Vatican City during World War II

[1] As early as April 1939, Pius XII announced a plan for peace, hoping to mediate a negotiation between the major European powers on the brink of war.

[3] With Mussolini's approval, the next day Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione contacted the nuncios in Paris (Valerio Valeri), Warsaw (Filippo Cortesi), and Berlin (Cesare Orsenigo) and the Apostolic Delegate in London (William Godfrey).

"[6] British historian Owen Chadwick drew four themes from the Vatican mediation attempts:[7] a particular closeness to Mussolini, to the point of sending correspondence of his drafting, from the period May–August 1939; British and Polish disinterest in Vatican proposals, which were suspected of being pro-Italian and pro-German, respectively; major European powers viewed the Pope as "no minor pawn upon their chessboard"; and, above all, Pius XII wanted to ensure compromise between the Western powers to prevent Soviet territorial gains.

With Poland overrun, but France and the Low Countries yet to be attacked, Pius continued to hope for a negotiated peace to prevent the spread of the conflict.

The similarly minded US President Franklin D. Roosevelt re-established unofficial American relations with the Vatican after a seventy-year hiatus and dispatched Myron C. Taylor as his personal representative.

[8] Despite intense behind the scenes actions, Pius XII was resolved not to issue any public pronouncement that took sides in the conflict; this first manifested itself in a refusal to explicitly condemn the German invasion of Poland.

Though couched in diplomatic language, Pius endorsed Catholic resistance, and stated his disapproval of the war, racism, anti-semitism, the Nazi/Soviet invasion of Poland and the persecutions of the Church.

"[14] The Pope wrote of "anti-Christian movements" bringing forth a crop of "poignant disasters" and called for love, mercy, and compassion against the "deluge of discord".

[15] He wrote of "Christians unfortunately more in name than in fact" having shown "cowardice" in the face of persecution by these creeds, and he endorsed resistance:[15] 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?Pius wrote of a persecuted Church[16] and a time requiring "charity" for victims who had a "right" to compassion.

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.

[22] Kaas put Müller in contact with Father Robert Leiber, who personally asked the Pope to relay the information about the German resistance to the British.

[26][27] Oster, Wilhelm Canaris and Hans von Dohnányi, backed by Beck, told Müller to ask Pius to ascertain whether the British would enter negotiations with the German opposition which wanted to overthrow Hitler.

[26] The Vatican agreed to send a letter outlining the bases for peace with Britain, and the participation of the Pope was used to try to persuade senior German Generals Halder and Brauchitsch to act against Hitler.

Hoffmann wrote that, when the Venlo Incident stalled the talks, the British agreed to resume discussions primarily because of the "efforts of the Pope and the respect in which he was held.

On 7 February, the Pope updated Osbourne that the opposition wanted to replace the Nazi regime with a democratic federation, but hoped to retain Austria and the Sudetenland.

[29] Chadwick wrote that Pius XII met with D'Arcy Osborne, telling him that he knew the names of the involved German generals but did not wish to share them.

[53] Pius XII spoke over the radio on several occasions, most notably during his 1942 Christmas address in which he voiced concern at the murder of "hundreds of thousands" of "faultless" people on the basis of no more than their "race or nationality".

During the German occupation of Rome, two films, The Gates of Heaven[54] by Vittorio de Sica and The Ten Commandments[55] by Giorgio Walter Chili, were shot inside the Vatican City.

In his 1939 Summi Pontificatus first papal encyclical, Pius XII expressed dismay at the invasion of Poland; reiterated Catholic teaching against racism and antisemitism; and endorsed resistance against those opposed to the ethical principles of the "Revelation on Sinai" and the Sermon on the Mount.

In 1943 he protested that "The Holy See would fail in its Divine Mandate if it did not deplore these measures, which gravely damage man in his natural right, mainly for the reason that these people belong to a certain race.

As German round-ups continued in Northern Italy, the Pope opened his summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, to take in thousands of Jews, and authorized institutions across the north to do the same.

[56] In 1944 Pius appealed directly to the Hungarian government to halt the deportation of the Jews of Hungary and his nuncio, Angelo Rotta, led a citywide rescue scheme in Budapest.

[64] These actions were the primary justification of the Polish Provisional Government for declaring the Concordat of 1925 null and void in 1945, an act that had tremendous consequences for post-war Polish-Vatican relations.

[65] During the liberation, many Catholic Allied troops visited the Vatican for Mass and to hear the Pope speak, including some who drove tanks into St. Peter's Square.

[66] The Pope was the greatest celebrity on the Italian peninsula during this period, and, given the tarnish of the King of Italy with fascism, there was even talk of extending the temporal power of the papacy.

By the end of World War II there were several prominent vacancies, including Cardinal Secretary of State, Camerlengo, Chancellor, and Prefect for the Congregation for the Religious.