In this post I challenged the readership to determine which of several circumstances would have been unknown to 18th and early 19th century Popes.
The answer, of course, was: An official Vatican newspaper that frequently published "scientific proof" of the Jewish "need" to eat blood at Passover.
Though such newspapers did exist, and did much to ready the soil of Europe for the holocaust, these were phenomenon of the last part of the 19th century, having been created to combat the liberal and Jewish press. As Eliyahu noted, this does not fit my time frame.
However, this should not prevent me from sharing a small taste of their poison:
'The Jews -- eternal insolent children, obstinate, dirty, thieves, liars, ignoramuses, pests and the scourge of those near and far . . . managed to lay their hands on . . . all public wealth . . . and virtually alone they took control not only of all the money . . . but of the law itself in those countries where they have been allowed to hold public offices . . . [yet they complain] at the first shout by anyone who dares raise his voice against this barbarian invasion by an enemy race, hostile to Christianity and to society in general.''This passage is from Civilta Cattolica, the newspaper published by Jesuits under the direction of the papal secretary of state. Ideas like this appeared regulalry Vatican papers like Civilta Cattolica, and L'Osservatore Romano, in the last half of the 19th century, and on through the first hald of the last century. These papers also published the Vatican's endorsement of things like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the guilt of Alfred Dreyfus and the charge that Jews regularly commit ritual murders of Christian children.
And what of the other items on my list? The yellow hats? The locked ghetto? The Carnivale debasements? The stolen Jewish children?
It will, I hope, anger you to learn that all of this and worse would have been familiar to 18th century Popes. Familiar, perhaps, is the wrong word. Endorsed, is better, for the Jews of the Papal States literally belonged to the Pope, and he was free to do with them as he chose.
Not until the liberal, enlightened, forces of Napoleon arrived was the ghetto destroyed, the Carnivale humiliations canceled, and the forced sermons reduced and finally ended. With the coming of the French forces, Jews were finally allowed something of a normal life, and some security in their daily existence.
Sadly, this change was not permanent. Gradually the old privitations were restored. The ghetto itself was rebuilt in 1840 by Pius IX, a singularly evil man who presided over the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortora (among a laundry list of other crimes against nature, truth and Jews) and once said that Jews ''had been children in the House of God,'' but ''owing to their obstinacy and their failure to believe, they have become dogs. 'We have today in Rome unfortunately too many of these dogs, and we hear them barking in all the streets, and going around molesting people everywhere.''
PS: This pope was beatified by John Paul II in 2000.
