Wartime pontiff Pope Pius XII has long been accused of failing to act in the face of Nazi atrocities, giving rise to the myth of “Hitler’s Pope.” But Vatican officials are working hard to debunk that myth and to share with the world the heroism, compassion, and cunning evinced by Pius XII in the face of one of the most horrific periods of world history. The Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome hosted a conference last week to reveal and discuss newly-declassified documents from the Vatican archive, detailing Pope Pius XII’s efforts to confront Nazi Germany’s Führer Adolf Hitler and protect Jews from concentration camps. Vatican Secretariat of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin presided over the conference, who condemned what he called “cases of scientific dishonesty which become ‘historical manipulation’ when documents are negligently or deliberately concealed.”
Amid debate over Pope Pius XII’s response to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, Pope Francis made the Vatican archival material on Pius XII’s pontificate available to historians and researchers in 2020. Parolin said Monday, “Thanks to the recent opening of the archives, it has become more evident that Pope Pius XII followed both the path of diplomacy and that of undercover resistance. This strategic decision wasn’t an apathetic inaction, but one that was extremely risky for everyone involved.” (READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: The Pope Is All Things to All Men)
While some historians still condemn Pius XII for his seeming inaction in the face of the Nazi regime’s brutalization of Europe, historical evidence paints another picture. Archival documents reveal that Pius XII “deplored” the systematic extermination of ethnic Jews under Nazi occupation, a practice he was aware of as early as 1942, shortly before the Nazis invaded Rome. He struggled to maintain the Vatican’s diplomatic neutrality and sometimes had to be reminded by his cardinals and curial advisors of the importance of that diplomatic neutrality. Some of these Vatican officials, documents suggest, may have harbored a disdain for or distrust of Jews, but records indicate that no such feelings were shared by Pius XII.
Documentary evidence is rife with examples of Pope Pius XII not just condemning Nazism and the brutalization of Jews but actively assisting persecuted Jews.
In fact, one of Pius XII’s most trusted advisors, the Vatican official Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, famously saved over 6,500 Jews and Allied soldiers from the Nazis during their occupation of Rome. The Irish priest, charmingly immortalized by Gregory Peck in the film “The Scarlet and The Black,” relied on a network of informal spies to help him hide and smuggle out of the country thousands of Jews and Allied soldiers who were being actively hunted down by the SS. Some Jews were even hidden in Pope Pius XII’s own residence, the Castelo Gandolfo, at the Pope’s own invitation. After the War ended, Pius XII granted O’Flaherty an honorary title and appointed him as a key officer in the Vatican’s doctrinal office, then called the Holy Office.
Pius XII also established the Vatican Information Service, which was instrumental during the war in secretly assisting persecuted Jews and is credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
Before ascending to the Papacy, Pius XII was a cardinal named Eugenio Pacelli. Under Pope Benedict XV, he was appointed the papal nuncio (the Pope’s ambassador) to Bavaria, effectively serving as the nuncio to all of Germany. In this capacity, he repeatedly advocated an end to World War I, developed a deep love for the German people, and foresaw the disastrous effects the Treaty of Versailles would have upon this nation he had come to cherish. Sister Pascalina Lehnert, a German nun who served as Pacelli’s secretary for decades, recalled:
Thinking back today on that time, when we Germans still all believed that our weapons would be victorious and the Nuncio was deeply sorry that the chance had been missed to save what there was to save, it occurs to me over and over again how clearly he foresaw what was to come. Once as he traced the course of the Rhine with his finger on a map, he said sadly, “No doubt this will be lost as well.” I did not want to believe it, but here, too, he was to be proved right.
Pacelli presciently recognized that the punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles would be used within Germany to foment, exacerbate, and manipulate a hatred of the victorious Allied powers. As the postwar Weimar Republic began to crumble, Pacelli was summoned to return to Rome. Before he left, though, he had ample opportunity to observe the growing Nazi movement and do what he could to oppose it. According to rabbi and historian David G. Dalin, “of the forty-four speeches Pacelli gave in Germany as papal nuncio between 1917 and 1929, forty denounced some aspect of the emerging Nazi ideology.” In a 1935 letter, Pacelli condemned the Nazis as “false prophets with the pride of Lucifer.” (READ MORE: Hitler’s Pope?)
In Rome, Pacelli was made Vatican Secretariat of State and oversaw the Church’s diplomatic and political relationships with the rest of the world. He warned Heinrich Brüning, a Catholic politicians and then-chancellor of the Weimar Republic, against the Nazis, but Brüning told Pacelli that he “misunderstood the political situation in Germany and the real character of the Nazis.” He also warned U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the dangers of the Nazi Reich, describing Hitler as a “fundamentally wicked person” who was not “capable of moderation” and declared that the Church’s cooperation or compromise with Nazi Germany was “out of the question.”
Pope Pius XI’s 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Deep Anxiety) was the first official condemnation of Nazism by any major organization and castigated the Nazi ideology for its paganism and “so-called myth of race and blood,” as well as declaring Hitler a “mad prophet possessed of repulsive arrogance.” The document was essentially ghostwritten by Pacelli and was smuggled into Germany by motorcyclists, for fear the Nazis would censor it, and read aloud from every Catholic church’s pulpit at Mass on Palm Sunday. Unlike most encyclicals, which are traditionally written and published in Latin, Mit brennender Sorge was written and published in German, since its chief audience was German. Following its publication, Nazis arrested and prosecuted numerous Catholic priests for crimes of “immorality.”
In 1939, on his 63rd birthday, Pacelli was elected Pope, following the death of Pius XI. His first papal encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, explicitly condemned racism and totalitarianism (hallmarks of the Third Reich) and Germany’s invasion of Poland. He also called for Catholics to resist the Nazi regime:
Who among “the Soldiers of Christ” — ecclesiastic or layman — does not feel himself incited and spurred on to a greater vigilance, to a more determined resistance, by the sight of the ever-increasing host of Christ’s enemies; as he perceives the spokesmen of these tendencies deny or in practice neglect the vivifying truths and the values inherent in belief in God and in Christ; as he perceives them wantonly break the Tables of God’s Commandments to substitute other tables and other standards stripped of the ethical content of the Revelation on Sinai, standards in which the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and of the Cross has no place?
Ever the diplomat, Pius XII worked hard to end the War, to keep Italian leader Benito Mussolini from joining forces with Hitler, and to help as many Catholics, Christians, and Jews as possible escape Nazi persecution. Although he maintained a public façade of diplomatic neutrality, Pius XII worked feverishly behind the scenes to save lives. Hitler biographer John Toland wrote that the reaction of the Allied forces to the Holocaust was “shameful,” but that, “The Church, under the Pope’s guidance, had already saved the lives of more Jews than all other churches, religious institutions and rescue organizations combined.” The Pope even issued orders, penned on Vatican letterheads, to Catholic priests in Nazi-occupied territories to do whatever was within their power to rescue Jews. Mark Riebling’s 2015 book “Church of Spies” even details Pope Pius XII’s secret plot to not only rescue Jews but, relying on mostly-Jesuit theology regarding the just war theory, assassinate Hitler. (READ MORE: On Becoming Catholic)
Documentary evidence is rife with examples of Pope Pius XII not just condemning Nazism and the brutalization of Jews but actively assisting persecuted Jews, even at the risk of Nazi invasion of the Holy See. Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli can even be credited with warning and motivating the Allies (especially the U.S. and the U.K.) to move against Hitler. Despite continuing accusations that Pope Pius XII was somehow “Hitler’s Pope,” it is clear he made strenuous efforts to prevent the Nazi extermination of Jews.
