"Report ties Vatican to Croatian fascists"

The following is excerpts from an article that appeared on June 3, 1998 in the Oregonian newspaper.

"The U.S. study says church officials may have helped the Nazi-backed regime's leaders after World War II

WASHINGTON - The Vatican may have helped leaders of the Nazi- backed fascist regime in Croatia escape after World War II with plundered gold and other valuables from Holocaust victims, a U.S. report said Tuesday.

"It seems unlikely that they were entirely unaware of what was going on," the report said of Pope Pius XII and his advisers, who helpled run a Rome pontifical college where war criminals took sanctuary.

The Vatican connection was raised in the second U.S. report about Nazi gold, a document focusing on how neutral nations provided Germany with materials for weapons and goods during World War II."

"The United States has long known about the Rome pipeline for hiding fascist Croation leaders because U.S. Army intelligence also used it to secretly shuttle former Nazis to South America, said the report, which relied on recently declassified U.S. documents.

The report, produced mainly by the State Department with contributions from other government agencies, said the pontifical College of San Girolamo was a refuge for Croatian puppet ruler Ante Pavelic and other Ustasha leaders after they killed as many as 700,000 people in Nazi-style death camps."