A second reason is that the Catholic Church was profoundly anti-Bolshevik and they identified Jews with Bolshevism, which the Nazis called Judeo-Bolshevism. This view was not nearly as widespread among other Christian churches.
You write in the book that the Catholic Church must make amends for its misdeeds, but hasn’t it already done all it can do? Didn’t it drastically alter its basic beliefs regarding Jews during the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s?
I give the Church a great deal of credit in the book for the advances it’s made, but it still has a long way to go. Surveys show that between 20-35 percent of people from Catholic countries believe that Jews today – not just way back when, but today – are guilty for the death of Jesus.
So the Church has to address the falseness of such a damaging charge and teach Catholics that this is a form of anti-Semitism, which the pope has said is actually a sin.
What will your next book be about?
I have a bunch of projects underway, though I’m not quite ready to talk about them. I write every day, literally every day. I’m also working now with WNET on making a documentary based on The Devil That Never Dies for public television.
