Pope Benedict XVI said yesterday it’s possible that consideration of the beatification cause of Pope Pius XII could be delayed for a few years.

The reason: To wait until more public access is possible to the Vatican’s archival material about Pius XII’s wartime actions in helping Jews during the Nazi Holocaust.

We’ll be reporting on what Benedict said, and why he said it, in our Nov. 9 issue, which will be available online to subscribers on Tuesday.

Here’s one thing that’s always worth remembering, regarding the allegations that Pius XII failed in his moral responsibility to help Jews during World War II: Jewish leaders of the day held exactly the opposite opinion.

So how did the picture of Pius XII subsequently shift from hero to horror, in the minds of many Jews? In an Oct. 28 article entitled “Rehabilitating Pius XII,” Forbes.com columnist Melik Kaylan says the change is due solely to a successful Cold War disinformation campaign launched by the KGB to discredit the Church.

“Wherefore then the controversy?” Kaylan asks. “In the postwar years, Jewish leaders the world over — and many in Israel, including the Chief Rabbi of Israel — acclaimed Pius loudly for his wartime conduct. But everything began to change in 1963 with an eight-hour play called The Deputy by an unknown West German playwright named Rolf Hochhuth. The play, which made the rounds of the Eastern Bloc and then the world, portrayed Pius as a ‘cold-eyed’ collaborator. It now turns out that Hochhuth was a KGB plant and the documents he used and cited were KGB forgeries. But the radical left of the time lapped it up, and its thesis seeped into the mainstream. The entire project even had a code name: Seat 12. The documentation on this is riveting, a seamless Cold War spy story worth perusing just for the quality of intrigue it unveils.”

Continues Kaylan, “In truth, Hitler hated Pius and Pius deplored both National Socialism and Communism, as countless extant documents show. He struggled against both incessantly, but the Soviets outlasted him, and their revenge has endured even in the West, giving rise to a dubious branch of Holocaust studies devoted entirely to blackening Pius’ reputation.”

Kaylan provides a lengthy list of known historical facts about concrete actions undertaken by Church authorities to save Jews from the Holocaust. And Kaylan notes that since he himself is neither Catholic nor Jewish he can’t be accused of having a vested interest in taking sides in the controversy.

“It should be remembered that none of the allied powers did anything to close the camps or save the Jews until very late in the war,” Kaylan’s article concludes. “Pope Pius saved more Jews over many more years than any international agency. It’s time, at the very least, to give his defenders a hearing.”

— Tom McFeely