Document revives WWII-era Vatican debate

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103&slug=Vatican%20Jewish%20Children

Friday, December 31, 2004 · Last updated 11:16 a.m. PT

Document revives WWII-era Vatican debate

By ANGELA DOLAND
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

VATICAN CITY -- A document that surfaced recently in church archives has revived debate about a contentious post-World War II issue: the Vatican's attempt to keep hold of some Jewish children who were protected from the Nazis by Christian families.

The 1946 circular apparently instructed French church authorities that Jewish children baptized as Roman Catholics, for safety or other reasons, should remain within the church - even if that meant not returning them to their own families once the Nazi occupation ended.

(snip)

"Children who have been baptized must not be entrusted to institutions that cannot ensure their Christian education," says a copy of the French-language letter obtained by The Associated Press.

One of the letter's most jarring lines says that children whose families survived the Holocaust should be returned, "as long as they had not been baptized." Those whose parents were killed "should not be abandoned by the Church," even if they had not received the sacrament.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103&slug=Vatican%20Jewish%20Children

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