June 26, 2009

Introduction:

            On the occasion of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul this coming June 28, which is also celebrated as the Pope’s Day, the Catholic Xybrspace Apostolate of the Philippines (CXAP) will be giving prominence in its Website for the following news articles on Pope Pius XII and his heroic role during World War II in saving the lives of more than half a million of the Jewish people in Europe, from murderous extermination by Hitler and his Nazi SS secret police fanatics.

            These articles are courtesy of New York City’s Pave the Way Foundation, whose Founder and President is Mr. Gary Krupp, a Jew. They first appeared in Catholic Family No. 10 under Copyright 2008 of The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise.

860,000 Lives Saved

The Truth About Pius XII and the Jews

See also Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust for the

case against the Pope’s behavior during the war.

People often ask: why did Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, not speak out more forcefully against Hitler?

Historian Fr. Dermot Fenlon of the Birmingham Oratory looks at the facts and sets the record straight. The answer is recounted by a former inmate of Dachau, Msgr Jean Bernard, later Bishop of Luxembourg:

“The detained priests trembled every time news reached us of some protest by a religious authority, but particularly by the Vatican. We all had the impression that our warders made us atone heavily for the fury these protests evoked… whenever the way we were treated became more brutal, the Protestant pastors among the prisoners used to vent their indignation on the Catholic priests: ‘Again your big naïve Pope and those simpletons, your bishops, are shooting their mouths off… why don’t they get the idea once and for all, and shut up. They play the heroes and we have to pay the bill.”

Albrecht von Kessel, an official at the German Embassy to the Holy See during the war, wrote in 1963:

“We were convinced that a fiery protest by Pius XII against the persecution of the Jews… would certainly not have saved the life of a single Jew. Hitler, like a trapped beast, would react to any menace that he felt directed at him, with cruel violence.”

The real question is, therefore, not what did the Pope say, but what did the Pope do? Actions speak louder than words. Papal policy in Nazi Europe was directed with an eye to local conditions. It was coordinated with local hierarchies. Nazi policy towards the Jews varied from country to country. Thus although anti-Jewish measures were met in France by public protest from Archbishop Saliege of Toulouse, together with Archbishop Gerlier of Lyons and Bishop Thias of Mantauban, their  protest was backed by a highly effective rescue and shelter campaign. (Thus) 200,000 lives were saved. In Holland, as Fr. Michael O’Carroll writes, the outcome was ‘tragically different’. The Jewish historian Pinchas Lapide sums it up:

“The saddest and most thought provoking conclusion is that whilst the Catholic clergy of Holland protested more loudly, expressly and frequently against Jewish persecutions than the religious hierarchy of any other Nazi-occupied country, more Jews – some 11,000 or 79% of the total – were deported from Holland; more than anywhere else in the West.”

Von Kessel’s view is therefore borne out by the experience of Nazi Holland: protests merely made more reprisals.

What of Rome itself? In 1943 the German ambassador to the Holy See, Von Weizsaecker, sent a telegram to Berlin. The telegram has been cited as damning ‘evidence’ against Pius XII.

“Although under pressure from all sides, the Pope has not let himself be drawn into any demonstrative censure of the deportation of Jews from Rome… As there is probably no reason to expect other German actions against the Jews of Rome we can consider that a question so disturbing to German-Vatican relations has been liquidated.”

Von Weizsaecker’s telegram was in fact a warning not to proceed with the proposed deportation of the Roman Jews: ‘there is probably no reason to expect other German actions against the Jews of Rome’. Von Weizsaecker’s action was backed by a warning to Hitler from Pius XII: if the pursuit and arrest of Roman Jews was not halted, the Holy Father would have to make a public protest. Together, the joint action of Von Weizsaecker and Pius XII ended the Nazi manhunt against the Jews of Rome. (Thus) 7,000 lives were saved.

In Hungary, an estimated 80,000 baptismal certificates were issued by Church authorities to Jews. In other areas of Eastern Europe the Vatican escape network (organized via Bulgaria by the Nuncio Roncalli – later John XXIII) has impressed those writers who have studied the subject, with the effectiveness of the Church’s rescue operation. David Herstig concludes his book on the subject thus: “Those rescued by Pius are today living all over the world. There went to Israel alone from Romania 360,000 up to the year 1965.”

The vindication of Pius XII has been established principally by Jewish writers and from Israeli archives. It is now established that the Pope supervised a rescue network which saved 860,000 Jewish lives – more than all the international agencies put together.

After the war the Chief Rabbi of Israel thanked Pius XII for what he had done. The Chief Rabbi of Rome went one step further. He became a Catholic. He took the name Eugenio.

Most Of Rome’s Jews Were Saved From Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’

L’Osservatore Romano

The following is a translation of an interview that Mr. Nikolaus Kunkel, a witness to Pius XII’s actions to save Roman Jews during the Second World War, gave to the German Catholic News Agency (KNA) on November 7, 2000.

Now 80 years old, Mr. Kunkel was an officer at the headquarters of the military governor of Rome. He directly witnessed the SS roundup of the Jews and the fact that the majority of them were saved by taking refuge in the Vatican. After the war Kunkel worked as a bank manager. A lieutenant at the time, he remembers those dramatic days at the end of 1943 when the SS wanted to take advantage of the transition of power from Mussolini to Badoglio to carry out “the final solution to the Jewish question” in Rome too. The victims of Hitler’s racist policies were able, for the most part, to take refuge in the Vatican thanks to Pius XII’s orders and thus to escape the fate intended for them.

KNA:   Mr. Kunkel, on 10 September 1943, after the Badoglio government broke with the Rome-Berlin Axis, the Wehrmacht occupied the Italian capital. The war diary of the supreme command of the armed forces says in this regard: “The Wehrmacht will take care of protecting Vatican City”. The 28 June 1964 edition of L’Osservatore della Domenica quotes Albretch von Kessel, collaborator of Ernst von Weizsacker, German ambassador to the Vatican, according to whom Hitler had always discussed the possibility of taking the Pope prisoner and deporting him to the German Reich. Verbatim: “If the Pope were to oppose this measure, there was even the possibility that he would be killed ‘while trying to escape’”. What is your recollection?

Kunkel:   For the duration of my time in Rome, a good nine months, all of us officials were convinced that any day the order could arrive: “Occupy the Vatican”. In this event – practically speaking, to save time – we had internally prepared a “mob plan”, which of course is not found in the war diary. I am sure that the Vatican also considered this danger. Hitler’s volatile nature made it realistic.

KNA:  The fact that Pope Pius XII also saw this risk suggests that he had already prepared a resignation statement, if he were taken prisoner. It probably read like this: “They can only arrest Cardinal Pacelli, not the Pope”.

Kunkel:  Fortunately it did not happen, but the risk was there.

KNA:   Were there contacts between the German military governor of Rome, Luftwaffe Major General Rainer Stahel, and the Vatican?

Kunkel   There were many. The Vatican’s official contact with us was Fr. Pankratius Pfeifer, the Superior General of the Salvatorians, who often dealt with the general, but also with the SS and the police. The so-called internal security of Rome was actually in the hands of the police, who were guided by the SS and by Kappler.

KNA:   Who really held the power? Was Kappler under the military governor?

Kunkel:   De iure yes, but de facto the SS was a state within a state. Therefore, yes, Kappler was in communication with the general, but in reality the SS led their own life and we did not know what went on within the SS hierarchy. In security questions, the SS more or less gave the orders in collaboration with the Italian Fascist police…

KNA:   So the police forces who had not changed sides with Badoglio…

Kunkel:   Yes, and that played a considerable role. While Badoglio had joined the Allies, Marshal Graziani, Mussolini’s War Minister, still took his cue from the Germans.

KNA:   A month and a half after the occupation of Rome, 16 October 1943, the SS ordered a roundup of Jews. Was General Stahel, as military governor, informed of the roundup? Could he have prevented it?

Kunkel:   Around mid-October there was a rumour that a special SS unit would be sent to the city and lodged at a small hotel near Piazza Barberini.

The unit’s task would be to deport the Jews. Italy already had “racial laws” by the end of the 1930’s; however, they were applied with great tolerance. It seems that in Rome there was already a sort of ghetto. When this rumour proved to be true, General Stahel summoned and informed the officers of divisions 1A, 1B and 1C, saying that he was totally opposed to the operation. A few weeks after the beginning of a new collaboration with the Italians under the direction of Graziani, a deportation of Roman Jews would have caused ill will and unrest among the roman people. We sensed that this was not the general’s whole opinion – which lay deeper! – but this statement stressing public order was a good explanation. The general continued saying that to stop this operation he would have to seek allies, above all in Berlin. To this end, Ernst von Weizsacker, the German ambassador to the Vatican, would have to help. In fact, von Weizsacker had a reputation as a cautious enemy of the Nazi regime. The general sent me to the ambassador with a sealed letter. I did not read it, but the general told me that in the letter he asked the ambassador to do all he could in Berlin to revoke the measure.

Kunkel:   I recall that when I went to von Weizsacker I waited in an anteroom and became angry because no one offered me a chair. The ambassador left the room and shortly after returned with the letter, this time sealed by him. He asked me to give the letter back to the general and (to) tell him that this time he “unfortunately could not be helpful”. I remember this phrase perfectly. When I gave him back the letter, the general spoke – cautiously – in a very detached way about the ambassador. After this he telephoned Himmler, but I cannot say anything for sure about that.

KNA:   Roman Jews were rounded up on 16 October. That same day the rector of Santa Maria dell’Anima,. Bishop Alois Hudal, and Fr. Pankratius Pfeifer called on the general and gave him the “clear impression” that the Pope would turn to world public opinion if these roundups were not immediately stopped. The next day, 17 October, the order came from Himmler to stop.

Kunkel:   We had the impression that the SS had planned an action, but it reached a dead end and became public. Today we know that about 1,000 Jews were arrested. In our opinion, most Roman Jews had got wind of the imminent SS action because of delays in the preparations and so many of them were saved.

KNA:   Of about 8,000 Roman Jews, then, 7,000 were saved?

Kunkel:   We were certain that a large number of them were able to take refuge in Vatican buildings, which are numerous in Rome. In fact, the persecuted were able to take refuge in a relatively simple way.

KNA:   7,486 hid in the Vatican itself…

Kunkel:   I don’t know the number.

KNA:   In practice, how did it work? How were these Jews saved?

Kunkel:   Probably by entering primarily from St. Peter’s Square. The other parts of the Vatican, with their high walls, are not accessible, while in St. Peter’s Square there were only two German guards on the border between Italy and Vatican City, to prevent German soldiers from entering Vatican territory in uniform. Civilians could freely cross this line.

KNA:   Was this border between St. Peter’s Square and the city of Rome marked in any way?

Kunkel:   No. As it is today, there was just a curved line marked between the colonnades. Our guards patrolled along this line.

KNA:   Certainly, what Bishop Hudal and Fr. Pfeifer said to General Stahel is worth noting: if the roundups of the Jews had been carried out, Pope Pius XII would have vigorously protested and would have pressured Himmler to stop the action!

Kunkel:   That was how it seemed to us at the time. We had the impression that the SS action had been delayed until most Jews had reached safety. We considered it a success that only 1,000 of the 8,000 or 9,000 or so Jews were arrested by the SS. Today, of course, one looks above all at the 1,000 victims; at the time we saw the 7,000 who did not become victims and were saved. But many people, institutions and events probably contributed to this rescue. By the way, a few days after the roundup and despite his poor health, General Stahel – an Old Catholic – was transferred to the eastern front.

KNA:   And now the decisive question: do you think that a more vigorous protest from Pope Pius XII would have saved more Jews in Rome, Italy and occupied Europe?

Kunkel:   At the time I spoke about this with my immediate superior, Major Bohm, a Protestant from Hamburg. We were both of the opinion that, faced with Hitler’s unpredictability, any action directed to world public opinion by the Pope would have been harmful.

KNA:   In his play The Deputy, Rolf Hochhuth expressed the opinion that Pius XII should have made a blistering protest. Since the Pope did not do this, he is guilty of a grave omission.(?)

Kunkel:   It is easy to speak after the fact. In any case, we who were on the staff of the German military governor of Rome were of the opinion that taking a vigorous stand would have had negative consequences.

KNA:  Would the Supreme Southern Commander, Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, with whom Pope Pius XII was in contact, have had the power to stop the roundup of the Jews?

Kunkel:   No. The power of the SS was so great that the Wehrmacht – to which Kesselring belonged – could not have opposed it. That would have taken a successful 20 July! (Note: Some nine months later on July 20, 1944 Hitler was almost killed by a bomb in his underground Command Headquarters, brought in there in an attaché case by a military officer.)

KNA:   In your opinion, can Pius XII be reproached for any of this actions?

Kunkel:   Pius XII was in the most difficult political situation in which a man can find himself. I recall a conversation with a Jesuit, Fr. Otto Faller, concerning Germany’s war on two fronts. He said to me: think that the Pope also fought a war on two fronts – against communism on one side and against Nazism on the other. This refers to the general situation at the time. As for your question: considering the circumstances, no one can reproach Pius XII for his actions. If he had spoken out more strongly, it would certainly have provoked unpleasant reactions.

KNA:   Might he eventually have been arrested?

Kunkel:   Yes, there was also that possibility.

A Reality of the Generations: Gary Krupp

Why is Pave the Way Foundation (PTWF) initiating a symposium to study the papacy of Pius XII? Part of the execution of our mission, as a non-sectarian organization, is to observe what creates friction between people. This particular issue is a significant source of anger and frustration between religious people. No matter how contentious this subject may be, we feel that we can help begin to repair the rift by researching the truth and presenting our results to those on both sides of the issue. Moreover, we feel that we must take this action in support of our mission to remove obstacles between religions.

PTWF is blessed with a motivated board of directors and advisers who have seen the effectiveness of all of our past activities. Many of our past projects may have seemed too controversial however the outcome has had very positive results. Our directors and advisors have permitted us to move ahead in the furtherance of our mission without regard to popularity or its impact on fund-raising. We hope our work will shed a long-overdue light on the history of a very dark period of human civilization, and that this symposium will begin to align public perception with the reality of what actually happened.

The papacy of Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, has been questioned primarily because of the period of history during which it occurred. The brutality and barbarism of the Nazi regime required the covert actions of the brave individuals whose initiatives saved human lives. These actions and directives from the Catholic leadership had to be carefully hidden from the spies, both outside and within the Vatican itself. This reality left a void of information for those who have studied the history of the era, thus creating an environment rife with questions, accusations and suppositions. This has resulted in the current impression that the Vatican and the Pope stood by complacently during the nightmare of the Holocaust.

PTWF has discovered, through our independent research, that these perceptions, which have caused great heartaches and friction, may not have any basis in fact. We intend to enable the experts to respond to and correct these errors in history based on verifiable evidence. As an observation, while researching archived news articles in both the Palestinian Post and the NY Times, we did not find one negative article about Pius XII and his interventions to save Jewish lives during the period 1939-1958. We discovered dozens of positive reports of his work. These archives are easily accessible on line for verification. In addition, we should note that had this type of independent investigation been taken on years ago, hundreds of eye witnesses who are now gone, could have been video interviewed.

Rampant speculation of this period led to the creation of numerous books, movies, plays, and the like, that have flourished on both sides of the issue. The reader or audience is left with the writer’s personal views and agenda and the general public is left with an indelible impression. The vast majority of people do not examine both sides of the issue. This symposium will allow new information to be aired, questioned and responded to immediately, hopefully leading to a mutual agreement and, perhaps, one day, a resolution.

Throughout our research, particularly in the eyewitness accounts that we have captured on video, one glaring observation has come up over and over again. Those who actually lived through the brutality of the Nazis and who were saved by the Church’s actions had one opinion of the actions of the Catholic Church and the Pope. Subsequent generations born into the safety of the defeat of the Nazi regime seem to hold a different opinion. Of course it is true that millions were not and could not be saved by the church and were doomed to be deported and sent to the camps. The vast majority of the survivors would have had no way of knowing of the church’s secret efforts to alleviate the suffering. The Church’s ability to act was limited by the nature of its true relationship with the Nazi regime. Basically, almost all of its efforts had to be confined to secret actions of interventions. Author Curtis Pepper explained: “For every form of communication used within the Roman Curia (memo, letter, phone call, encyclical, Papal bull and smoke signal) the whispered word outranks them all. Millions of words are put to paper or sent over wire. But urgent truths and hot gossip go out by whisper, shot anywhere from two inches to one foot from the ear of the listener.”

It is also important to realize that the benevolent caregivers in the Catholic Church were forced to operate under the direct threat of the Nazi regime. The Catholic leaders knew the dangers that existed because of the reality of spies and Nazi collaborators from within the walls of the Vatican. To quote one of the world’s experts on this papacy and who personally experienced Nazi murders within his own family, Father Peter Gumpel, S.J., “I cannot argue with your opinion, of which you are entitled to have, but you cannot comment on these events until you are looking into the eyes of death as we were”. It is for this reason that logically almost all of the critical directives from Pius XII and the Curia were by word of mouth, encrypted notes and written directives, many of which had to be destroyed immediately. Fr. Gumpel stated “you would never carry an unencrypted note or paper. If you were stopped this piece of paper could mean instant death”. The details and actions of this papacy of the war years must be viewed in this light.

One must also understand that there was a plan in place wherein Adolph Hitler, at any time, could have ordered the troops to kill Pope Pius XII and to seize the Vatican. The Vatican, a neutral state with no army to defend it, also was under attack and was identified early on as an enemy of National Socialism. One third of the Catholic clergy of Europe was murdered by the Nazis. The Nazi reaction to nearly every Vatican public protest was swift and brutal acceleration of the punishing deportation. This is why the papacy was forced to remain silent but to work effectively behind the scenes. The Pope knew very well that a provoked attack on the Vatican would have breached its neutrality and endangered the tens of thousands of refugees and caregivers in all of the churches, convents and monasteries throughout Europe and even the Vatican itself.

Another interesting phenomenon has become apparent during our research. Everything positive, each act of kindness or life-saving effort that occurred, was credited to a cardinal, bishop or priest. Every event construed as negative was blamed on Pope Pius XII. This is analogous to a victorious military commander being blamed for every error and misdeed of each soldier and at the same time the individual soldiers are credited with winning the war. This fact is most apparent in many comments of the individual acts, documents and malevolent events committed by some within the Catholic Church being directly blamed on Pius XII.

When one examines the Catholic Church’s wartime relations with the Jewish people one must also put these events into historical context. The Vatican’s efforts to save as many Jews as possible were characterized by Pope Pius XII in an emphatic statement to Msgr. Giovanni Ferrofino: “We must do something to save this vibrant community”. One must also realize that this all took place twenty years before the Second Vatican Council’s adoption of the declaration Nostra Aetate, which changed forever the Catholic Church’s relationship with the Jewish people. In all fairness we must also step back and objectively compare the Catholic Church’s efforts and effectiveness to save lives, to the efforts of the other religious leaders and governments around the world.

Our hope is that all of the participants of this symposium will judge the information that we are providing with a fair and open mind. And in that very spirit, simply ask, “What would I do if these decisions were mine to make”?

BRIEF HISTORY OF EUGENIO PACELLI

Professor Ronald Rychlak

Eugenio Pacelli – Pope Pius XII : Ronald J. Rychlak

Pope Pius XII, the Church’s 262^nd Pope, was born in Rome on March 2, 1876, as Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli. Young Eugenio was accepted into a prestigious seminary in Rome, the Capranica. He excelled in all of his studies, particularly languages: he became fluent in Latin, Greek, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew and  Aramaic. He also took classes at another great seminary, the Gregoriana. His demanding schedule caused him to develop a hacking cough, and the family doctor warned that he was on the brink of tuberculosis. That nearly ended Eugenio’s study, but he had been noticed by Pope Leo XIII who permitted young Pacelli to live at home while completing his courses. He was ordained on Easter Sunday, April 2, 1899.

Pope Leo XIII had a program for training exceptional young clerics to serve in the Vatican diplomatic service, and two years after Pacelli was ordained, Cardinal Gasparri invited him into this program. Leo died in 1903, but the next year, the new Pope Pius X named Pacelli a monsignor and assigned him to a team that was charged with codifying Church canon law. For the next decade and a half, Pacelli served as a research aide in the office of the Congregation of Ecclesiastical Affairs. He also served as the Pope’s Minutante, editing and correcting the Pope’s speeches and minutes, and as a personal envoy from the Pope to the Austrian Emperor.

In 1914, Pius X named Cardinal Gasparri the new Vatican Secretary of State, and Pacelli was promoted to the post Gasparri vacated, Secretary of the Congregation of Ecclesiastical Affairs. Pope Pius X died later this same year and was replaced by Pope Benedict XV. When World War I broke out, Pacelli and Gasparri were charged with maintaining liaison with the hierarchies on the both side of the conflict, answering appeals for aid from all over Europe, and organizing a war relief program.

In the summer of 1917, Benedict consecrated Pacelli as bishop in a special ceremony in the Sistine Chapel and at the same time elevated him to the rank of Archbishop. Pacelli was then sent off to Munich as the Papal representative to Bavaria. He presented the Pope’s peace plan to German leaders and worked to alleviate suffering by distributing food and clothing to the impoverished. He has been credited with helping 65,000 prisoners of war return home. In 1920 he was appointed an Apostolic Nuncio, and he eventually established two nunciatures, one in Munich and one in Berlin.

In 1921, Pacelli was recalled to Rome and elevated to the cardinalate. Early the next year he was made Cardinal Secretary of State. Working with Pope Pius XI, Pacelli opposed the expansion of nationalistic politics, particularly in Italy and Germany. In 1933 he negotiated on behalf of the Vatican for an agreement that was instrumental in protecting Catholics and the Catholic Church from the Nazis. He also made trips on behalf of the Pope to France, the United States, and Buenos Aires. On March 2, 1939, Pacelli became the first Secretary of State to be elected Pope since Clement IX in 1667. He crusaded for peace before and throughout WWII, and he forcefully denounced the extermination of peoples on account of race. Through the Pontifical Aid Commission, he operated a vast program of relief for all victims of war. When Hitler occupied Rome in September 1943, Pius opened Vatican City to Jewish and non-Jewish refugees.

It is commonly estimated that the Church under Pius saved more than half a million Jewish refugees during the war. With his encouragement, a vast underground of priests, religious, and laity throughout Italy and the rest of Europe served as a covert organization dedicated to protecting Jewish and non-Jewish refugees from the Nazis.

The end of the war saw Pius XII hailed as the inspired moral prophet of victory, and he enjoyed near-universal acclaim for aiding European Jews through diplomatic initiatives, thinly veiled public pronouncements, and the unprecedented continent-wide network of sanctuary. With the end of hostilities, the Pope concentrated on trying to help people recover from the ravages of war. Papal money was sent to every war-torn nation and distributed without regard to race, creed, or nationality.

Throughout the war, Pius had feared that a Soviet victory would mean that eastern Europe would fall to Communism, and after the Allies’ victory, much of it did. The Soviets established several satellite state governments that were beholden to (if not dominated by) Moscow. Pius actively worked to limit the Communist influence in Western Europe, especially in Italy.

Until failing health forced him to restrict his activities, Pius XII was extraordinarily accessible. He celebrated more public masses and held more private audiences than any of his recent predecessors had, and each week he held a special audience just for newlyweds. He also used television and radio to reach out directly to the people.

In December 1954, Pius fell seriously ill, and his physicians feared for his life, but he recovered his strength and returned to work. During this illness, Pius reported an apparition of the Lord. After this, the crowds drawn to him grew even larger.

During his pontificate, Pius expanded and internationalized the Church by creating 57 new bishoprics, 45 of them in America and Asia. He also caused the percentage of non-Italians in the College of Cardinals to rise above 50 percent, paving the way for the eventual election of a non-Italian Pope. He replaced colonial bishops with native hierarchies, approved the Dialogue Mass, and relaxed communion fasting rules.

An ardent devotee of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Pius consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart in 1942 and established a Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1945. In 1950, he issued an ex cathedra proclamation defining the dogma of the Assumption of Mary. Pius saw more positive elements in the ecumenical movement than did his recent predecessors.

In December 1949, shortly after the formation of the World Council of Churches, Pius formally recognized the ecumenical movement and permitted Catholic scholars to dialogue with non-Catholics on matters of faith. That same year the Holy Office issued a decree, with papal approval, stating that actual incorporation into the Catholic Church was not necessary for salvation. He also encouraged Catholic nuns to study theology, scripture, and psychology. His work encouraged his successor, Pope John XXIII, to convene Vatican II. As others have concluded: without Pacelli, Vatican II would have been unthinkable.

During his lifetime, Pius XII’s opposition to Hitler was well known. Nazis condemned him, Jews thanked him, and rescuers cited him as their inspiration. At the time of his death, Israeli representative to the United Nations and future Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, said: “During the ten years of Nazi terror, when our people went through the horrors of martyrdom, the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and to commiserate with their victims.” Nahum Goldmann, President of the World Jewish Congress, said: “With special gratitude we remember all he has done for the persecuted Jews during one of the darkest periods of their entire history.” Rabbi Elio Toaff, who would later become Chief Rabbi of Rome, said: “More than anyone else, we have had the opportunity to appreciate the great kindness, filled with compassion and magnanimity, that the Pope displayed during the terrible years of persecution and terror, when it seemed that there was no hope left for us.” More recently, however, some writers have raised questions about how actively he opposed the Nazis. One even went so far as to brand him “Hitler’s Pope”.

The controversy surrounding Pius XII’s wartime leadership actually began in 1963, with the publication and production of a play written by German playwright Rolf Hochhuth. The play, entitled the Deputy, presented Pius as an unprincipled politician, possessed of an aristocratic coolness and eyes that had an “icy glow”. According to some accounts, the play was produced as part of a KGB plot to discredit the Catholic Church. Whatever the origin, the play so shaped the perception of Pius that it has become an axiom of popular culture that he was, at the very least, guilty of criminal cowardice and insensitivity on the face of the Holocaust.

The Deputy is a seven-hour play, with Pius as the central, stationary figure. The Pope is not developed as a tragic figure, since he is neither tragically indecisive not torn by his alternatives. Not only does this Pius lack Christian charity, but also simple human decency. Even other critics of Pius have called the characterization of Pacelli “so wide of the mark as to be ludicrous”.

According to Hochhuth, the “main thesis” of The Deputy was “that Hitler drew back from the extermination program as soon as high German clerics.. or Vatican… forcibly intervened.” He went on to argue that he was not sure that Pius could have stopped Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, but as “Vicar of Christ,” he had a moral obligation to try. He suggested that Pius XII’s statements led to the end of the deportation of Jews from Hungary, “proving again how high the Pope’s credit stood.” Hochhuth said that after the United States entered the war, the Church was the only authority that Hitler continued to respect. Hochhuth defended the historical accuracy of his play, but he also argued that it had a moral truth of its own, separated from historical truth.

Immediately after The Deputy was premiered, Church officials responded, as did Protestant and Jewish leaders (some of whom found strong currents of anti-Semitism in his work). Jeno Levai, the leading scholar of the Jewish extermination in Hungary observed that it was a “particularly regrettable irony that the one person in all of occupied Europe who did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime and alleviate its consequences is today made the scapegoat for the failures of others.”

Pius did not use the bully pulpit to repeatedly condemn the evils of Nazism, but he did make several statements that pleased the Allies and angered Hitler. Like the International Red Cross and other rescue operations, the Vatican fed, sheltered, and clothed refugees during the war. It also helped Jewish people escape from occupied areas and avoid deportation. These efforts were jeopardized when open statements prompted Nazi retaliation.

Anyone who looks at the Pope’s actual statements, tributes from Jewish victims, news accounts from the time, testimony of those who knew him, and Nazi anger directed at him knows where the Pope stood.

In his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus  (Darkness over the Earth), released just weeks after the outbreak of war, Pius condemned the “Godless State” and deplored “the forgetfulness of that law of human solidarity and charity which is dictated and imposed by our common origin and by the equality of rational nature in all men, to whatever people they belong.” His reference to an “ever-increasing host of Christ’s enemies” was a clear swipe at both Germany and the Soviet Union. He went on to condemn racists, dictators, and treaty violators (all terms which applied directly to Adolph Hitler). Heinrich Mueller, head of the Gestapo, wrote: “this Encyclical is directed exclusively against Germany, both in ideology and in regard to the German-Polish dispute; How dangerous it is for our foreign relations as well as our domestic affairs is beyond dispute.” The Allied Forces dropped tens of thousand of copies behind enemy lines as propaganda.

In his 1942 Christmas statement, Pius spoke of the need for mankind to make a “solemn vow never to rest until valiant souls of every people and every nation of the earth arise in their legions, resolved to bring society and to devote themselves to the services of the human person and of a divinely ennobled human society.” Mankind owed this vow to all victims of the war, including “the hundreds of thousands who, through no fault of their own and solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction”. One Nazi report stated: “The Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order… His speech is one long attack on everything we stand for… [He] makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.”

After the liberation of Rome, Pius declared: “For centuries, [Jews] have been most unjustly treated and despised. It is time they were treated with justice and humanity. God wills it and the Church wills it. St. Paul tells us that the Jews are our brothers. Instead of being treated as strangers they should be welcomed as friends.” In an allocution to the sacred College on June 2, 1945, which was also broadcast on Vatican Radio, Pius noted the death of about 2,000 Catholic priests at Dachau and described National Socialism as “the arrogant apostasy from Jesus Christ, the denial of His doctrine and of His work of redemption, the cult of violence, the idolatry of race and blood, the overflow of human liberty and dignity”.

Father Leiber, Pius XII’s private secretary and personal confidant during the war put this issue to rest with one brief statement: “The Pope sided very unequivocally with the Jews at the time. He spent his entire private fortune on their behalf… Pius spent what he inherited himself, as a Pacelli, from his family.” Rescuer John Patrick Carroll-Abbing wrote: “Never, in those tragic days, could I have foreseen, even in my wildest imaginings, that the man who, more than any other, had tried to alleviate human suffering, had spent himself day by day in his unceasing efforts for peace, would twenty years later be made the scapegoat for men trying to free themselves from their own responsibilities and from the collective guilt that obviously weighs so heavily upon them.”

German foreign secretary Joachim von Ribbentrop testified at Nuremberg that he had a “whole desk full of protests” from Rome. The Vatican, in fact, worked with the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials, as the defendants faced charges stemming from their persecution of the Catholic Church.

Beyond mere words, Pius also undertook actions on behalf of the victims of Nazi terror. The survival rates for Jews in Catholic countries were almost invariably higher than for Jews who found themselves under Nazi occupation elsewhere. Much of that credit is due to the effort and inspiration of Pope Pius XII. During the war, in virtually every occupied nation, Catholic buildings were put into use as shelters for refugees. Church officials freely distributed false Baptismal certificates that could be used to avoid deportation. Numerous protests and objections were filed with the Axis governments.

Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer home, was used to shelter thousands of refugees during the war. A wartime US intelligence document reported that the “bombardment of Castel Gandolfo resulted in the injury of about 1,000 people and the death of about 300 more. The highness of the figures is due to the fact that the area was crammed with refugees.” No one but Pope Pius XII had authority to open these buildings to outsiders. In fact, his personal bedroom was converted to a nursery and birthing area, and about 40 babies were born there during the war.

The 1943-1944 American Jewish Yearbook reported that Pius XII “took an unequivocal stand against the oppression of Jews throughout Europe”. The head of the Italian Jewish Assistance Committee, Dr. Raffael Cantoni, who subsequently became the President of the Union of all Italian Jewish communities reported: “The Church and the papacy have saved Jews as much and in as far as they could save Christians… Six millions of my co-religionists have been murdered by the Nazis, but there could have been many more victims, had it not been for the efficacious intervention of Pius XII”.

1945, the Chief Rabbi of Romania, Dr. Alexander Safran, expressed the gratitude of the Jewish community for the Vatican’s help and support for prisoners in the concentration camps. Grand Rabbi Isaac Herzog of Jerusalem wrote:

“I well know that His Holiness the Pope is opposed from the depths of

his noble soul to all persecution and especially to the persecution…

which the Nazis inflict unremittingly on the Jewish people… I take

this opportunity to express… my sincere thanks as well as my deep

appreciation… of the invaluable help given by the Catholic Church

to the Jewish people in its affliction.”

            After the war, Rabbi Herzog visited the Vatican to thank Pius and the Holy See for “manifold acts of charity” on behalf of the Jews.

            Critics of Pope Pius XII often resort to shallow caricatures depicting Pius as cold, aloof, and sometimes evil. This caricature, of course, is ridiculously off the mark. Monsignor Hugh Montgomery, an English priest who knew Pope Pius XII well, wrote of him: “It must seem absurd to anyone who knew ‘Papa Pacelli’ at all to hear him described as ‘cold’. He had a boyish eagerness of manner which was most attractive and a radiant smile”. That personality served him well for the 22 years prior to becoming Pope that he spent as an international diplomat in service to the Holy See.

            Until failing health forced him to restrict his activities, he was extraordinarily accessible. He celebrated more public Masses and held more private audiences than any of his recent predecessors had, and each week he held a special audience just for newlyweds. He shifted the time of certain services, to permit more people to attend. He also used television and radio to reach out directly to the people. As the New York Times reported, he “exchanged views with more laymen of different creeds and nationalities than any pontiff of modern times.” Because of all these, he was known as the “least stuffy” of Popes.

            In 1963, Pope John XXIII passed away and was succeeded by Pope Paul VI (Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini). In 1965, Paul proposed that “his great model” Pius XII, be considered for sainthood. He has been declared “Servant of God”, and the cause of his beatification is well underway.

ADDENDUM:

Maria Valtorta, the author-visionary of the Poem of the Man-God, also recorded during one of her many visions, a dictation from the Lord Jesus Himself on June 24, 1943 which refers to the victims of World War II, the Holocaust and Pope Pius XII, including the columnies (“falsehood”) about him, as follows:

“The flowers of today, Corpus Domini of the time of wrath, are My slain children. Happy, among these, are those who fall as innocents and whose death without hard feelings becomes beautiful as martyrdom. One cannot see My Blood amid the blood of the slain. I retain My whiteness as Host. It is the others’ blood that spatters Me, just as it is the cruelty of those enslaved by the Enemy that strikes Me and strikes along with Me those who are victims like Me.

From the greatest individual among you (Pope Pius XII) – straight as on a mystical Cross between the temple and Heaven, and wounded, spat upon, pierced, scourged, like his Lord, by falsehood sold out to the Enemy – all the way to the smallest baby slaughtered like an innocent lamb. Yet, these victims have not been immolated uselessly. In them there is no stain of hatred. They are the victims. Forever blessed for being the victims!

“In My dearest children, in My real children, there is My mark. I have marked all of you who loved Me and whom I love. More than the tiara crowning him that sign is divinely a sign on the forehead of My current Peter (Pope Pius XII), in the Pontiff of Peace in whom there is no leaven of hatred.

More than any halo, that sign sparkles on the heads of the victims who fall with Me under Satan’s weapons and who are the forerunners of the Second Coming of Christ.

“And the same angels of the smitten churches who pray, worshipping the knocked-down Hosts, gather the innocent souls whose tears will be soothed in Heaven.”

(From page 9 of The End Times by Maria Valtorta, Centro Editoriale Valtortiano.)

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