by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

Here is a history which you were never taught about in Catholic Schools of any kind. The extensive collaboration of Catholic Clergy with the Nazi regime and the Waffen SS before and during World War II. And not only in Germany, throughout Europe, and in the Vatican!

The information came to light when the U.S. Army captured Albert Hartl, a former Catholic priest from Bavaria, who became a close collaborator with Himmler after leaving the Catholic priesthood and joining the Gestapo and working closely with the SS in Russia!

You can see his photo above, taken at Nuremburg. Here is the Wikipedia caption on that photo:

Albert Hartl (1904-1982) at the Nuremberg Trials. Hartl was RSHA-Fuhrer and SS-Member. This photograph of Hartl (probably as a witness) was taken by US Army photographers on behalf of the Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality (OUSCCPAC, May 1945 – Oct. 1946) or its successor organization, the Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes (OCCWC, Oct. 1946 – June 1949).

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the life of Hartl (note SD = Gestapo):

Hartl studied for the priesthood from 1916 to 1929 at a seminary in Freising and the University of Munich. He was ordained in 1929 by the Archbishop of Munich Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber and began teaching, including at the Freising seminary.^[2]

Career with SD

While teaching at Friesing, Hartl became involved with a group of priests who had joined the Nazi Party, and in 1933 he signed up as a paid SD informant. He reported Father Josef Rossberger, apparently his best friend, for anti-Nazi activity, which led to a trial, Rossberger’s imprisonment, and Hartl being taken into protective custody by Richard Heydrich, head of the SD. Following this, Hartl left the priesthood and joined the SD himself.^[2] In 1935, according to Gitta Sereny, he became the SD’s Chief of Church Information.^[3] In March 1941, when the Reich Security Head Office was reorganized, he was placed in charge of a Gestapo office known as IV B (“Sects”). Department IV B4, led by Adolf Eichmann, was the office responsible for the deportation of Jews outside Poland.^[4]

I reprint here pages from a OSS interrogation report on Albert Hartl, an ex-Catholic priest who joined the Waffen SS and received information from a network of spies throughout Europe during the Nazi era. The OSS was the Military Intelligence Service of the U.S. Military, which was charged in rounding up Nazi Spies, and potential war criminals during and after World War II.  Albert Hartl, at the end of the war, fled to Yugoslavia, but was arrested on a trip back to Austria. The information he gave up was crucial to mapping out the Nazi spy network within the Catholic Church from 1932-1945.

The report was declassified as per the Nazi War Crimes Act of 2007, and released by the CIA. You can download the entire report, which is 65 pages long, in PDF format here:

OSS – SSU – CIG EARLY CIA DOCUMENTS VOL. 5_0007 Full Document

St. Gallen Mafia connection

I publish this as an Appendix to my reports on the affiliations of Catholic Clergy with the Nazi Party and movement, which I covered in the following articles, previously published here at FromRome.Info:

1. The Nazi Forefathers of the St. Gallen Mafia
2. The Nazi Refugees and the origins of the St. Gallen Mafia

I do so, because Albert Hartl, was ordained a priest by Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich from 1917 to 1952, was a member of the House of Rampolla di Tindaro, to which the St. Gallen Mafia belongs according to its episcopal lineage.

I think this OSS document detailing the activities of Albert Hartl make it quite clear that Catholics cannot ignore the question of the interference of intelligence agencies and foreign spies at the Vatican, nor exclude the possibility that a political party among the clergy might control the Church so as to serve the most vile and godless interests.

What all need to really pay attention to, is how this Nazi agent, a Rampolla circle member, PROPOSED TO THE OSS — the future CIA — how to infiltrate the Catholic Church using controlled well-known personalities in Catholic education and media (p. 26, below).

Now for the pages which concern us. I reprint them as they are contained in the report from pages, 16-26, with a few exceptions.

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The

THEN AFTER THE REPORT ON PROTESTANT CLERGY AND RENEGADE CATHOLIC CLERGY, the report on Nazi informants at Rome:

AND FINALLY THE EVALUATION OF THE QUALITY OF INFORMATION SUPPLIED BY ALBERT HARTL to the US. OSS:

AND FINALLY, HARTL’S PROPOSAL FOR INFILTRATING CATHOLIC CHURCH BY THE CIA AND HOW TO GO ABOUT IT, through controlled Personalities…. !