Pius XII
Pius XII (Latin: Pius PP. XII), secular name Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (Rome, March 2, 1876-Castel Gandolfo, October 9, 1958), was number 260.o pope of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City from March 2, 1939 until his death in 1958. Pope Benedict XVI declared him venerable on December 19, 2009 along with John Paul II.
Before his election to the papacy, Pacelli worked as secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, apostolic nuncio and cardinal secretary of state, from where he was able to reach the conclusion of several international concordats with European and American states, including The Reichskonkordat with Nazi Germany stood out, signed in 1933 and still partly in force. On the other hand, it had a decisive influence on the writing of the encyclical letter of Pius XI entitled Mit brennender Sorge to the German bishops, of March 14, 1937, which meant a severe warning to the regime of Adolf Hitler.
His tenure as nuncio in Germany and as head of the Catholic Church during World War II continues to be the subject of analysis and controversy, mainly with regard to the intensity of his reaction to the crimes of the Nazi regime against millions of people in Europe for ethnic or ideological reasons.
Pius XII died at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, aged 82, after suffering acute heart failure caused by a myocardial infarction.
Biography
Early Years
Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli was born in Rome on March 2, 1876, into an aristocratic family whose history linked them to the papacy, since they belonged to the so-called black nobility.
He was the third of four children born to Filippo Pacelli, Prince of Acquapendente and Sant'Angelo in Vado, and his wife the nobildonna Virginia Graziosi.
His paternal grandfather, Marcantonio Pacelli, was second secretary in the Ministry of Finance of the Papal States, and then secretary of the Interior during the pontificate of Pius IX (whom he accompanied into exile in Gaeta) from 1851 to 1870; he founded the Vatican City newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano in 1861. His cousin Ernesto was one of the most important financial advisers to Pope Leo XIII, his father was dean of the Roman Rota, and his brother Francesco was a renowned lawyer specializing in canon law, known for the negotiations in the Lateran Pacts in 1929, which meant the conclusion of the Roman Question. Later, Francesco would be made a marquis by Pius XI.
At the age of twelve, he announced his intentions to enter a seminary instead of becoming a lawyer. Most of the biographical information that exists about Pacelli's childhood comes from the work of Sister Margherita Marchione.
He did his first studies at a private Catholic school. After finishing his primary studies, Pacelli undertook his classical secondary studies at the Ennio Quirino Visconti Lyceum in Rome, a school with anti-clerical and anti-Catholic tendencies.
In 1894, at the age of eighteen, he entered the Capranica seminary to prepare for priestly ordination. However, he could not stand the boarding school, so in the summer of 1895 he left the seminary and enrolled for the following year at the Apollinare Institute. In the seminary he had received a special dispensation to live in his house, due to health problems.From 1895 to 1896, he studied philosophy at the University of Rome La Sapienza.
Ecclesiastical functions
Priest and Monsignor
Pacelli was ordained a priest on April 2, 1899, (Easter Sunday) by Bishop Francesco Paolo Cassetta—Vice Regent of Rome and a family friend—and received his first assignment as manager at Chiesa Nuova, where he had served as acolyte.
That same year, he enrolled at the Pontifical Gregorian University and at the Apollinare Institute of the Pontifical Lateran University. In addition to receiving a doctorate in theology and in civil and canon law (in utroque iure). Vincenzo Vannutelli, cardinal of the S. Silvestro a Capite and a seasoned diplomat, who was a personal friend of his father, took him under his protection and tutored him in his studies. [ citation needed ]
In 1901, he entered the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, a sub-office of the Vatican Secretariat of State, where he became a minutante, thanks to the recommendation of Cardinal Vannutelli.
In 1904, Pacelli was appointed chamberlain and in 1905 domestic prelate of His Holiness. Between 1904 and 1916, he assisted Cardinal Pietro Gasparri in his codification of canon law in the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. Also, in 1901, he was chosen by Leo XIII to deliver, on behalf of the Holy See, condolences to King Edward VII of the United Kingdom on the death of his mother, Queen Victoria. In 1908, he served as the Vatican's representative to the International Eucharistic Congress in London, where he met Winston Churchill. In 1911 he represented the Holy See at the coronation of King George V.
In 1908 and 1911, Pacelli refused to be a professor of canon law at La Sapienza University in Rome and at the Catholic University of America, respectively.
In 1911, he became undersecretary and, the following year, assistant-secretary – a position he held during the papacy of Benedict XV – and in 1914 he was secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs as successor to Gasparri, who was promoted Cardinal Secretary of State. As secretary, Pacelli concluded a concordat with Serbia four days before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand of Austria in the attack on Sarajevo, which triggered World War I. During the course of the war, he kept the record vatican prisoner of war In 1915, he traveled to Vienna to assist the apostolic nuncio to that city, Monsignor Scapinelli, in his negotiations regarding Italy with Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.
Archbishop and Nuncio
Pope Benedict XV appointed Pacelli as apostolic nuncio to Bavaria on April 23, 1917, consecrating him titular bishop of Sardis and immediately elevating him to archbishop on May 13 of that year, before he left for Bavaria where, fifteen days later, he would meet with King Louis III and, later, with Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. As there was no nuncio in Prussia at that time, Pacelli was, for practical reasons, nuncio to all of Germany, having his nuncio officially extended on June 23, 1920 and in 1925 to the Empire and Prussia respectively. Many of Pacelli's assistants in Munich would remain with him until the end of his life, including sister Pascalina Lehnert, Pacelli's assistant, friend and adviser for 41 years.
Cardinalate
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On December 19, 1929, he was appointed cardinal presbyter of the title of Ss. Giovanni e Paolo by Pope Pius XI and, on February 7, 1930, he replaced Cardinal Gasparri as Secretary of State. Years of service to the department governed by this cardinal weighed heavily, but Pacelli was also undoubtedly the best expert on German politics and it was this country that set the pace of the time.
He negotiated and signed the concordats of the Holy See with the Duchy of Baden (1932), the Republic of Austria (1933) and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1935). He historically highlights the signing of the Reichskonkordat between the Holy See and Germany, with the support of German conservative and Catholic leaders Franz von Papen and Ludwig Kaas. This concordat is still in force today.
On the other hand, one of his most important actions as Secretary of State was to shape what would later become the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, which harshly condemned the policies of the Nazi regime. This encyclical was written at the initiative of the German bishops, drawn up in Rome in a first draft by Michael von Faulhaber, cardinal of the title Saint Anastasia and archbishop of Munich and Freising. Pacelli was the redactor of the definitive text. Dated March 14, 1937, it was read in all churches in Germany on March 21 (Palm Sunday), drawing Hitler's wrath. It was answered by the regime's propaganda apparatus headed by Joseph Goebbels. In his presentation of the encyclical, Pacelli likened the German Führer to the devil and presciently warned of his fear that the Nazis would launch a "war of extermination."[citation needed]
In 1938, he baptized the future King Juan Carlos I of Spain in the chapel of the Order of Malta.
During his tenure in the second Vatican post, he traveled to the United States, Argentina, Hungary and France and met with their respective leaders, which began to give him great international projection.
Pacelli accumulated to the Secretary of State – a position that he maintained even after being elected pope – the positions of Archpriest of the Vatican Patriarchal Basilica (1930), of Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archeology (1932) and of Camerlengo of the Catholic Church (1935).
Papacy
Choice
On the death of Pius XI in February 1939, the organization of the vacant see corresponded to Pacelli due to his position as camerlengo. He, precisely, was the favorite candidate. On March 2, 1939, after a conclave that lasted only two days and the third vote, he was elected pope and, in honor of his predecessor, he chose the name Pius XII. Ten days later he was crowned by the Cardinal Protodeacon of Santa Maria in Domnica, Camillus Caccia-Dominioni.
Before and during World War II
Pius XII was a pope with no direct pastoral experience, neither in parishes nor in dioceses, since his entire career had been spent in the Vatican administration. He was, on the other hand, a perfect connoisseur of the Roman curia, in which he moved practically all his life. Before his coronation and as a preventive measure, he drew up a letter of resignation before a notary public in the event that he was taken prisoner by the Nazis, so that the same thing that had happened with the arrest of Pius VII by Napoleon in 1809 would not happen.
On January 11, 1940, he summoned the representative of the United Kingdom to the Holy See, Francis D'Arcy Osborne, to inform him that a group of German generals wanted to overthrow Hitler and seek a peace agreement that it included the liberation of Poland and Czechoslovakia, but not Austria. The message was passed on to the war cabinet in London, which in mid-January decided not to take part.
In its 1941 Christmas editorial, the New York Times praised Pius XII for "standing fully against Hitlerism" and for "leaving no doubt that the Nazis' aims are irreconcilable with his own concept of Christian peace".
Several Jewish historians, such as Joseph Lichten of the B'nai B'rith (a Jewish organization dedicated to denouncing anti-Semitism and keeping the memory of the Nazi genocide alive), have documented the efforts of the Holy See in favor of of the persecuted Hebrews. According to Lichten himself, in September 1943, the Pope offered Vatican property as ransom for Jews imprisoned by the Nazis. He also recalls that, during the German occupation of Italy, the Church, following the instructions of Pius XII, hid and fed thousands of Jews in Vatican City and in the Castel Gandolfo palace, as well as in temples and convents. In the 1958 Jewish Antidefamation League newsletter, Lichten stated that:
The [Pius XII] opposition to Nazism and its efforts to help Jews in Europe were well known to the suffering world.
According to some sources, the Nazis had an advanced plan to kidnap the pope, and other sources claim that Pius XII supported three plots to overthrow Hitler.
In 1944, during the Second World War and with Benito Mussolini at the helm of the Italian Social Republic, his Christmas radio message called Benignitas et humanitas gave a decisive boost to the political current called Christian Democracy for the entire world for valuing, albeit with some caution, the democratic form of government:
Demonstrate his opinion on the duties and sacrifices imposed on him [sic - political participation]; not being compelled to obey without being heard [sic - freedom of expression]: there are two rights of the citizen who find in democracy, as indicated by his name, his expression. By the solidity, harmony and good fruits of this contact between the citizens and the government of the State can be recognized if a democracy is truly healthy and balanced, and what is its life and development force.Pius XII
Fragment of Benignitas et humanitas24 December 1944
After the war, several times Jewish organizations and personalities officially recognized the wisdom of the pope's diplomacy.
The World Jewish Congress thanked Pius XII for his intervention in 1945, with a generous donation to the Vatican. In the same year, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Yitzhak Herzog, sent the pontiff a special blessing "for his efforts to save Jewish lives during the Nazi occupation of Italy."
After the war, Israel Zolli, Chief Rabbi of Rome, who as no one else could appreciate the pope's charitable efforts for the Jews, converted to Catholicism and, as a sign of gratitude, took the pontiff's first name at baptism., Eugenio. Zolli wrote a book about his conversion, offering numerous testimonies about Pius XII's actions.
On September 7, 1945, Giuseppe Nathan, commissioner of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, declared:
First of all, we pay a reverent tribute of gratitude to the Supreme Pontiff and to the religious and religious who, following the directives of the Holy Father, saw in the persecuted brothers, and with courage and self-denial they gave us their help, intelligent and concrete, without worrying about the grave dangers to which they were exposed.Giuseppe Nathan
L'Osservatore Romano, 8 September 1945
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On September 21 of the same year, Pius XII received in audience A. Leo Kubowitzki, Secretary General of the International Jewish Congress, who came to present him, on behalf of the Union of Jewish Communities, his gratitude for the efforts of the Catholic Church on behalf of the Jewish population throughout Europe during the war.
On November 29, 1945, the Pope received about eighty delegates of Jewish refugees from various concentration camps in Germany, who came to express "the great honor of being able to personally thank the Holy Father for the generosity shown towards those persecuted during the terrible period of Nazi-fascism" (L'Osservatore Romano, November 30, 1945, p. 1).
In 1958, when Pius XII died, Golda Meir (Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs) sent an eloquent message:
We share the pain of humanity (...). When the terrible martyrdom fell down upon our people, the voice of the pope rose in favor of their victims. The life of our time was enriched with a voice that spoke clearly about the great moral truths above the tumult of the daily conflict. We mourn the death of a great servant of peace.Golda Meir
US President Eisenhower, upon learning of the pontiff's death, declared that "the world is now poorer after his death".
Israeli diplomat Pinchas Lapide estimated that Pacelli was responsible for personally saving at least 700,000 Jews. Jewish historian Richard Breitman has written a book on the Holocaust. As a consultant to the Working Group for the restitution of property to the Jews – a group that has obtained the declassification of the OSS dossiers. In an interview with Corriere della Sera, on June 29, 2000, Breitman – the only one authorized to see the documents on US espionage in World War II – explained that what impressed him the most was been German hostility towards Pius XII and the country's Germanization plan of September 1943. Breitman has also found "the Allied silence on the Holocaust astonishing".
In another area, after the discovery in 1938 of a necropolis under the basilica of Saint Peter, Pius XII ordered excavations to be carried out that would later be used to study whether the basilica had been built on the authentic tomb of the apostle. Several ancient tombs were found and one of them had an inscription (dated to around 270-290 AD) depicting two heads, one above the other. To the left of the lower head was the inscription PETRU, and to the right an S, along with a prayer addressed to Peter to intercede for all the Christians buried near his body. The discovery was described by Margherita Guarducci. In a radio address given on December 23, 1950, Pius XII accepted the findings, although he acknowledged that the skeletal remains could not be attributed to Peter with certainty. In 1964, Pablo VI would confirm that it was the remains of the apostle and, in 2006, Benedict XVI confirmed this fact again.[citation required]
After World War II
The pope's anti-communist attitudes became stronger after the war. In 1948, Pius XII declared that any Italian Catholic who supported communist candidates in that year's parliamentary elections would be excommunicated, and urged Azione Cattolica to support the Christian Democrats. In 1949, he authorized the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to excommunicate any Catholic who was active in or supported the Communist Party. He also publicly condemned the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
He had to be the Pope of the Cold War, and in this context his choice was clear: fervent anti-communism and an approach to the new emerging power, the United States. In this sense, his personal friendship with Francis J. Spellman, Archbishop of New York and military vicar of the North American forces, whom he named cardinal of the title of Ss. Giovanni e Paolo (1946).
After the war, Pius XII was also the spokesman to urge clemency and forgiveness for all those who participated in the war, including war criminals. He thus also interceded, through the apostolic nuncio in the United States, to commute the sentences of the Germans convicted by the occupation authorities. The Vatican requested a pardon for all those under sentence of death, once the execution of war criminals was allowed in 1948. A network of Catholic convents and religious institutions, together with the Red Cross, helped numerous Nazi criminals to evade justice, among them figures as important as Eichmann, who went to countries like Argentina, Spain, Australia or the US.
He explicitly recognized the regime that emerged in Spain from the civil war (1936-1939). In 1953, he signed a concordat with General Franco that gave a legal basis to the so-called Spanish "National-Catholicism", which would grant notable advantages to the Church in exchange for the legitimization of that system.
Pius XII also made the concordat with Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic in 1954. In this country, the rights of the Catholic Church were violated by repressive regimes. Pius XII also excommunicated Juan Perón in 1955 for his arrests of Church priests.
In post-war Italy, despite his tutelage and favoring the Christian Democracy party, he even clashed with its leader, Alcide de Gasperi, over his rejection of any pact with the extreme right and instead for his interest in collaborating with the left within a democratic spirit. Pius XII mobilized all his forces to prevent the access of a socialist to the mayoralty of Rome in 1952, but he did not succeed.
On November 1, 1950, through the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, he promulgated the doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin as a dogma of Catholic faith. It is the last dogma that the Catholic Church has defined until today.
One of his last documents was the encyclical Fidei donum (1957), in which he invited the entire Church to reactivate the missionary spirit, especially in Africa.
Last years
The last years of Pius XII's pontificate began at the end of 1954 with a long illness, during which his resignation was even considered. Subsequently, the changes in his work habits became noticeable. The pope began to avoid lengthy ceremonies, canonizations, and consistories, as well as showing hesitation in personal matters.
During his later years, he began to delay personnel appointments within the Vatican, finding it increasingly difficult to sanction subordinates and appointees such as Ricardo Galeazzi-Lisi (his personal physician), who after numerous indiscretions, was excluded from the Vatican. papal service in the last years of Pius XII, but keeping his title, he was able to enter the papal apartments to photograph the dying pontiff; later selling the snapshots to French magazines.
Pius XII was in the habit of elevating young priests as bishops, such as Julius Döpfner (35 years old) and Karol Wojtyła (38 years old), this being one of his last appointments in 1958. In addition, he took a strong position against the experiments pastoralists, such as "worker priests," who worked full-time in factories and joined political parties and unions. He continued to defend the theological tradition of Thomism as worthy of continued reform, and as superior to modern trends such as phenomenology or existentialism.
Illness and death
Since his 1954 illness, the pope has addressed lay people and groups on an unprecedented range of topics. Frequently, he addressed the members of scientific congresses, explaining Christian doctrine in light of the most recent scientific results. Sometimes he had to answer specific questions about morality, which were directed his way. For specific professional associations, he explained professional ethics in light of Church teaching. Pius XII granted the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, the oldest existing in Asia, the name of "the Catholic University of the Philippines."
Prior to 1955, Pius XII worked for many years with Giovanni Battista Montini (later Paul VI). The pope did not have a full-time assistant. Robert Leiber assisted him on occasion with his speeches and publications. Augustin Bea was his personal confessor. Pascalina Lehnert was his assistant and his housekeeper for forty years. Domenico Tardini was probably the closest to him.
Pius XII died on October 9, 1958 in the palace of Castel Gandolfo, the pope's summer residence, at the age of 82, after suffering acute heart failure caused by a sudden myocardial infarction.
His doctor later said: The Holy Father did not die of any specific illness. He was completely exhausted. He was overworked beyond the limit. His heart was healthy, his lungs were fine. He could have lived another twenty years, if he had saved himself.
Failed embalming
Pius XII's physician, Ricardo Galeazzi-Lisi, reported that the pontiff's body was embalmed in the room where he died using a new process invented by an embalmer from Naples, Professor Oreste Nuzzi.
Unlike all popes before him, Pius XII did not want his vital organs removed, demanding that he be kept in the same condition "in which God created him". According to Galeazzi-Lisi, this was the reason he and Nuzzi used a new method of embalming.
In a controversial press conference, Galeazzi-Lisi described in detail the embalming of the late pontiff's body. He claimed that it would use the same system of oils and resins with which the body of Jesus Christ was anointed. Galeazzi-Lisi claimed that the new process could "indefinitely preserve the body in its natural state". the corpse was hampered by the intense heat of Castel Gandolfo during the process.
Despite all attempts to reconstitute the face, the situation required the application of a wax mask.
Funeral
His funeral procession in Rome was the largest gathering of Romans from that date. The death of the pope, who was born in that city, was mourned by the Romans, apart from his memory as a wartime hero. Cardinal Angelo Roncalli wrote in his diary on 11 October that probably no Roman emperor had enjoyed so much of a triumph, which he considered a reflection of the spiritual greatness and religious dignity of Pius XII. He was finally entombed in the Vatican grottoes.
Testament
His will was published immediately after his death.
Controversies over his pontificate
Regarding the historiographical analysis of the conduct of Pope Pius XII during World War II and regarding the Jewish people and the Shoah, three clearly different periods can be recognized: a first stage, which goes from 1945 to 1963, in which the international community had a positive image of Pacelli's role regarding his intervention in favor of the Jewish people; a second stage, which extends from 1963 until well into the XXI century, in which a vision of Pacelli as an ally of the Nazis, a thesis supported by Rolf Hochhuth, Daniel Goldhagen, John Cornwell, Sergio Minerbi and others; and a third stage, in which historians such as Martin Gilbert, Ronald J. Rychlak and David Dalin once again present a positive image of the pontiff.
During the years after the end of the conflict, opinion about the role that Pius XII played during the war was extremely favorable and laudatory. The opinions of Yitzhak Herzog, Giuseppe Nathan, Leo Kubowitzki, Golda Meir, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Eugenio Zolli and Albert Einstein, among others, can be cited —already expressed in the previous sections of this article.
Einstein said:
As a lover of freedom, when the revolution came to Germany I looked confidently at universities knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth. But the universities were stalled. Then I looked at the great editors of newspapers who proclaimed their love for freedom in burning editorials. But they, like the universities, were reduced to silence, drowned in a few weeks. Only the Church stood and stood to face Hitler's campaigns to suppress the truth. I had not felt any personal interest in the Church before, but now I feel for her a great affection and admiration, because only the Church has had the courage and the stubbornness of upholding intellectual truth and moral freedom. I must confess that what I once despised now I unconditionally praise him.Albert Einstein
Time23 December 1940
The gratitude of the Jewish community in Rome to Pius XII was immortalized on a plaque that can be seen in the Historical Museum of the Liberation of Rome.
The New York Times editorial on December 25, 1942 stated: «The voice of Pius XII is the only voice in the silence and darkness that envelops Europe this Christmas... He is the only remaining ruler of the continent of Europe who dares to speak out loud."
Peter Gumpel repeats what Pius XII's collaborator Sister Pascalina Lehnert said about what she heard Cardinal Pacelli say about Hitler:
This man is completely exalted; all he says and writes bears the mark of his egocentrism; this man is able to trample corpses and remove everything that is an obstacle to him. I do not understand how many people in Germany do not understand it and do not know how to draw conclusions from what it says or writes. Who of these has at least read their creepy My fight?
Gumpel reveals that Pius XII performed several remote exorcisms on Hitler. Lehnert testified under oath:
... the German Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber and other bishops were persuaded that Hitler was demonstrated, so they alerted the Holy Father, and this, when the war began, not only did prayers, but resorted to exorcism on Hitler in his private Chapel, present us, the nuns.
Catholic writer Ronald J. Rychlak says that after the war, Soviet intelligence agencies intentionally discredited Pius XII as part of a covert war against the Church.
The event that gave rise to the controversial image of the pope regarding his relationship with Nazism was the publication of the play The Vicar by the German Rolf Hochhuth in 1962. The play was based on documentation forged and provided by the KGB, which intended to undermine the authority of the Vatican. This theory is adhered to by the British historian sir Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Winston Churchill and an expert in the history of the Jewish people.
The philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy recalls that Hochhuth "is also a well-known denialist, condemned as such several times", and recalled an interview of his, published in a far-right German weekly, "in which he defended David Irving, that denies the existence of the gas chambers".
In his book The Pontiff in Winter (2005), John Cornwell takes a more compassionate look at Pacelli and his silence, saying that the pope did not have much leeway under the Mussolini dictatorship and the subsequent Nazi occupation, although he continues to point out that Pius XII did not speak at the end of the war.
The position of the State of Israel can be summarized in what is written on the Yad Vashem monument:
When he was elected Pope in 1939, he filed a letter against racism and anti-Semitism that his predecessor had prepared. Even after the arrival in the Vatican of reports on the murder of Jews, the Pope did not carry out any protests or verbals or in writing. In December 1942, he abstained from signing a statement by the Allies condemning the extermination of Jews. When the Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz, the Pope did not intervene either. He maintained his neutral position during the war, with the exception of some appeals to the dignitaries of Hungary and Slovakia at the end of the war. Their silence and lack of guidance forced the men of the Church throughout Europe to decide on their own how to react.
The accusations of the State of Israel against Pius XII can be summarized in the following questions:
- his intervention in the signature of Reichskonkordat
- their decision not to enact the encyclical Humani generis unitas
- not having made a public protest about the Holocaust
- the lack of support to protect the Roman Jews during the "razzia" of October 1943
- the neutrality of the Holy See during the Second World War
Rabbi David G. Dalin, a professor of history and political science at Catholic Ave Maria University, says Cornwell is right that Hitler had a "favorite cleric" but that this was not the pope but the grand mufti of Jerusalem, the anti-Semitic Hajj Amin al-Husseini.
According to historian Michael Hesemann, Pius XII arranged the exodus of nearly 200,000 German Jews three weeks before the Night of Broken Glass.
The Jewish historian Saul Friedländer highlights Pacelli's aversion to Nazism and emphasizes his decisive collaboration in the drafting of the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge.
As early as 1939 Joseph Roth, a famous Jewish Austrian novelist and journalist and active communist militant, said:
... the pre-apocalyptic beasts (Nazis) that now dominate in politics already prey the true motives for which they persecute the Church. He (Pius XII) is the only one who truly harms them. What is more, those who did not fear a Pope, fear this one. And they don't just prey on him, but they know why.Joseph Roth
Israeli diplomat Pinchas Lapide estimated that Pius XII was personally responsible for saving at least 700,000 Jews.
During World War II, the actions of Pius XII and his Vatican aides (including the future Paul VI) not only helped save nearly 800,000 Jews, but he himself personally assisted many of them in Rome, according to an expert Jewish historian, Gary Krupp, supporting the conclusions of the Jewish historian and Israeli diplomat, Pinchas Lapide. Krupp and his wife Meredith are founders of the Pave the Way Foundation started in 2002 to “identify and remove non-theological obstacles between religions” . In 2006, Catholic and Jewish leaders asked him to investigate the "pitfall" of Pope Pius XII's reputation during the war. Pave the Way has some 46,000 pages of historical documentation to support these claims.
Among Pacelli's most prominent admirers is Rome's chief rabbi, Israel Zoller, who devoted an entire chapter of his memoirs to extolling his work of mercy toward the Jews. Zoller converted and was baptized in Rome by Bishop Luigi Traglia on February 13, 1945. His wife and his daughter were baptized a year later.
Many other testimonies and proofs of the work of Pius XII in defense of the Jews and in his resistance to Nazi policies can be found in the work of Rabbi David G. Dalin, who indicates that the title of Righteous Among the Nations it should be conferred on Pius XII, since he saved more Jews than Oskar Schindler.
Contrary to the theory that Pacelli was an anti-Semite, the Jewish historian Elliot Hershberg, points out that «whoever examines the large number of documents, testimonies, proven and demonstrable evidence, must necessarily conclude that Pope Pius XII was an affectionate and solidary friend of the Jewish people... As a Jew I know anti-Semitism well, and there is not a trace of anti-Jewish prejudice in the life of Eugenio Pacelli".
Rabbi Eric Silver also asserts that Pius XII was not anti-Semitic and adds that: «Whoever affirms the contrary has evidently never bothered to verify their own theses by comparing direct sources, studying the documents in the freely consultable archives in Rome ».
Dan Kurzman maintains that Hitler considered kidnapping and even assassinating the pontiff in 1944, but gave up fearing a possible Italian uprising. Kurzman also mentions that Pius XII participated in a 1939 failed attempt to overthrow Hitler.
Regarding Pius XII's silence, Catholic priest Peter Gumpel —postulator for Pacelli's beatification cause— points out that a public denunciation of the Shoah by the pope would not have saved a single life, but would have increased the persecution against the Jewish people, as happened in the Netherlands in 1942, when the Archbishop of Utrecht, Johannes de Jong, publicly denounced the persecution against the Jews; the Nazis captured and deported all Jewish converts to Catholicism, just as Edith Stein did. In 1968, Robert Kempner, Assistant United States Attorney General at the Nuremberg trials, argued that Pius XII's decision not to make a public denunciation was correct, since it would not have saved a single life. by the fascist assassins, the silent Pius XII gave radio speeches (for example, those of Christmas 1941 and 1942) that after his death would earn him the homage of Golda Meir." Historian Paolo Mieli quotes Kempner: " Any propagandist statement of a position by the Church against the Hitler government would not only have been premeditated suicide, but would have hastened the murder of far greater numbers of Jews and priests." Chief Rabbi of Denmark Marcus Melchior He said, "If the pope had spoken, Hitler would have massacred many more than six million Jews and perhaps eight million Catholics." German resistance member Josef Müller advised Pius XII to refrain from doing so. public statements against the Nazi regime, that only referred to in a general way and that left it to the German Catholic hierarchy to carry out the condemnations against the Nazi regime; according to Müller, any public condemnation made by the pope would have greatly hindered action of the German resistance.
Franz Josef Müller, the last living member of the White Rose, expressed his opinion about Pius XII not having made a public statement denouncing the Holocaust: «Look, even today I wonder: could he have done anything more? In Germany then there were also many Catholics whose lives were in danger. Parish priests, bishops and the Pope himself spoke illuminating words; But how could they have been more opposed to power, knowing that the Catholics would have paid the consequences? Listening to the pope's radio messages, we caught his indications between the lines ».
Father Pierre Blet recalls that Pius XII once decided to write a statement condemning the atrocities committed by the Nazis in Poland. In August 1943, Pius XII sent Father Quirino Paganuzzi to Poland to deliver the protest into the hands of the Archbishop of Krakow, Prince Adam Sapieha for publication. As soon as Monsignor Sapieha read the letter, he burned it, arguing that: "this is a brave statement... but if this writing falls into the hands of the Nazis, we, the Poles, will pay for it with a massive massacre."
Businessman and investigator into Pacelli's life, Gary Krupp, maintains that Pius XII went as far as personally rescuing some Roman Jews, in hiding as a Franciscan friar, when he walked the streets of Rome during the Nazi occupation.
Regarding the Razia of Rome on October 16, 1943, historians differ about the involvement of the pope in the rescue of the city's Jewish population; Of the nearly 8,000 Roman Jews who inhabited the city, 7,000 managed to escape. According to Susan Zuccotti and others, Pius XII did nothing about it and the rescue was the product of isolated, courageous and desperate efforts and by priests, monks and laymen like the Capuchin friar Père Marie-Benoît; According to historian Martin Gilbert, the pontiff was the one who alerted during the early hours of the morning about the raid, which allowed about 7,000 people to escape to safe places.
According to the American historian Mark Riebling, when the Germans invaded Rome in September 1943, there was discussion among the highest Nazi officials of taking the Vatican City with paratroop commandos and kidnapping Pius XII to take him to Germany, where Heinrich Himmler had planned the public execution of the pope for the inauguration of a new football stadium.
In 1999, the Jewish-Catholic Commission of Historians was created, a mixed group of Jewish and Catholic historians whose purpose was to examine the role of the Church during the Holocaust. The commission was suspended in 2001 after major disagreements arose, mainly over the impossibility of accessing documentation held by the Vatican. The dialogue was restarted in 2010 thanks to the efforts of the Pave the Way Foundation.
In 2012, documents were found in the Yad Vashem archives attesting to Pacelli's favorable disposition regarding the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine after the interview he had with Zionist militant Nahum Sokolow in 1917. In the same year, as apostolic nuncio to Bavaria, Pacelli called on the German government to protect the Jews of Palestine from reprisals by the Turks, and in 1926 he asked the German government to support the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Martin Gilbert argued, in 2008, that the final analysis of Pius XII's attitude towards the Jews could only be made when the Vatican's secret archives from the period of his pontificate were opened to the scrutiny of researchers, which it was expected to happen in 2013, but it did not happen until mid-2016. However, Gilbert made some observations regarding the criticisms that certain researchers made of Pius XII's actions with respect to the Jewish people and that are reflected in the Yad Vashem memorial:
- Pius XII did not sign and could never have signed the joint declaration of the Allies of 1942 regarding the persecution of European Jews precisely because it was a declaration of the Allies and the Vatican was not part of that entente political-military and that the criticism made it only seven days later in the Christmas message of 1942.
- The radial message of Christmas of 1942 never expressly mentioned that the Jews were persecuted by the Nazis, but their recipients understood the criticism that the message contained: the high circles of German diplomacy expressed that "in a way never seen before, the pope has repudiated the new European national-socialist order. He has practically accused all the German people of injustice against the Jews and has become the spokesman of the Jewish war criminals."
- Gilbert points out that it is unfair that in the monument it is pointed out that the efforts for the Jews of Hungary and Slovakia only took place towards the end of the war as a way that the Church had to congratulate late with the international community; the efforts made by the Church were made at that time because it was precisely at that time and not earlier, that the governments of Slovakia and Hungary carried out the mass deportation of Jews to the Nazi concentration camps.
In July 2012 —due to the large amount of documentary material and the contribution of the aforementioned historians— the Yad Vashem authorities modified the text written on the monument:
The Vatican, under Pius XI, Achille Ratti, and represented by the Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, signed a concordat with Nazi Germany in July 1933, with the aim of preserving the rights of the Catholic Church in Germany.The reaction of Pius XII, Eugene Pacelli, on the murder of Jews during the Holocaust is a matter of controversy among scholars. During the development of the Second World War, the Vatican maintained a policy of neutrality. The pontiff abstained from signing the Declaration of the Allies of 17 December 1942 condemning the extermination of the Jews. However, in his radio message of December 24, 1942, he referred to the “hundreds of thousands who, without any fault of their part, sometimes because of their nationality or ethnic origin, have been consigned to death or a slow disappearance”. The Jews were not explicitly mentioned. When the Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz, the Pontiff made no public protest. The Holy See appealed separately to the rulers of Slovakia and Hungary for the Jews.
The critics of the Pope argue that the decision to refrain from condemning the murder of Jews by the Nazis constitutes a moral fault: the lack of a clear guide left room for many to collaborate with Germany, reassured by the idea that it did not contradict the moral teaching of the Church. This also left the initiative of the rescue of the Jews to individual and lay clerics. Their defenders argue that this neutrality prevented harsher measures against the Vatican and the institutions of the Church throughout Europe, allowing a considerable rescue activity to take place at different levels of the Church. On the other hand, they note the cases in which the pontiff offered support for the activities in which Jews were rescued. Until all relevant material is available to scholars, this matter will remain open to future research.
Access to the secret Vatican Archives
In March 2019, Pope Francis announced that documents from the Vatican Secret Archives referring to the pontificate of Pius XII would be opened to researchers, which would be available from March 2, 2020.
More than 150 people have requested access to the archives, though only 60 can be accommodated in the offices at a time. Among the first to see the documents were representatives of the Jewish community in Rome and scholars from Yad Vashem, the Israel Holocaust Museum, and the United States Holocaust Museum.
In January 2022, historian Michael Feldkamp announced that he had discovered evidence in the Vatican archives that Pius XII had personally saved at least 15,000 Jews from extermination and that he had sent a report on the Holocaust to the US government shortly thereafter. of the Wannsee Conference, although they did not believe him.
In June 2022, David Kertzer, one of the first historians to have analyzed the archives, published his book The Pope at War. Kertzer, with the support of thousands of previously unpublished documents, uncovered the existence of secret negotiations between Hitler and Pius XII already a few weeks after the end of the conclave, promoted by Hitler himself with the intention of improving his relations with the Vatican. Pius XII, for his part, would have concentrated his efforts on protecting and improving the situation of the Church in Germany in the face of the anti-Catholic policies of the Nazis, although both parties could not reach any formal agreement. During these meetings, which continued to be held regularly until the spring of 1941, both parties avoided alluding to the "racial politics" of the new German Reich —according to the strategy of silence adopted in this regard by Pius XII— and In Kertzer's opinion, the negotiations served to distract the pontiff and keep him silent in the face of the early Nazi assaults on Europe (including Germany's invasion of Catholic Poland) and the incipient persecution of the Jews.
The Vatican archives have provided many millions of pages and it is expected that it will take many years to process the findings. So far, the study of the archive has been inconclusive.
Cause for canonization
The cause of Pius XII was opened on November 18, 1965 by Pope Paul VI. To study the actions of Pius XII during the war, a commission of four eminent historians was appointed, made up of Pierre Blet (France), Angelo Martini (Italy), Burkhart Schneider (Germany) and Robert A. Graham (United States). In March 2007, the congregation recommended that Pius XII should be proclaimed venerable. Pope Benedict XVI did so on December 19, 2009, at the same time as John Paul II.
The start of the cause for beatification provoked a negative reaction from rabbis who described the decision as "insensitive". Pacelli's weakness, but his beatification could make him an ideal for future generations. For me, beatification would be an impediment to dialogue. »The State of Israel is also opposed to the canonization of Pius XII until the Vatican archives referring to his pontificate have been opened.
In popular culture
- In the movie The Scarlet and the Black (Scarlet and black(1983) John Gielgud starred at a Pius XII that endorsed the work of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, who concealed Jews and prisoners of war in the Nazi-occupied Rome.
- On the tape Amen.of 2002, Pius XII is interpreted by Marcel Iureș as a pontiff suffering from what happens to the Jews, but he also feels impotent for his luck.
- It is also played by actor James Cromwell on the TV miniseries Under the sky of Rome (Sotto il cielo di Roma), a film of 2010 that refers to the attitude of the Holy See, especially the Pope, in the face of the events of the Second World War, with an emphasis on the intention of the Nazis to rapture Pius XII and the actions taken by him during this difficult period of history.
- The mighty handmaid of God, a series of German television in 2011, which relates the life of the nun and personal assistant Pascalina Lehnert, also showing the work of Pius XII (interpreted by the Italian actor Remo Girone) during the Nazi period.
- The movie Shades of Truth (Shadows of Truth), it is a premiered production in 2015 that defends the figure of Pius XII, based on the secret work he did to save the Jews.
- In 2016, the National Geographic Channel issued the docudrama The Pope vs. Hitler (Pope vs. Hitler) detailing the collaboration that Pius XII provided in the plots against Adolf Hitler.
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