Pope Pius XII 'helped Jews'

Documentary evidence has been found that Pope Pius XII ordered monasteries to shelter Jews being persecuted by the Nazis, a Vatican prelate said yesterday.

Peter Gumpel, the late Pope's official advocate in the process to have him beatified, the first step towards canonisation, said the November 1943 order had turned up in a Rome monastery in the archives of Augustinian nuns.

Moves to beatify Pius XII, who has been accused of passivity during
the Nazi genocide of Jews, have been criticised within the Catholic Church as well as by Jewish groups.