The speech highlighted the suffering of Catholics and the Catholic Church during the war and represented the Catholics in Germany as the Nazis’ victims. He made not even the briefest mention, indeed no mention at all, of the Nazis’ extermination of Europe’s Jews. If any Jews had been in those concentration camps alongside the valorous Catholic priests and lay Catholics, one would not know it from the pope’s speech. Nor did he make any mention of Italy’s part in the Axis cause, much less suggest any Italian responsibility for the disasters that had befallen Europe.
