VATICAN CITY (CNS): Adolf Hitler personally ordered one of his senior Nazi officers to arrange the kidnapping of Pope Pius XII toward the end of World War II, according to new information cited by an Italian newspaper.
Instead of carrying out Hitler’s order, the officer met secretly with the pope in May 1944 to warn him of the plot.
A month later, the Nazis were fleeing Rome, and Hitler’s plan could not be carried out.
The reconstruction of the kidnapping scenario was published on January 15 by the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire, based on testimony taken by Church experts examining a possible declaration of sainthood for Pope Pius.
Purported plans by the Nazis to abduct or arrest Pope Pius and take him out of Italy first came to light in the Nuremberg trials after World War II, but details have been sketchy.
According to Avvenire, Church experts in Germany looking into the canonisation cause of the wartime pope received sworn testimony on March 24, 1972 from General Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff, head of the Waffen SS, or Nazi elite guard, in Italy.
“I received a personal order from Hitler to kidnap Pope Pius XII,” General Wolff told the Church investigators.
Upon returning to Rome, General Wolff arranged to meet with the pope. After entering the Vatican clandestinely in civilian clothes, General Wolff told the pontiff of Hitler’s order and said he would never carry it out, but he warned the pope to be on guard.
Jesuit Father Peter Gumpel, who is working on the sainthood cause of Pope Pius, told Catholic News Service that General Wolff’s account coincides with other evidence that has emerged about Hitler’s mistrust of the pope and his hatred of the Church.
