism, nations had an obligation to work for racial harmony: "men of good will should make every effort to eliminate public distinctions which are dishonorable and exclusive, in order that relations among social groups be governed exclusively by interracial justice and charity." 42 To be sure, there were limitations on interracial contacts "defined be sentiments of fraternity and prudence," particularly having to do with marriage. But on one issues, a sore point in relations with Nazi Germany because of the Nuremberg Laws, and soon to be a battleground in Fascist Italy, there could be no compromise: unwritten marriage preferences were one thing, but marriage was a sacrament instituted by Christ and was solely in the care of the Church."

State-imposed limitations on marriage between members of difference races were unjust, were insulting to races that were so singled out, and were an affront to human dignity. 43

The draft encyclical then turned to the subject of the Jews, noting how those who put race on a pedestal sometimes looked to divisions within races, and sought to purify their own race. In doing so, they launched a cruel campaign against the Jews, reminiscent of historic persecutions which had been repeatedly denounced by the Holy See, especially when such outrages had been conducted under the mantle of Christianity. In a remarkable passage, the draft spoke of the impact of antisemitic campaigns. "Once this persecution is launched, millions of people in their own native lands are stripped of the most elementary rights and privileges of citizenship, are refused legal protection against violence and robbery, are subjected to insult and shame

...People who fought so valiantly for their countries are treated as traitors; children of those who fell on the field of battle become outlaws, by the sole fact of their parentage ... This flagrant denial of elementary justice to the Jews leads to the expulsion of thousands into the hazards of exile, without any resources. Wandering from country to country, they are a burden to themselves and to humanity." 44

To be sure, the draft insisted, there was a Jewish question, but this was a religious and not a racial, national, or territorial question. Explaining, the text then repeated the traditional Catholic view of the Jews: having been chosen by God to prepare the way for the coming of Christ, the Jews rejected Jesus, violently repudiated him, and in collusion with others, had him put to death. Even after, "this unfortunate people ... condemned, it seems, to wander the face of the earth forever, had nevertheless been preserved from total ruin by the mysterious hand of providence, and has maintained itself over the cebturies up to our own time." 45 Having obstinately rejected Christ, the Jews have shown a constant enmity toward Christianity and as a result there has been a continuing tension between Jews and Christians.

Ardently hoping for their conversion, the draft maintained, the Church had nonetheless been attentive to the dangers to which contact with the Jews could expose the souls of its followers -- a concern that was certainly as urgent now as in the past. "As long as the unbelief of the Jews and their hostility toward Christianity persist, the Church must guard against the dangers that this unbelief and hostility pose to the faithful. The dangers are especially acute when they involve the promotion of revolutionary movements that seek to overthrow the social order and undermine respect for and love of God. To protect the faithful, therefore, the Church has "warned against relations with the Jewish community that were overly casual and that could introduce into Christianity customs and ways of perception that were incompatible with its ideals." The Church supported "energetic measures to protect the faith and protect society itself against the pernicious influences of error." 46

Antisemitism, however, was not the right way to achieve this objective. Its methods of persecution were incompatible with he authentic spirit of the Catholic Church. Moreover, antsemitism did not work. While some effort "to eliminate or reduce [the Jews'] antisocial or injurious character" was indicated, persecution made matters worse. Rather than eliminating the characteristics of the oppressed group, such measures only accentuated them.

Those who were unjustly persecuted often became persecutors themselves and their hatred of Christianity intensified. The victims of persecution turned to those who sought to stir up political, social or economic hatreds. What could be done thereof? There as no single way to deal with the Jews, because their circumstances differed throughout the world. For practical reasons, action was best left to the "interested parties". Defensive moves, for that was what they were, should eschew solutions that had to do with violence, force, or brutal means of coercion, and prefer "measures dictated by a healthy spiritualism." There was one guideline, however: "no solution is a true solution if it contradicts the strict requirements of justice and charity." 47

Concluding, the draft underscored the role of the Church in pointing out the road for society to follow. There was no denunciation of Nazi policies, no condemnation of specific anti-Jewish programs, and no indication that Fascist Italy was poised to adopt racial laws of its own. After nearly a hundred pages, the draft ended not with a flourish, but rather with a reiteration of Catholic teachings on "unity and peace: fruits of redemption."

Antisemitic polices were indeed condemned, but to our ears at least there is a distressing willingness to grant a wide berth to secular authorities acting against Jews, and to contemplate "energetic measures to protect the faith and morals of the faithful - language that was sometimes used to justify anti-Jewish campaigns in prewar Poland and Hungary, for example. In 1941, faced with wartime persecutions such as mounted by the Vichy regime in France, the Vatican was willing to countenance an entire anti-Jewish program as more or less acceptable- providing, of course, as a Vatican source indicated to the French ambassador to the Holy See sing the familiar refrain, that such laws were enforced with due regard to "justice and charity." Apparently, the Vatican thought that they were. 48

Read in context, the draft encyclical seems much more like a repetition of conventional wisdom of the Church on antisemitism than a call to arms against antisemitic forces in Germany and Italy. Indeed, antisemitism seems to have had a much less prominent place in the encyclical than the subsequent interest in this theme- for obvious reasons -- might suggest. Race was of central importance to John LaFarge and it was clearly of vital interest to him to have the Vatican comment authoritatively on this question. The American priest seems to have had little or no interest in Jewish matters, however. So far as one can tell from his biography and his published writings, he wrote nothing of substance about them- neither before nor even during the Second World War. The passages on the Jews were probably drafted by Gundlach. In 1930, as Passelecq and Suchnecky note, the German Jesuit had contributed an article "Antisemitismus" to a basic reference work, the Lexicon fur Theologie und Kirche, that essentially reflected Catholic thinking of the day, and these are the themes, that there was nothing new in Humani Generis Unitas about the Jews.

Under these circumstances, it is hard to imagine that the issuing of the World War would have made a great deal of difference encyclical on the eve of the Second World War would have made a great deal of difference- let alone that it might have "averted the Holocaust." Both in its condemnation of antsemitism and in its recitation of the traditional anti-Judaism of the Catholic Church - to be reversed only by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s -- the draft articulated Catholic views that were well known. Using much more forthright language at times, and with words not heavily freighted by anti-Judaism, Pius XI repeatedly denounced the Italian Fascist government's embrace of racism and antisemitism in the weeks following the completion of the draft encyclical-- all to no effect, of course, just as Mit brennender Sorge, issued in 1937, had failed to arrest the Nazi tide. 50

The story of the draft encyclical "ends on a sour note" in the words of one reviewer, Frederick Brown. 51 Not only did the efforts of LaFarge and his colleagues miscarry, their challenge to fascist antisemitism also included Catholic teachings of contempt for Jews- the doctrine finally condemned by the Church only in 1965, with Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council's declaration on the Jews. The "lost encyclical" turns out not to have been a tragically spurned instrument that might have restrained Nazism, but part of a wider cultural distaste for Jews, despite its rejection of Fascist antisemitism. Our own quest for a "lost encyclical" thereby leaves us with an air of futility. This might have been turns out not to have been so different from what actually was. Psychologically, of course, the search for might have beens is understandable- and despite the lack of evidence that the Nazis could readily have been deflected from their murderous objectives towards the Jews. We will probably keep searching for other options considered and not taken, so long as we remain so unsettled by the catastrophe that really did happen, and not fully convinced by the explanation for it that we have.

Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski- Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies

Wlodimir Ledochowski S.J.

John LaFarge S.J.

Since John Hagee had reportedly blamed the Roman Catholic Church for the WW2 holocaust of the Jewish peoples, I went to his site for a search there upon John LaFarge, the Jesuit who was involved with encyclical opposing racially based persecution that was reportedly suppressed by Wlodimir Ledochowski, and found nothing.

For the benefit of Hagee and anyone else, I did an internet search upon this and came across the book "Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies", from which I quote below:

(excerpt)

The election of Pacelli made it all but certain that the draft encyclical prepared y LaFarge and his colleagues would never be issued by the Holy See. From the Vatican, Ledochowski's assistant wrote to LaFarge on March 16 saying that the draft had not yet had time to take the matter in hand. A few weeks later he advised LaFarge that the project was finished, and that the French and English versions would be returned. La Farge was to keep the whole process secret, Ledochowski insisted, although he could publish parts of the draft over his own signature-subject of course, to the regular censorship of the Jesuit Order. 29

Why did the encyclical fail to see the light of day as LaFarge and Gundlach so feverantly had hoped? As we have seen, the German Jesuit strongly suspected that the obstacle was Ledochowski, and that his motives were anti-communism. Of Polish aristocratic background, Ledochowski seemed to subsequent commentators a militant right-wing cleric who probably was disinclined to challenge the fascist dictators, particularly on questions of race and antisemetism. However, elements of his background and is reputation might suggest otherwise. 30 Known as a Polish patriot, Ledochowski was actually born in 1866 in the Lower Austrian village of Loosdorf, just west of Vienna, and his native language was German. Once a page at the court of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, he was the son of Count Anthony Ledochowski, an exiled Russian Pole and cavalry officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, and Josephine Salis-Zizers, who was of aristocratic Swiss background. His distinguished family included Cardinal Miecyslaw Ledochowski, prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, a sister [Julia Ursula] who was superior of the Polish Ursulines, and another sister [Maria Teresa] who directed missionary work in Africa. Educated in both German and Polish instructions, Ledochowski was elected Superior General of the Jesuit Order in 1915, and served in his post for twenty seven years until his death in 1942. He lived almost continuously in Rome for this entire period.

Appreciated as a strict disciplinarian and keen administrator, committed to the strengthening [of] the Jesuit Order and opposing the excesses of modernism, Ledochowski was a dynamic and determined leader, with greater seniority in the high office at the Vatican even than the Pope himself. He seems to have no particular interest in Jewish matters, but was understood to be rather liberal on matters of race and religious diversity. "A great believer in the cooperation of Catholics with non-Catholics" observed The New York Times in its 1942 obituary; he worked untiringly to promote understandings between religious groups." 31 As Superior General, Ledochowski sought the appointment of native clergymen in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East and, again according to The New York Times, was "keenly interested in the rights and progress of the Negro in the United States."

There is no indication that he might have been driven by anticommunism to spare criticism of Germany under Hitler. To be sure, as Passelecq and Suchecky point out, Ledochowski had believed like so many others that Nazism was a passing phenomenon, and in a sense the Soviets were seen to pose a far more fundamental threat than the Hitlerian regime to the interests of the Church. 32 But on the other hand as the Fuhrer hold on power solidified[,] the dangers of Nazism became more apparent- a viewpoint confirmed by Obborne's Italian counterpart in August 1939. Indeed, Ledochowski was said to fear the pope's peace initiative of 1939 precisely because it suggested the Holy See was coming too much under German and Italian pressure. 33

Another hypothesis has it that Pacelli himself might have blocked the encyclical- based on the latter's disinclination to confront the fascist dictators on matters of racism and antisemitism and his concern to maintain the neutrality of the Holy See. The French Cardinal Eugene Tisserant's words in 1940 are often quoted, saying that history might reproach the Vatican with having followed a policy of "Selfish convenience" under Pius XII, in marked contrast to the policies of his predecessor, Achille Ratti. 34 Whatever the general assessment of Pacelli, however, no evidence has come to light that he sought to subvert the objectives of his predecessor whom he had faithfully served as secretary of state, or that he disagreed with the content of the draft encyclical. What seems much more important is the shifting context of the spring of 1939. A few weeks after the death of Pius XI[,] the British government announced a military guarantee of Poland, sharply reversing their hands-off approach to eastern Europe. To an even greater degree than before, the European powers seemed about to go to war. At the Vatican, might the newly elected pope have been determined to make a fresh effort to preserve the peace, putting aside Ratti's confrontationist approach, which after all had borne little fruit? Pacelli seems to have been determined to assist the European powers "not to destroy each other," as Owne Chadwick observes. This was not a rejection of Pius XI's cause, but the adaptation of a new priority. In Chadwick's words, "Vatican policy changed overnight." 35

Much of factual evidence cited above has been known, at least among a small circle of interested readers, since the end of 1972, when a story on he "hidden encyclical" appeared in the Kansas City-based, lay-edited National Catholic Reporter (NCR) by Thomas Breslin, then a twenty-eight-year old academic and former Jesuit seminarian who had come across the material in LaFarge's private papers. Unfortunately, discussion at the time drew only selectively from the draft encyclical itself and made some very doubtful claims about its import. "Pope Pius XI commissioned ... an encyclical attacking racism and anti-Semitism in June of 1938," the NCR article began; had it been published, the encyclical "would have broken the much criticized Vatican silence on the persecution f the Jews before and during the Second World War." Had the encyclical appeared, the associate editor of NCR further claimed, hundreds of thousands, even millions of lives might have been saved. Commenting more soberly for the NCR, Gordon Zahn, historian and author of German Catholics and Hitler's Wars, noted that "the heart of [the draft] encyclical, its whole reason for being written in the first place, was the explicit condemnation of racism and anti-Semitism." While not so bold in his claims as Connor Cruise O'Brien fifteen years later, Zahn was nevertheless certain that publication would have made an important difference. "Nazi anti-Semitic practices would not have stopped, but they [might] not have escalated to the stage of planned extermination; more important, Catholics in countries soon to be occupied might have been less ready to cooperate when the time came." 37

At the time, the NCR story whetted the appetite of Georges Passelecq, who eventually joined with Bernard Suchecky to write a full-dress account of the affair. In a not entirely convincing first chapter, the authors suggest that their hunt for the missing encyclical- a most elusive document, "like the Loch Ness monster," as one source described it to them -- was constantly obstructed by Church authorities. 38 It is not clear why they did not immediately seek out Breslin, who was named in the 1972 NCR story. ....

Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski: a Polish count with, some said, anti-Semitic inclinations of his own

From National Catholic Reporter, March, 8, 1996

Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski
26th Superior General "Black Pope" of the Jesuit Order
February 11, 1915 - December 13, 1942

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-18129726.html

In late September 1938, LaFarge submitted the text to his Jesuit superior general, Fr. Wlodimir Ledochowski. The latter is reported to have said the document was "too strong and provoking." Ledochowski, a Polish count with, some said, anti-Semitic inclinations of his own, withheld the encyclical from the pope. Instead, he asked a Rome scholar, Fr. Eurico Rosa, to tone it down. Rosa, however, was ill, and was dead within three months.

Crucial time was passing. A turning point was Kristallnact, Nov. 9-10, a night of pogroms when Jewish shops were widely and brutally vandalized and Jews were beaten and killed. Some Holocaust students claim that the silence--particularly on the part of the churches--that followed this outrage was all the hint Hitler needed that he could scapegoat the Jews with impunity.

LaFarge's papers indicate that Ledochowski held on to the encyclical draft for several months. Finally, LaFarge wrote directly to the pope, who then ordered Ledochowski to produce the document without delay.

Here, the term "anti-Semitic" means anti-Jewish, rather then its literal meaning which would additionally be anti-Arabic.

John LaFarge S.J.

Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski


Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski: 1940

Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski: 1942

Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski Apparantly Favored Racial Persecution of Jewish Peoples

Maximillian Kolbe: God is Cleansing Poland

Wlodimir (Vladimir) Ledochowski Apparantly Favored Racial Persecution of Jewish Peoples

Wlodimir Ledochowski: the 26th Superior General of the Jesuit OrderJohn LaFarge S.J.

From Religious People of Interest in the Shoah:

Pius XI in the late 30s made a monumental move: the first writing of an Encyclical which at least in part denounced racial anti-Semitism.

It is referred to as "the hidden Encyclical".

Pius XI requested American Jesuit Msgr LaFarge to draft the statement which upheld traditional Catholic doctrine against Jewish doctrine but decried racism against the Jews, and countered at least part of the intent of the 1933 Vatican Concordat with Nazi Germany. Ledochowski was the austere politician and Jesuit General at the time, and he was not in favor of the new document. It mysteriously disappeared and Pius died before the signing, although it was one of the last documents on his desk.

The document: Humani Generis Unitas, or "The Unity of the Human Race" might have made a difference in the Vatican's allowance of the Third Reich's policies. Pius died, Pius XII, more a politician and diplomat than theologian and with ties to Germany and von Papen took office rapidly.

Ledochowski is credited with being instrumental in the suppression of the document.