Eventually 400,000 Germans were sterilized, and the Vatican did not issue a Pastoral
Letter against it for another decade, only after the tide of the war had begun to turn against the Nazis.
Benedict’s resignation was a selfless act since he had come to realize he was not capable of leading the modern church and making the tough decisions that were needed. “It wasn’t one thing, but a whole combination of them,” concluded Paolo Rodari, Il Foglio’s veteran Vatican reporter. Vatileaks, said Rodari, “was a constant drumbeat on the Pope.
In a historic 1933 accord, the Vatican was the first sovereign state to sign a bilateral treaty with Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. The Nazis promised to protect Catholics inside Germany in return for the church endorsing Hitler’s government.
Mussolini’s insistence on public morality, belief in the inferior role of women, and the ban on contraception and abortion made the fascists palatable to the church.
John Paul was a bystander as the American church quietly approved an aggressive new legal strategy that included, as The Washington Post uncovered, “hiring high-powered law firms and private detectives to examine the personal lives of the church’s accusers, fighting to keep documents secret and engaging in new tactics to minimize settlements.