Alois Hudal
Roman Catholic Bishop, Nazi supporter and anti-Semite of Austrian descent
Alois Karl Hudal (also known as Luigi Hudal; 31 May 1885 – 13 May 1963) was an Austrian bishop of the Catholic Church based in Rome. For thirty years, he was the head of the Austrian-German congregation of Santa Maria dell'Anima in Rome and, until 1937, an influential representative of the Catholic Church in Austria.
In his 1937 book, The Foundations of National Socialism, Hudal praised Adolf Hitler and his policies and indirectly attacked Vatican policies. After World War II, Hudal helped establish the ratlines, which allowed prominent Nazi German and other European former Axis officers and political leaders, among them accused war criminals such as Adolf Eichmann, to escape Allied trials and denazification.
Biography
Education
Alois Hudal, the son of a shoemaker, was born on 31 May 1885 in Graz, Austria, and studied theology there from 1904 to 1908. He was ordained to the priesthood in July 1908.
Hudal became a specialist on the liturgy, doctrine and spirituality of the Slavic-speaking Eastern Orthodox Churches while a parish priest in Kindberg. In 1911, he earned a Doctor of Sacred Theology degree at the University of Graz. He entered the Teutonic College of Santa Maria dell'Anima in Rome, where he was a chaplain from 1911 to 1913 and attended courses in Old Testament at the Pontifical Biblical Institute. He earned his Doctor of Sacred Scripture degree with a dissertation on Die religiösen und sittlichen Ideen des Spruchbuches ("The Religious and Moral Ideas of the Book of Proverbs"), published in 1914.
The public source identifies “Alois Hudal” as roman Catholic Bishop, Nazi supporter and anti-Semite of Austrian descent. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Alois, Hudal and Roman.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alois Hudal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.