Pius XII (Latin: Pius PP. XII), born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (March 2, 1876 – October 9, 1958), reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City from March 2, 1939 to 1958. He is one of few Popes in recent history to exercise his Papal Infallibility by issuing a dogmatic definition. He worked to promote peace and protect the Church during a turbulent time of war has provided a lengthy and flattering account of his boyhood and teenage years.

In 1894, at the age of 18, he entered the Capranica Seminary to begin study for the priesthood and enrolled at the Gregorian University. He was ordained a priest on Easter Sunday, April 2, 1899 by Bishop Francesco Paolo Cassetta.

From 1904 until 1916, Fr. Pacelli assisted Cardinal Gasparri in his codification of canon law. Pope Benedict XV (1914–22) appointed Fr. Pacelli as Apostolic Nuncio to Bavaria in April 1917, and consecrated him bishop on May 13 1917.L'Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English, 12/19 August 1998, page 9 This was the very day of the first Marian apparitions at Fátima, Portugal, notable as Pacelli had a special devotion to the Virgin Mary.

Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli

Eugenio Pacelli served the Holy See largely as a diplomat and his role within the Church was largely centered on diplomatic negotiation with Germany. He was the Papal Nuncio in Bavaria from 1917, to the Germany from June 1920 and to Prussia from 1925.

Early in this Nunciate (in a private letter (dated November 14, 1923), to Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Cardinal Gasparri) Pacelli denounced the National Socialist movement as an anti-Catholic and anti-Hebrew threat.

During the 1920s and 1930s Cardinal Pacelli succeeded in negotiating concordats with Bavaria, Prussia and Baden, but failed in regard to Germany. One of his associates was the German priest Ludwig Kaas, who was known for his expertise in Church-state relations and politically active in the Centre Party.

Cardinal and Secretary of State

Pacelli was created a cardinal on 16 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI (1922–39). Within a few months, on 7 February 1930, Pius XI appointed Pacelli Cardinal Secretary of State. In 1935, Cardinal Pacelli was named as the Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church. During the 1930s Cardinal Pacelli negotiated concordats with Baden, Austria and Germany. He also made many diplomatic visits throughout Europe and the Americas, including an extensive visit to the United States in 1936.

The Reichskonkordat controversy

Continuing controversy surrounds Pacelli's role in overseeing negotiations for the Reichskonkordat between Germany and the Holy See. It is sometimes perceived as giving important international acceptance to Hitler's regime, though it was preceded by the Four-Power Pact Hitler had signed in June 1933. At the time, however, it was very common for the Holy See to sign concordats with many nations, which in reality had more to do with bolstering the new, 4-year-old Vatican State's own international recognition than with recognizing other regimes. Such concordats were important to the Holy See because without them the Church might be denied the right to organize youth groups, make ecclesiastical appointments, run schools, or even conduct religious services. The term "concordat" is itself misleading, as in English it appears to connote general approval and friendship, when in fact it is merely a treaty that addresses specific concerns (in this case German Catholicism), and is not a broad declaration of regimental or ideological approval.

A national concordat with Germany was one of Pacelli's main objectives as Secretary of State - historian Klaus Scholder called it his 'great goal'. As nuncio during the 1920s he had made unsuccessful attempts to obtain German agreement for such a treaty, and between 1930 and 1933 he attempted to initiate negotiations with representatives of successive German governments.

The importance of the concordat policy to Pacelli, to the point that it dominated his thinking on German matters, is exemplified in Heinrich Brüning's account of their meeting on 8th August 1931 (Brüning, leader of the Catholic German Centre Party, was Reich Chancellor between 29th March 1930 and 30th May 1932.) According to Brüning's memoirs Pacelli suggested that he disband the Centre Party's governing coalition with the Social Democrats and "form a government of the right simply for the sake of a Reich concordat, and in doing so make it a condition that a concordat be concluded immediately." Bruning refused to do so, replying that Pacelli "mistook the political situation in Germany and, above all, the true character of the Nazis."

The German elections of July 1932 saw a further rise in Nazi representation: the party became the largest in the Reichstag with 230 of 608 seats. This prompted Pacelli again to advise the Centre Party to work with the Nazis in a coalition of the right, despite the fact that at this point the German bishops officially condemned Nazism and banned Catholics from membership. Pacelli, however, saw things differently from the German hierarchy and viewed the Nazis as an anti-Communist party of Christian principles. He told Bavarian envoy Ritter: "it is to be hoped and desired that, like the Centre Party and the Bavarian Peoples' Party, so too the other parties which stand on Christian principles and which now also include the National Socialist party, now the strongest party in the Reichstag, will use every means to hold off the cultural Bolshevizing of Germany, which is on the march behind the Communist Party."

According to Klaus Scholder, a Reichskonkordat was in fact impossible under the Weimar Republic: "as long as this democratic republic existed in Germany a Reich concordat was inconceivable." Catholic parties would never have sufficient strength to get a treaty past protestant and socialist opposition. It was thus the emergence of Hitler's dictatorship that allowed the concordat to become a real possibility, following the model of the Lateran treaties with fascist Italy where the Church had agreed to abstain from political activity in return for recognition in a concordat.

After further elections in January 1933, the Nazis formed a new government with Hitler as chancellor on 30th January. According to Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, the new German cabinet began to talk about a concordat "immediately after 30 January, 1933".. With the Nazis still short of a majority on the Reichstag, yet more elections were held on 5th March, and on 23rd March Hitler assumed dictatorial powers with the passing of the Enabling Act. The Act required a two thirds majority as it amended the German constitution: this majority was obtained through the support of the Centre Party. Historians including Klaus Scholder have maintained that a key reason for the Centre Party leadership agreeing to support the Enabling Act was a promise from Hitler to negotiate a Reich concordat with the Vatican. Scholder maintains that Centre Party president Ludwig Kaas, a priest and close associate of Pacelli, "probably acted as the key go-between in the whole matter."

The day after the Enabling Act vote Kaas went to Rome in order to, in his own words, "investigate the possibilities for a comprehensive understanding between church and state." The first official mention of the concordat was made when Kaas returned ten days later, on 2nd April. On 9th April Kaas returned to Rome, travelling with von Papen, to begin the official negotiations for the concordat. The concordat was finally signed, by Pacelli for the Vatican and von Papen for Germany, on 20th July. This was shortly after Germany had signed similar agreements with the major Protestant churches in Germany. One of Hitler's key conditions for agreeing the concordat had been the dissolution of the Centre Party, which occurred on 6th July. However according to Fr. Robert Leiber, a close collaborator of Pacelli, the secretary of state was upset that the party had dissolved before the negotiations were concluded. (see Rychlak).

The reichskoncordat is sometimes criticised for giving important international acceptance to Hitler's regime, though it was preceded by the Four-Power Pact Hitler had signed in June 1933. At the time, however, it was very common for the Holy See to sign concordats with many nations, which in reality had more to do with bolstering the new, 4-year-old Vatican State's own international recognition than with recognizing other regimes.

Critics of the Concordat claim it linked the Roman Catholic Church too closely with Nazism. The 3 June encyclical Dilectissima Nobis, in which Pope Pius XI protested against anti-Church policies in republican Spain, indicated that the Church found no difficulty in adapting herself to various civil institutions, be they monarchic or republican, aristocratic or democratic, "provided the Divine rights of God and of Christian consciences are safe".

Hitler saw the Reichskonkordat as a victory for his side. Hitler told his cabinet on 14 July:

"An opportunity has been given to Germany in the Reichskonkordat and a sphere of influence has been created that will be especially significant in the urgent struggle against international Jewry."

Cardinal Faulhaber is reported to have said: "With the concordat we are hanged, without the concordat we are hanged, drawn and quartered."

The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (pre-World War II)

Most observers regard the Church's relationship with the Nazi regime as similar to those it established with other non-communist states and governments. Dr. Eamon Duffy, a historian of the papacy, observed that the Church under Pius XI followed a consistent policy of establishing concordats with individual states during the 1920s and the 1930s. Despite the diversity of the Church's concerns, the Church did specifically speak to the issue of anti-Semitism, a key feature of Nazism. On September 6 1938, in speech to a pilgrims which was reported by the international press Pius XI said: "Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and forefather. Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do. No, no, I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we are all Semites."

Between the German Concordat's signing in 1933 and 1939, Pope Pius XI made nearly sixty formal complaints to the Nazi government, which were drafted by Pacelli but which show only a gradual realisation of the gravity of the Nazi threat and Nazi misuse of the concordat

The Church of course ignored this threat and elected Pacelli Pope Pius XII on March 2, 1939. After the election, Nazi media complained about the "prejudiced hostility and incurable lack of comprehension" shown by the Holy See. The morning after Pius XII's election, the Berlin Morgenpost reported: "The election of Cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favor in Germany because he was always opposed to Nazism and practically determined the policies of the Vatican under his predecessor." Das Schwarze Korps, the official publication of the elite Nazi Schutzstaffel (better known by the initials 'SS"), said: "As nuncio and secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli had little understanding of us; little hope is placed in him. We do not believe that as Pius XII he will follow a different path." In

Becoming Pope Pius XII

Following the death of Pius XI, Cardinal Pacelli was elected Pope by the conclave on 2 March 1939, his 63rd birthday, and took the name of Pius XII. He was the first Secretary of State to become Pope since Pope Clement IX (1667–69) in 1667. Pius XII's papal coronation was the grandest in over a hundred years.

World War II

Pius XII's pontificate began on the eve of the Second World War. During the war, the Pope followed a policy of public neutrality mirroring that of Pope Benedict XV during the First World War. However, as Cardinal Pacelli, Pius XII was against the Nazis' increasing political power in Germany and in August 1933 wrote to the British representative to the Holy See his disgust with the Nazis and "their persecution of the Jews, their proceedings against political opponents, the reign of terror to which the whole nation was subjected." One of the crucial terms of the concordat with Germany was that German officials were to regard baptized Jews as Christians. Accordingly, Pius XII ordered his nuncio in Turkey (Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII) to prepare thousands of baptismal certificates for refugee Jews arriving in Istanbul in the hope that such papers would gain them passage into the country. (When he was later thanked for his extensive lifesaving work, Roncalli said, "In all these painful matters I have referred to the Holy See and simply carried out the Pope's orders: first and foremost to save Jewish lives.") As the war went on, such documents were freely distributed in all occupied nations, and Pius established a committee that helped thousands of Jews leave Europe with identification showing that they were under the protection of the Catholic Church.)

After the Nazis invaded the small nations of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium during 1940, Pius XII sent expressions of sympathy to the Queen of the Netherlands, the King of Belgium, and the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. When the Italian Fascist dictator Mussolini learned of the warnings and the telegrams of sympathy, he took them as a personal affront and had his ambassador to the Vatican file an official protest, charging that Pius XII had taken sides against Italy's ally Germany. The Pope responded that his conscience was at ease and added, "We are not afraid to go to a concentration camp."..

In April 1941 Pius XII granted a private audience to Croatian fascist poglavnik (führer) and war criminal Ante Pavelic. The Vatican did not officially recognise Pavelic's so-called Independent State of Croatia, in fact a Nazi puppet state, but neither did it condemn the genocide and forced conversions to Catholicism perpetrated by the Croat Ustaše. Pius XII was criticised for his reception of Pavelic: a British Foreign Office memo on the subject described him as "the greatest moral coward of our age".

Rome was, of course

On September 26, 1943, Nazi officials demanded of Jewish leaders in Rome 50 kilograms of gold (or the equivalent in dollars or sterling) within 36 hours, threatening otherwise to send two hundred Roman Jews to the concentration camps. Unable to come up with the full amount, the Jews needed help from a source they could trust. In his memoir Before the Dawn (reissued in 1997 as Why I Became a Catholic), Eugenio Zolli, then Chief Rabbi of Rome, recounts that he was selected to go to the Vatican and seek help. With false identification papers he got past the German guards that ringed the Vatican. Once inside, he explained the situation to Vatican officials, and they retreated to consult with Pius XII who provided the needed money. The Germans would receive their payment.

Despite the Church's efforts in Hungary, 437,000 Jews had been deported by mid-summer 1944. On June 25 Pius XII intensified the campaign with an open telegram to the Regent of Hungary, Admiral Horthy. In, it he wrote:

"Supplications have been addressed to us from different sources that We should exert all our influence to shorten and mitigate the sufferings that have for so long been peacefully endured on account of their national or racial origin by a great number of unfortunate people elonging to this noble and chivalrous nation. In accordance with our service of love, which embraces every human being, our fatherly heart could not remain insensible to these urgent demands. For this reason We applied to your Serene Highness appealing to your noble feelings in the full trust that your Serene Highness will do everything in your power to save many unfortunate people from further pain and suffering."

Pius XII and the Holocaust

Prior to 1963, the efforts of Pius XII on behalf of all victims of war-time fascist aggression were well known and unquestioned. Despite this disavowal of the play as representing anything historical, a few picked up on Hochhuth's theme and claimed Pius XII's efforts to mitigate the Holocaust were inadequate and that his role in negotiating the Reichskonkordat may have been well-meaning but played into the hands of Adolf Hitler.

These criticisms in the mid-1960s were short-lived and quickly dismissed since both Jewish and non-Jewish witnesses to Pius XII's efforts during the war were still alive and attested to his pro-active efforts to help save would-be victims of fascist aggression. Books such as Dr. Joseph Lichten's, A Question of Judgment (1963) were written in response to The Deputy to serve as an unambiguous historical defense of Pius XII's actions during the war. Dr. Lichten, a Polish Jew who served as a diplomat and later an official of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith in Rome, wrote that any criticism of the Pope's actions during World War II was "a stupefying paradox", because "no one who reads the record of Pius XII's actions on behalf of Jews can subscribe to Hochhuth's accusation."

After the quick and thorough defense made in the 1960s, a lull of over thirty years ensued when the record seemed settled and little comment was made regarding Pius XII's actions during World War II. As such, the second phase of criticism came toward the end of the 20th century with the debut of books such as John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope. In this second phase of criticism, more than fifty years after the end of the war, a new generation of critics, many of whom did not remember World War II were trying their hand at critiquing the role Pius XII played during the war. Likewise, by the late 1990s most of the eye witnesses of Pius XII's actions as well as the recipients of his kindness and saving actions, were no longer alive to silence the new wave of criticism as they had in the 1960s. Additionally, the second phase of criticism in the 1990s relied less on questioning the demonstrable efforts of Pius XII which no one could deny, and more on speculation that the Pope could have done more which is a charge virtually beyond the realm of proof or disproof. As such the argument of "he could have done more" simply lingers and requires individual appreciation of the conditions of World War II; conditions perhaps not fully appreciated by those who did not experience the war's fury first hand. Pius XII's critics have been largely dismissed by pro-Pius XII writers who allege poor scholarship, e.g. failure to cite to primary sources, and a certain bias, extending into anti-Catholic bigotry

In concrete terms, Pius XII was notably more critical of Nazi racial policies before and during the war than was Churchill or Roosevelt.

Second, if Pius XII had condemned Nazism more aggressively, the result would have been reprisals within Germany and countries occupied by her, making the Church's efforts against Nazi policies at the parish level difficult. Indeed such a reprisal occurred, when the Dutch bishops protested against the deportation of the country's Jewish population. The occupiers retaliated by singling out Jewish converts to the Church for deportation, the most notable example being Edith Stein. Likewise, when Clemens August Von Galen, bishop of Munster, wanted to speak against the persecution of the Jews in Germany, the Jewish elders of his diocese begged him not to because it would only damage them. Various episcopal conferences, first of all in Poland, urgently requested Pius XII not to condemn the persecution of the Poles and Jews because it would not save lives but increase the persecution. Likewise, the Jews being hidden were even provided with Kosher meals

During the war, the Pope was widely praised for making a principled stand. For example, Time Magazine credited Pius XII and the Catholic Church for "fighting totalitarianism more knowingly, devoutly, and authoritatively, and for a longer time, than any other organized power" (Time, 16 August 1943).

These questions have also resurfaced of late because of the moves toward canonisation of Pius XII. In addition to canonization, during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II (1978–2005), some Catholic and Jewish leaders, including Rome's Chief Rabbi (and Holocaust survivor) Elio Toaff, began discussing and promoting the cause of Pius XII to receive such posthumous recognition from Yad Vashem. Despite these positive causes, some in the Jewish community remain concerned with the history of Pius XII.

In 1999, a class action suit against the Vatican Bank and others was brought up in the United States by various Holocaust survivors, alleging collusion in war crimes by the Ustashe regime of the Independent State of Croatia. In addition, the same lawsuit concerns secreting large vaults of war loot from Croatia into Vatican accounts. The suit alleges these funds were used to finance 'rat-line' escape routes for Nazi and other fascist war-criminals such as the Catholic Ustashe leadership who were allegedly assisted by Vatican agencies to find safe haven mostly in South America. (See also:ODESSA.)

John Cornwell's criticisms

Perhaps most well-known of Pius's recent critics has been John Cornwell in the book Hitler's Pope who concluded that "Pacelli's failure to respond to the enormity of the Holocaust was more than a personal failure, it was a failure of the papal office itself and the prevailing culture of Catholicism." But Cornwell has his critics, for example Kenneth L. Woodward who stated in his review of the book in the September 27 1999, issue of Newsweek that: "Errors of fact and ignorance of context appear on almost every page."

Likewise, many authors have since attacked Cornwell (who has no academic degrees in history, law, or theology), his sources, and his methods, including Rabbi David G. Dalin in The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis published in 2005. Rabbi Dalin suggests that Yad Vashem should honor Pope Pius XII as a "Righteous Gentile" writing that "he anti-papal polemics of ex-seminarians like Garry Wills and John Cornwell (author of Hitler's Pope), of ex-priests like James Carroll, and or other lapsed or angry liberal Catholics exploit the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the Catholic Church today."

In an attempt to address some of this controversy, in 1999 the Vatican appointed the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission (ICJHC),

Despite the controversy, most sources agree that at least some Jews were saved by the Catholic Church during World War II. World War II historian Martin Gilbert places the number as high as 800,000, although this figure is disputed by other historians. In Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican by Pierre Blet and Lawrence J. Johnson they state "Vatican diplomatic initiatives mitigated the sufferings of tens of thousands of Jews, and delayed the sad fates of thousands more."

Selected Quotes about Pius XII from various prominent Jewish leaders

• "No keener rebuke has come to Nazism than from Pope Pius XI and his successor, Pope Pius XII."
  • Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, chancellor, Jewish Theological Seminary of America in the New York Times, March, 1940.

• "Pius XII took an unequivocal stand against the oppression of Jews throughout Europe."
  • The 1943-1944 American Jewish Yearbook

• "The repeated interventions of the Holy Father on behalf of Jewish Communities in Europe has evoked the profoundest sentiments of appreciation and gratitude from Jews throughout the world."
  • Rabbi Maurice Perlzweig, Political director of the World Jewish Congress. Written February 18 1944 in a letter to Msgr. Amleto Cicognani, the apostolic delegate in Washington, D.C.

• "In the most difficult hours of which we Jews of Romania have passed through, the generous assistance of the Holy See…was decisive and salutary. It is not easy for us to find the right words to express the warmth and consolation we experienced because of the concern of the supreme pontiff, who offered a large sum to relieve the sufferings of deported Jews…. The Jews of Romania will never forget these facts of historic importance."
  • Rabbi Alexander Safran, chief rabbi of Romania note to Monsignor Andrea Cassulo, Papal Nuncio to Romania, April 7 1944

• "The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion, which form the very foundation of true civilization, are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of Divine Providence in this world."
  • Rabbi Isaac Herzog, chief rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine, March 1945.

• "The Church and the papacy have saved Jews as much and in as far as they could save Christians.. Six million 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."
  • Dr. Raphael Cantoni, director of the Italian Jewish Assistance Committee, American Jewish Yearbook 1944-1945, 233.

• Albert Einstein also praised the efforts of Pius XII and the Catholic Church after World War II: "Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the courage to struggle for spiritual truth and moral liberty." Statement made in 1946 as quoted in Three Popes and the Jews by Pinchas E. Lapide (New York: Hawthorn, 1967), p. 251.

• "What the Vatican did will be indelibly and eternally engraved in our hearts. Priests and even high prelates did things that will forever be an honor to Catholicism."
  • Israel , former Chief Rabbi of Rome, 1948.

• "If the pope had spoken out, Hitler would probably have massacred more than six million Jews and perhaps ten times ten million Catholics, if he had the power to do so."
  • Rabbi Marcus Melchior, Holocaust survivor and Chief Rabbi of Denmark, 1950.

• "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 for us there was no longer an escape."
  • Elio Toaff, Chief Rabbi of Rome, 1951.

• "We share in the grief of humanity at the passing away of His Holiness Pope Pius XII. In a generation affected by wars and discords, he upheld the highest ideals of peace and compassion. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace."
  • Golda Meir, Israeli Prime Minister, message of condolence to the Vatican, sent 1958.

• "With special gratitude we remember all he has done for the persecuted Jews during one of the darkest periods in their entire history”
  • Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, message of condolence to the Vatican, sent 1958.

• "In relation to the insane behavior of the Nazis, from overlords to self-styled cogs like Eichmann, he did everything humanly possible to save lives and alleviate suffering among the Jews; that a formal statement would have provoked the Nazis to brutal retaliation, and would substantially have thwarted further Catholic action on behalf of Jews."
  • Dr. Joseph Lichten, a Polish Jew who served as a diplomat and later an official of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith in Rome. Written in his book A Question of Judgment (1963)(written in response to The Deputy play and available online ).

• "The papal nuncio and the bishops intervened again and again on the instructions of the pope, and that as a result of these labors in the autumn and winter of 1944, there was practically no Catholic Church institution in Budapest where persecuted Jews did not find refuge."
  • Jewish historian Jeno Levai, Hungarian Jewry and the Papacy: Pius XII Did Not Remain Silent (1965).

• "Pius XI had good reason to make Pacelli (the future Pius XII) the architect of his anti-Nazi policy. Of the forty-four speeches which the Nuncio Pacelli had made on German soil between 1917 and 1929, at least forty contained attacks on Nazism or condemnations of Hitler’s doctrines. Pacelli, who never met the Führer, called it ‘neo-Paganism.’"
  • Pinchas E. Lapide, former Israeli diplomat and Orthodox Jewish Rabbi in Three Popes and the Jews (New York: Hawthorn, 1967) p. 118.

• "The Catholic Church, under the pontificate of Pope Pius XII was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000, Jews from certain death at Nazi hands." **Pinchas E. Lapide, Three Popes and the Jews (1967).

• "No Pope in history has been thanked more heartily by Jews. Upon his death in 1958, several suggested in open letters that a Pope Pius XII forest of 860,000 trees be planted on the hills of Judea in order to fittingly honor the memory of the late Pontiff because the Catholic Church under the pontificate of Pius XII was instrumental in saving the lives of as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands."
  • Pinchas E. Lapide, Three Popes and the Jews (1967).

• "I told that my first duty was to thank him, and through him the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish public for all they had done in the various countries to rescue Jews…. We are deeply grateful to the Catholic Church."
  • Moshe Sharett (who later became Israel’s first foreign minister and second prime minister)

• “Pius XII did not make his protest heard when the Roman Jews were carried away right under his nose"
  • Amos Luzzatto, president of Union of Italian Jewish Communities. (September 28, 1998).

• "Hitler distrusted the Holy See because it hid Jews. The Germans considered the Pope as an enemy."
  • Jewish historian Richard Breitman, professor at American University in Washington, D.C. Statement made in Italian newspaper "Corriere della Sera" on June 29 2000.

• "My judgment cannot but be positive. Pope Pacelli was the only one who intervened to impede the deportation of Jews on 16 October 1943, and he did very much to hide and save thousands of us. It was no small matter that he ordered the opening of cloistered convents. Without him, many of our own would not be alive." October 25 2000.
  • Michael Tagliacozzo, Jewish historian and staff member at Beth Lohame Haghettaot (Center of Studies on the Shoah and Resistance). Beth Lohame Haghettaot in western Galilee in Israel is one of the world's largest museums and centers of documentation on the Holocaust.

• "I simply cannot understand the failure of the Pope speak out."
  • Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of Union of American Hebrew Congregations (2000)

• "The Talmud teaches that 'whosoever preserves one life, it is accounted to him by Scripture as if he had preserved a whole world.' More than any other twentieth-century leader, Pius XII fulfilled this Talmudic dictum, when the fate of European Jewry was at stake. No other pope had been so widely praised by Jews — and they were not mistaken. Their gratitude, as well as that of the entire generation of Holocaust survivors, testifies that Pius XII was, genuinely and profoundly, a righteous gentile."
  • Rabbi David G. Dalin, Ph.D. "Pius XII and the Jews." Weekly Standard vol. 6 no. 23 (February 26 2001).

• "Even though the 'Final Solution' was a Nazi invention, not a Church one, the Pontiff who headed the Roman Catholic Church during the Holocaust period, Pius XII, did nothing to either condemn it or protest against it; his standing by while blood was being shed deserves full condemnation, on behalf of future generations as well. At Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, there is an avenue on which every tree is dedicated to the memory of a Righteous Gentile. Had Pius XII fulfilled his basic duty, this avenue would be much longer and the lives of many more Jews would have been saved during those horrible days."
  • Israeli Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, 2000.

• "In a sense, it's an indictment of the dual standard of morality practiced by Pius XII. They (the Vatican) have no hesitation in properly charging the Soviets with atrocities but tragically failed to do so when it came to the murder of the Jews in the Holocaust."
  • Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress 2001 speaking on discovery of a report by Archbishop Montini into the Soviet occupation of Berlin.

• "The facts are that Pius XII was the best informed leader on what was happening in Europe during the Holocaust. Yet unlike many priests and bishops who risked their lives and showed great courage in defying Hitler, the Pope sat in stony silence as millions of Jews were murdered in the death camps." 2001
  • Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center

• “Over time I have become convinced that during World War II Pope Pius XII and the vast majority of European Christian leaders regarded the elimination of the Jews as no less beneficial than the destruction of Bolshevism.”
  • Rabbi Richard L. Rubenstein, professor emeritus University of Bridgeport (Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust, Eds Carol Rittner and John K. Roth, Continuum).

• "Yet, if the Roman Catholic Church pursues its plans to canonize Pope Pius XII, it will be more damaging to its reputation than another huge explosion of pedophile priest scandals. For even child molestation – evil and sinister as it is – remains a step below complicity in the extermination of millions of people and ordering mass kidnapping, two great sins among many by which Pius XII disgraced himself." 2004
  • Schmuley Boteach, Orthodox Rabbi and US media personality

• "We can't help but notice that under Cardinal Ratzinger's tutelage, the Church began moves to elevate the infamous Pope Pius XII to the status of saint. Instead of repenting for the failure of the Church to give unequivocal messages telling all Catholics that they would be prevented from receiving communion for collaborating or cooperating in any way with Nazi rule, or for failing to hide and protect Jews who were marked for extermination, Ratzinger has sought to whitewash this disgraceful moment in Church history” 2005.
  • Michael Lerner, progressive Rabbi and editor of Tikkun

• "During the Nazi occupation of Rome, three thousand Jews found refuge at one time at the pope’s summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. Amazingly, Castel Gandolfo is never mentioned or discussed in the anti-papal writings of many of the pope’s critics. Yet at no other site in Nazi-occupied Europe were as many Jews saved and sheltered for as long a period as at Castel Gandolfo during the Nazi occupation of Rome. Kosher food was provided for the Jews hidden there, where, as George Weigel has noted, Jewish children were born in the private apartments of Pius XII, which became a temporary obstetrical ward."
  • Rabbi David G. Dalin, Ph.D., July 29 2005 interview with Dr. Thomas E. Woods.

Angering Hitler

The relationship between the Nazis and the Roman Catholic Church plainly deteriorated further throughout the war. Joseph Goebbels was clear about the Reich's attitudes. His 26 March 1942 diary entry reads, "It's a dirty, low thing to do for the Catholic Church to continue its subversive activity in every way possible and now even to extend its propaganda to Protestant children evacuated from the regions threatened by air raids. Next to the Jews these politico-divines are about the most loathsome riffraff that we are still sheltering in the Reich. The time will come after the war for an over-all solution of this problem." (Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries, 1948, p. 146).

The Nazis themselves were vehemently outraged by the what they called Pius' "anti-Nazi, pro-Jewish stance", and criticized him because of it. To cite another of numerous documented examples. While Hitler may have had no intention of installing a new Roman pontiff, he had indeed discussed in a meeting on 26 July 1943 the possibility of invading the Vatican and imprisoning the pope in Upper Saxony (Dalin, p. 76). Other plans of Hitler had simply called for Pius XII and the whole Roman Curia to be massacred. Adolf Hitler said " is the only human being who has always contradicted me and who has never obeyed me. (Hans Jansen's "The Silent Pope?" 2000)

After WWII had ended, and even until current times, evidence of the Nazis' disdain for Pius XII's actions to save Jews was documented. After guarding Adolf Eichmann's diaries for almost 40 years, the Israeli government made them public on February 28 2000. Eichmann, a Nazi SS lieutenant colonel, was executed in 1962 in Israel for "crimes against the Jewish people and against humanity." Eichmann wrote these diaries during the months following his death sentence. They are especially chilling in their description of the way the Nazi regime came to the "Final Solution" against the Jews, and the way the extermination was implemented. The pages are also very interesting in studying the Vatican's position on the persecution of Jews. Some people accuse the Church of having done nothing in October, 1943, when the Nazis began to deport Jews from their "ghetto" in Rome. However, Eichmann wrote that the Vatican "vigorously protested the arrest of Jews, requesting the interruption of such action; to the contrary, the Pope would denounce it publicly."

Pope Pius' encyclicals

His encyclicals include:

• Mystici Corporis Christi: On the Mystical Body, 29 June 1943
• Communium Interpretes Doloraum: An Appeal for Prayers for Peace, 15 April 1945
• Fulgens Radiatur: Encyclical on Saint Benedict, 21 March 1947
• Mediator Dei: On the Sacred Liturgy, 20 November 1947
• Auspicia Quaedam: On Public Prayers For World Peace And Solution Of The Problem Of Palestine, 1 May 1948
• In Multiplicibus Curis: On Prayers for Peace in Palestine, 24 October 1948
• Redemptoris Nostri Cruciatus: On the Holy Places in Palestine, 15 April 1949
• Anni Sacri: On A Program For Combating Atheistic Propaganda Throughout The World, 12 March 1950
• Humani Generis: Concerning Some False Opinions Threatening to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine, 12 August 1950
• Munificentissimus Deus, 1 November 1950 (on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven). See below for more information on this.
• Ingruentium Malorum: On Reciting the Rosary: Encyclical promulgated on 15 September 1951
• Fulgens Corona: Proclaiming a Marian year to Commemorate the Centenary of the Definition of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, 8 September 1953
• Ad Caeli Reginam: On Proclaiming the Queenship of Mary, Encyclical promulgated on 11 October 1954
• Datis Nuperrime: Lamenting the Sorrowful Events in Hungary, and Condemning the Ruthless Use of Force, 5 November 1956
• Miranda Prorsus: On the Communications Field: Motion Pictures, Radio, Television, 8 September 1957

Additionally, as Papal Secretary of State, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli wrote the final draft of the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Anxiety) for Pope Pius XI.

Beatifications, canonisations, and teachings

During his reign, Pius XII canonized eight saints, including Pope Pius X, and beatified five people. He consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942.

In 1950, Pius XII issued the encyclical Munificentissimus Deus and infallibly defined the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. This doctrine teaches that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was taken into Heaven body and soul after the end of her earthly life. This belief had been held by Catholic and Orthodox Christians since the early centuries of the Church (for example, by St. Gregory of Tours), but it had never been formally defined as a dogma until 1950. This definition was the only occasion in the 20th century a pope solemnly defined a dogma ex cathedra, i.e. as Extraordinary (Solemn) Magisterium, which is connected to Papal Infallibility.

Pius XII ends the Italian Majority in the College of Cardinals

Only twice in his pontificate did Pius XII hold a consistory to create new cardinals, a decided contrast to Pius XI, who had done so seventeen times in seventeen years on the papal throne. The first occasion has been known as the "Great Consistory", of February 1946; it was the largest in the history of the Church up to that time, and brought an end to over five hundred years of Italians constituting a majority of the College. By his appointments then and in 1953 he substantially reduced the proportion of cardinals who belonged to the Roman Curia.

Pope Pius in later life and after his death

Pius was dogged with ill health later in life, largely due to a charlatan, Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, who posed as a medical doctor and won Pius's trust. His treatments for Pius gave the Holy Father chronic hiccups and rotting teeth. Though eventually dismissed from the Papal Household, this man gained admittance as the pope lay dying and took photographs of Pius which he tried, unsuccessfully, to sell to magazines.

Footnotes

1.   Sr. Margherita Marchione, Pope Pius XII: Architect for Peace (Paulist Press, 2000). ISBN 080913912X
2.   Edgar Ansel Mowrer Triumph and Turmoil ISBN 04 92 00267
3.   Ludwig Volk Das Reichskonkordat vom 20. Juli 1933 ISBN 3 7867 0383 3.
4.   Klaus Scholder "The Churches and the Third Reich" volume 1: especially part 1 chap 10 'Concordat Policy and the Lateran Treaties (1930-33); part 2 chap 2 "The Capitulation of Catholicism" (February-March 1933)
5.   Heinrich Brüning Memoiren, English translation as quoted in Scholder pp.152-3
6.   report by von Ritter, Bavarian envoy to the Vatican, to the Bavarian Land government, as quoted in Scholder p.157
7.   Scholder pp.160-1
8.   Scholder p.241
9.   Toland & Atkin, or Volk (op. cit.)
10.   Michael F. Feldkamp Pius XII. und Deutschland ISBN 3 525 34026 5.
11.   Ludwig Volk Das Reichskonkordat vom 20. Juli 1933 ISBN 3 7867 0383 3.
12.   John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII pp.130-131.
13.   The speech was covered in, for example, the New York Times of 12th December 1938. See , also
14.  
15.  Israel Gutman (ed.)Encyclopedia of the Holocaust vol 2 p.739
16.  Mark Aarons and John Loftus Unholy Trinity pp.71-2
17.   Forms 47 questions.
18.   Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes p.341.
19.   On the question of Pius XII's attitude toward the Nazi persecutions, see also the New York Times editorial page for Christmas Day of 1941 and 1942.
20.   Dalin, David G. The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis. Regnery Publishing. Washington, 2005. ISBN 0-89526-034-4

Additional reading

• John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (Viking, 1999) ISBN 0670876208
• Rabbi David G. Dalin, The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis (Regnery, 2005). ISBN 0895260344.
• Sr. Margherita Marchione, Pope Pius XII: Architect for Peace (Paulist Press, 2000). ISBN 080913912X
• Ronald J. Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope (Our Sunday Visitor; 2000). ISBN 0879732172
• Anonymous, Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich (Publisher: Pelican Pub Co; February 2003). ISBN 1589801377 (originally published in 1941)
• Karl Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich (London, 1987)
• Eugenio Zolli, Before the Dawn (Roman Catholic Books; Reprint edition, February 1997). ISBN 0912141468 (author is the former wartime chief rabbi of Rome who took the name "Eugenio" at his Baptism in honor of Pope Pius XII)
• Susan Zuccotti,Under his very Windows, The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000). ISBN 0300084870

Pius XII and the Holocaust

Official documents

• Pope Pius XII's wartime Encyclical condemning Nazism's racism and Communism's atheism
• anti-Nazi encyclical promulgated by Pope Pius XI, written by future Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli), 14 March 1937. This is the only encyclical to have been originally published in German.
• of the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission,

Overviews

• , an overview of various books in the New York Times Book Review

Defending Pius

• Rabbi David Dalin, Ph.D.
• The Weekly Standard

Condemning Pius

• from Christian Century by Kevin Madigan
• by Garry Willis in the New York Times Book Review

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