A Catholic ratline

- Bishop Alois Hudal

I'm reading a couple of books from the library that are interesting. One is The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. As wikipedia states, the plot blends the history and folklore of Vlad Ţepeş and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula, and it's a lot of fun so far. For those who'd like a more sympathetic pov of Vlad the impaler, check out the movie Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula.

The subject of other book I'm reading is actually more disturbing than the vampirism of The Historian. It's another in that series by Daniel Silva about the Israeli agent/art restorer Gabriel Allon - A Death in Venice. One thing mentioned in this novel about the tracking down of a former Nazi war criminal, is the ratline, or escape routes for Nazis fleeing Europe after WWII .... one of them was run by a Catholic Bishop, Alois Hudal. The whole wikipedia article about him is chilling, but here's just a bit ....

Alois Hudal (also known as Luigi Hudal; 31 May 1885 in Graz, Austro-Hungarian Empire – 13 May 1963 in Rome, Italy) was a Rome-based bishop of Austrian descent. He was for thirty years head of the small Austrian-German congregation of Santa Maria dell'Anima in Rome and until 1937, an influential representative of the Austrian Church. In his 1937 book The Foundations of National Socialism Hudal praised Adolf Hitler and some of his policies and indirectly attacked the policies of the Vatican. After World War II, an unrepentant Hudal became infamous for the "ratline" he helped to establish, allowing prominent Nazi German and other European former Axis officers and political leaders, among them ...... war criminals such as Franz Stangl, commanding officer of Treblinka ... Other highly prominent Nazi war criminals allegedly helped by the Hudal network were SS captain Edward Roschmann, known as the "Butcher of Riga", doctor Josef Mengele, better known as the "Angel of Death" at Auschwitz ... Gustav Wagner, commanding officer of Sobibor, Alois Brunner, organizer of deportations from France and Slovakia to German concentration camps, and above all Adolf Eichmann, the man who had been put in charge of implementing the murder of European Jewry. In 1994 Erich Priebke, a former SS captain, told Italian journalist Emanuela Audisio, La Repubblica, that Bishop Hudal helped him reach Buenos Aires, which was later admitted by Vatican historian Robert Graham SJ .....

In writing this post I also came across an interesting article in a 2003 issue of Commonweal magazine - Canonizing Pius XII: why did the pope help Nazis escape? by Michael Phayer - which is pretty damning of the role Pius XII played in supporting the escape of Nazis.

I'm a dunce about modern history and I really know little of it - I can tell you about the meal that supposedly killed Henry I (a surfeit of lampreys) or about the nick-name of Harold II's girlfriend (swan-neck), but all this stuff about the Holocaust and WWII and the Catholic Church just amazes and horrifies me.