Pius XII: Vicar of Christ, Not Hitler

Neil Patterson

Originally published in Issue VI of Vulgata, April 2002.
 
 

Often made is the insinuation that Pius XII, who was pope from 1939 to 1958, was in active league with the Nazi government, but this is an argument which is made in living rooms and at diner tables and not in formal scholarly debate by historical researchers.  If ever you should meet someone at a cocktail party trying to pass this off as truth, simply ask them to explain themselves and they will quickly be shown to be calumniators.  However, some historians have put forward evidence that they believe shows that through his alleged failure to publicly denounce the Nazi programme, Pius XII is morally responsible for many Jewish deaths. To get to the truth of the matter, several questions must be answered.  Did or did no the Pope save thousands of people by sheltering them in Church properties?  To what extent did he speak out against the Nazis?  Did he have good reason to fear that lives would be saved if he spoke out? Furthermore, if one is to maintain that the Pope was guilty of silence, then one must give some motivation must be given for him to have remained silent.  In my estimation there are only two.  Either Pius was a moral coward and did not speak out because he was overly afraid of what would happen to himself or the Church or he was an anti-Semite or somehow sympathetic to the Nazi programme.  I see no evidence of these claims.  Neither of these claims are true.  A complete examination of the evidence will clearly show that the conscience of the Church regarding the actions of Pope Pius XII can be clear.

It seems to me impossible to believe that the Vatican was completely uncaring towards the Jewish people during the war given the fact that the Pope himself ordered convents, monasteries and other Church properties across Europe to open their doors to refugees.  The Jewish historian Pinchas E. Lapide credits the Church with saving at least 860 000 Jewish lives during the war. This is one of the highest figures put forward by any historian, but even in the event that it is somewhat generous, there is no doubt that hundreds of thousands were saved.  In recognition of this, there is no shortage of praise from the global Jewish community regarding Pius XII.  Albert Einstein, the famous agnostic humanist of Jewish ancestry, had this to say during the war:

“Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.”
Another example is that of Israel Zolli, the chief Rabbi of Rome during the war.  He was so impressed with the faith and charity of Pius XII that despite his position of high authority within the Jewish religion he converted to Catholicism and took the baptismal name “Eugenio”, Pius’ first name.  Golda Meir, who was the Israeli foreign minister in 1958, the year of Pius’ death, also expressed acknowledgement and gratitude on behalf of the Jewish people.

Some historians suggest that while the Church may have hidden Jews, the Pope did not initiate and may not have even approved of this action.  However, since there is simply no positive evidence to support this claim, I cannot agree.  Furthermore,  there were approximately 450 Jews hiding in the Vatican itself, more than 4000 in Church properties in Rome and approximately 3000 in the Pope’s personal summer palace of Castel Gandolfo. It seems impossible to me that such an operation could have happened without the full support of the Pope, especially considering that it involved putting of those under his charge including priests, monks and nuns in great danger.  Indeed, it was not uncommon for Church properties in Italy to be raided by fascist forces. Regardless of any attack on the reputation of Pius XII, these good works fall on his record and on the record of the Church as a whole. However there still remains that question of silence and whether or not the Vatican should have said more against the Nazi’s Final Solution.

 There are no public statements in the form of speeches, apostolic letters or encyclicals issued by Pius which specifically condemn the Nazis by name.  However, instances abound where he condemns the persecutions of religious groups and minorities, the absolute power of the state of its citizens and the propagandizing of hatred.  Pius writes “there is indeed in some countries at present an unrestrained propaganda which does not refrain from openly altering the truth day by day, and almost hour by hour, presenting opposing nations in a false, outrageous light to public opinion.”  It is clear that he speaks especially of both Hitler’s and Stalin’s governments, even though he does not mention them by name.  This is not only obvious in retrospect, but also to his audience at the time. On Christmas Day 1941, the New York Times wrote:

“The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas... he is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all... the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism... he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace.”
And exactly one year later:
“This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent... Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were lifeless things.”
In fact, the Allies were sufficiently pleased with the content of Pius’ first Encyclical Summi Pontificus (1939) that they air-dropped tens of thousands of copies over Germany. Interestingly enough, that event is recounted in Hitler’s Pope, a book strongly critical of Pius.  The authour, John Cornwell, criticizes the encyclical as “tardy”, “unrealistic” and full of “equivocations” and yet on the same page he quotes such clear and unequivocal statements such as his comment on the invasion of Poland:
“The blood of so many who have been cruelty slaughtered. Though they bore no military rank, cries to heaven especially from the well-loved country of Poland… She puts her trust in that Virgin Mother of God who is the help of Christians, and waits for the day when she will be allowed at last to emerge, unharmed, from the waves that engulf her.”
It is clear to me that the Pope was not silent during the Holocaust.  He had to use words carefully because of the delicate diplomatic situation he was in, but nonetheless it was clear to all at the time exactly how Pius felt about the Nazis.

 There is no denying that the situation was delicate and dangerous.  Certainly after the German occupation of Rome in 1943, there was always the threat of a Nazi takeover of the Vatican or a siege situation wherein the Nazis cut power and food supplies to the Holy See.  Hitler himself, admittedly in a state of great agitation after Mussolini’s defeat, said, “I’m going into the Vatican right now.  Do you think the Vatican bothers me?  We’ll grab it at once… We can apologize afterwards.”  But even before that the Nazis had a record of persecuting Catholics.  It is estimated that 3 000 000 Catholics and 3000 Catholic priests were murdered by the Nazis during the war. The Nazis also made it clear that any protest from Rome would result in retaliation.  In a telegram written by von Ribbentrop, the Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs to Bergen, the German ambassador to the Vatican on January 24, 1943,  he says,

“if, however, you should detect any evidence that the Vatican is preparing to drop its reserve and take up a political or propaganda position hostile to Germany, it would have to be made aware beyond all doubt […] that the Reich Government would lack neither telling propaganda materiel nor opportunities for concrete action as an effective response to any blow aimed by the Vatican at Germany.”
Such “concrete action” was not unprecedented, either.  The Archbishop of Utrecht protested strongly against the Nazi persecutions in Holland in 1942.  The Nazis immediately responded with another round-up of Jewish and non-Aryan Catholics for the concentration camps, including the martyr Blessed Edith Stein.  It is this climate of great danger that Pius and all those opposed to the Nazis had to operate.  Even if the above evidence leaves some (although not myself) demanding more action from Pius and the Church, this climate, which had everyone frightened and cautious, must be remembered.  Furthermore, I have not heard mention from any critics of any other person in a position of non-military authority who did more to help the Jews.

 Finally, I feel that there is one more event which must be examined and is best understood in light of the situation described above.  On October 16, 1943 the Nazis launched their plan to arrest the 8000 Jews that lived in Rome.  Historian Susan Zucotti, who seems to have done the most extensive work on this event, determines that, given the Pope’s vast information network across Europe, it is highly likely that he knew the date and the time of the planned arrest.  She argues that Moellhausen, the temporary German ambassador to Italy learned of the plan and, after trying to convince Ribbentrop that it was a bad idea, informed von Weizsacker, the German ambassador to the Vatican, who in turn informed high Vatican officials. Given this, Zucotti asks why the Pope did not warn the Roman Jewish community, whose leaders he was in contact with.  In fact, the only response from the Vatican was a letter send on orders from the Pope on the day of the arrests by Msgr. Alois Hudal, rector of the German Church in Rome, to Gen. Stahel, commander of the German forces in Rome. The letter was short and polite, but contained this statement:

“I earnestly request  you to order the immediate cessation of these arrests in Rome and its environs.  I fear that if this is not done, the Pope will make a public stand against it, which could not fail to serve anti-German propaganda as a weapon against us Germans.”
No such protest was ever made.  This is puzzling given Pius’ record for active defense of the Jews, particularly in Rome.  However, there are a few things to point out.  Firstly, it is quite likely that the Pope never intended to speak out, for the same reasons he never spoke out directly against the Nazis.  The threat of his speaking out gave the Nazis pause.  Adolph Eichmann, in his diary which was recently released by the Israeli government, wrote "The objections given [by the Catholic Church] and the excessive delay in the steps necessary to complete the implementation of the operation, resulted in a great part of Italian Jews being able to hide and escape capture." The Nazis intended to arrest all 8000 Jews in Rome, they in fact only managed to arrest 1 259 of them, a ration that was roughly equivalent to the 85% of all Jews across Italy who survived. It would seem that Pius’ threat was effective.  The question of why the Pope failed to warn the Jewish community before the sixteenth remains a mystery, despite his other efforts.  It seems likely that he made an error in judgement, but I don’t think that this in any way diminishes his other heroic acts.

As I pointed out earlier, if Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope” as some of his critics argue, then significant evidence has to be brought forward that suggests that he was either a moral coward or an anti-Semite.  If Pius was an anti-Semite, he kept it well hidden.  Nowhere in any of his published writings did he make an anti-Semitic comment.  In Summi Pontificus he quotes Collosians 3:11: “Where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. But Christ is all and in all."  Pius’ record speaks for itself on this issue.  The irrefutable facts that Pius and the Church rescued hundreds of thousands of Jews during the holocaust, the fact that many members of the Church suffered so greatly for their opposition to the Nazis and the outpouring of praise, thanks and recognition from both the secular and Jewish world after the war should be enough to silence all critics.
 

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