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Vatican Denies Pope's Involvement in Hitler Youth
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by Rob Walker | May 13, 2009 at 05:29 am
204 views | 26 Recommendations | 5 comments
A Vatican spokesman has issued contradictory information about Pope Benedict XVI, stating that the pope was never involved in the Hitler Youth movement. This is in direct contrast to a series of interviews the Pope gave in 1996, that said he had been drafted into the Hitler Youth.
In 1941, Pope Benedict, then a 16-year-old named Joseph Ratzinger, was forced to join, but left as soon as he was able to. The new statements come during the Pope's controversial trip to the middle east.
Mr Lombardi said the Pope, as Joseph Ratzinger, a 16-year-old seminarian, served in an auxiliary air defence squadron “that had nothing to do with Nazism or Nazi ideology”. Venting frustration with the relentless focus on the Pope’s war years — a highly sensitive subject on a visit to the Jewish state — Mr Lombardi insisted that the Pope “never was in this movement of young people ideologically linked to Nazism”. The spokesman said that he felt compelled to respond “to the lies written by the media here and internationally”.
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Recommendations (26)
Roy C
Vancouver, Washington, United States
albertacowpoke
Canada
Paschen
Narita, Chiba, Japan
generaldecay
Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (5)
at 05:50 on May 13th, 2009
Oh my! There is no end of scandal about this pope!
at 06:56 on May 13th, 2009
Those are very old allegations and they keep coming up every now and then. He never did try to hide his youth and well he was a teen in NAZI times and living in Bavaria, the Fascist strong hold in Germany.
It was a given to be in the Hitler youth in those days, especially in Bavaria.
People should read his dissertation and speech given at the Sorbonne in Paris in the 70th. Now that would be an eye opener.
He argued that their was no right religion, but that religion has been adapted to each culture and geography as well as climate over time and that in the end it is all about one and the same spiritual entity. Ratzinger during the Council, was considered “the best of the so–called periti, the experts...with the reputation for being an avant-garde progressive”. That was before he became Pope and had to follow doctrine.
I will try to find the speech again.
I have not fund his 1968 nor his 1970 address or his Doctoral yet, but I fund this.
http://freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=354494&p=157
at 09:20 on May 13th, 2009
Everyone had to join Hitler Youth. If you want to be critical of the pope, find a real failing on his part, such as his suspension of the Georgetown University theologian for teaching that Catholics could question the teaching on birth control because it was not an article of faith and wasn't part of papal infallibility, a doctrine from the 1880s, when the pope had the Vatican Council of that day declare the pope to be infallible on matters of doctrine.
at 09:26 on May 13th, 2009
wow! interesting story-line and something I did not know, thanks for posting
at 03:25 on May 14th, 2009
That's what strange to me about this whole mess - everyone knows you had no choice being in the Hitler Youth, especially at that age. Very few people would hold it against him, and it's common knowledge anyway. Why try and hide it at this late stage?
I think someone screwed up.