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In 2013, Pope Francis publicly stated he'd get to the bottom of several scandals plaguing the Catholic Church.
Despite the pontiff's investigation, one scandal remains shrouded in mystery: that of the Vatican Bank and Nazi gold.
You see, some bits of evidence suggest the Vatican collaborated with Nazi party members responsible for plundering Jewish citizens' gold during World War II. But other evidence casts doubt on the extent of the Catholic Church's direct participation in Nazi activities. The Holy See has long denied any sort of affiliation between the Church and the Third Reich ever existed. Still, limited independent research into a possible connection has been conducted by several agencies, including the U.S. Treasury.
"During and after World War II, was the Vatican bank a witting or unwitting accomplice of Nazi collaborators known as Ustashi who made their way from a seminary in Rome to safe havens in South America?" The National Catholic Review asked July 15. "Did the Vatican bank profit as a result of payments received from these Nazi collaborators who were known as the Ustashi? If we were to follow the Ustashi money, where would the trail lead?"
There's limited evidence with which to answer these questions. We'll let you decide for yourself...
The Vatican and Nazi Gold: Evidence of Church Involved
The Ustasha, an organization also known as the "Nazi Puppet Regime," operated in Yugoslavia from 1929-1945. It functioned as a fascist terrorist movement that supported Nazi and Italian forces.
During World War II, Ustashi military members gathered an estimated 500,000 Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies and demanded 1,000 kilograms of gold from each, wrote ABC News on Feb. 15, 2013. They were told the money would prevent their murders. But once the funds were handed over, the groups were sent to concentration camps anyway, where most of them died.
While the Ustasha collaborated with German forces to fight in occupied Yugoslavia, the organization likewise operated closely with the Croatian Catholic Church, helping priests force Orthodox Serbs to convert. Members of the Franciscan sect also distributed anti-Jewish propaganda with the aid and protection of the "Nazi Puppet Regime."
The clergy's involvement was eventually exposed. A trial in 1946 resulted in the conviction of six Ustasha priests total, including former Franciscan Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic - the overseer of a concentration camp where the Ustashas killed hundreds of thousands of Jewish Serbs.
Though Fr. Filipovic-Majstorovic oversaw one of the death camps, it was Fr. Krunoslav Draganovic who had directed the entire murderous priesthood. The Franciscan was also a senior official of the Ustasha committee. Foreseeing defeat near the end of the war, in 1943, the Ustasha made arrangements with the Vatican for Draganovic to be sent to Rome. There he served at a clandestine Ustasha hub disguised as a seminary.
Draganovic and other collaborators helped procure the means and support for a number of fellow Ustasha war criminals attempting to escape persecution. They even managed to forge Red Cross passports. Eventually, through an underground railroad of sympathetic priests known as "the Ratline," several members of the Ustasha escaped to neutral countries (primarily Spain and Argentina).
Virtually the entire "puppet regime's" leadership went free - largely due to help from the Vatican.
The Vatican and Nazi Gold: A Mysterious Document Surfaces
When Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, 288 kilograms of gold were removed from the Croatian National Bank and state treasuries. Some of that landed in Draganovic's hands. Called the "Golden Priest," he continued to dole out funds to Croatian refugees from his new home in Rome. He was never officially charged for war crimes and returned to Yugoslavia after the war. He died in 1983 in Sarajevo.
Rumors swirled for years that the Vatican Bank harbored Croatian plunder. But it wasn't until new evidence surfaced in 1997 that the controversy picked up steam again...
On July 23, 1997, The L.A. Times revealed that documentarians from the television network A&E had discovered proof in the Vatican Bank's archives of a Nazi gold scandal. Specifically, they uncovered a memo amid a trove of already declassified material that totaled over a million pages. The documentarians were the first to thoroughly sift through the humongous cache of information.
The memo had been composed by former U.S. Treasury Department field investigator Emerson Bigelow. After the Second World War, Bigelow conducted several investigations throughout Europe. This is when he purportedly connected with a viable source that could link the Vatican Bank directly to Nazi gold. Bigelow outlined all of this information in his memo that, for an unknown reason, was never received.
The Vatican and Nazi Gold: The People vs. the Church
When survivors of the Ustasha regime learned of the documentarians' investigation, they formally requested Bigelow's report be released under the Freedom of Information Act in 1997. The survivors filed a lawsuit against the Vatican Bank based on Bigelow's memo in 1999.
According to Concordatwatch.com, the case was originally brought before a California court in November 1999. Four years later, Vatican lawyers successfully argued the case was outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. The previous ruling was overturned.
Then in 2005, an appeals court overturned that judgement and allowed some of the claims - primarily those for restitution - to proceed. However, on Dec. 30, 2009, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco re-upheld the original lower court ruling. The decision stated the Vatican Bank was immune from the lawsuit and further prosecution under the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
To this day, the Vatican's archives - likely the only source that could directly tie the Vatican Bank with Nazi gold - have remained sealed.
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The Ustasha Treasury is still alive and is one of the longest running World War 2 restitution cases. As attorney for plaintiffs in the original lawsuit, we did not give up after dismissal for lack of jurisdiction in the USA. Claims were filed with the European Union because the Vatican uses the Euro. Failing there, a canon law petition was filed earlier this year directly with Pope Francis. We will now see if the Pope really wants clean up the Vatican Bank and Ustasha Treasury case or not.
Thank you for this information!
Wildly irresponsible article. Using extremely limited and non-connected information to create a conspiracy theory that the author is too lazy to actually research. This kind of misinformation and misdirection is only for a sensational tagline.
As the first Plaintiff in the class action law suit brought against the Vatican Bank some 16 years ago, I continue to be eternally grateful that Dr. Jon Levy has such tenacity in his effort to bring justice to 700,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 70,000 Roma Gypsies for Vatican inspired war crimes 70 years ago…If this Pope is indeed sincere and a man of his word, the scandal related to a thousand Croatian Catholic priests who personally murdered tens of thousands of victims with their own hands then fled to Argentina through the "Vatican Ratline." The Vatican then laundered the gold and artwork through Swiss and banks in Buenos Aires now worth billions. May their victims one day live to see justice.
William Dorich
The Vatican is denying the charge. "There is no basis in reality to the report," said Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls. He said it is based on an anonymous source, apparently a U.S. intelligence agent, "whose reliability is more than dubious." Historians have roundly criticized the Vatican for maintaining ties to the Utasha regime, which exterminated hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies during the war. Without further evidence, the charge stands largely as rumor. The money itself, if the Vatican ever held it, may long since have been returned to Utashas who fled to Spain and Argentina after the regime's collapse. But while those rumors persisted, the intelligence source speculated they were a "smokescreen to cover the fact that the treasure remains in its original repository." Search warrant, anyone? [Time]
210. Some critics also charge that the Croatian Catholic Church hid war criminals after the war and helped Nazi gold make its way from Croatia to the Vatican. As for the allegations regarding gold and money taken abroad from the independent Croatian state during 1944-45, author Jere Jareb examined all the relevant documents. He found no evidence that Pavelic or the Ustashe deposited stolen gold at the Vatican, much less that Pius XII approved of such acts. Jere Jareb, Zlato i novac Nezavisne Države Hrvatske izneseni u inozemstvo 1944 i 1945 (Hrvatski institut za povijest Dom i svijet: Zagreb, 1997); see “Croatian Catholics and Jewish Gold,” Inside the Vatican, August-September 1998, 11. A lawsuit based on this claim (Emil Alperin, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Vatican Bank, et al., Defendants) was dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Dec. 27, 2007. On forced conversions, see pp. 358-59.
Rychlak, Ronald (2010-05-27). Hitler, the War, and the Pope, Revised and Expanded (p. 567). Our Sunday Visitor. Kindle Edition.
You meant that America magazine wrote the following question on July 15, 2015. There is no such publication as "The National Catholic Review." That is a subtitle for the magazine known as America.
"Did the Vatican bank profit as a result of payments received from these Nazi collaborators who were known as the Ustashi? If we were to follow the Ustashi money, where would the trail lead?"
No evidence? Judge for yourself. This sworn testimony by US Army Special Agent Gowen, who is still alive by the way, is why the Vatican never wants this to go to court. Gowen investigated the case in 1947 and debriefed the two main parties, Vatican official Fr. Draganovic and Ustasha Colonel Babic who delivered a 10 truck convoy of gold and loot to Rome in 1946.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/243152636/William-E-W-Gowen-Deposition-December-12-2005-Volume-I-Alperin-v-Vatican-Bank
https://www.scribd.com/doc/243153370/William-E-W-Gowen-Deposition-December-13-2005-Volume-II-Alperin-v-Vatican-Bank
https://www.scribd.com/doc/243153581/William-Gowen-Vol-III-20051214
https://www.scribd.com/doc/243154827/William-E-W-Gowen-Deposition-March-9-2006-Volume-IV-Alperin-v-Vatican-Bank
https://www.scribd.com/doc/243156305/William-Gowen-Deposition-Exhibits-2005
Granted the flurry of mid 2000s data Dr Levy is fully aware of later forensic dismissals of evidence of plaintiffs [ONE NOTES A LATER 2011 UPDATE AD INFRA]
CF
Alperin v. Vatican Bank
Alperin v. Vatican Bank was a failed class action suit by Holocaust survivors brought against the Vatican Bank ("Institute for the Works of Religion" or "IOR") and the Franciscan Order ("Order of Friars Minor") filed in San Francisco, California on November 15, 1999. The case was initially dismissed as a political question by the District Court for the Northern District of California in 2003, but was reinstated in part by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2005. That ruling attracted attention as a precedent at the intersection of the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) and the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA).
Part of the complaint against the IOR was dismissed in 2007 on the basis of sovereign immunity, and the remainder of the claim against that defendant was dismissed on the ground that the property claim had no nexus to the United States, a decision confirmed in February 2010 by the Ninth Circuit. The case against the Franciscan Order, who by then were the sole defendants, ended in March 2011 when the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment dismissing the claim, and the case was not appealed further. No part of the claim, therefore, ever came to trial and none of the plaintiffs' allegations of fact were ever established in Court
See more at Wikipedia.org..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alperin_v._Vatican_Bank
NB Wikipedia warts and all treatment of PAVELIC V CARDINAL STEPINAV ISSUES
Despite initially welcoming the Independent State of Croatia, Martin Gilbert wrote that Stepinac later "condemned Croat atrocities against both Serbs and Jews, and himself saved a group of Jews in an old age home".
Upon hearing news of the Glina massacre, in the summer of 1941 Stepinac sent a letter to Paveli?, requesting that "on the whole territory of the Independent State of Croatia, not one Serb is killed if he is not proven guilty for what he has deserved death." When hearing of the racial laws being enacted, he asked: "We…appeal to you to issue regulations so that even in the framework of antisemitic legislation, and similar legislation concerning Serbs, the principles of human dignity be preserved." On Sunday May 24, 1942 he condemned racial persecution in general terms, though he did not specifically mention Serbs. He stated in a diocesan letter:
All men and all races are children of God; all without distinction. Those who are Gypsies, Black, European, or Aryan all have the same rights (…) for this reason, the Catholic Church had always condemned, and continues to condemn, all injustice and all violence committed in the name of theories of class, race, or nationality. It is not permissible to persecute Gypsies or Jews because they are thought to be an inferior race.
In a sermon on October 25, 1942, he further commented on racial acceptance:
We affirm then that all peoples and races descend from God. In fact, there exists but one race…The members of this race can be white or black, they can be separated by oceans or live on the opposing poles, [but] they remain first and foremost the race created by God, according to the precepts of natural law and positive Divine law as it is written in the hearts and minds of humans or revealed by Jesus Christ, the son of God, the sovereign of all peoples.
When deportation of Croatian Jews began, Stepinac and the papal envoy Giuseppe Marcone protested to Andrija Artukovic. Pope Pius XII had dispatched Marcone as Apostolic Visitor to Croatia, reportedly in order to assist Stepinac and the Croatian Episcopate in "combating the evil influence of neo-pagan propaganda which could be exercised in the organization of the new state". Marcone served as Nuncio in all but name.
=============================================================================================================
In 1992, Croatia came out from under the thumb of Communism. One of the first acts of Parliament in the newly independent state of Croatia was to issue a declaration condemning “the political trial and sentence passed on Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac in 1946.” 220 Stepinac was condemned, declared the Parliament, “because he had acted against the violence and crimes of the communist authorities, just as he had acted during the whirlwind of atrocities committed in World War II, to protect the persecuted, regardless of the national origin or religious denomination.”
Rychlak, Ronald (2010-05-27). Hitler, the War, and the Pope, Revised and Expanded (p. 337). Our Sunday Visitor. Kindle Edition.
Fr. John George is a mouthpiece for the Vatican…there are numerous documents that attest to the Vatical laundering money to Swiss banks who in turn sent the money, gold and paintings to Argentina.
Cleverly and sleazily omitted in Fr. John George's remarks is that Ante Pavelic also escaped through the "Vatican Ratline" for Argentina where he became the "Security Advisor" tp President Juan Peron who issued 34,000 visas to Croatian war criminals including the 970 Croatian Catholic priests who fled Croatia after the war to avoid prosecution.
In my book, Jasenovac Then & Now: A Conspiracy of Silence, I post here some of the dozens of first person testimonies obtained after 1945 when this hideous Croatian Concentration Camp was destroyed and the last 87 victims escaped…some of those victims are still alive to testify.
“For centuries the Serbian people have stood in the Balkans as the bulwark of Christian
civilization against invaders and oppressors. As a consequences of their stand, great losses have been inflicted on them in the course of centuries… Genocide in its worst and most destructive form, however, was inflicted upon the Serbs in 1941-45 by the members of the Croatian Fascist movement, the Ustasha… The massacres carried out in the Serbian Orthodox Church in Glina between May and August, 1941, belong undoubtedly, to the darkest chapters of human depravity in modern times.”
Senator Herbert H. Lehman, New York
U.S. Senate, October 20, 1951.
“The Jasenovac camp was the lowest level to which mankind can fall …the most horrible place of torture in the history of man …hell on earth. It was the work of hatred, the work of evil, and the work of the devil himself.
Everything that one could write about the Jasenovac camp could only be a pale picture of Jasenovac and what it was.Because no one could ever overdo it when writing about Jasenovac and what happened there.”
Djordje Milisha,
Jasenovac survivor,
from his book, Jasenovac Hell.
“…There is not a pen capable of describing the horror and terror of the atmosphere at Jasenovac. It surpasses any human fantasy. Imagine Hell, the Inquisition, a terror more dreadful than any that ever before existed anywhere, run by bloodthirsty wild animals whose most hidden and disgusting instincts had come to the surface in a way never before seen in human beings—and still you have not said enough.” Jasenovac screamed out at the world and nobody heard that Serbs were the victims of 'the greatest genocide, in proportion to a nation’s population,' in WWII, as Jasenovac became the “Yugoslav Dachau.” Antun Miletich, a Croatian writer.
BLAZEVIC, GRGA
Catholic priests in Bosanski Novi, where he organized a concentration camp for Serbians and made himself the commander. Many Serbs who were arrested were slaughtered in this camp on his orders. He insisted that he was doing what Archbishop Stepinac wanted and expected of him. For his work on behalf of the “Croatian cause,” Fascist Ante Pavelic decorated him.
CULINA, Fra ANSELMO
Catholic priest who personally killed inmates at Jasenovac. He committed all of his murders with a small knife attached to his wrist that he liked to show to his victims before killing them. He carried this knife with him at all times, even when holding mass for Croat soldiers. Fascist Ante Pavelic decorated him.
KAURINOVIC, Msgr. JOSIP
Catholic priest in Prijedor. Special representative of His Holiness, the Pope. Personally participated in the mass killings of Serbs, including women and children. Preferred killing Serbs to expelling them. He insisted that they could, conceivably return some day to their homes. He personally arrested Serbian Orthodox priests in the area, tortured them, dismembered them, and murdered them. Fascist Ante Pavelic decorated him.
PERIC, Dr. SRECKO
Catholic priest from the Monastery of Gorica, near Livno. About twenty friars from this monastery participated with Peric in slaughtering about 5,000 Serbs from the Livno area. Dr. Peric first arrested the Serbian men from Livno and took them to the Koprivnica, between Bugojno and Rupres. He had them brutalized and executed. Some were tortured to death. He then arrested their mothers, wives, and children and ended their lives in the same way. The women were raped, their breasts were cut off—children were dismembered and their eyes were gouged out. The killers then cut off the heads of the children and proceeded to throw them into their mothers’ laps.
KRALIK, FRANJO
Catholic priest and chief-editor of the Catholic magazine “Katolicki Tjednik,” through which he promoted an unrelenting hatred toward the Serbs. In his writings, he insisted that Croatia could not be cleansed of Serbs in a “nice way” and added: “Pope Gregory VII didn’t clean up the Catholic Church in some nice way, but with force.”
GUDELJ, Don MARTIN
Catholic priest in Opuzen. Called on all Croats in his church sermons to begin digging Serbian graves. Organized groups of killers that went with him through the Serbian villages in his jurisdiction, killing the Serbs they found there and pillaging their properties. He killed the children by beheading them with a bayonet. He personally slaughtered 450 men, women, and children. Together with Fra Dr. Bilobrk, he committed great massacres of Serbs on June 28, 1941, Vidovdan—a religious Serbian national holiday.
SCHOLZ, Fra SIDONIJE
Franciscan priest who murdered Serbian Orthodox priest Djordje Bogic of Nasice after torturing him. He cut off Bogic’s nose and tongue, then cut him open the full length of his stomach and wrapped his intestines around his neck. Fascist Ante Pavelic decorated him.
The Pope can run but he cannot hide from these grotesque war crimes perpetrated by Croatian Catholic priests who fled to Argentina where this Pope was a newly ordained priest and where 45,000 Argentine citizens disappeared…Erasing this ugly history of the church has been a work of art with many American CIA agents using their power and their pens to distort history…There are thousands of family members alive today like me who lost 17 members burned to death in the Serbian church in Vojnic where 97 Serbs were locked inside. Pretending that all of this is a figment of our imagination is not only cruel but reveals the depth of this religious cesspool in which history continues to be silenced and rewritten by people like this Pope.
A[The Vatican at best of times cannot control behavior of individual members of now 1.2 Billion RC let alone 500 million in chaotic times in WW2.
B]While the Pope and Stepinac voiced public opposition to persecution etc-such could hardly be enforced by parachuting in Swiss Guards and ilk
C[Add to that- Vatican had to decipher what was fact, faction and propaganda fiction at ground level where lies and distortions were an industry
D]Any wonder the recent actions against the Holy See at US supreme courts were dismissed with no allegations forensically corroborated.
E]This minuscule sovereignty stood alone in a vanquished Europe against the forces of Satan himself providing overcrowded shelter to cowering allied diplomats,awaiting Hitlers threats to clean them out and drag Pope Pius to Germany[cf Hitler's Table talk records]
F]Yet critics here berate Vatican inaction despite state-of-art halberd weaponry
G]Get it straight for once Ratlines was directly under control of crazy naziphile bishop Hudal i hix grotty backlanr office[all unknown to Pope]
H]NB they obsessively berate that lil supposed Vatican callous indolent potential bulwark up against the Axis alliance of Germany and Italy- formed iin 1936 which later included Japan and other nations; "the Axis opposed the Allies in World War II"
I]Meanwhile back on earth anti axis WMD Vatican City , officially Vatican City State = a walled enclave within the city of Rome, with a population of 842, and the smallest internationally recognized independent state in the world by both area and population.
J] It is a monstrous forensic/militaristic anachronism to judge facilely Vatican IN WW2 as a massive bulwark against Axis etc and indeed then to judge Vatican as irresponsibly criminal in not facing down Hitler and henchmen, when even gargantuan allied military could contemporaneously do little.
Be it noted that ratline was independently masterminded by fruitcake naziphile bishop Hudal-long ago distanced by the Vatican. In 1936 Hudal published a booklet, The Foundations of National Socialism, and in 1942 a second pro-Nazi pamphlet, Europe's Religious Future. The latter piece was in answer to an Italian publication written by Francesco Orestano which appeared in Gerarchia, a fascist journal founded by Mussolini.
Hudal was helped by strange Machiavellian fr dragonivic who ultimately lived, worked and died in communist Yugoslavia. I suspect he was a Soviet mole[among many] infiltrating the ratline collecting info on nazi rats to bribe them later, especially when the nazis were adopted by OSS in the operation paper-clip
Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) program in which over 1,500 German scientists, technicians, and engineers from Nazi Germany and other foreign countries were brought to the United States for employment in the aftermath of World War II. It was conducted by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), and in the context of the Cold War. One purpose of Operation Paperclip was to deny German scientific expertise and knowledge to the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, as well as inhibiting post-war Germany from redeveloping its military research capabilities.
Vatican has got some explaining to do about Montini (later Paul VI) being involved with the major war criminal Pavelic.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/243198125/Montini-Meets-with-Pavelic
"While studying the archives of Bishop Hudal in Santa Maria dell’Anima, Prof. Matteo Sanfilippo discovered a letter from Monsignor Montini (the future Pope Paul VI), expressing outrage at Hudal’s suggestion that the Vatican help Nazis escape. An abundance of evidence suggests that, because of Bishop Hudal’s Nazi leanings, he was excluded from all official Vatican affairs of the day."
Gary L. Krupp (2013-04-02). POPE PIUS XII AND WORLD WAR II: THE DOCUMENTED TRUTH : A Compilation of International Evidence Revealing the Wartime Acts of the Vatican (Kindle Locations 5231-5234). Xlibris. Kindle Edition.
Furthermore
"In actuality, the Vatican rebuked Paveli? and refused to recognize the Independent State of Croatia or receive a Croatian representative. When Paveli? traveled to the Vatican, he was greatly angered because he was permitted only a private audience rather than the diplomatic audience he had wanted. He might not even have been granted that privilege, but for the fact that the extent of the Ustashi atrocities that had already begun were not yet known."
[Montini of course was behind that audience-ed frjg]
Gary L. Krupp (2013-04-02). POPE PIUS XII AND WORLD WAR II: THE DOCUMENTED TRUTH : A Compilation of International Evidence Revealing the Wartime Acts of the Vatican (Kindle Locations 4795-4798). Xlibris. Kindle Edition.
Fr. George being non responsive is not helpful. The questions presented here is why did the Vatican Bank launder the Ustasha Treasury and help several top Ustasha including Pavelic escape justice? And what was the involvement of Vatican Secretary of State Montini (Paul VI)? Seems to me if Montini is to be made a saint, his consorting with war criminals could be a problem? Secondary sources that contradict actual documents and witnesses from that time period seem like apologists for Rome.
"Father" George is frantic that if the media paid attention to this case, Humanae Vitae would lose all "moral authority" to beat millions of unhealthy women into early graves by breeding fresh victims for pedophile priests.
DR Levy's question is based on gratuitous assumptions already forensically rejected
(Emil Alperin, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Vatican Bank, et al., Defendants) was dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Dec. 27, 2007. On forced conversions, see pp. 358-59.
Rychlak, Ronald (2010-05-27). Hitler, the War, and the Pope, Revised and Expanded (p. 567). Our Sunday Visitor. Kindle Edition
"Consorting with criminals" is very vague, I ministered last rites[consort?] to Australia's heinous gangster/crim Chow Hayes,abhorred by underworld made Capone look like a page boy
Jewish Telegraph Agency on Gold, Jews and Vatican
http://www.jta.org/1947/06/27/archive/nazi-officer-who-extorted-gold-ransom-from-rome-jewish-community-to-be-tried
Israeli foreign minister Golda Meir stated: "We share in the grief of humanity…. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims…. We mourn a great servant of peace."
Nor can Albert Einstein's statement be ignored: "Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign paign for suppressing the truth…. The Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly"
Margherita Marchione. Did Pope Pius XII Help the Jews? (Kindle Locations 75-78). Kindle Edition.
Alperin and Plaintiffs v the Raiders of lost Nazi Gold Train?
http://www.npr.org/2015/08/28/435416088/has-a-long-lost-nazi-train-packed-with-gold-been-found-in-poland
I'll believe Serb witnesses and William Gowen any day over the self-serving claims of frantic "Father" George.