11 Million Holocaust Victims

Left: St. Edith Stein.

We know that there were 6 Million Jews butchered by the Nazis during World War II but they were not alone.  Of the 6 Million Polish citizens killed, three million were Jews and 3 Million were Polish Christians and Catholics. Heinrich Himmler said, “All Poles will disappear from the world… It is essential that the great German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles.”

When they refused to sign documents of loyalty to Nazi ideology Jehovah Witnesses were forced to wear purple armbands.  Thousands were imprisoned as dangerous traitors because they refused to take a pledge of loyalty to the Third Reich.  But other Christians did not quite do as well.  Hitler sought to create a new religion and had no time for those whose faith was strong enough to resist the Nazi ideology.  Catholic Priests and Christian pastors as well as those who were influential community leaders were arrested and imprisoned in a special barracks for clergy set up at Dachau, near Munich, Germany.  Those who were not executed were allowed to die slowly of starvation and disease.

Contrary to common belief, under Pope Pius XI as Nuncio to Germany Eugenio Pacelli, the later Pope Pius XII spoke out strongly against Hitler and his murderous regime.  After assuming the Chair of Peter in 1939 he was Europe’s strongest moral voice against Nazism and he worked constantly to save the lives of millions.

1929 Pacelli was appointed Papal Secretary of State. In 1930 Cardinal Pacelli assumes new duties. L'Osservatore Romano, which speaks the mind of the Holy Father and Church, runs a series of articles from the office of Cardinal Secretary of State severely criticizing Nazism. The October 11, 1930 article declares: "Belonging to the National Socialist Party of Hitler is irreconcilable with the Catholic Conscience." These pieces are reprinted in diocesan newspapers around the world, especially in Germany, where bishops and priests emphasize that the teaching is official Church teaching.



Indeed, Catholics and Protestants joined the Jews in their march to death at the hands of the Nazis, despite the efforts of Pius XII and a host of senior clergy in occupied Europe who condemned anti-Semitism and resisted Nazi oppression.

A New Saint

Kateri Tekakwitha, pronounced ‘gaderi degagwitha’ in Mohawk, also known as Catherine Tekakwitha, was the first Native American to be beatified by blessed Pope John Paul II in 1980.  She will be canonised a saint by Pope Benedict XVI on October 21 2012.

Also known as ‘The Lilly of the Mohawks’ she was born in the Mohawk village of Gandaouague in northern New York around the year 1656, the daughter of Kenneronkwa, a Mohawk chief, and Tagaskouita, a Roman Catholic Algonquin.

On her death in 1680 scars from the smallpox she suffered as a child, vanished causing Pope Pius XII to declare this a miracle, but this was not the only reported miracle attributed to Blessed Tekakwitha. Among others was a miracle cure of Joseph Kellogg, a non Catholic who after being captured by natives suffered smallpox which could not be cured.  Joseph became a Catholic and after Jesuits exposed him to relics from Tekakwitha’s grave he was cured.  Other miracle cures included the hearing of a priest being recovered and a nun in Montreal another woman is said to have recovered from a kind of pneumonia.  In the case of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, there is no shortage of miracles.

A bronze statue of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha kneeling in prayer, created by the artist Cynthia Hitschler, is featured along the devotional walkway of Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine, La Crosse, Wisconsin.

The Sun’s evil twin.

No, I’m not referring to the British Newspaper “The Sun” but to the star that gives us all the light of day.  That big, bright, shiny yellow thing in the sky.  Does the Sun have an evil twin?  Well, there’s a scientific theory that seems to say so.

Nemesis, is a hypothetical, hard to detect red dwarf star, or possibly a white dwarf (unlikely) or brown dwarf (possible) that is orbiting the sun every 26 million years (yep that is million and not a typo).  Its distance from the sun is about one and a half light years beyond the Oort cloud (no this isn’t a typo either).  The Oort cloud is all the frozen rocky, dirty snowball stuff that makes up the core of a comet.

It is believed that as Nemesis heads in toward the sun it knocks bits of the Oort cloud out of place sending it in toward the sun – and us!  This is why it is thought that the earth faces mass extinctions every 26 million years or so (or whatever), the earth get’s a smack by a comet knocked out of its safe orbit by the Sun’s evil twin.

Nemesis is only a fraction the mass of the Sun (which is why it’s a dwarf) and no where near as bright (white, red or brown in color) and impossible to see from the earth by any telescope – but not in the infrared spectrum from space which is why there’s a satellite up there looking for the little bugger.

David Raup and Jack Sepkoski identified in a paper a statistical periodicity in extinction rates over the last 250 million years.  They found what they believed to be a pattern of extinctions on average of every 26 million years but they could not identify a cause.  This later drew the attention of several teams of Astronomers, leading to the hypothetical Nemesis.  Don’t hold your breath!  In 2010 Melott and Bambach re-examined the fossil data using improved dating and found evidence suggesting an extinction rate of 27 million years.  Given that there’s no sign of the little bugger causing all the problems and we’re still in the ‘safe zone’ I don’t think there’s any need to increase your insurance policy just yet.