Source: The Catholic News Archive
NCR Reports: Researchers Discover Unpublished Encyclical On Racism By Pius XI
By ROBERT HOLTON
Home (KNS) An American Jesuit confirmed here that Pope Pius XI, at the time of his death in 1939, had in his possession a draft encyclical that contained a “scorching indictment of antiSemitism” and a "blistering attack” on Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Father Walter Abbott, S.J., also confirmed that key elements of the draft, especially those on racism, had been drawn up at the specific request of the Pontiff by the late Father John LaFarge, S.J., associate editor of America, the Jesuit weekly in New York, and a specialist in interracial justice. The existence of the unpublished 1938 encyclical condemning anti-Semitism and recism in general was disclosed by The National Catholic Reporter. It was commissioned by Pope Pius XI and called ‘‘Humani Generis Unitas” (The Unity of the Human Race.) Father Abbott, who heads the Vatican’s Office for the Common Bible, said he came across the document in 1963 while researching Father LaFarge’s papers for a biography he was asked to do on the noted American Jesuit, who died in 1963. Pius XII He also confirmed that the unpublished encyclical also found its way into the hands of Pope Pius XII, who “quoted from it a bit in his first encyclical in October 1939 and during and after the war (World War II) in his nowfamous Christmas messages which were like little encyclicals.” However, the biblical scholar noted, the hard-hitting document was never published
in its entirety and the strongest of its passages against discrimination and injustice were not quoted by Pius XII. Father Abbott said that although Father LaFarge completed the original document with the aid of a French Jesuit and a German Jesuit in September of 1938, the document was not given to Pius XI until the following January. Observing that by the time Pope Pius XI received the draft, he was “gravely ill,” he died in February, 1939 Father Abbott confirmed the NCR disclosure that it was not known whether the Pope actually read the 100-page draft before his death. Father Abbott said the Jesuit General at that time. Father Vladimir Ledochowski, “had taken it upon himself to have the original LaFarge version toned down by a Jesuit scholar stationed in Rome. The scholar died shortly after receiving the document with orders to make certain changes. Father Ledochowski since has died too.” Father LaFarge, explained Father Abbott, wrote to Pius
XI in January 1939, askingihim what had become, of the draft and informing him that he had turned it over to the Jesuit General some time earlier. “The Pope asked Father Ledochowski for the document and was given it in its original form with a letter attached,” said Father Abbott, “. . . and there is a letter in the files from a very high official at the Secretariat of State confirming that the text was given to the Pope.” Father Abbott said the Jesuit General in 1939 "obviously felt that if the document had been issued in the form Father LaFarge had submitted it, there would soon no longer have been a Catholic Church in Germany.” This was a reference to the belief that Hitler could have used such a document as an acid test for the Catholic bishops of Germany calling on them to renounce the document or die backing it. While Father Abbott would pot comment about what, if any, effect such a document might have made on Hitler’s dealings with the Jews of Europe during World War 11, he did agree that its publication would have averted much of the criticism that the Vatican and Pius XII remained silent about the Nazi persecution and slaughter of Jews before and during the war. “Father LaFarge said when he was asked by the Pope to write the encyclical, ‘it was like the whole rock of Peter was falling on top of me,’ ” Father Abbott recalled from the LaFarge papers. Father Abbott added, however, that the Pope agreed Father LaFarge could inform the Jesuit General and seek the aid of the two Jesuit scholar friends. “But the Pope told him, ‘Remember, you are writing this encyclical for me, not for Father Ledochowski.’ " Father Abbott said there is
ample evidence in the LaFarge papers to show that Pius XI had a very good idea of what he wanted to say in the encyclical. In fact, he noted, shortly after the meeting with Father LaFarge, Pius XI, in a general audience, referred to his planned encyclical in speaking of a “not-yet-published document of ours.” Father Abbott said the LaFarge document contained 178 numbered sections and “in it the racism of the Nazi Government was totally condemned in no uncertain terms and the whole middle of the document was an attack on the National Socialist (Nazi) system of Germany with a great deal of mention of antiSemitism.” Too Strong Declaring that Father Ledochowski felt the LaFarge attack on the Nazi Government was “too strong and provoking,’* Father Abbott said the Jesuit leader believed “it would be unwise to invite a head-on confrontation with the Hitler Government and that it was better to work out some ‘modus operandi.’ ”
FATHER LAFARGE
FATHER ABBOTT