Pius XII, Pope

[b. EUGENIO PACELLI, MARCH 2, 1876–OCTOBER 11, 1958]

Italian Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, 1939 to 1958

The controversy over Pope Pius XII's alleged silence on the Holocaust is one of the most heated in modern history. Although he was praised by Jewish leaders after World War II and following his death in 1958, Rolf Hochhuth in his play The Deputy (1963) accused the pontiff of indifference to the plight of Jews. Hochhuth contended that had Pius XII spoken out in protest against the Holocaust, countless Jews would have been saved. The activities of Vatican-supported individuals and institutions in the postwar rescue of former Nazi officials only added to the criticism. The controversy that ensued pitted papal detractors against papal supporters and has continued unabated into the twentyfirst century.

Pius XII's detractors claim that as papal secretary of state (1930–1939) before he became pope, Pacelli's negotiation of a concordat or treaty with Hitler's Germany in 1933 gave prestige to the Nazi regime and destroyed whatever power the Catholic Center Party of Germany still held. In response, the pope's supporters observe that Pacelli negotiated the concordat to protect German Catholics against the dictatorial regime, and that the Center Party was already doomed to extinction.

After Pacelli became Pope Pius XII on the eve of the outbreak of war in 1939, and up to the end of the war in 1945, papal detractors argue that he never spoke out in public against the Nazi regime, and even though he knew by mid-1942 that the Germans were operating death camps and killing Jews on a massive scale, he did not publicly protest the Holocaust. Supporters of the pontiff point out that early in the war he condemned atrocities against noncombatants as "actions that call for vengeance in the sight of God." They also direct critics' attention to his address of June 1943 in which he stated, "every one of our public utterances has had to be weighted and pondered . . . in the very interest of those who are suffering, so as not to render their position even more difficult and unbearable than before." Detractors claim that these words were not specific or harsh enough, and that the church's formal excommunication of Hitler (a born Catholic) would have had a significant impact on Catholics in German-occupied Europe. Supporters insist that the excommunication of Hitler would have had no effect on the leader's manic obsession with exterminating Jews, and they question how word of any excommunication might have been able to travel beyond Nazi censors.

Pius XII's reputation has suffered even more blame for his weak response to the Nazi roundup of Rome's Jews in October 1943 when the city was under German occupation. Detractors insist that he should have gone to the Jews' place of imprisonment and demanded their release. Supporters point out that he instructed his secretary of state to threaten a public protest if the roundup continued, even though he feared such a protest would give the Germans a reason to invade neutral Vatican buildings in their search for Jewish refugees.

Detractors and supporters of the pope each cite specific rationales for Pius XII's behavior during the course of World War II. Detractors claim that the pope was an anti-Semite; that he feared a protest would provoke the Germans to destroy Rome; that he favored the Germans over the Allies because of his long residence there as papal nuncio in the 1920s; that he did not want to force German Catholics into a crisis of conscience by making them choose between their church and their state; and that he was so fearful of Soviet Communism that he favored German Nazism as a bulwark against Russian expansion.

Against these specific charges, papal supporters argue that Pius XII did, in fact, try to help Jews by instructing the clergy on how to make their religious houses places of refuge (and that even if no specific document detailing such a policy can be found, the action could hardly have occurred without papal approval), and that no evidence of anti-Semitism on the part of the pope exists. As for the pontiff's alleged fears about the destruction of Rome, the possibility of this event only developed after the German occupation in 1943, which took place more than a year after news of the death camps reached the pope, and thus it cannot have been a motivating factor for his public silence.

Supporters counter the claim that Pope Pius XII favored Germany by pointing to numerous Nazi officials' comments to the contrary, both before and during the war. They call attention to the fact that the pontiff actually agreed to be a conduit between Germans opposed to Hitler and the British government to arrange a compromise peace early in the war. As for the charge that the pope did not want to create a crisis of conscience for German Catholics, papal supporters insist that German Catholics would simply have ignored a papal statement which, in any event, Nazi propagandists might have transformed into a message of support for the regime.

Against the claim that the pope preferred German Nazism to Soviet communism, his supporters respond that although Pius XII undoubtedly feared the communization of Europe, he viewed the wartime Western alliance with Soviet Russia as necessary to defeat Nazism. Thus, he steadfastly refused German requests to characterize its invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 as a Christian crusade, and he furthermore counseled American Catholics to support the wartime alliance with Soviet Russia.

The pontiff's supporters offer two reasons for Pius XII's behavior. They proffer that he wanted to serve as a mediator between the warring sides and therefore could not condemn either. Thus, his criticism of the Nazi regime was implicit in order to preserve his neutrality. Papal critics counter that the mediation of the war was unrealistic, given the Allied statement of unconditional surrender and Hitler's unwillingness to compromise.

Supporters point to Pope Pius XII's own recorded statement that a public protest would have made the conflict worse as proof of his main rationale. Detractors, citing the enormity of the Holocaust, ask how the situation could have been worse. Supporters insist that no one outside of its Nazi planners, not even Jews themselves, ever imagined the immensity of the Holocaust, and that Pius XII, thrust into the most difficult position of any pope in modern history, felt a primary obligation to preserve the safety of Catholics in German-occupied Europe.

SEE ALSO Catholic Church; Religion

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chadwick, Owen (1986). Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Conway, John (1994). "The Vatican, Germany and the Holocaust." In Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age, ed. Peter Kent and John Pollard. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.

Cornwell, John (1999). Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. New York: Viking.

Phayer, Michael (2000). The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Rychlak, Ronald (2000). Hitler, the War, and the Pope. Columbus, Miss.: Genesis Press.

Sánchez, José M. (2002). Pius XII and the Holocaust: Understanding the Controversy. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press.

José M. Sánchez