Authors

Francesco Zavatti¹;  ¹ Institute of Contemporary History, Södertörn Univ, Sweden

Discussion

This paper explores a little-known dimension of Catholic humanitarianism: the encounters between the Roman Catholic Church and Romanian fascists and war criminals displaced in Western Europe after the Second World War. In the absence of reliable sources, historiography has long remained silent on the relationship between the Vatican and Romanian “fascists on the run”. Posthumous memoirs and unsubstantiated reports preserved in secret police archives, however, have fuelled speculation and prejudice—especially since a few dozen among the displaced continued to seek ways of giving Romanian fascism an afterlife with political substance, while many others attempted to obscure or downplay their earlier political commitments and the stigma associated with it.

Drawing on newly released sources from the pontificate of Pius XII, preserved in Vatican, ecclesiastical, and private archives, this study reconstructs the origins, dynamics, and outcomes of these humanitarian encounters through a micro-historical approach. This method makes it possible to serialise, contextualise, and thus render intelligible anomalous episodes that might otherwise appear as isolated or marginal events in postwar history.

The paper first examines the material assistance provided by Catholic networks, which secured for select Romanian displaced persons unusual privileges compared with their compatriots in the DP camps—including accommodation, access to resources, and protection from the authorities. Second, it considers the diverse purposes behind such assistance, which ranged from fostering the potential union of Orthodox believers with Roman Catholicism, to saving the rescued from the dangers of forced repatriation and thus preserving their human rights, to broader ideals of Christian charity. Finally, the paper demonstrates that although Catholic rescuers extended refuge, they consistently rejected proposals for political alliances advanced by the rescued, thus challenging widespread assumptions and calling for a reassessment of the Cold War representations of the Vatican, Catholicism, and the Romanian diaspora.