From ............. Daily New Miner, Fairbanks, AK

Associated Press

[ DNM's headline]

CATHOLIC CHURCH SUPPORTED NAZIS IN WW II, REPORT SAYS

February 5, 1992

PARIS (AP) - A Jesuit theologian's report, discovered after 48 years in a private archive, accuses the hierarchy of France's Roman Catholic Church of fully supporting the pro-Nazi government of Vichy France.

The report, written in 1944 by respected theologian Henri du Lubac, condemns the behavior of many Roman Catholic bishops under the Nazis as "a scandal."

"The church in France appeared in the eyes of everyone to profit odiously from an odious situation," wrote Lubac in the report, published for the first time in this month's issue of Revue de Deux Monde, a religious journal.

Lubac said during the four years under German occupation "the [Roman Catholic] Church seemed satisfied, despite justice being violated everywhere, consciences tortured and Christian values swept away."

The theologian, who died in September, wrote the confidential report at the request of Jacques Maritain, France's ambassador to the Vatican under President Charles de Gaulle.

According to Lubac, the majority of French bishops

"were servile and adopted an attitude which condemned nearly all Christian resisters," maintaining "right to the end . . . their massive condemnation of the underground."

"Never, except in rare dioceses, did one hear protests . . . or warnings against excess, never an appeal to Christian dignity," Lubac wrote.

Nearly 50 years after the war, France is only beginning to deal with the behavior of the [Roman Catholic] Church during the German occupation. Historians are concluding that, despite individual acts of bravery and heroism, much of the church hierarchy collaborated wholeheartedly.

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