Legacy MattersSo worried was the KGB about Catholic opposition to communism, they tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II, corrupted many of the Polish clergy into collaboration with the secret police, they also deliberately tried to smear the Vatican by portraying Pope Pius XII as a Nazi sympathizer.
Ion Michai Pacepa who was there before he became the highest ranking intelligence office to defect to the West, tells the amazing story never before told how the Kremlin decided to undermine the moral authority of the Church by attacking a dead man who could not defend himself.
Moscow's Assault on the Vatican - The KGB made corrupting the Church a priority.
They pilfered documents from the Vatican archives that formed the basis for a play by an unknown playwright called The Deputy that caused a sensation around the world. I remember being shocked at the implication that the Pope hated the Jews and was Hitler's Pope. Today, that's what most people think.
Today, many people who have never heard of The Deputy are sincerely convinced that Pius XII was a cold and evil man who hated the Jews and helped Hitler do away with them. As KGB chairman Yury Andropov, the unparalleled master of Soviet deception, used to tell me, people are more ready to believe smut than holiness.
Turns out the play was all based on lies.
A few years later, Pope John Paul II started the process of sanctifying Pius XII, and witnesses from all over the world have compellingly proved that Pius XII was an enemy, not a friend, of Hitler. Israel Zoller, the chief rabbi of Rome between 1943-44, when Hitler took over that city, devoted an entire chapter of his memoirs to praising the leadership of Pius XII. “The Holy Father sent by hand a letter to the bishops instructing them to lift the enclosure from convents and monasteries, so that they could become refuges for the Jews. I know of one convent where the Sisters slept in the basement, giving up their beds to Jewish refugees.”