Word that the Vatican is now charging that the U.S. and British governments suppressed information about the extent of the Holocaust is all at once comic, ironic and tragic. Recently, the Vatican’s official newspaper, “L’Osservatore Romano,” declared that Allied governments during World War II deliberately failed to act to stop the systematic murder of European Jewry despite having detailed information about it. The Vatican article also noted that the wartime Pope Pius XII worked quietly to help save Rome’s Jews during the Nazi occupation of the city.

The charges against the Allies, the paper wrote, are evident when one reads the diary of then U.S. Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau, who was Jewish. “The incapacity, indolence and bureaucratic delays of America impeded saving thousands of Hitler’s victims,” wrote Morgenthau. For good measure, he added, “We in Washington [knew that the Nazis] had planned to exterminate all the Jews of Europe” since August 1942 [but] for about 18 months from receiving the first reports of this horrible Nazi plan, the State Department did practically nothing.”

This is neither new nor news. In fact, scholars have poured over such references and in doing so rightly tarnished the reputation of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Indeed, significant research has shown that protestations that any move against the concentration camps would have taken away from the fight against the Nazis – the best way to stop the Holocaust –rings hollow.

It’s more likely that this article is part of the Vatican’s ongoing campaign to deflect criticism of the wartime Pius XII, who is still on the path to sainthood – a topic extremely emotional and controversial amongst Catholic-Jewish dialogue participants.

In truth, everyone failed when it came to the Holocaust. There are no points to score here, but only profound lessons to learn. That is why trying to place one group’s piety over another is a sad, sad chapter in the ongoing effort to comprehend the massive tragedy of the 20th century.