Pope Pius XII
Victim of a
Black Legend
Few
figures in modern times have undergone as dramatic a change in reputation as
Pope Pius XII. For almost twenty years following
World War II, he was revered as one of the few world leaders who actively
worked to help the Jews - - saving thousands from extermination by the
Nazis. Then within less than a decade, his
reputation changed, and he began to commonly be portrayed as a coldhearted Nazi
sympathizer who had cooperated with Hitler and ignored the plight of the
Jews. That narrative has become one of
the most effective black legends in history.
To appreciate why it is so unfair, we must first understand who Pope
Pius was and what experiences shaped his judgements.
Life and Ministry
As explained in the documentary, A Hand of Peace: Pope Pius XII and the
Holocaust, Eugenio Pacelli was born in 1876 to what was considered a
"Roman Noble" family, which meant the family had a history of serving
the papacy. Partly due to that experience, early in his career after becoming a
priest, he was made part of the Pope's diplomatic corps. During WWI, Pacelli distinguished himself
through his work in humanitarian relief efforts, helping POWs, promoting peace
efforts, and aiding orphans. Because of
his wartime services, he was made a bishop and then named Papal Nuncio to
Germany. By the time Hitler became Fuhrer,
Pacelli had risen to Secretary of State for the Vatican. In that role, he signed the Reichskonkordat with Germany in 1933 in
order to give the Church more freedom in continuing its educational
ministry. He was elected pope in March 1939, shortly before
WWII started, largely due to his holiness and diplomatic skills.[1]
During WWII, Pope Pius XII did whatever
he could to aid people on both sides, particularly the people of Rome. Whenever Rome was bombed, he went out with his
staff and distributed supplies such as blankets and food, gave the last rites,
and helped in any other way he could.
Throughout his career he was a staunch opponent of Nazism, Fascism, and
Communism. He also had many other achievements
during his papacy. By the time of his
death in 1958, Pope Pius had written an encyclical on the liturgy, reformed the
rites of Holy Week, done preparatory work for conciliar liturgical reform, gave
impetus to missionaries, opened application of historical critical method to Sacred
Scriptures, established doctrinal norms for the study of Sacred Scripture, emphasized
the importance of Scripture’s role in Christian life, and opened the Church to
consideration of evolutionary theory.[2]
Work Against the Nazis
Pacelli showed his opposition to Nazism very
early on in his career. While Nuncio to Germany, forty out of forty-four
speeches he gave denounced Nazism. During
this period, the Vatican sought to protect the rights of Catholics in various
countries. Therefore, as Vatican
Secretary of State, Pacelli signed concordats or agreements that would allow
for events like Masses and youth groups to occur without harassment, but he
continued to oppose Nazism and Communism wherever possible. For example, when Hitler visited Rome in
1938, the Vatican refused to see him and forbade all the religious in Rome from
participating in the related festivities.
In 1937, an encyclical edited by Pacelli, Mit
Brennender Sorge was read in all the churches of Germany on Palm Sunday. It
was an extremely strong denunciation of Nazism. Hitler was furious and had anyone found with a
copy of it arrested. Shortly after WWII
began in October, 1939, Pope Pius XII issued his first encyclical, Sunni Pontificatus (On the Unity of Human
Society), which was a clear indictment of Nazism and similar
philosophies. For example, it decried
two errors that “render almost impossible or at least precarious and uncertain,
the peaceful intercourse of peoples. The
first of these pernicious errors, widespread today, is the forgetfulness of
that law of human solidarity and charity which is dictated and imposed by our
common origin and by the equality of rational nature in all men, to whatever
people they belong . . .”[3]
The message of Sunni Pontificatus was so clear that the Allies dropped 88,000
copies of it over Germany.[4] When Pope Pius XII had another strong
statement smuggled into Poland, the Cardinal there had it burned and sent a
letter back saying the reading of such a statement would get too many people
killed. In his 1942 Christmas Message,
“The Internal Order of States and People,” Pope Pius XII clearly condemned many
of the Nazi’s practices. For example, he
called for the “recognition of the principle that even the State and the
functionaries and organizations depend(ing) on it are obliged to repair and to
withdraw measures which are harmful to the liberty, property, honor, (and) progress
of health of the individuals.”[5]
Pope Pius XII was so problematic to
Germany that Hitler gave General Karl Wolff, who was sent to Rome to head the
SS, a special mission to kidnap and/or assassinate the pope. Fortunately, Wolff never carried the mission
out.[6]
Widely Acknowledged Personal Efforts to Save the Jews
Throughout WWII, Pope Pius XII tried to prevent
the deportation of Rome's Jews, and, when that failed, to save as many Jews as
he could through the Catholic Church. He
directed all the Catholic institutions in Rome to take in as many Jews as they
could, thus saving over five thousand lives. Pope Pius used his personal inheritance to
provide the Jews and other people targeted by Nazis a means to escape the
country before being captured by the Nazis.
During and after WWII, the Pope was
universally praised for his wartime efforts.
For example, an Editorial
in The New York Times on December 25,
1941, stated, “The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and
darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas.
He is about the only ruler left on the continent of Europe who dares to
raise his voice at all.”[7] After the war, the Jewish World Congress even made a large financial gift
to the Vatican in recognition of the pope’s efforts to aid the Jews. When Pope Pius XII died in 1958, fifty-eight nations
sent representatives to the funeral mass. Jews, Americans, Canadians, and most other
people expressed condolences and thanks for what Pius XII had done to save the
Jews. According to the The Jewish Post, on November 6, 1958, “.
. . There probably was not a single ruler of our generation who did more to
help the Jews in their hour of greatest tragedy, during the Nazi occupation of
Europe, than the late Pope.”[8]
Origin of a Black Legend
After decades of thanks and widespread
respect for Pope Pius’s heroic efforts to help the Jews, how did his reputation
in popular culture change so dramatically?
In 1963, a play by Rolf Hochhuth, The
Deputy: A Christian Tragedy, debuted in Germany and eventually was
translated into over twenty languages. It
proved to be one of the most controversial and deceptive plays of our time, depicting
Pope Pius the XII as not doing anything to save the Jews during the Holocaust. In many places where The Deputy was shown, riots occurred in protest of the false portrayal. But, the damage was done. A black legend developed that said what the
play depicted was the truth, despite the fact that the creator and the first director
appear to have been influenced by the Russian Communists, who were vehement
enemies of the Papacy and Pope Pius XII in particular. Those who believe the play say that Pius XII
was silent during the Holocaust because he was indifferent to the plight of the
Jews or was actually sympathetic to the Nazis. They further claim that Pope
Pius XII could have used his influence to turn Germany's Catholic population against
Hitler. But, many historians say this is
nonsense because the Third Reich screened anything that was shown to the public
and would have kept out and destroyed whatever the Pope might have written or
said in support of an uprising.[9]
Defenders of Pope Pius XII believe that he
was doing the best he could during a period when much of the continent was under
Nazi control. He constantly had to judge
whether more vocal or pointed condemnations of Nazism would actually do any
good or whether it would backfire and cause the death of thousands more Jews
and Catholics. All accounts indicate
that Pope Pius was a man of deep prayer and great diplomatic judgement and
skill who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to save the Jews and spoke out
publicly whenever he could.
How We Should
Judge
The
decisions that Pope Pius XII had to make about how to resist and condemn the Holocaust during World War II were
perhaps some of the most important, yet difficult, questions any human being
has faced in modern history. Any honest
examination of the historical evidence shows that Pope Pius XII did resist the Nazi’s actions and
condemn them in many different ways.
Could he, should he, have issued more scathing public statements
condemning the Nazi’s atrocities in the concentration camps at the time, or
would that have caused retaliations that would lead to thousands more
deaths? People of good will can answer
that question differently. Ultimately,
however, there is no one clear answer to that question. It was a matter of prudential judgement, and
there is abundant evidence that Pope Pius acted out of genuine humanitarian
motives and chose a course of action that he believed would best aid or save
the most Jews possible under the circumstances.
It is disingenuous at best for anyone today to smear Pope Pius’s
reputation with the claim that he was “Hitler’s Pope.” It is time to bury the black legend begun by The Deputy for good.
[1] Alan Schreck, The Compact History of the Catholic Church
(Cincinnati: Servant Books, 2009), 124.
[2] A Hand of Peace: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust, directed by David
Naglieri (2009: Ignatius Press), DVD.
[3] Pius XII, “Sunni Pontificatus:
On the Unity of Human Society,”The Vatican, October
20, 1939, accessed April 5, 2016, n. 34-35, http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_20101939_summi-pontificatus.html
[4] A Hand of Peace.
[5] Pius XII, “The Internal Order of States and
People,” EWTN, 1942, accessed April 1, 2016, https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P12CH42.HTM
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
Bibliography
A Hand of Peace: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust. Directed by
David Naglieri. Ignatius Press, 2009. DVD.
Pius XII. “Sunni
Pontificatus: On the Unity of Human Society.”The Vatican. October 20, 1939. Accessed April 5, 2016. http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_20101939_summi-pontificatus.html
Pius XII. “The Internal Order of States and
People.” EWTN. 1942. Accessed April 1, 2016. https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P12CH42.HTM
Schreck, Alan. The Compact History of the Catholic Church.
Cincinnati: Servant Books, 2009.
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