David Israel Kertzer (born February 20, 1948) is an American anthropologist, historian, and academic, specializing in the political, demographic, and religious history of Italy.

His book The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe (2014)[1] won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.

"[4] The book analyzes the relation between the development of the Catholic Church and the growth of European anti-Semitism in the 19th and 20th centuries, arguing that the Vatican and several popes contributed actively to fertilizing the ideological ground that produced the Holocaust.

At the time of the death of Pius XII, in 1958, all the documents of the pontificate were locked up: by preventing scholars from consulting them, many questions remained unanswered, making Eugenio Pacelli one of the most controversial popes in history.

Above all, Kertzer explains why, despite having irrefutable evidence[9] of the ongoing extermination of the Jews, Pius XII never denounced the Nazi atrocities, as he preferred to abandon the role of moral guide, rather than put at risk continued existence of the Church.