We, the undersigned, appeal to the international community...all Governments, the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, Amnesty International, non-governmental institutions, World Churches, Synagogues, Mosques, other regional organizations, and all people of right action and goodwill throughout the world to call upon the Vatican to acknowledge and apologize to Ethiopians for its complicity with the Fascists who perpetrated unspeakable war crimes against humanity in Ethiopia during the Fascist Italian occupation of that country from1935-1941.

Vatican officials and clergy, under the spiritual leadership of Pope Pius XI, blessed Mussolini’s Fascist army on its way to carry out a systematic mass extermination campaign in Ethiopia that claimed the lives of no less than one million people, including the entire monastic community at the Debre Libanos Monastery, the destruction of 2,000 churches, 525,000 homes and the perpetration of havoc upon the environment. Human beings and animals who relied on the environment for air, water and food died in great numbers from horrific atrocities including poison gas sprayed from Fascist airplanes, over battlefields and remote rural areas, while the League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations, and 52 world governments and The Vatican stood by silently and watched.

Though Mussolini’s systematic genocide of the Ethiopian people from 1935-1941 occurred virtually within the same timeframe as Hitler’s Nazi holocaust against the Jews from 1933-1941, nevertheless, the Fascist genocide in Ethiopia is excluded from the annals of the world’s history books and from historical genocide documents at the United Nations. While the Vatican has graciously apologized to Jews for its silence during the Nazi holocaust, it has never extended the same Christian courtesy to Ethiopians although, in their case, the Vatican was directly complicit in Fascist atrocities in Ethiopia. The Vatican’s silence and the United Nations disregard of the genocide against the Ethiopian people is counter to the principles of human rights and justice and continues to have a negative impact on every generation of all peace loving people including those of African origin.

Discrete efforts to elicit a Vatican apology have so far remained unanswered. We, therefore, have to appeal to the international community to demand a full, public apology by the Vatican for its complicity with the Fascists who perpetrated untold war crimes against humanity in Ethiopia.

On behalf of the innocent victims of Fascist atrocities in Ethiopia from 1935-1941, we thank you for your support.

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