The BBC is not the most self-critical of organisations but Lord Alton of Liverpool and Fr Leo Chamberlain of Ampleforth have actually prevailed in the matter of a complaint against a news broadcast in which a reporter stood at Auschwitz and proclaimed, as fact, that the attitude of the Catholic Church to the Holocaust was one of silence.
These days the BBC seems remarkably untroubled by anything as inconvenient as proper research and is content to repeat any old canard as long as it adds melodrama or controversy to what was once straightforward coverage of the news.
Here are just a few of the inconvenient truths its reporter ignored:
In 1928 the Vatican issued a condemnation of anti-Semitism. In 1933 a group of German bishops announced that the sacrament would be refused to anyone engaged in Nazism with its creed of eugenics. In 1940, when the Nazi war machine was overrunning swathes of Europe, the Vatican issued a condemnation of the attack on the disabled – or as Hitler called them, “useless eaters”.
Actions speak louder than words and the BBC might like to note the record of resistance and risk that was undertaken not just by individual bishops, priests and lay Catholics but by the pope himself. The careless writers of the report might also like to note that most of the following comes not from Catholic but Jewish sources.
After the war the Israeli consul stated that Pius XII had been instrumental in saving “at least 700,000 Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazis”. Indeed, there were wholehearted tributes and thanks to the pope at that time. Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, and its chief rabbi, Isaac Herzog, were among those to recognise and praise his efforts. Meanwhile, the chief rabbi of Rome actually became a Catholic and took the pope’s name as a tribute to him. You can hardly have a more dramatic endorsement than that!
When, in 1958, Pius died the tributes flowed again, and included one from Golda Meir and one from the Jewish Chronicle. However do the revisionists get around that?
And whose are these words? “Seldom has there been a persecution so heavy, so terrifying, so grievous and lamentable in its far-reaching effects.” Churchill? A Jew in exile? Nope, it was Pius XI, who also said that no Christian could be anti-Semitic because “spiritually we are all Semites”. So that was silence, was it?
In 1940 Einstein said: “Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign of suppressing the truth … I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.”
The Jews who hid in Pope Pius XII’s winter palace, those who were hidden and aided by Catholics, the thousands of priests imprisoned in Dachau and its like all knew exactly where the Church stood. So did the Nazis, who described Pius XII as “Jew-loving”.
Lord Alton says that for a thorough, careful analysis of what happened, one might do worse than read the work of John Frain, The Cross and the Third Reich. I shall take his advice and obtain a copy.
So why did the BBC accept so uncritically a version of history which simply does not stand up to much examination? I doubt if those who wrote the report set out to mislead and I suspect they were rather surprised when challenged.
My hunch is that it is all part of an institutional bias against the Catholic Church. I remember the visit of Benedict XVI in 2010. The BBC trailed it as a disaster, focusing on child abuse (which is ironic in view of the BBC’s own appalling record) and predicting mass protest. When the sun and 25,000 people came out to greet the pontiff at Bellahouston there was an urgent rewriting of the script. Perhaps executives might have pondered why they had prepared the script as originally conceived.
To be fair, the BBC was not unique in this regard. David Cameron, who had found an excuse not to meet the pope on his arrival – an unusual response to a state visit – made certain that he was there at the end to share in Benedict’s success. I was helping to cover the visit for Sky TV, which had from the start a professional and unbiased approach.
The complaint against the BBC has been upheld, but not many will know that, whereas the original broadcast will have been seen by millions. So let me tell TV bosses how they can make amends for libelling the Church and those Catholics who gave their lives fighting Hitler. They can commission a historically accurate documentary on the role of the Church during the Holocaust. I am very happy to volunteer my services.
Ann Widdecombe is a novelist, broadcaster and former prisons minister
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