Vatican’s Bloody Bargains: From Hitler’s Reich to Iran’s Mullahs

Background: Pope Leo gives top honor to Iran’s Ambassador and Iranian state media is making the most of it.

Christopher Hale: Pope Leo XIV has named Mohammad Hossein Mokhtari, Iran’s ambassador to the Vatican, a Knight of the Grand Cross of the Pontifical Order of Pius IX, according to a certificate dated May 8 and signed by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the pope’s Secretary of State. The honor raises the Iranian envoy to one of the most senior classes of the highest active papal order, founded in 1847 by Pope Pius IX and conferred today on senior diplomats and heads of state…. Iranian state media is not treating this as a routine retirement honor. PressTV and the West Asia News Agency are running the certificate alongside images of Mokhtari with Pope Leo XIV, framing the medal as a counter-signal from an American pope to a wartime American president — a quiet diplomatic verdict on Donald Trump’s bombing campaign against Iran (Hale).

Marc Thiessen: Truly, Leo has lost the plot (Thiessen).

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Vatican’s Realpolitik Alliances from the Third Reich to the Islamic Republic of Iran

By: Amil Imani

The Vatican does not stand for ‘good’ or ‘evil’; it stands for the survival of the Vatican. From the 1933 treaty with Hitler to the 2026 handshake with Tehran, the Holy See has proven that it will always prioritize its own diplomatic desk over the lives of those suffering under the regimes it legitimizes.

While the smoke still rose from the ruins of the Third Reich and the world cried out for the heads of the architects of the Holocaust, a silent, crimson thread was being spun from the heart of the Vatican. As the Nuremberg trials sought justice, the Ratlines – a clandestine network of clergy and Church – issued travel documents – were already funneling the world’s most wanted monsters, from Adolf Eichmann to Josef Mengele, toward the safety of South American sunrises. This was not a lapse in judgment; it was the signature of a centuries-old geopolitical playbook. Today, as the Holy See maintains a cozy, uninterrupted dialogue with the Mullahs of Tehran while the rest of the West recoils at their brutality, the uncomfortable truth becomes impossible to ignore: the Vatican does not just tolerate autocrats – it treats them as its most enduring business partners.

The legacy of Pope Pius XII remains one of the most contentious subjects in modern history, balancing between the image of a silent witness to the Holocaust and a cautious diplomat working behind the scenes. The opening of millions of documents in the Vatican archives in 2020 has finally provided historians with the evidence needed to move beyond polarized labels. The relationship between the Catholic Church and the Nazi regime began with a formal pact that would haunt the papacy for years. In July 1933, the future Pius XII – then Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli – spearheaded the Reichskonkordat, a treaty between the Holy See and the Third Reich.

For Hitler, the agreement was a massive victory; it was his first international treaty, granting his regime a veneer of moral legitimacy and international approval. However, the agreement effectively pulled the rug out from under internal Catholic opposition. Parish priests found it difficult to criticize a Chancellor whom the Pope had formally recognized.

Even as the pact was being signed, warnings were ignored. Edith Stein, a Jewish – born nun, wrote an urgent letter to the Pope in 1933, pleading for the Church to speak out against the idolization of race. Neither Pius XI nor his successor, Pacelli, responded to her. When Pacelli became Pope Pius XII in 1939, he adopted a stance of official neutrality.

One of the most damning revelations from the newly unsealed files is the extent of the Pope’s knowledge regarding the mass murder of Jews. By the autumn of 1942, the Vatican had received detailed eyewitness reports of incredible butchery in the Warsaw Ghetto and atrocities in Lviv. When the United States government asked the Vatican to corroborate these reports, Secretary of State Luigi Maglione claimed the Holy See could not confirm the news in detail. Internal documents now show that this refusal to speak was influenced by deep – seated prejudice within the Vatican bureaucracy. A newly discovered memo from a staffer advised against believing the reports, dismissing them because Jews easily exaggerate, and that Eastern European sources were not an example of honesty. This anti – Semitic memo was notably absent from the 11 – volume collection of wartime documents the Vatican published in the 1960s to defend its reputation.

The tension between the Church’s moral mission and its institutional preservation was never clearer than on October 16, 1943. On that day, the SS rounded up over 1,200 Jews in Rome – some just 800 yards from St. Peter’s Square. While the Jews were held for two days at a military college, the Vatican’s response was revealingly selective. Archives show the Vatican worked feverishly to identify those who had been baptized as Catholics, arguing that they should not be considered Jews and thus should be spared from deportation.

While approximately 250 baptized individuals were freed, the remaining 1,007 Jews were put on trains to Auschwitz; only 16 survived. When the Cardinal Secretary of State met with the German ambassador to inquire if the roundup could be stopped, the ambassador warned that the order came from Hitler himself. The Vatican official quickly backed down, stating he was not insisting on any protest. For the Vatican, the institutional church was the supreme value. He feared that a Nazi defeat might lead to the triumph of Bolshevism in Europe. His primary goal was not the preservation of secular lives, but the safeguarding of the institutional interests of the church.

The historical reserve was not a one – time tactical error; it was the birth of a doctrine that continues to define the Church’s relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran today. While much of the Western world has isolated Tehran over its nuclear ambitions and state – sponsored terrorism, the Vatican has maintained uninterrupted diplomatic relations since 1954. The partnership goes deeper than mere diplomacy; it is an ideological alliance born from a shared hatred of secular liberalism.

وقتی پاپ میخاره !
پاپ لئو چهاردهم، بالاترین نشان افتخار دیپلماتیک واتیکان را به سفیر پفیوز جمهوری اسلامی، آیت‌الله محمد حسین مختاری، اعطا کرد.

فرستاده همان رژیمی که چند وقت پیش بالاخره پاپ بر اثر فشار ترامپ مجبور شد اشاره‌ای گذرا به کشتار دی ماه بکند!

پاپ لئو نه تنها برای جان… pic.twitter.com/a8TBYLm1Vy

— Amir Farshad EBRAHIMI (@Goftaniha) May 13, 2026

In international forums like the United Nations, a striking and consistent pattern has emerged. Despite their theological divides, the Holy See and Iran frequently vote as a bloc. Both entities resist secular Western shifts regarding traditional family structures, gender roles, and reproductive rights. Critics argue that this shared social conservatism creates a theocratic shield that protects both institutions from modern liberal critiques. During the brutal crackdowns on Iranian protesters throughout 2025 and 2026 – a movement characterized by the Woman, Life, Freedom slogan – the Vatican’s response remained characteristically measured. While thousands were arrested or executed, the Holy See opted for the language of dialogue over denunciation.

Just as Pius XII calculated that the Nazi regime was a necessary bulwark against the East, the modern Vatican views the Mullahs of Tehran as a necessary partner in a shared war against secularism. In both eras, the pattern is identical: secret negotiations over public principles, a moral vacuum where the oppressor is never named, and the prioritization of religious authority over the cries of the persecuted.

Whether it is the Ratlines after WWII or the cordial hosting of Iranian officials today, the Catholic Church remains a master of the long game. However, as the world becomes increasingly polarized, the Church faces a looming crisis of credibility. History has finally unsealed the truth about the Church’s silence: it is a business decision. The archives of 1943 tell a story of a Church that chose the safety of its stone walls over the lives of those being loaded onto trains just 800 yards away. Today, that same cold calculus is mirrored in the Vatican’s refusal to break with the Mullahs. As the Iranian regime’s ‘gender apartheid’ became a global scandal, the Holy See once again chose the path of secret back-channels.

The Vatican does not just tolerate autocrats – it validates them. From 1933 to 2026, the Holy See has proven that in the struggle between human rights and institutional power, it will always choose the side of the dictator. History suggests that the Church will always choose the treaty over the protest, betting that institutions outlive the dictators they once shook hands with. But as the bodies pile up in the name of religious dialogue, one must ask: what is left of the soul of an institution that only survives by consorting with the world’s most dangerous actors?