Pope Pius XII

World War II

Pius' pontificate began on the eve of the Second World War. During the war, Pope Pius XII 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."

Related Topics:
Second World War - Pope Benedict XV - First World War - Holy See - Jew

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When he was told Hitler was a strong leader to deal with the communists, Pacelli responded that Hitler and his Nazis were infinitely worse. http://www.catholicleague.org/pius/piusxii_faqs.html

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Pius XII established diplomatic relations with the Japanese Empire in March 1942. As the war was approaching its end in 1945, Pius XII advocated a lenient policy by the Allied leaders for the vanquished in an effort to prevent the mistakes made at the end of World War I. He attempted to negotiate an early German and Japanese surrender, but his initiatives failed.

Related Topics:
Japanese Empire - March - 1942 - 1945 - Allied - World War I

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Pius XII's role during World War II has been a source of controversy. Critics accuse him of remaining silent towards the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes. Though the Pope actually did speak out, e.g., in his Christmas message of 1942, he did so in a careful manner. Pius's main argument for that policy was twofold. That public condemnation of Hitler and Nazism would have achieved little of practical benefit, given that his condemnation could effectively be censored and so unknown to German Catholics (who in any case had been told as early as the early 1930s by the German Roman Catholic hierarchy that Nazism and Catholicism were incompatible). Secondly, Pius argued that had he 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 occupants retaliated by singling out Jewish converts to the Church for deportation, the most notable example being Edith Stein. Accordingly, the Pope mostly concentrated on practical measures, such as hiding Jews in convents. Also an "underground railroad" of secret escape routes had been set up by prominent Catholics such as Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, who operated under the tacit, if not implicit, approval of Pope Pius XII (as portrayed in the 1983 TV-movie "The Scarlet And The Black").

Related Topics:
World War II - Holocaust - Parish - Dutch - Edith Stein - Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty - 1983

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According to the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, "Preserving Vatican neutrality, and the capability of the Church to continue to function where possible in occupied Europe and Nazi-allied states, was a far better strategy to save lives than Church sanctions on a regime that would have merely laughed at them."

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Although today's press generally villifies Pius XII for not condemning Nazism explicitly enough, the New York Times in its Christmas editorials of 1941 and 1942 praised Pius XII for his moral leadership as a "lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent" and for, among other things, assailing "the violent occupation of territory, and the exile and persecution of human beings, for no other reason than race." On Christmas Day, 1941, during perhaps the lowest point of the war, the New York Times opined: "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." Time Magazine also 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).

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It is estimated that at a bare minimum 300,000 Jews were saved through the direct, but covert activities of the Vatican during World War II. World War II historian Martin Gilbert places the number at 800,000. Rabbi Pinchas Lapide, a former Israeli diplomat, credited Pius XII and the Catholic Church with saving 860,000 Jews. "It?s a big number, to be sure," says columnist Sidney Zion in the March 16, 2000 Houston Chronicle, "but even if we halve it and then subtract by two, we have more Jews saved by the Vatican than by the Allies." Indeed, the Vatican is credited with saving more Jews from the holocaust than all the allied forces combined. The United States turned away boats of Jewish refugees and England did not take many refugees either. After the war had ended, Pius XII was praised by numerous Jewish organizations who had first-hand knowledge of his prudent and heroic actions in saving the lives of Jews. The head rabbi of Rome (Israel Zolli) converted to Catholicism, citing as his reason Pius XII's witness to religious fraternity.

Related Topics:
Rabbi - Israel Zolli

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Praise for Pius XII from prominent Jewish leaders

::"We share in the grief of humanity ?. 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."

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::Golda Meir

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• "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 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
• "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 Israel

::::::"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."

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::::::Moshe Sharett (who later became Israel?s first foreign minister and second prime minister)

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Dr. Raphael Cantoni, director of the Italian Jewish Assistance Committee, wrote: "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."

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Albert Einstein also praised the efforts of Pius XII and the Catholic Church: "Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty."

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Hitler's Disgust with Pius XII

Adolf Hitler said " is the only human being who has always contradicted me and who has never obeyed me." Some modern historians second-guess whether or not Pope Pius XII did enough to prevent the Holocaust and save lives, and indeed whether any intervention by him would have any impact on the number of deaths caused by Nazi policies.

Related Topics:
Adolf Hitler - The Holocaust

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The relationship between the Nazis and the Roman Catholic Church plainly deteriorated further throughout the war and 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, in response to Pius XII's famous Christmas broadcast of 1942-which clearly condemned the Nazi slaughter of the Jews, German war documents reveal the furor Pius XII's words aroused within Nazi ranks: "In a manner never known before...the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order. His radio allocution was a masterpiece of clerical falsification of the National Socialist world-view....His speech is one long attack on everything we stand for....God, says, regards all peoples and races as worthy of the same consideration. Here he is clearly speaking on behalf of Jews....That this speech is directed exclusively against the New Order in Europe as seen in National Socialism is clear in the papal statement that mankind owes a debt to "all who during the war have lost their Fatherland and who, although personally blameless, have simply on account of their nationality and origin, been killed or reduced to utter distinction." Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals"(cited by Anthony Rhodes in The Vatican in the Age of Dictators: 1922-1945,1973, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, pp. 272-273).

Related Topics:
Joseph Goebbels - 26 March - 1942

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So troubling was Pius XII's anti-Nazi activities, Hitler had formalized plans to kidnap Pius XII and replace him with a puppet pacacy that would not give Nazism any resistance. One of the more recent confirmations of this plot was reported in the Italian newspaper Avvenire which suggested that Hitler ordered SS General Karl Wolff, a senior occupation officer in Italy, to kidnap Pius. According to this account, Wolff put on civilian clothes and visited the Vatican to warn him.

Related Topics:
Avvenire - SS - Karl Wolff

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