Editing Pope Pius XI (section)

==== Response of the press and governments ====
While numerous German Catholics, including those who participated in the secret printing and distribution of the encyclical, went to jail and concentration camps, the Western democracies remained silent, which Pius XI labeled bitterly a "conspiracy of silence".<ref name="Franzen, 395">Franzen, 395.</ref><ref name="divinired">[[Encyclical]] ''[[Divini Redemptoris]]'', §&nbsp;18 (AAS 29 [1937], 74). 1937. ''Libreria Editrice Vaticana'' ([https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19031937_divini-redemptoris.html English translation] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150909124153/http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19031937_divini-redemptoris.html |date=9 September 2015 }})</ref> As the extreme nature of Nazi racial [[anti-Semitism]] became obvious, and as Mussolini in the late 1930s began imitating Hitler's anti-Jewish race laws in Italy, Pius XI continued to make his position clear. After Fascist Italy's [[Manifesto of Race]] was published, the pope said in a public address in the Vatican to Belgian pilgrims in 1938: "Mark well that in the Catholic [[Mass (liturgy)|Mass]], [[Abraham]] is our Patriarch and forefather. Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do. No, no, I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we [Christians] are all Semites".<ref>Marchione 1997, p. 53.</ref> These comments were reported by neither [[Osservatore Romano]] nor [[Vatican Radio]].<ref>John Connelly, [http://commonwealmagazine.org/nazi-racism-church Nazi Racism & the Church: How Converts Showed the Way to Resist] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130321053148/http://commonwealmagazine.org/nazi-racism-church |date=21 March 2013 }}, Commonweal, 24 February 2012</ref> They were reported in Belgium on 14 September 1938 issue of [[La Libre Belgique]]<ref>Giovanni Miccoli, " Les Dilemmes et les silences de Pie XII: Vatican, Seconde Guerre mondiale et Shoah », Éditions Complexe, 2005, {{ISBN|978-2-87027-937-3}}, p. 401</ref> and on 17 September 1938 issue of French Catholic daily [[La Croix (newspaper)|La Croix]].<ref>[http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k443437h.langEN La Croix, 17 September 1938, page 1] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202124149/http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k443437h.langEN |date=2 February 2017 }}, Gallica, accessed 12 November 2012</ref> They were then published worldwide but had little resonance at the time in the secular media.<ref name="Franzen, 395" /> The "conspiracy of silence" included not only the silence of secular powers against the horrors of Nazism but also their silence on the persecution of the Church in Mexico, the Soviet Union and Spain. Despite these public comments, Pius was reported to have suggested privately that the Church's problems in those three countries were "reinforced by the anti-Christian spirit of Judaism".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Geert |first=Mak |title=In Europe:Travels through the 20th century |year=2004 |page=295}}</ref>