Peter Gumpel

Peter Gumpel (* November 15, 1923 in Hannover ) is a German Jesuit and Church historian.

Under the Nazi regime, he and several members of his family were persecuted by the Nazis. He had to escape twice, first to France and then to the Netherlands, where he went and helped persecuted Jews during the war in the underground.

Since 1954 he was a tutor at Germanicum in Rome. He received his doctorate in 1964 at the Gregorian. Gumpel was a professor of " History and Theology of the Catholic Spirituality " at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. From 1960 he was deputy general of the Jesuit Order. From 1972 to 1983 he was a theological judges at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Since 1983 he is the relator in the beatification process of Pius XII.

Gumpel expressed regret that known Catholic personalities and groups the beatification of Pius XII. questioned and Jewish groups the beatification process opposed resistance. In this context, Gumpel expressed to an Austrian newspaper, it is an incontrovertible historical fact that many of the Bolsheviks, who had the Catholic and Orthodox Church persecuted in Russia, were Jews.