such a show of his Catholicism—that he saw nothing inhuman or un-Christian in it ... the deportation of 80,000 persons to Poland, is equivalent to condemning a great number of them to certain death." The Vatican protested to the Slovak government that it "deplore(s) these... measures which gravely hurt the natural human rights of persons, merely because of their race." On 18 September 1942, Pius XII received a letter from Monsignor Montini (future Pope Paul VI), saying "the massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms". Later that month, Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the Vatican, warned Pius that the Vatican's "moral prestige" was being injured by silence on European atrocities, a warning which was echoed simultaneously by representatives from the United Kingdom, Brazil, Uruguay, Belgium, and Poland. Myron C. Taylor passed a US Government memorandum to Pius on 26 September 1942, outlining intelligence received from the Jewish Agency for Palestine which said that Jews from across the Nazi Empire were being systematically "butchered". Taylor asked if the Vatican might have any information which might "tend to confirm the reports", and if so, what the Pope might be able to do to influence public opinion against the "barbarities". Cardinal Maglione handed Harold Tittmann a response to the letter on 10 October. The note thanked Washington for passing on the intelligence, and confirmed that reports of severe measures against the Jews had reached the Vatican from other sources, though it had not been possible to "verify their accuracy". Nevertheless, "every opportunity is being taken by the Holy See, however, to mitigate the suffering of these unfortunate people". In December 1942, when Tittmann asked Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione if Pius would issue a proclamation similar to the Allied declaration "German Policy of Extermination of the Jewish Race", Maglione replied that the Vatican was "unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities". Pius XII directly explained to Tittman that he could not name the Nazis without at the same time mentioning the Bolsheviks. Following the Nazi/Soviet invasion of Poland, Pius XII's Summi Pontificatus called for the sympathy of the whole world towards Poland, where "the blood of countless human beings, even noncombatants" was being spilled. Pius never publicly condemned the Nazi massacre of 1,800,000–1,900,000 Poles, overwhelmingly Catholic (including 2,935 members of the Catholic clergy). In late 1942, Pius XII advised German and Hungarian bishops to speak out against the massacres on the Eastern