Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
Encyclopedia
The relationship between Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust has long been disputed, with some scholars arguing that he kept silent during the Holocaust, while others have argued that he saved thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of Jews.
's racial laws. Pius later engineered an agreement — formally approved on June 23, 1939 — with Brazil
ian President
Getúlio Vargas
to issue 3,000 visas
to "non-Aryan Catholics".
However, over the next eighteen months Brazil’s Conselho de Imigração e Colonização (CIC) continued to tighten the restrictions on their issuance — including requiring a baptismal certificate
dated before 1933, a substantial monetary transfer to the Banco do Brasil
, and approval by the Brazilian Propaganda Office in Berlin
— culminating in the cancellation of the program fourteen months later, after fewer than 1,000 visas had been issued, amid suspicions of "improper conduct" (i.e. continuing to practice Judaism
) among those who had received visas.
, dissuaded Pope Pius XI
— who was nearing death at the time — from condemning Kristallnacht
in November 1938, when he was informed of it by the papal nuncio in Berlin. Likewise the prepared draft of an encyclical Humani Generis Unitas
("On the Unity of Human Society"), which was ready in September 1938 but, according to the two publishers of the draft and other sources, not forwarded to the Vatican by the Jesuit General Wlodimir Ledochowski
. On January 28, 1939, eleven days before the death of Pope Pius XI, a disappointed Gundlach informed the author La Farge: "It cannot continue like this. The text has not been forwarded to the Vatican."
He had talked to the American assistant to Father General, who promised to look into the matter in December 1938, but did not report back. It contained an open and clear condemnation of colonialism
, racism
and antisemitism. Some historians have argued that Pacelli learned about its existence only after the death of Pius XI and did not promulgate it as Pope. He did however use parts of it in his inaugural encyclical Summi Pontificatus
, which he titled "On the Unity of Human Society."
(October 20, 1939), Pius XII publicly expressed sympathy for the Polish people in the aftermath of the invasion
by Nazi Germany. Phayer (2000) is of the opinion that whilst the encyclical condemns the war it doesn't condemn the invasion.
In May 1942, the Pope appointed a German Apostolic Administrator to lands in Nazi occupied Poland (Wurtheland). According to Phayer (2008), this was seen as implicit recognition of the breakup of Poland and that this, combined with Pius's failure to explicitly censure the invasion, led to a sense of betrayal amongst the Poles.
In December 1942, the Polish President in exile wrote to Pius XII appealing that "the silence must be broken by the Apostolic See".
President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent Myron C. Taylor as his special representative to the Vatican in September 1941. His assistant, Harold Tittman, repeatedly pointed out to Pius the dangers to his moral leadership by his failure to speak out against the violations of the natural law carried out by the Nazis. Pius XII responded that he could not name the Nazis without at the same time mentioning the Bolsheviks.
Pius XII also never publicly condemned the Nazi massacre of 1.8 - 1.9 million mainly Catholic Polish gentiles (including 2,935 members of the Catholic Clergy), nor did he ever publicly condemn the Soviet Union for the deaths of 1,000,000 mainly Catholic Polish gentile citizens including an untold number of clergy.
In an interview Father Peter Gumpel stated that Robert Kempner's (former U.S Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor) foreword to Jeno Levai's 1968 book "Hungarian Jewry and the Papacy" asserts that Pope Pius did indeed complain through diplomatic channels about the situation of Hungarian Jews but that any public protestation would have been of no use.
Montini (future Pope Paul VI
), saying, "the massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms". Later that month, Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the Vatican, warned Pius that the Vatican's "moral prestige" was being injured by silence on European atrocities — a warning which was echoed simultaneously by representatives from Great Britain, Brazil, Uruguay, Belgium, and Poland — the Cardinal Secretary of State
replied that the rumors about genocide could not be verified.
In December 1942, when Tittman asked Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione if Pius would issue a proclamation similar to the Allied declaration "German Policy of Extermination of the Jewish Race", Maglione replied that the Vatican was "unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities."
"Mankind owes that vow to the numberless exiles whom the hurricane of war has torn from their native land and scattered in the land of the stranger; who can make their own the lament of the Prophet: 'Our inheritance is turned to aliens; our house to strangers.' Mankind owes that vow to the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or slow extermination."
Reinhard Heydrich
's Reich Central Security Office analyzed Pius' Christmas message and concluded:
Pius said to Father Scavizzi “I have often considered excommunication, to castigate in the eyes of the entire world the fearful crime of genocide. But after much praying and many tears, I realize that my condemnation would not only fail to help the Jews, it might even worsen their situation… No doubt a protest would gain me the praise and respect of the civilized world, but it would have submitted the poor Jews to an even worse persecution.”
. According to Rev. Peter Gumpel
, a historian in charge of Pius' canonization process, the Pope told leading bishops that should he be arrested by Nazi forces, his resignation would take immediate effect and that the Holy See would move to another country, specifically Portugal
, where the College of Cardinals
would elect a new pope. Some historians argue that the reason Hitler wanted to capture the Pope was because he was concerned Pius would continue speaking against the way the Nazis treated the Jews. However, the plan was never brought to fruition, and was reportedly foiled by Nazi general Karl Wolff
. Both British historian Owen Chadwick and Jesuit ADSS editor Robert A. Graham dismissed the existence of a plot as British wartime propaganda. However, subsequent to those accounts, Dan Kurzman in 2007 published a work which he maintains establishes the plot as fact.
On September 27, 1943, one of the Nazi commanders in Rome demanded that the Jewish community pay one hundred pounds of gold within thirty-six hours or three hundred Jews would be taken prisoner. When the Jewish Community Council was only able to gather only seventy pounds of gold, they turned to the Vatican. In his memoirs, the then Chief Rabbi Zolli of Rome writes that he was sent to the Vatican where he was met by the Vatican treasurer and secretary of state who told him that the Holy Father himself had given orders for the deficit to be filled with gold taken from the Treasury."
Despite the payment of the ransom 2,091 Jews were deported on October 16, 1943, and most of them died in Germany. Many others were also killed on March 24, 1944, at the Fosse Ardeatine.
In November 1943, nuncio Cesare Orsenigo
spoke to the leader of the Third Reich on behalf of Pope Pius XII. In his conversation with Hitler, he talked about the status of persecuted peoples in the Third Reich, apparently referring to Jews. This conversation with the Nazi leader led to no success. Over large parts of the conversation Hitler simply ignored Orsenigo, he went to the window and did not listen.
.
According to the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, Roncalli forwarded a request for the Vatican to inquire whether other neutral countries could grant asylum to Jews, to inform the German government that the Palestine Jewish Agency had 5,000 immigration certificates available and to ask Vatican Radio to broadcast that helping Jews was an act of mercy approved by the Church. In 1944, Roncalli used diplomatic couriers, papal representatives and the Sisters of Our Lady of Zion to transport and issue baptismal certificates, immigration certificates and visas – many of them forged – to Hungarian Jews. A dispatch dated Aug. 16, 1944 from Roncalli to the papal nuncio to Hungary illustrates the intensity of "Operation Baptism":
were published in the Italian press, stating that Pope Pius XII ordered Rome's convents and monasteries to hide Jews during the Second World War.
On October 28, 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.... Since it is currently thought that the Germans will take no further steps against the Jews in Rome, the question of our relations with the Vatican may be considered closed."
Eichmann wrote in his diary that the Vatican "vigorously protested the arrest of Jews, requesting the interruption of such action; to the contrary, the Pope would denounce it publicly." Eichmann added that "the objections given and the excessive delay in the steps necessary to complete the implementation of the operation, resulted in a great part of Italian Jews being able to hide and escape capture"
Eichmann wrote in his diary that
is one of the most controversial aspects of the record of Pope Pius XII
during that period.
According to Roth and Ritner, "this is a key point because, in debates about Pius XII, his defenders regularly point to denunciations of racism and defense of Jewish converts as evidence of opposition to antisemitism of all sorts. The Holocaust is one of the most acute examples of the "recurrent and acutely painful issue in the Catholic-Jewish dialogue", namely "Christian efforts to convert Jews".
informed Pius of Jewish deportations in Vienna.
of Croatian bishops in November 1941. The synod appealed to Pavelić to treat Jews "as humanely as possible, considering that there were German troops in the country". The Vatican replied with praise to Marcone with praise for what the synod had done for "citizens of Jewish origin", although Israeli historian Menachem Shelah demonstrates that the synod concerned itself only with converted Jews. Pius XII personally praised the synod for "courage and decisiveness".
if the Vatican objected to anti-Jewish laws, Pius responded that the Church condemned antisemitism, but would not comment on specific rules. Similarly, when Philippe Pétain
's regime adopted the "Jewish statutes," the Vichy
ambassador to the Vatican, Léon Bérard
(a French politician), was told that the legislation did not conflict with Catholic teachings. Valerio Valeri
, the nuncio
to France
was "embarrassed" when he learned of this publicly from Pétain and personally checked the information with Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione who confirmed the Vatican's position.
Yet in June 1942 Pius personally protested against the mass deportations of Jews from France, ordering the papal nuncio to protest to Marshal Pétain against "the inhuman arrests and deportations of Jews". In October 1941 Harold Tittman, a U.S. delegate to the Vatican, asked the pope to condemn the atrocities against Jews; Pius replied that the Vatican wished to remain "neutral," reiterating the neutrality policy which Pius invoked as early as September 1940.
asserts that the timing of the statement, during a period when Hungary was in the process of formulating new anti-Semitic laws, ran counter to Pope Pius XI's September statement urging Catholics to honour their spiritual father Abraham.
In March 1944, through the papal nuncio in Budapest
, Angelo Rotta
, the pope urged the Hungarian
government to moderate its treatment of the Jews. The pope also ordered Rotta and other papal legates to hide and shelter Jews. These protests, along with others from the King of Sweden, the International Red Cross, the United States, and Britain led to the cessation of deportations on 8 July 1944. Also in 1944, Pius appealed to 13 Latin American governments to accept "emergency passports", although it also took the intervention of the U.S. State Department for those countries to honor the documents.
Luigi Maglione received a request from Chief Rabbi
of Palestine
Isaac Herzog
in the Spring of 1939 to intercede on behalf of Lithuanian Jews
about to be deported to Germany. Pius called Ribbentrop
on March 11, repeatedly protesting against the treatment of Jews. In his 1940 encyclical Summi Pontificatus, Pius rejected anti-semitism, stating that in the Catholic Church there is "neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision." In 1940 Pius asked members of the clergy, on Vatican letterhead, to do whatever they could on behalf of interned Jews.
during 1940, Pius XII sent expressions of sympathy to the Queen of the Netherlands, the King of Belgium, and the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. When Mussolini learned of the warnings and the telegrams of sympathy, he took them as a personal affront and had his ambassador to the Vatican file an official protest, charging that Pius XII had taken sides against Italy's ally Germany. Mussolini's foreign minister claimed that Pius XII was "ready to let himself be deported to a concentration camp, rather than do anything against his conscience."
When Dutch bishops protested against the wartime deportation of Jews in 1942, the Nazis responded with harsher measures rounding up 92 converts including Edith Stein
who were then deported and murdered. "The brutality of the retaliation made an enormous impression on Pius XII."
In 1942, the Slovakian charge d'affaires
told Pius that Slovakian Jews were being sent to concentration camps. On March 11, 1942, several days before the first transport was due to leave, the chargé d'affaires in Bratislava
reported to the Vatican: "I have been assured that this atrocious plan is the handwork of... Prime Minister (Tuka
), who confirmed the plan... he dared to tell me - he who makes such a show of his Catholicism - that he saw nothing inhuman or un-Christian in it... the deportation of 80,000 persons to Poland, is equivalent to condemning a great number of them to certain death." The Vatican protested to the Slovak government that it "deplore(s) these... measures which gravely hurt the natural human rights of persons, merely because of their race."
On April 7, 1943, Monsignor Domenico Tardini, one of Pius’s closest advisors, told Pius that it would be politically advantageous after the war to take steps to help Slovakian Jews.
, a Jewish theologian and Israeli diplomat to Milan in the 1960s, claimed in Three Popes and the Jews
that Catholics were "instrumental in saving at least 700,000 but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands." Some historians have questioned this oft-cited number, which Lapide reached by "deducting all reasonable claims of rescue" by non-Catholics from the number of Jews he claims succeeded in escaping to the free world from Nazi-controlled areas during the Holocaust.
The Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Isaac Herzog, sent the Pope a personal message of thanks on February 28, 1944, in which he said: "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 foundations of true civilization, are doing for us unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of divine Providence in this world."
Other Jewish leaders chimed in also. Rabbi Safran of Bucharest, Romania, sent a note of thanks to the papal nuncio on April 7, 1944: "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."
The Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, also made not a statement of thanks: "What the Vatican did will be indelibly and eternally engraved in our hearts. ... Priests and even high prelates did things that will forever be an honor to Catholicism."
Catholic scholar Kevin Madigan interprets such praise from prominent Jewish leaders, including Golda Meir
, as less than sincere; an attempt to secure Vatican recognition of the State of Israel
.
On September 21, 1945, the general secretary of the World Jewish Council, Dr. Leon Kubowitzky, presented an amount of money to the pope, "in recognition of the work of the Holy See in rescuing Jews from Fascist and Nazi persecutions." After the war, in the autumn of 1945, Harry Greenstein from Baltimore, a close friend of Chief Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem, told Pius how grateful Jews were for all he had done for them. "My only regret," the pope replied, "is not to have been able to save a greater number of Jews."
In 1963, Rolf Hochhuth
's controversial drama Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel
(The Deputy, a Christian tragedy, released in English in 1964) portrayed Pope Pius XII as a hypocrite who remained silent about the Holocaust. Books such as Dr. Joseph Lichten's A Question of Judgment (1963), written in response to The Deputy, defended Pius XII's actions during the war. Lichten labelled any criticism of the pope's actions during World War II as "a stupefying paradox" and said, "no one who reads the record of Pius XII's actions on behalf of Jews can subscribe to Hochhuth's accusation." Critical scholarly works like Guenter Lewy
's The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (1964) also followed the publication of The Deputy. Lewy's conclusion was that "the Pope and his advisers—influenced by the long tradition of moderate anti-Semitism so widely accepted in Vatican circles—did not view the plight of the Jews with a real sense of urgency and moral outrage. For this assertion no documentation is possible, but it is a conclusion difficult to avoid". Carlo Falconi (1967) described Hochhuth's depiction as crude and inaccurate, however he doesn't accept the explanations put forward by apologists of Pius regarding his alleged silence. In particular he rejects the defence of not making things worse by public denunciation since no fate could have been worse that what the Jews were undergoing and that on the one occasion when Bishops did speak out against the euthanasia of disabled people the Nazi's backed down. He also rejected the defence that the Pope did not know of what was happening since in his opinion this is directly contradicted by instances in which Pius did make diplomatic interventions In 2002 the play was adapted into the film Amen.
An article on Jesuit Vatican journal La Civilità Cattolica in March 2009 indicated that the accusations that Hochhut's play made widely known originated not among Jews but in the Communist bloc. It was Moscow Radio, on 2 June 1945, that first direct against Pius XII the accusation of refusing to speak out against the exterminations in Nazi concentration camps. It was also the first to call him "Hitler's Pope". The same journal during the pontificate of Pius was still accusing the Jews of being "Christ killers" and of indulging in ritual murder as late as 1942.
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
. Pacepa also claims that he was involved in contacting East bloc agents close the Vatican in order to fabricate the story to be used for the attack against the wartime pope.
Hitler's Pope
criticized Pius for not doing enough, or speaking out enough, against the Holocaust. 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. He further argues that Pius was anti-Semitic
and that this stance prevented him from caring about the European Jews. However, as noted below, Cornwell views have developed, now stating he is unable to judge the Pope's motivation.
Cornwell's work was the first to have access to testimonies from Pius's beatification process as well as to many documents from Pacelli's nunciature which had just been opened under the seventy-five year rule by the Vatican State Secretary archives. Cornwell's work has received much praise and criticism. Much praise of Cornwell centered around his disputed claim that he was a practising Catholic who had attempted to absolve Pius with his work. While works such as Susan Zuccotti's Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy
(2000) and Michael Phayer
's The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (2000) are critical of both Cornwell and Pius XII, Ronald J. Rychlak
's Hitler, the War and the Pope is critical as well but defends Pius XII in light of his access to most recent documents.
Cornwell's scholarship has been criticized. For example, Kenneth L. Woodward stated in his review in Newsweek that "errors of fact and ignorance of context appear on almost every page." Five years after the publication of Hitler's Pope, Cornwell stated: "I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler's Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany". In 2009 Cornwell wrote of the "fellow travellers" i.e. those priests in Nazi Germany who accepted the benefits that came with the Reichskonkordat
but who failed to condemn the Nazi regime at the same time. He cites Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) as being an example of a "fellow traveller" who was willing to accept the generosity of Hitler in the educational sphere (more schools, teachers and pupil places), so long as the Church withdrew from the social and political sphere, at the same time as Jews were being dismissed from universities and Jewish pupil places were being reduced. For this he considers Pacelli as effectively being in collusion with the Nazi cause, if not by intent. He further argues that Monsignor Kass
, who was involved in negotiations for the Reichskonkordat, and at that time the head of the Roman Catholic Centre Party
, persuaded his party members, with the acquiescence of Pacelli, in the summer of 1933 to enable Hitler to acquire dictatorial powers. He argues that the Catholic Centre Party vote was decisive in the adoption of dictatorial powers by Hitler and that the party's subsequent dissolution was at Pacelli's prompting.
Most recently, Rabbi David Dalin's
The Myth of Hitler's Pope
argues that critics of Pius are liberal Catholics and ex-Catholics who "exploit the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the Catholic Church today" and that Pius XII was actually responsible for saving the lives of many thousands of Jews.
The Commission did not discover any documents, but had the agreed-upon task to review the existing Vatican volumes, that make up the Actes et Documents du Saint Siege (ADSS) The Commission was internally divided over the question of access to additional documents from the Holy See, access to the news media by individual commission members, and, questions to be raised in the preliminary report. It was agreed to include all 47 individual questions by the six members, and use them as Preliminary Report. In addition to the 47 questions, the commission issued no findings of its own. It stated that it was not their task to sit in judgement of the Pope and his advisors but to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the papacy during the Holocaust.
The 47 questions by the six scholars were grouped into three parts: (a) 27 specific questions on existing documents, mostly asking for background and additional information such as drafts of the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge
, which was largely written by Eugenio Pacelli. (b) Fourteen questions dealt with themes of individual volumes, such as the question how Pius viewed the role of the Church during the war. (c) Six general questions, such as the absence of any anti-communist sentiments in the documents. The disagreement between members over additional documents locked up up under the Holy See's 70 year rule resulted in a discontinuation of the Commission in 2001 on friendly terms. Unsatisfied with the findings, Dr. Michael Marrus, one of the three Jewish members of the Commission, said the commission "ran up against a brick wall.... It would have been really helpful to have had support from the Holy See on this issue."
In 1985, Pietro Palazzini
was honored by the museum, where he protested the repeated criticisms against Pius, on whose instructions Palazzini declared to have acted. Palazzini, a theological advisor to the Pontiff, had taught and written about the moral theology of Pope Pius XII.
Rabbi David G. Dalin
argues in The Myth of Hitler's Pope
that Yad Vashem should honor Pope Pius XII as a "Righteous Gentile", and documents that Pius was praised by all the leading Jews of his day for his role in saving more Jews than Oskar Schindler
.
Rabbi David Rosen
has taken exception to the caption, stating when Pius died both Moshe Sharett
and Golda Meir
sent telegrams stating that when darkness reigned over Europe, he was one of the few who raised his voice in protest. "What Yad Vashem says is not necessarily wrong," conceded Rosen, "but it doesn't give us all the information." Rabbi Rosen later quoted eminent historian Martin Gilbert
, who says that Pius saved thousands of Jews.
on behalf of all people, apologized to Jews by inserting a prayer at the Western Wall
that read "We're deeply saddened by the behavior of those in the course of history who have caused the children of God to suffer, and asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant."
This papal apology, one of many issued by Pope John Paul II for past human and Church failings throughout history, was especially significant because John Paul II emphasized Church guilt for, and the Second Vatican Council's condemnation of, anti-Semitism. The papal letter We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah
, urged Catholics to repent "of past errors and infidelities" and "renew the awareness of the Hebrew roots of their faith."
on September 15–17, 2008, by Pave the Way Foundation http://www.ptwf.org/Downloads/Pope%20Pius_document.pdf. Pope Benedict XVI held on September 19, 2008 a reception for the conference participants, where he praised Pius XII as a pope who made every effort to save Jews during the war http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2008/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080918_pave-the-way_en.html. A second conference was held on November 6–8, 2008 by the Pontifical Academy for Life
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=12968.
On October 9, 2008, the 50th anniversary of Pius XII's death, Benedict XVI celebrated pontifical mass in his memory. 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.
The CRIF
, an organization which represent Jews in France, has opposed the beatification of Pius XII.
The Pave the Way Foundation
, sponsored by an American Jew, has offered new research vindicating Pius XII. The documents found by this foundation were never examined by Pius XII's critics or used as sources in the many books accusing him of not doing enough.
Tarcisio Bertone. "Hitler's Pope A Judgment Historically Unsustainable". http://www.ewtn.com/library/CHISTORY/histunsustp12.HTM
Reaction to the racial laws
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 MussoliniBenito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
's racial laws. Pius later engineered an agreement — formally approved on June 23, 1939 — with Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian President
President of Brazil
The president of Brazil is both the head of state and head of government of the Federative Republic of Brazil. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the Brazilian Armed Forces...
Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Dornelles Vargas served as President of Brazil, first as dictator, from 1930 to 1945, and in a democratically elected term from 1951 until his suicide in 1954. Vargas led Brazil for 18 years, the most for any President, and second in Brazilian history to Emperor Pedro II...
to issue 3,000 visas
Visa (document)
A visa is a document showing that a person is authorized to enter the territory for which it was issued, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport...
to "non-Aryan Catholics".
However, over the next eighteen months Brazil’s Conselho de Imigração e Colonização (CIC) continued to tighten the restrictions on their issuance — including requiring a baptismal certificate
Baptism
In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...
dated before 1933, a substantial monetary transfer to the Banco do Brasil
Banco do Brasil
Banco do Brasil S.A. is the largest Brazilian and Latin American bank by assets, and the third by market value. The bank, headquartered in Brasília, was founded in 1808 and is the oldest active bank in Brazil — and one of the oldest financial institutions in the world.Banco do Brasil is controlled...
, and approval by the Brazilian Propaganda Office in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
— culminating in the cancellation of the program fourteen months later, after fewer than 1,000 visas had been issued, amid suspicions of "improper conduct" (i.e. continuing to practice Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
) among those who had received visas.
Hidden encyclical
Walter Bussmann has argued that Pacelli, as Cardinal Secretary of StateCardinal Secretary of State
The Cardinal Secretary of State—officially Secretary of State of His Holiness The Pope—presides over the Holy See, usually known as the "Vatican", Secretariat of State, which is the oldest and most important dicastery of the Roman Curia...
, dissuaded Pope Pius XI
Pope Pius XI
Pope Pius XI , born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, was Pope from 6 February 1922, and sovereign of Vatican City from its creation as an independent state on 11 February 1929 until his death on 10 February 1939...
— who was nearing death at the time — from condemning Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
in November 1938, when he was informed of it by the papal nuncio in Berlin. Likewise the prepared draft of an encyclical Humani Generis Unitas
Humani generis unitas
Humani generis unitas was a planned encyclical of Pope Pius XI before his death on February 10, 1939, which condemned antisemitism, racism and the persecution of Jews...
("On the Unity of Human Society"), which was ready in September 1938 but, according to the two publishers of the draft and other sources, not forwarded to the Vatican by the Jesuit General Wlodimir Ledochowski
Wlodimir Ledochowski
Wlodimir Ledóchowski, S.J. was the 26th Superior-General of the Society of Jesus.He was born on the family estate, Sitzenthal, in Loosdorf, near St. Pölten , the son of Count Antoni Halka Ledóchowski...
. On January 28, 1939, eleven days before the death of Pope Pius XI, a disappointed Gundlach informed the author La Farge: "It cannot continue like this. The text has not been forwarded to the Vatican."
He had talked to the American assistant to Father General, who promised to look into the matter in December 1938, but did not report back. It contained an open and clear condemnation of colonialism
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
, racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and antisemitism. Some historians have argued that Pacelli learned about its existence only after the death of Pius XI and did not promulgate it as Pope. He did however use parts of it in his inaugural encyclical Summi Pontificatus
Summi Pontificatus
Summi Pontificatus is an encyclical of Pope Pius XII published on October 20, 1939. The encyclical is subtitled "On the Unity of Human Society." It was the first major encyclical of Pius XII so was seen as setting "a tone" for his papacy. It critiques major errors at the time, such as ideologies...
, which he titled "On the Unity of Human Society."
Invasion of Poland
In his first encyclical Summi PontificatusSummi Pontificatus
Summi Pontificatus is an encyclical of Pope Pius XII published on October 20, 1939. The encyclical is subtitled "On the Unity of Human Society." It was the first major encyclical of Pius XII so was seen as setting "a tone" for his papacy. It critiques major errors at the time, such as ideologies...
(October 20, 1939), Pius XII publicly expressed sympathy for the Polish people in the aftermath of the invasion
Invasion of Poland (1939)
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II in Europe...
by Nazi Germany. Phayer (2000) is of the opinion that whilst the encyclical condemns the war it doesn't condemn the invasion.
In May 1942, the Pope appointed a German Apostolic Administrator to lands in Nazi occupied Poland (Wurtheland). According to Phayer (2008), this was seen as implicit recognition of the breakup of Poland and that this, combined with Pius's failure to explicitly censure the invasion, led to a sense of betrayal amongst the Poles.
In December 1942, the Polish President in exile wrote to Pius XII appealing that "the silence must be broken by the Apostolic See".
1940 request on behalf of Jews
In 1940 Pius asked members of the clergy, on Vatican letterhead, to do whatever they could on behalf of interned Jews.Reported Meeting with German-Jewish visitor in 1941
In 1944, the Palestine Post published the account of a "Refugee" who stated that he visited the Vatican in 1941, was received by Pope Pius XII, identified himself as a person born in Germany who was no longer a German because he was Jewish, and requested help for Jews who had been saved from a shipwreck, but were "starving" in a prisoner of war camp, and that Pope Pius told him to return with a written report for the Secretary of State, and did not promise further assistance, but did tell him "You are a young Jew. I hope you know what that means and I hope you will always be proud to be a Jew" and then loudly say "whether you are worthier than others only the Lord knows, but believe me, you are at least as worthy as every other human being that lives on our earth! And now my Jewish friend, go with the protection of the Lord, and never forget, you must always be proud to be a Jew!", in the presence of other visitors, many of whom were German soldiers in uniform. In 2006, he was still anonymous and only "clues" existed as to his identity. Although the author indicated that the event was witnessed by over many individuals, including "cardinals, bishops and other high dignitaries", Vatican officials, secretaries", diplomats and "about 80" visitors, neither the 1944 article nor a 2006 report by the website of Inside the Vatican indicated that any of these witnesses had confirmed the anonymous author's account.Alleged silence
Cardinal Tisserant, a senior member of the Roman Curia wrote to Cardinal Suhard, the Archbishop of Paris, as Nazi forces were overunning France in June 1940. 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. And that is extremely sad - above all when one has lived under Pius XI."President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent Myron C. Taylor as his special representative to the Vatican in September 1941. His assistant, Harold Tittman, repeatedly pointed out to Pius the dangers to his moral leadership by his failure to speak out against the violations of the natural law carried out by the Nazis. Pius XII responded that he could not name the Nazis without at the same time mentioning the Bolsheviks.
Pius XII also never publicly condemned the Nazi massacre of 1.8 - 1.9 million mainly Catholic Polish gentiles (including 2,935 members of the Catholic Clergy), nor did he ever publicly condemn the Soviet Union for the deaths of 1,000,000 mainly Catholic Polish gentile citizens including an untold number of clergy.
In an interview Father Peter Gumpel stated that Robert Kempner's (former U.S Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor) foreword to Jeno Levai's 1968 book "Hungarian Jewry and the Papacy" asserts that Pope Pius did indeed complain through diplomatic channels about the situation of Hungarian Jews but that any public protestation would have been of no use.
1942 Address to College of Cardinals
In the summer of 1942, long after the Roman curia had become aware of the mass murders, Pius explained to his college of Cardinals the reasons for the great gulf that existed between Jews and Christians at the theological level: "Jerusalem has responded to His call and to His grace with the same rigid blindness and stubborn ingratitude that has led it along the path of guilt to the murder of God." Historian Guido Knopp describes these comments of Pius as being "incomprehensible" at a time when "Jerusalem was being murdered by the million".1942 letter
On September 18, 1942, Pius received a letter from MonsignorMonsignor
Monsignor, pl. monsignori, is the form of address for those members of the clergy of the Catholic Church holding certain ecclesiastical honorific titles. Monsignor is the apocopic form of the Italian monsignore, from the French mon seigneur, meaning "my lord"...
Montini (future Pope Paul VI
Pope Paul VI
Paul VI , born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 21 June 1963 until his death on 6 August 1978. Succeeding Pope John XXIII, who had convened the Second Vatican Council, he decided to continue it...
), saying, "the massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms". Later that month, Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the Vatican, warned Pius that the Vatican's "moral prestige" was being injured by silence on European atrocities — a warning which was echoed simultaneously by representatives from Great Britain, Brazil, Uruguay, Belgium, and Poland — the Cardinal Secretary of State
Cardinal Secretary of State
The Cardinal Secretary of State—officially Secretary of State of His Holiness The Pope—presides over the Holy See, usually known as the "Vatican", Secretariat of State, which is the oldest and most important dicastery of the Roman Curia...
replied that the rumors about genocide could not be verified.
In December 1942, when Tittman asked Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione if Pius would issue a proclamation similar to the Allied declaration "German Policy of Extermination of the Jewish Race", Maglione replied that the Vatican was "unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities."
Christmas 1942 message
In his Christmas address of 1942, Pius XII appealed to the world to take a long, hard look at "the ruins of a social order which has given such tragic proof of its ineptitude"."Mankind owes that vow to the numberless exiles whom the hurricane of war has torn from their native land and scattered in the land of the stranger; who can make their own the lament of the Prophet: 'Our inheritance is turned to aliens; our house to strangers.' Mankind owes that vow to the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or slow extermination."
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
's Reich Central Security Office analyzed Pius' Christmas message and concluded:
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 Weltanschauung...the Pope does not refer to the National Socialists in Germany by name, but his speech is one long attack on everything we stand for...God, he says, regards all peoples and races as worthy of the same consideration. Here he is clearly speaking on behalf of the 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 destitution.' Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice towards the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.
Ad maiora mala vitanda
On April 30, 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. Here lies one of the reasons, why We impose self-restraint on Ourselves in our speeches; the experience, that we made in 1942 with papal addresses, which We authorized to be forwarded to the Believers, justifies our opinion, as far as We see.... The Holy See has done whatever was in its power, with charitable, financial and moral assistance. To say nothing of the substantial sums which we spent in American money for the fares of immigrants."News from Father Scavizzi
In the spring of 1943 Pirro Scavizzi, an Italian priest, told Pius that the murder of the Jews was "now total", even the elderly and infants were being destroyed "without mercy". Pius is reported to have broken down and wept uncontrollably.Pius said to Father Scavizzi “I have often considered excommunication, to castigate in the eyes of the entire world the fearful crime of genocide. But after much praying and many tears, I realize that my condemnation would not only fail to help the Jews, it might even worsen their situation… No doubt a protest would gain me the praise and respect of the civilized world, but it would have submitted the poor Jews to an even worse persecution.”
Attempted kidnapping
In 1943, plans were allegedly formulated by Hitler to occupy the Vatican and arrest Pius and the cardinals of the Roman CuriaRoman Curia
The Roman Curia is the administrative apparatus of the Holy See and the central governing body of the entire Catholic Church, together with the Pope...
. According to Rev. Peter Gumpel
Peter Gumpel
Peter Gumpel is a German jesuit priest and Church historian. Professor emeritus of the Gregorian University , he is presently the relator in Pius XII`s cause for beatification....
, a historian in charge of Pius' canonization process, the Pope told leading bishops that should he be arrested by Nazi forces, his resignation would take immediate effect and that the Holy See would move to another country, specifically Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, where the College of Cardinals
College of Cardinals
The College of Cardinals is the body of all cardinals of the Catholic Church.A function of the college is to advise the pope about church matters when he summons them to an ordinary consistory. It also convenes on the death or abdication of a pope as a papal conclave to elect a successor...
would elect a new pope. Some historians argue that the reason Hitler wanted to capture the Pope was because he was concerned Pius would continue speaking against the way the Nazis treated the Jews. However, the plan was never brought to fruition, and was reportedly foiled by Nazi general Karl Wolff
Karl Wolff
Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff was a high-ranking member of the Nazi Schutzstaffel , ultimately holding the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS. He became Chief of Personal Staff to the Reichsführer and SS Liaison Officer to Hitler until his replacement in 1943...
. Both British historian Owen Chadwick and Jesuit ADSS editor Robert A. Graham dismissed the existence of a plot as British wartime propaganda. However, subsequent to those accounts, Dan Kurzman in 2007 published a work which he maintains establishes the plot as fact.
German occupation of Rome
When 60,000 German soldiers and the Gestapo occupied Rome in 1943, thousands of Jews were hiding in churches, convents, rectories, the Vatican and the papal summer residence.On September 27, 1943, one of the Nazi commanders in Rome demanded that the Jewish community pay one hundred pounds of gold within thirty-six hours or three hundred Jews would be taken prisoner. When the Jewish Community Council was only able to gather only seventy pounds of gold, they turned to the Vatican. In his memoirs, the then Chief Rabbi Zolli of Rome writes that he was sent to the Vatican where he was met by the Vatican treasurer and secretary of state who told him that the Holy Father himself had given orders for the deficit to be filled with gold taken from the Treasury."
Despite the payment of the ransom 2,091 Jews were deported on October 16, 1943, and most of them died in Germany. Many others were also killed on March 24, 1944, at the Fosse Ardeatine.
Nuncio Orsenigo's appeal to Hitler
Cesare Orsenigo
Cesare Vincenzo Orsenigo was Apostolic Nuncio to Germany from 1930 to 1945, during the rise of Nazi Germany and World War II...
spoke to the leader of the Third Reich on behalf of Pope Pius XII. In his conversation with Hitler, he talked about the status of persecuted peoples in the Third Reich, apparently referring to Jews. This conversation with the Nazi leader led to no success. Over large parts of the conversation Hitler simply ignored Orsenigo, he went to the window and did not listen.
Actions of Angelo Roncalli
Part of the historical debate surrounding Pius XII has concerned the role of nuncio Angelo Roncalli, the future John XXIII, in rescuing Jews during the War. While some historians have argued that Roncalli was acting as a nuncio on behalf of the Pope, others have said that he was acting on his own when he intervened on behalf of Jews, as it would appear by the rather independent position he took during the Jewish orphans controversyJewish orphans controversy
The Jewish orphans controversy was a legal dispute that occurred after the Second World War when the Holy See under Pope Pius XII issued instructions that Catholic institutions and families should keep baptized Jewish children in their ranks after they had been rescued from a likely deportation to...
.
According to the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, Roncalli forwarded a request for the Vatican to inquire whether other neutral countries could grant asylum to Jews, to inform the German government that the Palestine Jewish Agency had 5,000 immigration certificates available and to ask Vatican Radio to broadcast that helping Jews was an act of mercy approved by the Church. In 1944, Roncalli used diplomatic couriers, papal representatives and the Sisters of Our Lady of Zion to transport and issue baptismal certificates, immigration certificates and visas – many of them forged – to Hungarian Jews. A dispatch dated Aug. 16, 1944 from Roncalli to the papal nuncio to Hungary illustrates the intensity of "Operation Baptism":
Roman razzia
In August 2006, extracts from the 60-year-old diary of a nun of the Convent of Santi Quattro CoronatiSanti Quattro Coronati
Santi Quattro Coronati is an ancient basilica in Rome, Italy. The church dates back to the 4th century, and is devoted to four anonymous saints and martyrs. The complex of the basilica with its two courtyards, the fortified Cardinal Palace with the St...
were published in the Italian press, stating that Pope Pius XII ordered Rome's convents and monasteries to hide Jews during the Second World War.
On October 28, 1943, Ernst von Weizsäcker
Ernst von Weizsäcker
Ernst Freiherr von Weizsäcker was a German diplomat and politician. He served as State Secretary at the Foreign Office from 1938 to 1943, and as German Ambassador to the Holy See from 1943 to 1945...
, 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.... Since it is currently thought that the Germans will take no further steps against the Jews in Rome, the question of our relations with the Vatican may be considered closed."
Eichmann wrote in his diary that the Vatican "vigorously protested the arrest of Jews, requesting the interruption of such action; to the contrary, the Pope would denounce it publicly." Eichmann added that "the objections given and the excessive delay in the steps necessary to complete the implementation of the operation, resulted in a great part of Italian Jews being able to hide and escape capture"
Eichmann wrote in his diary that
"At that time, my office received the copy of a letter, that I immediately gave to my direct superiors, sent by the Catholic Church in Rome, in the person of Bishop Hudal, to the commander of the German forces in Rome, general Stahel. The Church was vigorously protesting the arrest of Jews of Italian citizenship, requesting that such action interrupted immediately throughout Rome and its surroundings. To the contrary, the Pope would denounce it publicly. The Curia was especially angry because these incidents were taking place practically under Vatican windows. But, precisely at that time, without paying any attention to the Church’s position, the Italian fascist government passed a law ordering the deportation of all Italian Jews to concentration camps."
Conversions of Jews to Catholicism
The conversion of Jews to Catholicism during the HolocaustConversion of Jews to Catholicism during the Holocaust
The conversion of Jews to Catholicism during the Holocaust is one of the most controversial aspects of the record of Pope Pius XII during The Holocaust....
is one of the most controversial aspects of the record of Pope Pius XII
Pope Pius XII
The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli , reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958....
during that period.
According to Roth and Ritner, "this is a key point because, in debates about Pius XII, his defenders regularly point to denunciations of racism and defense of Jewish converts as evidence of opposition to antisemitism of all sorts. The Holocaust is one of the most acute examples of the "recurrent and acutely painful issue in the Catholic-Jewish dialogue", namely "Christian efforts to convert Jews".
Austria
In 1941, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
informed Pius of Jewish deportations in Vienna.
Croatia
Archbishop Stepinac called a synodSynod
A synod historically is a council of a church, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. In modern usage, the word often refers to the governing body of a particular church, whether its members are meeting or not...
of Croatian bishops in November 1941. The synod appealed to Pavelić to treat Jews "as humanely as possible, considering that there were German troops in the country". The Vatican replied with praise to Marcone with praise for what the synod had done for "citizens of Jewish origin", although Israeli historian Menachem Shelah demonstrates that the synod concerned itself only with converted Jews. Pius XII personally praised the synod for "courage and decisiveness".
France
Later in 1941, when asked by French Marshal Philippe PétainPhilippe Pétain
Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...
if the Vatican objected to anti-Jewish laws, Pius responded that the Church condemned antisemitism, but would not comment on specific rules. Similarly, when Philippe Pétain
Philippe Pétain
Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...
's regime adopted the "Jewish statutes," the Vichy
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
ambassador to the Vatican, Léon Bérard
Léon Bérard
Léon Bérard was a French politician and lawyer.He was Minister of Public Instruction in 1919 and from 1921 to 1924, and Minister of Justice from 1931 to 1932 and was elected to the Académie française in 1934.Bérard was the Ambassador from Vichy France to the Holy See from 1940 to 1945.-Léon Bérard...
(a French politician), was told that the legislation did not conflict with Catholic teachings. Valerio Valeri
Valerio Valeri
Valerio Valeri was an Italian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Religious in the Roman Curia from 1953 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1953 by Pope Pius XII.President Charles de Gaulle insisted that Valeri be removed...
, the nuncio
Nuncio
Nuncio is an ecclesiastical diplomatic title, derived from the ancient Latin word, Nuntius, meaning "envoy." This article addresses this title as well as derived similar titles, all within the structure of the Roman Catholic Church...
to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
was "embarrassed" when he learned of this publicly from Pétain and personally checked the information with Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione who confirmed the Vatican's position.
Yet in June 1942 Pius personally protested against the mass deportations of Jews from France, ordering the papal nuncio to protest to Marshal Pétain against "the inhuman arrests and deportations of Jews". In October 1941 Harold Tittman, a U.S. delegate to the Vatican, asked the pope to condemn the atrocities against Jews; Pius replied that the Vatican wished to remain "neutral," reiterating the neutrality policy which Pius invoked as early as September 1940.
Hungary
Before the Holocaust began an International Eucharistic Conference took place in Budapest in Hungary during 1938. Cardinal Pacelli addressed the congress and described the Jews as people "whose lips curse [Christ] and whose hearts reject him even today". Michael PhayerMichael Phayer
Michael Phayer, born 1935, is a historian and professor emeritus at Marquette University in Milwaukee and has written on 19th and 20th century European history and the Holocaust....
asserts that the timing of the statement, during a period when Hungary was in the process of formulating new anti-Semitic laws, ran counter to Pope Pius XI's September statement urging Catholics to honour their spiritual father Abraham.
In March 1944, through the papal nuncio in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, Angelo Rotta
Angelo Rotta
Angelo Rotta , originally from Milan, Italy, was the Apostolic Nuncio in Budapest at the end of World War II.During his previous diplomatic activity in Bulgaria, he already saved many Bulgarian Jews by issuing them baptismal certificates and safe conducts for the trip to Palestine.In 1944 - 1945 he...
, the pope urged the Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
government to moderate its treatment of the Jews. The pope also ordered Rotta and other papal legates to hide and shelter Jews. These protests, along with others from the King of Sweden, the International Red Cross, the United States, and Britain led to the cessation of deportations on 8 July 1944. Also in 1944, Pius appealed to 13 Latin American governments to accept "emergency passports", although it also took the intervention of the U.S. State Department for those countries to honor the documents.
Lithuania
Cardinal Secretary of StateCardinal Secretary of State
The Cardinal Secretary of State—officially Secretary of State of His Holiness The Pope—presides over the Holy See, usually known as the "Vatican", Secretariat of State, which is the oldest and most important dicastery of the Roman Curia...
Luigi Maglione received a request from Chief Rabbi
Chief Rabbi
Chief Rabbi is a title given in several countries to the recognized religious leader of that country's Jewish community, or to a rabbinic leader appointed by the local secular authorities...
of Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
Isaac Herzog
Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog
Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog , also known as Isaac Herzog, was the first Chief Rabbi of Ireland, his term lasting from 1921 to 1936...
in the Spring of 1939 to intercede on behalf of Lithuanian Jews
Lithuanian Jews
Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks are Jews with roots in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania:...
about to be deported to Germany. Pius called Ribbentrop
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop was Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945. He was later hanged for war crimes after the Nuremberg Trials.-Early life:...
on March 11, repeatedly protesting against the treatment of Jews. In his 1940 encyclical Summi Pontificatus, Pius rejected anti-semitism, stating that in the Catholic Church there is "neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision." In 1940 Pius asked members of the clergy, on Vatican letterhead, to do whatever they could on behalf of interned Jews.
The Netherlands
After Germany invaded the Low CountriesLow Countries
The Low Countries are the historical lands around the low-lying delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers, including the modern countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and parts of northern France and western Germany....
during 1940, Pius XII sent expressions of sympathy to the Queen of the Netherlands, the King of Belgium, and the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. When Mussolini learned of the warnings and the telegrams of sympathy, he took them as a personal affront and had his ambassador to the Vatican file an official protest, charging that Pius XII had taken sides against Italy's ally Germany. Mussolini's foreign minister claimed that Pius XII was "ready to let himself be deported to a concentration camp, rather than do anything against his conscience."
When Dutch bishops protested against the wartime deportation of Jews in 1942, the Nazis responded with harsher measures rounding up 92 converts including Edith Stein
Edith Stein
Saint Teresia Benedicta of the Cross, sometimes also known as Saint Edith Stein , was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and nun, regarded as a martyr and saint of the Roman Catholic Church...
who were then deported and murdered. "The brutality of the retaliation made an enormous impression on Pius XII."
Slovakia
In September 1941 Pius objected to a Slovakian Jewish Code, which, unlike the earlier Vichy codes, prohibited intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews.In 1942, the Slovakian charge d'affaires
Chargé d'affaires
In diplomacy, chargé d’affaires , often shortened to simply chargé, is the title of two classes of diplomatic agents who head a diplomatic mission, either on a temporary basis or when no more senior diplomat has been accredited.-Chargés d’affaires:Chargés d’affaires , who were...
told Pius that Slovakian Jews were being sent to concentration camps. On March 11, 1942, several days before the first transport was due to leave, the chargé d'affaires in Bratislava
Bratislava
Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...
reported to the Vatican: "I have been assured that this atrocious plan is the handwork of... Prime Minister (Tuka
Vojtech Tuka
Vojtech "Béla" Tuka was the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic between 1940 and 1945. Tuka was one the main forces behind the deportation of Slovak Jews to Nazi concentration camps in Poland...
), who confirmed the plan... he dared to tell me - he who makes such a show of his Catholicism - that he saw nothing inhuman or un-Christian in it... the deportation of 80,000 persons to Poland, is equivalent to condemning a great number of them to certain death." The Vatican protested to the Slovak government that it "deplore(s) these... measures which gravely hurt the natural human rights of persons, merely because of their race."
On April 7, 1943, Monsignor Domenico Tardini, one of Pius’s closest advisors, told Pius that it would be politically advantageous after the war to take steps to help Slovakian Jews.
Post-war praise
Pinchas LapidePinchas Lapide
Pinchas Lapide was a Jewish theologian and Israeli historian. He was an Israeli diplomat from 1951 to 1969, among other position acting as Israeli Consul to Milan, and was instrumental in gaining recognition for the young state of Israel. He wrote more than 35 books during his lifetime...
, a Jewish theologian and Israeli diplomat to Milan in the 1960s, claimed in Three Popes and the Jews
Three Popes and the Jews
Three Popes and the Jews is a 1967 book by Pinchas Lapide, then Israeli Consul to Milan. The "three popes" are Pope Pius XII , Pope John XXIII , and Pope Paul VI .- Reviews :Rabbi David G...
that Catholics were "instrumental in saving at least 700,000 but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands." Some historians have questioned this oft-cited number, which Lapide reached by "deducting all reasonable claims of rescue" by non-Catholics from the number of Jews he claims succeeded in escaping to the free world from Nazi-controlled areas during the Holocaust.
The Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Isaac Herzog, sent the Pope a personal message of thanks on February 28, 1944, in which he said: "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 foundations of true civilization, are doing for us unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of divine Providence in this world."
Other Jewish leaders chimed in also. Rabbi Safran of Bucharest, Romania, sent a note of thanks to the papal nuncio on April 7, 1944: "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."
The Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, also made not a statement of thanks: "What the Vatican did will be indelibly and eternally engraved in our hearts. ... Priests and even high prelates did things that will forever be an honor to Catholicism."
Catholic scholar Kevin Madigan interprets such praise from prominent Jewish leaders, including Golda Meir
Golda Meir
Golda Meir ; May 3, 1898 – December 8, 1978) was a teacher, kibbutznik and politician who became the fourth Prime Minister of the State of Israel....
, as less than sincere; an attempt to secure Vatican recognition of the State of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
.
On September 21, 1945, the general secretary of the World Jewish Council, Dr. Leon Kubowitzky, presented an amount of money to the pope, "in recognition of the work of the Holy See in rescuing Jews from Fascist and Nazi persecutions." After the war, in the autumn of 1945, Harry Greenstein from Baltimore, a close friend of Chief Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem, told Pius how grateful Jews were for all he had done for them. "My only regret," the pope replied, "is not to have been able to save a greater number of Jews."
The Deputy
Rolf Hochhuth
Rolf Hochhuth is a German author and playwright. He is best known for his 1963 drama The Deputy and remains a controversial figure for his plays and other public comments, such as his insinuation of Pope Pius XII's sympathies for Hitler's extermination of the Jews in the 1963 play The Deputy and...
's controversial drama Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel
The Deputy
The Deputy, a Christian tragedy , also known as The Representative, is a controversial 1963 play by Rolf Hochhuth which indicts Pope Pius XII for his failure to take action or speak out against The Holocaust. It has been translated into more than twenty languages...
(The Deputy, a Christian tragedy, released in English in 1964) portrayed Pope Pius XII as a hypocrite who remained silent about the Holocaust. Books such as Dr. Joseph Lichten's A Question of Judgment (1963), written in response to The Deputy, defended Pius XII's actions during the war. Lichten labelled any criticism of the pope's actions during World War II as "a stupefying paradox" and said, "no one who reads the record of Pius XII's actions on behalf of Jews can subscribe to Hochhuth's accusation." Critical scholarly works like Guenter Lewy
Guenter Lewy
Guenter Lewy is an author and political scientist who is a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts. His works span several topics, but he is most often associated with his 1978 book on the Vietnam War, America in Vietnam, and several controversial works that deal with the...
's The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (1964) also followed the publication of The Deputy. Lewy's conclusion was that "the Pope and his advisers—influenced by the long tradition of moderate anti-Semitism so widely accepted in Vatican circles—did not view the plight of the Jews with a real sense of urgency and moral outrage. For this assertion no documentation is possible, but it is a conclusion difficult to avoid". Carlo Falconi (1967) described Hochhuth's depiction as crude and inaccurate, however he doesn't accept the explanations put forward by apologists of Pius regarding his alleged silence. In particular he rejects the defence of not making things worse by public denunciation since no fate could have been worse that what the Jews were undergoing and that on the one occasion when Bishops did speak out against the euthanasia of disabled people the Nazi's backed down. He also rejected the defence that the Pope did not know of what was happening since in his opinion this is directly contradicted by instances in which Pius did make diplomatic interventions In 2002 the play was adapted into the film Amen.
An article on Jesuit Vatican journal La Civilità Cattolica in March 2009 indicated that the accusations that Hochhut's play made widely known originated not among Jews but in the Communist bloc. It was Moscow Radio, on 2 June 1945, that first direct against Pius XII the accusation of refusing to speak out against the exterminations in Nazi concentration camps. It was also the first to call him "Hitler's Pope". The same journal during the pontificate of Pius was still accusing the Jews of being "Christ killers" and of indulging in ritual murder as late as 1942.
Former Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
General Ion Mihai Pacepa
Ion Mihai Pacepa
Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the former Eastern Bloc. He is now a United States citizen, a writer, and a columnist....
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
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
and Eastern bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
secret services leading a campaign to discredit the moral authority of the Church and Christianity in the West
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
. Pacepa also claims that he was involved in contacting East bloc agents close the Vatican in order to fabricate the story to be used for the attack against the wartime pope.
Paul VI's defense of Pius
During his 1964 visit to Jordan and Israel, Paul VI passionately spoke out in defense of Pius during his farewell to the Israeli authorities. He said that all know what he accomplished in defense and for the rescue of all those who faced difficulties, with no distinction whatsoever. He added that nothing is more unjust than this outrage against such a venerable figure.Hitler's Pope and The Myth of Hitler's Pope
In 1999, John Cornwell'sJohn Cornwell (writer)
John Cornwell is an English journalist and author, and a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. He is best known for various books on the papacy, most notably Hitler's Pope; investigative journalism; memoir; and the public understanding of science and philosophy. More recently he has been concerned...
Hitler's Pope
Hitler's Pope
Hitler's Pope is a book published in 1999 by the British journalist and author John Cornwell that examines the actions of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi era, and explores the charge that he assisted in the legitimization of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany, through the pursuit of a...
criticized Pius for not doing enough, or speaking out enough, against the Holocaust. 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. He further argues that Pius was anti-Semitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
and that this stance prevented him from caring about the European Jews. However, as noted below, Cornwell views have developed, now stating he is unable to judge the Pope's motivation.
Cornwell's work was the first to have access to testimonies from Pius's beatification process as well as to many documents from Pacelli's nunciature which had just been opened under the seventy-five year rule by the Vatican State Secretary archives. Cornwell's work has received much praise and criticism. Much praise of Cornwell centered around his disputed claim that he was a practising Catholic who had attempted to absolve Pius with his work. While works such as Susan Zuccotti's Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy
Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy
Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy is a book by Susan Zuccotti.It describes the actions of the Vatican and Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust, claiming the Church stayed neutral even with the full knowledge of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis...
(2000) and Michael Phayer
Michael Phayer
Michael Phayer, born 1935, is a historian and professor emeritus at Marquette University in Milwaukee and has written on 19th and 20th century European history and the Holocaust....
's The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (2000) are critical of both Cornwell and Pius XII, Ronald J. Rychlak
Ronald J. Rychlak
Ronald J. Rychlak is an American lawyer, jurist, author and political commentator. He is the Associate Dean For Academic Affairs and the Mississippi Defense Lawyers Association Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, and is known for his published works, career as an...
's Hitler, the War and the Pope is critical as well but defends Pius XII in light of his access to most recent documents.
Cornwell's scholarship has been criticized. For example, Kenneth L. Woodward stated in his review in Newsweek that "errors of fact and ignorance of context appear on almost every page." Five years after the publication of Hitler's Pope, Cornwell stated: "I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler's Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany". In 2009 Cornwell wrote of the "fellow travellers" i.e. those priests in Nazi Germany who accepted the benefits that came with the Reichskonkordat
Reichskonkordat
The Reichskonkordat is a treaty that was agreed between the Holy See and Nazi government, that guarantees the rights of the Catholic Church in Germany. It was signed on July 20, 1933 by Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen on behalf of Pope Pius XI and President...
but who failed to condemn the Nazi regime at the same time. He cites Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) as being an example of a "fellow traveller" who was willing to accept the generosity of Hitler in the educational sphere (more schools, teachers and pupil places), so long as the Church withdrew from the social and political sphere, at the same time as Jews were being dismissed from universities and Jewish pupil places were being reduced. For this he considers Pacelli as effectively being in collusion with the Nazi cause, if not by intent. He further argues that Monsignor Kass
Ludwig Kaas
Ludwig Kaas was a German Roman Catholic priest and politician during the Weimar Republic.-Early career:Born in Trier, Kaas was ordained a priest in 1906 and studied history and Canon law in Trier and Rome. 1906 he completed a doctorate in theology and in 1909 he obtained a second doctorate in...
, who was involved in negotiations for the Reichskonkordat, and at that time the head of the Roman Catholic Centre Party
Centre Party (Germany)
The German Centre Party was a Catholic political party in Germany during the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic. Formed in 1870, it battled the Kulturkampf which the Prussian government launched to reduce the power of the Catholic Church...
, persuaded his party members, with the acquiescence of Pacelli, in the summer of 1933 to enable Hitler to acquire dictatorial powers. He argues that the Catholic Centre Party vote was decisive in the adoption of dictatorial powers by Hitler and that the party's subsequent dissolution was at Pacelli's prompting.
Most recently, Rabbi David Dalin's
David G. Dalin
David G. Dalin is an American Conservative rabbi and historian, is the author, co-author, or editor of ten books on American Jewish history and politics, and Jewish-Christian relations. He is currently a professor of history and politics at Ave Maria University, in Florida...
The Myth of Hitler's Pope
The Myth of Hitler's Pope
The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis is a book written by American historian and Rabbi David G. Dalin and published in 2005 by Regnery Publishing.- Background :...
argues that critics of Pius are liberal Catholics and ex-Catholics who "exploit the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the Catholic Church today" and that Pius XII was actually responsible for saving the lives of many thousands of Jews.
International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission
In 1999, in an attempt to address some of this controversy, the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission (Historical Commission), a group of three Catholic and three Jewish scholars was appointed, respectively, by the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews (Holy See's Commission) and the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), to whom a preliminary report was issued in October 2000.The Commission did not discover any documents, but had the agreed-upon task to review the existing Vatican volumes, that make up the Actes et Documents du Saint Siege (ADSS) The Commission was internally divided over the question of access to additional documents from the Holy See, access to the news media by individual commission members, and, questions to be raised in the preliminary report. It was agreed to include all 47 individual questions by the six members, and use them as Preliminary Report. In addition to the 47 questions, the commission issued no findings of its own. It stated that it was not their task to sit in judgement of the Pope and his advisors but to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the papacy during the Holocaust.
The 47 questions by the six scholars were grouped into three parts: (a) 27 specific questions on existing documents, mostly asking for background and additional information such as drafts of the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge
Mit Brennender Sorge
Mit brennender Sorge is a Catholic Church encyclical of Pope Pius XI, published on 10 March 1937 . Written in German, not the usual Latin, it was read from the pulpits of all German Catholic churches on one of the Church's busiest Sundays,...
, which was largely written by Eugenio Pacelli. (b) Fourteen questions dealt with themes of individual volumes, such as the question how Pius viewed the role of the Church during the war. (c) Six general questions, such as the absence of any anti-communist sentiments in the documents. The disagreement between members over additional documents locked up up under the Holy See's 70 year rule resulted in a discontinuation of the Commission in 2001 on friendly terms. Unsatisfied with the findings, Dr. Michael Marrus, one of the three Jewish members of the Commission, said the commission "ran up against a brick wall.... It would have been really helpful to have had support from the Holy See on this issue."
Yad Vashem controversy
An inscription at Yad Vashem states that Pius XII's record during the Holocaust was controversial, and that he negotiated a concordat with the Nazis, maintained Vatican neutrality during the war and took no initiatives to save Jews.In 1985, Pietro Palazzini
Pietro Palazzini
Pietro Palazzini was an Italian Cardinal who helped to save Jews in World War II.Born in Piobbico, near Pesaro, he was ordained a priest on December 6, 1934 and was made a Cardinal in 1973....
was honored by the museum, where he protested the repeated criticisms against Pius, on whose instructions Palazzini declared to have acted. Palazzini, a theological advisor to the Pontiff, had taught and written about the moral theology of Pope Pius XII.
Rabbi David G. Dalin
David G. Dalin
David G. Dalin is an American Conservative rabbi and historian, is the author, co-author, or editor of ten books on American Jewish history and politics, and Jewish-Christian relations. He is currently a professor of history and politics at Ave Maria University, in Florida...
argues in The Myth of Hitler's Pope
The Myth of Hitler's Pope
The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis is a book written by American historian and Rabbi David G. Dalin and published in 2005 by Regnery Publishing.- Background :...
that Yad Vashem should honor Pope Pius XII as a "Righteous Gentile", and documents that Pius was praised by all the leading Jews of his day for his role in saving more Jews than Oskar Schindler
Oskar Schindler
Oskar Schindler was an ethnic German industrialist born in Moravia. He is credited with saving over 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories, which were located in what is now Poland and the Czech Republic respectively.He is the subject of the...
.
Rabbi David Rosen
David Rosen
David Rosen is the name of:* David Rosen , longtime CEO of SEGA* David Rosen , Professor of Musicology, Cornell University* David Rosen , fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in 2000...
has taken exception to the caption, stating when Pius died both Moshe Sharett
Moshe Sharett
Moshe Sharett on 15 October 1894, died 7 July 1965) was the second Prime Minister of Israel , serving for a little under two years between David Ben-Gurion's two terms.-Early life:...
and Golda Meir
Golda Meir
Golda Meir ; May 3, 1898 – December 8, 1978) was a teacher, kibbutznik and politician who became the fourth Prime Minister of the State of Israel....
sent telegrams stating that when darkness reigned over Europe, he was one of the few who raised his voice in protest. "What Yad Vashem says is not necessarily wrong," conceded Rosen, "but it doesn't give us all the information." Rabbi Rosen later quoted eminent historian Martin Gilbert
Martin Gilbert
Sir Martin John Gilbert, CBE, PC is a British historian and Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford. He is the author of over eighty books, including works on the Holocaust and Jewish history...
, who says that Pius saved thousands of Jews.
We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah
In 2000, Pope John Paul IIPope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
on behalf of all people, apologized to Jews by inserting a prayer at the Western Wall
Western Wall
The Western Wall, Wailing Wall or Kotel is located in the Old City of Jerusalem at the foot of the western side of the Temple Mount...
that read "We're deeply saddened by the behavior of those in the course of history who have caused the children of God to suffer, and asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant."
This papal apology, one of many issued by Pope John Paul II for past human and Church failings throughout history, was especially significant because John Paul II emphasized Church guilt for, and the Second Vatican Council's condemnation of, anti-Semitism. The papal letter We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah
We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah
We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah is a document published in 1998 by the Catholic Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, under the authority of Pope John Paul II. In this document the Vatican condemned Nazi genocide and called for repentance from Catholics who had failed to...
, urged Catholics to repent "of past errors and infidelities" and "renew the awareness of the Hebrew roots of their faith."
Recent developments
A special conference of scholars on Pius XII on the 50th anniversary of his death was held in RomeRome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
on September 15–17, 2008, by Pave the Way Foundation http://www.ptwf.org/Downloads/Pope%20Pius_document.pdf. Pope Benedict XVI held on September 19, 2008 a reception for the conference participants, where he praised Pius XII as a pope who made every effort to save Jews during the war http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2008/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080918_pave-the-way_en.html. A second conference was held on November 6–8, 2008 by the Pontifical Academy for Life
Pontifical Academy for Life
The Pontifical Academy for Life or Pontificia Accademia Pro Vita is a Pontifical Academy of the Roman Catholic Church dedicated to promoting the Church's consistent life ethic...
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=12968.
On October 9, 2008, the 50th anniversary of Pius XII's death, Benedict XVI celebrated pontifical mass in his memory. 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.
The CRIF
Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France
Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France is an umbrella organization of French Jewish organizations. CRIF opposes anti-Semitism and policies that they perceive to be anti-Semitic....
, an organization which represent Jews in France, has opposed the beatification of Pius XII.
The Pave the Way Foundation
Pave the Way Foundation
Pave the Way Foundation is a non-sectarian organization whose mission is to identify and eliminate non-theological obstacles between religions, headed by Gary Krupp. It has done considerable research on the papacy of Pius XII and has sought to deconstruct negative stereotypes such as "Hitler's Pope"...
, sponsored by an American Jew, has offered new research vindicating Pius XII. The documents found by this foundation were never examined by Pius XII's critics or used as sources in the many books accusing him of not doing enough.
External links
Tarcisio Bertone. "Hitler's Pope A Judgment Historically Unsustainable". http://www.ewtn.com/library/CHISTORY/histunsustp12.HTM