Tainted Vatican Media Bats for Biden

Pope's newspaper endorsed antisemitism and dictatorial regimes for decades

In an unconventional intervention, the Vatican's official mouthpiece — discredited for its unstinting antisemitism and support for dictatorial regimes — has extolled the pro-abortion US President Joe Biden, comparing him to Pope Benedict XVI and Nelson Mandela. 

While Pope Francis refused to comment or even pray for Donald Trump after the former president nearly died from an assassination attempt, L'Osservatore Romano offered effusive praise for Biden's decision to withdraw from the presidential race and seek a second term as the nation's president. 

"Political time can be very fruitful even in short periods."

"Giving up is costly. Very costly," the editorial published July 22 gushed, stressing that Biden had made "a noble choice, which — as several observers have noted — places the good of the country above one's personal interests."

"Political time can be very fruitful even in short periods: Joe Biden has 'only' six months left before the handover of power on January 20, 2025," the Vatican newspaper raved, explaining that Biden no longer had to "make choices exclusively in view of the electoral campaign."

"It is to be hoped that the US president (Biden) will give life to new courageous and creative initiatives to achieve those objectives that will define his legacy in history, particularly in foreign policy, starting from the end of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East," the editorial enthused. 

COMPARING BIDEN TO BENEDICT

L'Osservatore Romano compared Biden's quitting the campaign trail to Pope Benedict XVI's "historic renunciation of the Petrine ministry" in February 2013. 

"In 1999, Nelson Mandela made a similar choice," the editorial noted, "when he gave up running for a second presidential term and retired from public life," after defeating apartheid and starting the process of reconciliation in South Africa. "Now it was time to leave to others the harvesting of the seeds that had cost him 27 years in prison."

Ducking the issue of the undemocratic manner in which his successor was chosen, the Vatican mouthpiece argued that Biden had "already indicated his preference for vice president Kamala Harris to succeed him in the Oval Office."

"In 1999, Nelson Mandela made a similar choice."

The Vatican has displayed a markedly different attitude to Trump. After the failed assassination attempt on the former president, the Holy See Press Office issued a terse statement intentionally omitting Trump's name. 

"The Holy See expresses its concern about last night's violence which hurts people and democracy, causing suffering and death," it announced. "It joins in the prayer of the US Bishops for America, for the victims and for peace in the country that the motives of the violent may never prevail." 

The statement was not sent to journalists or included in the Vatican's daily bulletins. 

Moreover, Pope Francis did not refer to the assassination attempt in his Sunday Angelus address. Instead, the pontiff prayed for "all populations who are oppressed by the horror of war," urging his audience not to forget "tormented Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, and Myanmar."

HISTORICAL BLEMISHES

Founded in 1861, the Vatican's daily newspaper has been regarded as the most authoritative source for Vatican views on its political affiliations, and viewed all over the Catholic world as offering the clearest expressions of the reigning pope's perspectives on the issues of the day. 

Historians, however, have noted L'Osservatore Romano's unsavory support for antisemitism and the regimes of Hitler and Mussolini. 

"The attitude of L’Osservatore Romano not only no longer gives rise to concerns but has assumed ... an attitude of greater understanding."

"The Vatican's enthusiasm for the Duce (Mussolini) was again on display on the tenth anniversary of the March on Rome. L'Osservatore Romano's support for the dictator could scarcely have been more enthusiastic," writes Professor of Italian Studies Dr. David Kertzer in his bestseller The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe. 

Mussolini had worked "vast, profound, colossal changes in all branches of public administration," the Vatican daily reported, and since his first address in parliament in 1921, had "exalted the incomparable beauty of the Catholic idea and the Church's mission in the world," the daily reported.

RACIST RANTS

Raimondo Manzini, who expressed his support for an "Italian racism," served for 18 years as the editor of L'Osservatore Romano, supporting the Facists' racial theory that "a pure Italian race exists" which is "of Aryan origin." 

In an antisemitic rant, the Vatican daily noted that the popes had restricted the rights of Jews for centuries in order to protect Catholics. "The Vatican newspaper thus offered a blueprint of the anti-Semitic laws that Mussolini would begin enacting less than three weeks later," Kertzer writes. 

While the newspaper criticized Nazi Germany in the first weeks of 1939, the attacks abruptly ceased after Pope Pius XII wrote to Hitler just three days after his election on March 5, 1939, expressing his hope that he could restore harmonious relations between the Vatican and the Third Reich. 

"The Vatican newspaper thus offered a blueprint of the anti-Semitic laws that Mussolini would begin enacting less than three weeks later."

Pius XII expressly ordered L'Osservatore Romano to end all criticism of the Nazi regime. The newspaper complied. In mid-September, when the daily published an article portraying US President Roosevelt in a good light, the pontiff lashed out at the editor,

Giuseppe Dalla Torre, turning down his request to buy new printing machines and ordering a reduction in the number of copies printed.

The pontiff even ordered all copies of the day's printed edition of the newspaper to be pulped when it contained, without editorial comment, war bulletins from Italy and Germany, but also those from France and the Allies, telling newsstands that the printing machinery had broken down. 

In 1940, Bernardo Attolico, Mussolini's ambassador to the Vatican, reported that "the attitude of L'Osservatore Romano not only no longer gives rise to concerns but has assumed, and I've been assured that it will always assume in the future, an attitude of greater understanding."

Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.

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