WWII Jewish children not to be returned if baptized (church, baptism)

[Bright-ness' Shadow]

Vatican hit by new row over war role

Pope kept Jewish families apart

John Hooper in Rome
Wednesday December 29, 2004
The Guardian Complete Article

The Vatican secretly issued instructions to the Catholic church in France not to return Jewish children to their families after the second world war, it emerged yesterday.

The children were entrusted to the church's care to save them from the death camps. But if the parents survived the war and came forward to reclaim their sons or daughters, the children were only to be returned "provided [they] have not received baptism", the Vatican ordered.

The instructions, contained in a letter dated October 20 1946, were sent by the Holy Office, the Vatican department responsible for church discipline, to the future Pope John XXIII, Angelo Roncalli, who at that time was the Holy See's envoy in Paris. The letter was published yesterday by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

[Quoth The Raven]

WW2, The Vatican, shady goings on. Who would have thought it could happen...