Pietro Palazzini

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Pietro Cardinal Palazzini (May 19, 1912 – October 11, 2000) was an Italian Cardinal who helped to save Jews in World War II.

Born in Piobbico, near Pesaro, he was ordained a priest on December 6, 1934 and was made a Cardinal in 1973.

[edit] Dutch Catechism

An emminent moral theologian, he was appointed by Pope Paul VI, to serve as coordinator and secretaty of a Commission of high-ranking Cardinals to review a new and higly popular presentation of the Catholic faith issued by the Catholic Bishop conference of the Netherlands, "a work which on the one hand is marked with exceptional qualities but on the other hand, because of its new opinions, from the very moment of issue disturbed not a few of the faithful" ^[1]

October 14, 1968, Palazzini issued their official views together with Charles Journet, Joseph Frings, Joseph-Charles Lefèbvre, Ermenegildo Florit, Michael Browne, and Lorenz Jäger Declaration of the Commission of Cardinals on the "New Catechism" "De Nieuwe Katechismus, the Dutch Catechism,. The declaration was not rejected by the Dutch bishops nor did they change the text. The views of the Vatican is today "a Supplement" to the bestseller, which, while controversial, was translated into over 20 languages and received wide distribution in the US and Europe.

In 1985, he was honored by Yad Vashem as "Righteous Among the Nations"where he protested the repeated criticisms against Pope Pius XII, on whose instructions Palazzini declared to have acted. Palazzini, an theological advisor to the Pontiff, had taught and written about the moral theology of Pope Pius XII. ^[2]

In a 1992 interview, he referred to a walk he took with Pius XII in the Vatican Gardens before the imminent Nazi occupation of Rome, during which, it was rumoured, the Pope could be abducted. Behind the bushes, soldiers of the Noble Guard, on the walkways, soldiers of the Noble Guard, everywhere marching exercises by the soldiers of the Papal Noble Nuard. When the Pope asked the meaning of all this, he was told that these are exercises in preparation for his defense, in case of a German take-over of the Vatican. However, on the day of the German occupation of the Eternal City, the Papal Noble Guard had disappeared. Only the Swiss guard stood watch at the Vatican. Pope Pius XII, Palazzini stated would not have left the Vatican as Pope in case of a Nazi abduction. He would have resigned and left as a simple priest. ^[3]

Pietro Palazzini was a Bailiff Grand Cross of Honor and Devotion of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

[edit] References

• OBITUARIES OF THE CONSTANTINIAN ORDER.