Pope Pius XII. Photo: Ambrosius007

JNS.org – Jewish groups and Israeli leaders have criticized former Australian deputy prime minister Tim Fischer for saying that the “Jewish lobby” has unfairly treated the legacy of Pope Pius XII.

Jewish groups are known to be critical of Pope Pius XII, who was pope during the Nazi era, for not publicly condemning the atrocities that were being perpetrated by the Germans against the Jewish people. But in his new book, “Holy See, Unholy Me: 1000 Days in Rome,” Fischer claims that Pius “instructed Catholics to help Jews, hiding hundreds in convents, monasteries and the Vatican,” and says the tactics of the “Jewish lobby” are “about representing a cause and maintaining influence and power.”

“This is very standard anti-Semitic fare… the notion of Jews controlling the world, either through financial markets or the media, or both,” said Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, on Fischer’s book.