Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust

The papacy of Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) began on 2 March 1939 and continued to 9 October 1958, covering the period of the Second World War and the Holocaust, during which millions of Jews were murdered by Adolf Hitler's Germany.

[2] Pius maintained links to the German Resistance, and shared intelligence with the Allies, but at the same time he developed alliances with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and even arranged secret negotiations with Hitler's envoys.

In his 1939 Summi Pontificatus first papal encyclical, Pius XII expressed dismay at the 1939 Invasion of Poland (without ascribing blame); reiterated Catholic teaching in support of universal brotherhood; and endorsed resistance against those opposed to the ethical principles of the "Revelation on Sinai" and the Sermon on the Mount.

"[17] Pius XI offered three encyclicals against the rising tide of European totalitarianism: Non abbiamo bisogno (1931; "We Do Not Need to Acquaint You" – against Italian Fascism); Mit brennender Sorge (1937; "With Deep Anxiety" – against Nazism) and Divini redemptoris (1937; "Divine Redeemer" – against atheist Communism).

"[19] Cardinal Pacelli (the later Pope Pius XII) addressed the International Eucharistic Conference that took place in Budapest, Hungary, between 25 and 29 May 1938, and, according to Holocaust scholar and historian Michael Phayer, described the Jews as people "whose lips curse [Christ] and whose hearts reject him even today".

[30] In 1939, the newly elected Pope Pius XII appointed several prominent Jewish scholars to posts at the Vatican after they had been dismissed from Italian universities under Fascist leader Benito Mussolini's racial laws.

[36] Following themes addressed in Non abbiamo bisogno (1931), Mit brennender Sorge (1937) and Divini redemptoris (1937), Pius wrote of a need to bring back to the Church those who were following "a false standard ... misled by error, passion, temptation and prejudice, [who] have strayed away from faith in the true God".

[37] Frank Coppa wrote "It is true that Pius XII's first encyclical of 20 October 1939 rejected the claims of absolute state authority propounded by the totalitarian powers, but his denunciation was general rather than specific and difficult to decipher.

[41] He further asserts that the Pope's pronunciations in the encyclical relating to his intention "to give testimony to the truth" without fear of opposition, along with similar sentiments expressed by the German episcopate, "remained an empty formula in the face of the Jewish tragedy".

And in order to give external expression to these, Our intentions, We have chosen the forthcoming Feast of Christ the King to raise to the Episcopal dignity at the Tomb of the Apostles twelve representatives of widely different peoples and races.

In the midst of the disruptive contrasts which divide the human family, may this solemn act proclaim to all Our sons, scattered over the world, that the spirit, the teaching and the work of the Church can never be other than that which the Apostle of the Gentiles preached: "putting on the new, (man) him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of him that created him.

[49] Walter Bussmann has argued that Pacelli, as Cardinal Secretary of State, dissuaded Pope Pius XI – who was nearing death at the time[50] – from condemning Kristallnacht in November 1938,[51] when he was informed of it by the papal nuncio in Berlin.

Pius XII often repeated what he told the Italian ambassador to the Vatican in 1940, "We would like to utter words of fire against such actions [German atrocities] and the only thing restraining us from speaking is the fear of making the plight of the victims even worse.

Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice towards the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.On the contrary, according to Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini commented on the pope's message with sarcasm: "This is a speech of platitudes which might better be made by the parish priest of Predappio.

"[73] On 30 April 1943, Pius wrote to Bishop Von Preysing of Berlin to say: "We give to the pastors who are working on the local level the duty of determining if and to what degree the danger of reprisals and of various forms of oppression occasioned by episcopal declarations ... ad maiora mala vitanda (to avoid worse) ... seem to advise caution.

[citation needed] On 28 October 1943, Ernst von Weizsäcker, the German Ambassador to the Vatican, telegrammed Berlin that "the Pope has not yet let himself be persuaded to make an official condemnation of the deportation of the Roman Jews.

"[93] Historian Susan Zuccotti, author of Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy, wrote "If the Pope remained silent, however, he allowed nuns, monks, priests, and prelates in his diocese, including several at the Vicaraite, to involve themselves in Jewish rescue.

To do so, she has to be silent about the much greater number of Roman Jews that the Church, with the approval of the Pope, hid within a wide network of monasteries, convents, schools, and hospitals, 'under the very windows' of the Gestapo and the collaborating Fascist police.

[112] Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione received a request from Chief Rabbi of Palestine Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog in the spring of 1939 to intercede on behalf of Lithuanian Jews about to be deported to Germany.

"[72] In A History of Christianity, Michael Burleigh writes: For reasons either of personal character or of professional training as a diplomat, his [Pius's] statements were exceedingly cautious and wrapped up in involuted language that is difficult for many to understand, especially in this age of the resonant sound-bite and ubiquitous rent-a-moralist.

[124] He further notes that in 1951 another French Catholic intellectual, François Mauriac, wrote in the introduction to a book by "the Jew Poliakov" that "we never had the comfort of hearing the successor of Galilee, Simon Peter, [i.e Pius XII] use clear and precise words, rather than diplomatic allusions, to condemn the countless crucifixions of the 'brothers of the Lord' [i.e. Jewish people]".

Frank Coppa wrote: "During World War II as well, Papa Pacelli's diplomatic focus often restricted his moral mission, refusing to openly condemn Nazism's evil actions including its genocide when it appeared it might triumph, but denouncing it as satanic when it was defeated.

Tisserant expressed his concern at the racism of the Nazis, the systematic destruction of their victims and the moral reserve of Pope Pius XII: "I'm afraid that history may be obliged in time to come to blame the Holy See for a policy accommodated to its own advantage and little more.

Upon the arrival of the Allied Forces in Rome, on June 4, 1944, Israel Zolli resumed the post of Grand Rabbi and in the following July he celebrated a solemn ceremony in the Synagogue, which was broadcast by radio, to publicly express the gratitude of the Jewish community to Pius XII, for the help given to them during the Nazi persecution.

[165] Defector and former Securitate General Ion Mihai Pacepa has stated that the play of Hochhuth and numerous publications attacking Pius XII as allegedly having been a Nazi sympathizer were fabrications from the KGB and Eastern bloc Marxist secret services leading a campaign to discredit the moral authority of the Church and Christianity in the West.

Cornwell argued that Pius's entire career as the nuncio to Germany, cardinal secretary of state, and pope was characterized by a desire to increase and centralize the power of the Papacy, and that he subordinated opposition to the Nazis to that goal.

In a review of the book, the eminent Holocaust historian and Churchill biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert, wrote that Dalin's work was "an essential contribution to our understanding of the reality of Pope Pius XII's support for Jews at their time of greatest danger.

[160] Michael Burleigh comments that "Making use of the Holocaust as the biggest moral club to use against the Church, simply because one does not like its policies on abortion, contraception, homosexual priests or the Middle East, is as obscene as any attempt to exploit the deaths of six million European Jews for political purposes.

He further argues that those who use a person's identity as a Jew, Catholic or German as a tool to further their cause betray a great deal about themselves as such tactics are often used to stifle sober debate by switching attention away from the truth as exemplified by the charge of "anti-Catholicism" by apologists.

Shortly prior to, and after the mass, dialectics continued between some Jewish religious leaders and the Vatican as Rabbi Shear Yeshuv Cohen of Haifa addressed the Synod of Bishops and expressed his disappointment towards Pius XII's "silence" during the war.