An unknown number of thousands of such children were sheltered in this manner, and an unknown percentage were not returned to Jewish families.
At a news conference at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, CJC vice president Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld said that court action would likely be the group's next avenue if the Vatican does not respond.
The CJC hopes to determine how many Jewish children hidden in convents during the Holocaust were not returned to their families after World War II - and possibly their current identities as well. The issue came to the fore once again several weeks ago when a 1946 document was found indicating that Pope Pius XII approved a Church directive not to return baptized Jewish children to their families.
Amos Luzzatto, president of the Italian Jewish community, wrote after the above discovery that "there will be problems in relations with the Jews, if proceedings continue for the beatification of Pius XII."
"Today, on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz," Rabbi Herzfeld said, "it is time for the Vatican to hear loud and clear: 'We want our children back.' As long as the children of all those murdered at Auschwitz do not know their true identities, how can we truly say that Auschwitz has been liberated?"
"The Catholic Church deserves credit for having hidden these children," said CJC President Rabbi Avi Weiss of Riverdale, NY. "Where they went wrong is when they refused to return them. That's abominable. We're talking about kidnapping. Spiritual kidnapping. And as a rabbi who believes deeply in reaching out to clergy of other faiths, I really implore the Catholic Church to come clean on this."