​“We invite you to celebrate the Season of Creation this year under the heading of Jubilee for the Earth. The concept of Jubilee is rooted in the Bible and underlines that there must exist a just and sustainable balance between social, economic and ecological realities. The lesson from the biblical concept of jubilee points us towards the need to restore balance in the very systems of life, affirming the need for equality, justice and sustainability and confirming the need for a prophetic voice in defence of our common home.”

“A prophetic voice” i.e.: speak boldly for integral human development:

“Development cannot be limited to mere economic growth alone. In order to be authentic, it must be complete: integral, that is, it has to promote the good of every person and of the whole person.”  - Pope St Paul VI, 1967, Populorum Progressio, n 14
 
“Integral Human Development is the holistic development of the human person, covering all aspects of life: social, economic, political, cultural, personal and spiritual.”
           See the Caritas development approach.

 What does it look like?

• A life with dignity – where people are able to access basic services, are included in social, political and economic life. This empowers people with confidence to make changes in their own lives
• Just and peaceful relationships – by addressing power, equity and conflict issues, people can feel safe within their family and community, and actively engage in community activities
• Sustained economic wellbeing and resilience – where people have access to resources necessary for life for themselves and their family
• Influence and independence – by improving the ability to access information and resources, people should be able to influence attitudes and decisions that affect their lives

                                                                                                                        by Andrew Conradi, ofs (from various sources)

                NOTE:  This is an extra blog about the "Homeless Jesus". See my August blog below this one.
 
Vatican City, 23 March 2016 – A natural-size bronze sculpture of Jesus, represented as a homeless person resting on a bench, entirely wrapped in a lightweight cover with only his feet uncovered and bearing the signs of the nails of crucifixion, was located for the duration of Holy Week in the Sant'Egidio Courtyard in the Vatican, at the entrance to the offices of the Apostolic Almoner.
The work inspired by Mathew 25:34-46 was by the Canadian artist Timothy P. Schmalz, who had the idea of representing Christ in this original way after seeing a homeless man sleeping on a bench in the open air during the Christmas period. From Gospel to life in art!
 
A smaller copy was presented to Pope Francis during a general audience in St. Peter's Square in November 2013. The artist recounts that the Holy Father, upon seeing the work, touched its knees and feet and prayed.
The statue, donated to the Apostolic Almoner by the sculptor, is cast in bronze from the original. The first cast was located in Regis College, in the Jesuit Faculty of Toronto, Ontario, Canada after two other churches decline to accept it.
 
Its popularity is growing and there are about 100 other copies of "Homeless Jesus," with several now in Canada. One is outside Holy Rosary Cathedral, Vancouver, BC, and others abroad in Australia, Cuba, India, Ireland, Spain, the USA, and UK while another statue by Schmalz, "Whatsoever you do", is located at the main entrance of the "Santo Spirito" Hospital, Rome.
 
The castes are all the same. The only difference is in the photography i.e. the angle, distance and lighting which affect the clarity and some do not show the feet nail holes very well because they are in shade.
 
Schmalz intended for the bronze sculpture to be provocative, admitting, "That's essentially what the sculpture is there to do. It's meant to challenge people.”
The sculpture suggests that Christ is with the most marginalized in our society. The Christ figure is shrouded in a blanket with His face covered with the only indication that the figure is Jesus being the visible wounds on the feet. The life-size version of the work provides enough room for someone to sit on the bench. Pope Francis: “We cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life.”  (3 June 2020, General Audience)

The one now at the top of my blog shown below is outside the Papal Charities Building, Vatican City.

The one below that was previously at the top of my blog is by Kelly Wilkinson (The Indianapolis Star, 2015) is in Indianapolis, 

IN, Roberts Park United Methodist Church as part of the church’s efforts to raise awareness about homelessness in that city. The church staff, which provides free meals to the homeless every Sunday afternoon, defend the work as a provocative and public way to ignite a much-needed debate; but some find it insulting, demeaning, creepy even sacrilegious. One even called the police thinking it was a real person. It reminds us that anybody, at any given time, given certain circumstances, can experience homelessness. “Ninety per cent of the people, whether they be agnostic, atheist, or Christian, love the sculpture. However, residents are often seen sitting on the bench alongside the statue, resting their hands on Jesus and praying.
​
They love the message. It points to the idea that all of human life is sacred and this is ... one of the great gifts that Christianity brought Western civilization and the world,” Schmalz has said.

The morning of 17 August 2017, Holy Rosary Cathedral's Rev. Stanley Galvon found a homeless man sleeping beneath a statue of Jesus doing the same. STANLEY GALVON            ....Learn more

​                                                                                          by Andrew Conradi, ofs, JPIC & Laudato Si’ Animator

​Eco-Parish Guide for Catholic Parishes
This free Eco-Parish Guide is a great resource for your parish to bring Laudato Si’ to life.
Developed in cooperation with GCCM’s partners around the globe, the guide is directed at Catholic parishes globally to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) by addressing actions in relation to parish operations, the congregation, and the broader community. Inspired by Catholic Social Teaching, the Eco-Parish guide offers an active response to Pope Francis’ call for climate change action in his encyclical, Laudato Si’.
This free comprehensive guide explains how parishes can make a difference by:

• forming green teams
• reducing parish emissions
• engaging parishioners on low carbon lifestyle choices
• advocating for climate justice
• caring for those harmed by climate change

 
                  If you want an example from Canada click here for one from Ottawa-Cornwall:
                                     Care for God’s Creation – A Guide for Parishes

​                      From the OFM JPIC Office - a reminder of what Franciscan JPIC is about:
                                    Get Ready for Laudato Si’ Revolution

Pope Francis, building upon the teachings of St. John Paul II and his call to ecological conversion, calls us to respond to “the urgent need for a bold cultural revolution.” (Contact, January-March 2020) [quoting Laudato Si’, n 114]

“OUR FOUR PILLARS

• To promote the JPIC values intrinsic to the Franciscan charism among our Franciscan brothers and sisters throughout the world
• To foster the lived spirituality of St. Francis through solidarity with the marginalized, and with all of Creation
• To live out and intensify the ecological conversion expressed in Laudato Si’
• To assist and cooperate with local and national JPIC coordinators, and with different social movements.”

 
We OFS JPIC and Global Catholic Climate Movement Laudato Si’ animators try to do this and hope you will read what we pass on to you, our secular sisters and brothers! We are all called in our local fraternities to be collaborative, creative, and courageous in Living out Laudato Si’ in most impactful actions. If we are not part of the solution are we part of the problem?                           

​German botanist Ernst Haeckel first used the term ecology in 1866. The first wave of environmentalism grew out of moves to conserve and protect nature especially birds and the formation of natural history societies (and promotion of public health) from the 1880s until 1914 in Europe. The second wave began in the 1950s and picked up in the 1960s & 70s. However, the stage was set for change by the World Wildlife Fund (now The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which was founded in 1961 with an initial focus on the protection of endangered species. As more resources became available, its operations expanded into other areas such as the preservation of ​biological diversity, sustainable use of natural resources, the reduction of pollution, and ​climate change.  Jumping ahead but while on terminology: 'Biological Diversity', a term introduced by Lovejoy (1980) to express the number of species present in the community has an offshoot: 'Biodiversity', coined by Walter G. Rosen in the year 1985 (Wilson, 1988). 

It was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 which had a huge and widespread impact. The book represented a watershed moment, selling more than 500,000 copies in 24 countries as it raised public awareness and concern for living organisms, the environment and the inextricable links between pollution and public health. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in US pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides.

Other events having great impact were other oil tanker spills e.g. Torrey Canyon (1967). The Flemish Catholic movement (Anders Gaan Leven Live Differently) was an example of Catholic youth involvement.

The Trimates- (English, American and Canadian)  Jane Goodall, ​Dian Fossey,[4] and Birutė Galdikas — chosen by anthropologist Louis Leakey also helped raise awareness as did the National Geographic and David Attenborough’s natural history unit of the BBC. I remember the existence of The Society Promoting Environmental Conservation in Burnaby/ Vancouver, BC and Greenpeace in Vancouver, BC both founded in 1969. As the name suggests, Greenpeace was closely associated/grew out of the anti-war and anti-nuclear movement. As someone said “Peace” as a greeting/goodbye Bill Darnell said: “Better make it a green peace”.

Peace activist John McConnell first proposed the idea of Earth Day in 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco. US Senator Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day one month later on 22 April 1970, after witnessing the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill from an offshore oil platform 10 km off Santa Barbara, California. By the end of 1970, the first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of other first of their kind environmental laws. Realizing that solutions would only be effective through common effort, countries convened the ​first global conference on the environment in Stockholm from 5-16 June 1972.  
                    
Largely because of U.S. leadership, industrialized nations agreed to establish and provide initial funding for what is arguably the world’s premier global environmental institution: the United Nations Environment Programme. UNEP catalyzed negotiation of the 1985 Vienna Convention and its follow-on, the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a treaty to restrict production and use of substances that deplete Earth’s protective ozone layer. Today the agency continues to drive international efforts on issues including pollution control, biodiversity conservation and climate change.

In 1990 Earth Day went global, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries. Today, Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behaviour and create global, national and local policy changes.

Unfortunately under the current President, US leadership in the environmental movement has wilted and reversed!

What did Pope Francis say about Earth Day 2020?
In his weekly address, Pope Francis honoured the Earth Day movement. He said, “As the tragic coronavirus pandemic has taught us, we can overcome global challenges only by showing solidarity with one another and embracing the most vulnerable in our midst."

More from the Holy Father, who in an Easter Sunday letter to popular movements wrote, “In these days of great anxiety and hardship, many have used war-like metaphors to refer to the pandemic we are experiencing. If the struggle against COVID-19 is a war, then you are truly an invisible army, an army whose only weapons are solidarity, hope, and community spirit, all revitalizing at a time when no one can save themselves alone.” 

There is hope and here is an example: Renewable energy and 50 million jobs! Read on...                                                  
The big question is: Will the world’s governments be willing to put their money where their mouths are? Beware the “widening gap between rhetoric and action” by governments regarding climate change. The unfortunate fact is that whereas governments everywhere have been paying lip service to climate change and clean energy, in reality, they are wont to go to much greater lengths to try and save the fossil fuel sector from collapse than invest in clean energy projects with much longer and unproven paybacks.
 
Laudato Si’ teaches us that “everything is connected.” From a recent report:  The scientists said the multi trillion-dollar economic recovery packages being rolled out by governments must be used to strengthen and enforce environmental protection: “It may be politically expedient to relax environmental standards and to prop up industries such as intensive agriculture, airlines, and fossil-fuel-dependent energy sectors, but doing so without requiring urgent and fundamental change essentially subsidises the emergence of future pandemics.” Read more... 
 
How do we make the governments listen? In our National JPIC Action Plan (2012) at n. 2.3 we call it parrhesia (to speak boldly)! Or as Acts 4:29 puts it: “thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word”; Laudato Si’ (38 & 179) also told us. 

...​to raise awareness to control powerful global warming chemicals - hydrofluorocarbons - HFCs. Reducing HFCs under the Montreal Protocol to avoid 0.5°C of global warming by 2000, while continuing to protect the ozone layer. The Montreal Protocol to protect the Earth’s ozone layer is to date the only United Nations environmental agreement to be ratified by every country in the world. It is also one of the most successful. With the parties to the Protocol having phased out 98 per cent of their ozone-depleting substances, they saved an estimated two million people from skin cancer every year. So we can work together!

And got another minute? One is enough! Time to watch:

Our house is on fire: ignore it at our peril or react now. Good to pass on to young people? They will get the message!

TIME FOR A SONG! A new favourite:
...a song created by an affiliate of the Global Catholic Climate Movement, brought to us by JPIC Franciscans Africa and written by Steven Kezamutima, ofs, the founder and leader of Waka Waka Band that is behind the “Anti COVID-19” song. Founded in August 2016, the band is made up of ten Secular Franciscan youths studying at Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) in Kenya and drawn from various African countries, among them Kenya, Malawi, Burundi and DR Congo. Steven is a university student from Burundi pursuing a Masters degree in Justice, Peace and Social Cohesion at CUEA and referred to in the song as Baba Miti (Father of Trees in Swahili), a nickname his peers gave him due to the Birthday Tree Planting Campaign he runs across East Africa. Together with Lusungu Kumwenda from Malawi and the Waka Waka Band they sing it: African reggae!

The song called AntiCovid-19 is here to give hope to People and Planet that God is taking control. A call for a united sustainable global response: human need before corporate greed.   Read more about it here .

And more about JPIC FA here.
While Africa is in our thoughts perhaps we can reflect on this: As if covid19 is not enough, for more than two years the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have warned that sub-Saharan Africa stands on the verge of a debt crisis.                     
Does this call for charity or justice?
Inequality/injustice: Rethinking executive compensation in times of crisis?!
“As Tom Powdrill at the U.K. pension consultancy PIRC wrote recently, “Watching medical staff worldwide throw themselves into the battle against COVID-19, without any expectation that they will be paid a single penny extra as a ‘bonus’ for their efforts, but with the expectation that some of them will die, requires us to rethink things fundamentally.”  Read more... 

Another beautiful song in this time of trial: The Prayer (4.28 mins)

  
“From de facto interconnection to chosen solidarity …
Gospel faith put to the test … Everyone depends on everyone else”
                                                             ​So says the Pontifical Academy for Life: Global Pandemic And Universal Brotherhood

​

As church closures will affect parish collections, we ask you to support Development and Peace’s work by donating by mail, over the phone or online:

Send a cheque to Development and Peace,
1425 René-Lévesque Blvd. West, 3rd Floor, Montreal (Quebec) H3G 1T7
Phone 1-888-664-3387 to donate.  

                          Donate online at  Development and Peace.
   
In this time of Covid 19 we would do well to remember that Solidarity is key to addressing both the climate crisis and the pandemic. "We require a new and universal solidarity," Pope Francis wrote in Laudato Si’ (n 14), noting that "obstructionist attitudes, even on the part of believers, can range from denial of the problem to indifference, nonchalant resignation or blind confidence in technical solutions."

Much of the world has overcome scepticism when it comes to the covid 19 pandemic emergency. But what will it take to accomplish for the climate emergency – and to instil the urgency required to cmbat both?

In Lent and especially in D&P/Caritas Canada’s Share Lent we would do well to reflect on what Pope Francis wrote in Querida Amazonia (2 Feb 2020):
  “14. The businesses, national or international, which harm the Amazon and fail to respect the right of       the original peoples to the land and its boundaries, and to self-determination and prior consent,               should be called for what they are: injustice and crime. 

To feel outrage and to beg forgiveness

   15. We need to feel outrage,[10] as Moses did (cf. Ex 11:8), as Jesus did (cf. Mk 3:5), as God does in     the face of injustice (cf. Am 2:4-8; 5:7-12; Ps 106:40). It is not good for us to become inured to evil; it     is not good when our social consciousness is dulled before “an exploitation that is leaving destruction     and even death throughout our region… jeopardizing the lives of millions of people and especially the     habitat of peasants and indigenous peoples”.[11]”

This fits in with our March the Common Good title Lent - Time for Reconciliation for Land and People and which leads from Laudato Si’ n 49 &146 quoted elsewhere to Aboriginal Land Title, the Rule of Law and the Wet’suet’en issue in BC. Most of us are probably unaware of the background to this issue and it is hoped this newsletter can help our understanding. It has many facets and can get complicated but like all things can also be simplified. If Teck Resources can withdraw a multi-billion-dollar oilsands project in northern Alberta it must be because they can see the majority of the people are ahead of the Governments in seeing we must transition to sustainable energy.

In a world moving away from fossil fuels, this project was only ever offering false promises to the workers of Alberta, and Canada, who are naturally concerned about their futures. Canada has a wealth of opportunities awaiting in wind, solar, geothermal and energy efficiency. Now is the time to invest in the clean energy sector and a real just transition for communities.

Surely all the fossil fuel subsidies would provide jobs in cleaner energy? Simple but not easy!

Trust in God!

The confusion:
Confrontations over Wet’suet’en and Coastal GasLink pipeline
                                                                   by Andrew Conradi, ofs (OFS JPIC and GCCM Laudato Si’Animator)
 
Are you confused? Not sure what’s going on? Fed up with blockades? Want to know a bit of background to better understand it all? Wonder what questions are raised by this conflict? Is this related to climate change and hearing the cry of the earth and cry of the poor? If there is a Canadian Catholic position on this, what is it?
  
          Franciscan Voice Canada & the Common Good will try to help clarify these issues!
 N.B. We are not experts but have done our best and do hope that in the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ: “Research is the highest form of Adoration” !

Starting in Dawson Creek, the pipeline's route crosses through the Canadian Rockies and other mountain ranges to Kitimat, where the fracked gas will be liquefied at a planned $18-bn gas liquefaction and storage plant to be exported to Asian customers. We know fracking is not environmentally sound although LNG is less environmentally damaging in carbon emissions than coal which it may replace. The pipelines’ route passes through several First Nations peoples' traditional lands, including some that are unceded. Although approved by 20 First Nations' elected Band councils, including five of the six Wet’suet’en elected Band Councils, approval has been withheld by the hereditary chiefs of the Wetʼsuwetʼen Nation on ecological grounds leading to a blockade of construction within the Wetʼsuwetʼen peoples' traditional lands. The hereditary chiefs had suggested an alternative route, passing over less ecologically and culturally sensitive lands, but the company found these proposals, among other difficulties, too expensive.
​
The company and government point to support from elected chiefs and Band councils along the pipeline route, many of which have signed benefit-sharing agreements as a way to gain much-needed money for their communities through jobs.  The only elected Band council not to sign an agreement with Coastal GasLink is the Hagwilget which is 40% Wet’suwet’en and 60 % Gitxsan and a community within Gitxsan territory.
 
The elected Band councils, imposed under the Indian Act, have a limited role in governing six reserves totalling 35 square kilometres (click on link to see map). The Wet’suwet’en say their traditional territory is 22,000 square kilometres and the hereditary chiefs, who also have a limited role, are responsible for those territories. Coastal GasLink began negotiations with the hereditary chiefs but when the company did not get agreement switched to the Band councils; but the pipeline does not pass through any reserves. This relates to the question of who has jurisdiction and should be consulted and give consent to the pipeline. This can only be settled by the Wet’suwet’en themselves.
​
There exist 13 hereditary chief positions but four are vacant so only six are named and they only represent three clans. They don't represent all the clans according to elected Chief Dan George of the Ts'il Kaz Koh First Nation.​

Protests, occupations and road & rail blockades later spread beyond Wet’suwet’en land e.g. to the BC Legislature in Victoria and to other First Nations e.g. Mohawk lands in Ontario and Québec. Old & young and Indigenous & settlers took part in sympathy protest demonstrations and blockades. A Franciscan friar told me he wondered if the Holy Spirit was at work bringing diverse people together because of this aboriginal and fossil fuel issue.
 
Three major questions come to mind:
    1. Sovereignty. Since these lands are unconquered and unceded by treaty who has sovereignty and whose law prevails?
   2. Delay in resolution of aboriginal title and rights. Why have these questions not been answered before? (N.B. The answers are complicated but have been simplified in the answers here)
    3. The church’s position - What is it?
 
1.  Sovereignty. A partial answer to the question on sovereignty was answered by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1997 Delgamuukw decision and the 2014 Tsilhqot'in decision, both of which recognized Aboriginal title over unceded territories. Aboriginal title is a sui generis, or inherent unique collective right to the use of and jurisdiction over a group’s ancestral territories. [Sui generis is a Latin phrase that here means "of its own kind, in a class by itself", therefore "unique".]
The two cases were partial answers because they failed to resolve details leaving them to negotiations between the parties. Incidentally it was the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, not the elected Bands, who brought the Delgamuukw action (Delgamuukw being a Gitxsan hereditary chief’s name).  Although First Nations aboriginal title bestows the right to prior consultation and consent over development on their land this does not grant a veto. Negotiations have sometimes been fast if it was in the interests of the Crown or settlers e.g. The Douglas Treaties (1849/50) or the Numbered Treaties (1871-1920). Or slow e.g. the Nisga’a Treaty (2000). Now with the civil disobedience and blockades the Wet’suet’en have upped the ante.
 
2. Delay in resolution of aboriginal title & rights. The answer to the length of time taken to answer the question leads to examination of the legal concepts going back to Roman times: terra nullius, doctrine of discovery, and history of British and Canadian treaty making with First Nations, cultural genocide and reconciliation, etc, etc.

See more: https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1380223988016/1544125243779

Another part of the answer is that governments have failed to resolve issues around Aboriginal rights and title, unless forced to after lengthy and expensive court battles or negotiations over treaties like the Nisga’a treaty (2000) marking the end of a 113-year journey — and the first steps in a new direction because on that date, the Indian Act ceased to apply to Nisga’a people northern coastal mainland BC (not shown on map above). The Nisga’a Treaty, reached outside the treaty commission process, showed the way. The Nisga’a created a constitution, ratified by the nation’s members.
 
The Wet’suwet’en remain one of 65 First Nations currently ensnared in the B.C. Treaty Process, negotiating a self-government agreement with the BC Treaty Commission established in 1993.  But after 27 years and around $1 billion there are just three treaties. Another 26 First Nations are still negotiating. And 31 nations that originally signed up — including the Wet’suwet’en, represented by the hereditary chiefs — are “not currently negotiating.” For the Wet’suwet’en that seems to be changing as I write (7 March) depending on acceptance by the Wet’suwet’en of an agreement announced 1 March 2020 after a meeting of the (Canada) Minister for Crown-Indigenous relations, Carolyn Bennett and (BC) Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, Scott Fraser and Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs. In the words of Carolyn Bennett, “we have agreed as ministers that we will come back to sign [it] if it is agreed upon by the Nation." Details will not be revealed until then but it appears to be about Indigenous rights and land titles. Disagreement remains over the natural gas pipeline going through traditional territory which the hereditary chiefs continued to oppose. However presently as I write, protest rail blockades have been removed across Canada. Mohawks removed the Tyendinaga & Kahnawake rail blockades saying: 'It's a gesture of good faith.'
 
For the Wet’suet’en Nation the hereditary chiefs have forced the issue of their title and rights over the pipeline. Why did they have to wait 22 years after Delgamuukw? As one commentator, John Ivison, wrote in the National Post: “It looks very much like Ottawa has been shaken from its lassitude by the protests, which is poor reflection on this government and its immediate predecessors. It suggests that Indigenous Canadians only get noticed by their federal government when they take to the barricades.” (2 March 2020)
 
But we do not yet know if the 1 March 2020 agreement resolves the question of who speaks for the Wet’suet’en Nation when there are differences between the elected band councils and the hereditary chiefs and how these differences should be resolved.
Recognition of three of the hereditary chiefs is in dispute. Gloria George, Darlene Glaim and Theresa Tait-Day were stripped of their hereditary titles in recent years after creating the Wet'suwet'en Matrilineal Coalition. Those opposed to the stripping allege that customary law was not followed and the replacements are accused of “masquerading” as hereditary chiefs that have no right to speak as such. One of the hereditary chiefs works for Coastal GasLink and so can be presumed to be in favour of the pipeline.

SIX REASONS CLIMATE SCIENTISTS ARE HOPEFUL, AND YOU SHOULD BE, TOO
Here are the six reasons from British university profs:

• Costa Rica offers us a viable climate future
• Financial investors are cooling on fossil fuels
• We are getting much better at forecasting disaster
• Local authorities across the world are declaring a 'climate emergency'
• Radical climate policy goes mainstream
• Young people are on the march!

        .....Read more

.....and what about the Church:
Pope Pius XII’s actions to help persecuted Jews 
Pope Pius XII’s actions to help persecuted Jews speak far louder than his alleged “silence,” experts say.
“Never again!” has become an everlasting cry in response to the mass killing of Jews in Europe during the Second World War, and remembrance has become a perennial action to honor the victims of the Holocaust.

But whether the Catholic Church did enough to fight this injustice, and whether Pope Pius XII remained silent in the face of the Nazi atrocities, have also become perennial questions.    ...Read more 

More about the background on the Church and the Holocaust: You might like to read more and become aware of what was nearly published.  Humani generis unitas (On the Unity of the Human Race) was a draft for an encyclical planned by Pope Pius XI before his death on February 10, 1939. The draft text condemned antisemitism, racism and the persecution of Jews. For much more background on this fascinating topic check here. Also see Summi_Pontificatus
​
Summi Pontificatus is an encyclical of Pope Pius XII published on 20 October 1939. The encyclical is subtitled "on the unity of human society".[1] It was the first encyclical of Pius XII and was seen as setting "a tone" for his papacy. It critiques major errors at the time, such as ideologies of racism, cultural superiority and the totalitarian state. Some of it is apparently based on Humani generis unitas.
 
                    Peace & joy, Andrew Conradi, ofs