Pope Pius XII `helped the Jews'

Vatican City - The Vatican yesterday forcefully rejected accusations that wartime Pope Pius XII was an anti-Semite and Nazi sympathiser who turned a blind eye to the Holocaust. "He certainly was not [an anti-Semite]. He helped the Jews," said Father Pierre Blet, the Vatican's leading historian on the second World War. Father Blet, a French Jesuit, was responding to a point-blank question - "Was Pius an anti-Semite?" - asked at a news conference presenting the Italian version of his book Pius XII and the Second World War in the Vatican Archives.