QUESTION: What were the Vatican Ratlines?

ANSWER: The “Vatican Ratlines” was a nickname given by U.S. Army Intelligence to the underground escape route set up and run by Papal Rome (i.e., the Vatican) to help Nazi and Fascist war criminals avoid capture at the end of World War II. These Nazi and Fascist war criminals, including no small number of Roman Catholic clergy, were hidden in monasteries and convents – even in Rome itself – until they could safely travel under disguise with counterfeit identity papers to such locations as the USA, Argentina, and other Latin American countries.

Some of the Nazi and Fascist war criminals that the Vatican helped to escape Europe at the end of World War II included such “human monsters” as Adolf Eichmann (head of the Nazi SS Department for Jewish Affairs), Klaus Barbie (Nazi Gestapo chief in Lyons, France), Franz Stangl (commandant of the Nazi extermination camp at Treblinka in northeast Poland), and Ante Pavelic (Fascist Croatian fuehrer who was responsible for the mass murder of up to one million innocent Serb Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Gypsies).

Let us never forget that pro-Nazi, anti-Jewish Pope Pius XII – a man whom some in the Roman Catholic Church want to “canonize” (i.e., to make – to declare – a “saint” of the Roman Catholic Church) – was the “boss” of the men who supervised and operated the Vatican Ratlines!

Dave Hunt, on pages 310-315 of his book, “A Woman Rides the Beast” (1994), tells us: “Having failed to do anything on a significant scale to rescue the Jews, the pope [Ed.: i.e., Pope Pius XII] would exert great effort to save their murderers. …The pope let it be known in the [Ed.: European] refugee camps [Ed.: near and at the end of World War II] that the Vatican would shelter [Ed.: Nazi and] Fascist fugitives.

…A steady stream of Nazi [Ed.: and Fascist] war criminals began to flow through an underground escape route which was quickly set up by the Vatican. The network would be known as the [Ed.: Vatican] Ratlines. Investigative reporters Mark Aarons and John Loftus…write in their remarkable book ‘Unholy Trinity’: ‘Under the direction of Pope Pius XII, Vatican officials such as Monsignor Giovanni Montini (later Pope Paul VI) supervised one of the greatest obstructions of justice in modern history…facilitating the escape of tens of thousands of Nazi [Ed.: and Fascist war criminals] to the West…’

Most [Ed.: Roman] Catholics would have been shocked to know what the Vatican was secretly doing – and most of all to know that the escaping [Ed.: Nazi and Fascist] war criminals included a large number of [Ed.: Roman Catholic] clergy, from priests to archbishops. Nor was the Vatican ignorant of their [Ed.: i.e., the fleeing Nazi and Fascist war criminals’] crimes but had actually given them its blessing with full knowledge of the awful facts…

…This underground network [Ed.: i.e., the Vatican Ratlines] of [Ed.: Roman] Catholic offices, seminaries, monasteries, convents, and residences provided not only shelter on the escape route but false identities and passage to South America and other safe havens. The most infamous mass murderer of them all, Adolf Eichmann…head of the SS Department for Jewish Affairs and in charge directly under Hitler of the entire Holocaust, was among the tens of thousands who were carefully smuggled by [Ed.: Roman] Catholic officials with Vatican blessing down the Ratlines.

The [Ed.: Vatican] Ratlines began with diplomatic pressure applied by [Ed.: Pope] Pius XII to allow his personal representatives to visit prisoner-of-war camps to minister religiously to [Ed.: Roman] Catholics. The real purpose was to identify and smuggle out Nazi [Ed.: and Fascist] war criminals. It can hardly be a coincidence that the man Pius XII chose to head this outrageous obstruction of international justice was his close adviser, [Ed.: Roman Catholic] Bishop [Ed.: Luigi “Alois”] Hudal, whom almost all of Rome knew was a fanatical anti-Semite and pro-Nazi…

[Ed.: Roman Catholic Bishop Luigi “Alois” Hudal] faithfully carried out a secret mission [Ed.: i.e., overseeing the Vatican Ratlines] in service of the pope and his beloved [Ed.: Roman Catholic] Church. After he was replaced, that work continued under Vatican sponsorship. The new men in charge were even more overtly evil than [Ed.: Bishop] Hudal. Like him, they were [Ed.: Roman Catholic] clergy who believed they were serving God and knew they had the pope’s blessing.

…To help finance the Vatican’s escape network [Ed.: for Nazi and Fascist war criminals], [Ed.: Walter] Rauff [Ed.: a Nazi war criminal and mass murderer of Jews] enlisted a former SS colleague, Frederico Schwendt, one of the most talented counterfeiters of all time. His genius supplemented Vatican funds during the early days of the [Ed.: Vatican] Ratlines. Later operations were supported in large measure from the sale of some of the Nazis’ ill-gotten treasures, including hundreds of pounds of gold smuggled out to the West and laundered by [Ed.: Roman] Catholic prelates.”

Eric Jon Phelps, on page 1285 of his book, “Vatican Assassins” (Third Edition, 2007), tells us: “Jesuit-trained Pope Pius XII, advised by Bavarian German Jesuit Robert Leiber, ruled the Order’s Vatican Ratlines. He appointed his close personal friend, Austrian [Ed.: Roman Catholic] Bishop Luigi ‘Alois’ Hudal (1885-1963), a former consultant for the Holy Office of the Inquisition…to control the Vatican’s escape routes over the Brenner Pass into Italy. [Ed.: Bishop] Hudal, intimate with [Ed.: German] Knight of Malta Franz von Papen and Nazi officials, used Jesuits guiding [Ed.: Nazi] SS Lt. Col. Walter Rauff to help other top Nazis out of Europe including Heinrich Mueller, Adolf Eichmann, Franz Stangl (commandant of Treblinka), Martin Bormann and Joseph Mengele. Once out of Europe the Nazi Jesuit Coadjutors were then protected by [Ed.: Pope] Pius XII’s Sovereign Military Order of Malta through employment within its international business consortiums – under the guise of the Cold War!

…Monsignor Montini [Ed.: who was Pope Pius XII’s Under Secretary of State] was the master of Bishop Hudal, responsible for the Pope’s international affairs. This included his direct supervision of the [Ed.: Vatican] Ratline’s Caritas Internationalis, which issued passports to fleeing Nazis. The director of Caritas in Vienna, and later in Rome, was one of the Pope’s monsignors – Jesuit Karl Bayer! The Company [Ed.: i.e., the Jesuit Order] shuttled over 50,000 Nazis to foreign ports…”

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE VATICAN Ratlines:

Read the 544-page paperback book, “A Woman Rides the Beast”, by Dave Hunt. To order this book via credit card, please call The Berean Call at 1-800-937-6638 (orders only; 8 A.M. – 5 P.M. Pacific time).

Read the 236-page paperback book, “The Vatican’s Holocaust”, by Avro Manhattan. To order this book, please make check or money order payable in the amount of $12 (includes S&H to U.S. locations) to “Ozark Books”, and mail it to: Ozark Books // P.O. Box 3703 // Springfield, MO 65808.

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