Editor’s note—this article is based on a video at The Edwin Black Show, which includes visual documentation of all facts. The video can be seen here.

During the final ceremony of the most recent March of the Living at Auschwitz, I was quite moved when Israel Defense Forces Chief Cantor LTC Shai Abramson sang the song of the fighting partisans who waged war from the forests, and he sang it in Yiddish — just like my father and mother sang it when they were partisans fighting in the Polish woods [ed. note: see all the MotL recordings]. My parents told me that every day, they prayed to God to deliver them just one more day. As the cantor’s voice pierced the air, I also recalled the brave men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, praying to the heavens as they did. The speakers on stage reminded us as well that every day the brave men and women of the IDF also pray to God as they fight to preserve life and the nation.

We are reminded of the Talmudic injunctions for self-defense and warfare to save lives. It is the principle of self-defense, and the mandate to preserve life, the principle of Pikuach Nefesh, which overrules all other religious tenets in Judaism — Save Life.

And then my mind went to Pope Leo XIV, who on Palm Sunday declared that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

Pope Leo says this about men who stormed Normandy, about every Jew in the IDF, and about my parents who fought as partisans. At the same time, he condemned President Trump’s war to save humanity from nuclear conflagration by religious fanatics in Iran. Pope Leo, who are you to tell us whose prayers God hears?

I know the world sees you as a great Holy Man. But I see you as just another product of the Catholic Church in Chicago, one of the most criminal and corrupt organizations in American history. I’m from Chicago myself. So, you, Pope Leo, know what I know about Chicago.

I spent some of my early professional years investigating the Catholic Church in Chicago, as did a cadre of Catholic reformers and Catholic journalists. Fact: The Catholic Church in Chicago completely partnered with the corrupt Democratic political machine and the Chicago Mob’s worst gangsters to make millions of dollars and accrue power. Let’s go back a few decades.

The Chicago Archdiocese was led by Cardinal John P. Cody. He lived in a mansion and had a mistress — effectively a wife — Helen Dolan Wilson, who he showered with a missing million dollars of church money that funded a Boca Raton vacation home and many other benefits. The Chicago Sun-Times was among the leaders in exposing this. A federal grand jury was close to indicting Cardinal........

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