The Secret Truth
about
Pope Pius XII
about
Pope Pius XII
It was announced, not long ago, that Pope Pius XII, a/k/a Eugenio Pacelli would be soon be canonized into Sainthood
by the current Pope, Pope Benedict XVII who himself was once a member of The Hitler Youth and it appears he did
little or nothing to oppose the Nazis.
There is also evidence
There are however very serious questions about the prudence of such a move. There is strong evidence that Pope
Pius XII was largely indifferent to Hitler and the Holocaust which took place during the reign of Pope Pius XII. Let us
review the evidence against Pope Pius XII and the case that this Pope is unworthy of being declared a Saint.
by the current Pope, Pope Benedict XVII who himself was once a member of The Hitler Youth and it appears he did
little or nothing to oppose the Nazis.
There is also evidence
There are however very serious questions about the prudence of such a move. There is strong evidence that Pope
Pius XII was largely indifferent to Hitler and the Holocaust which took place during the reign of Pope Pius XII. Let us
review the evidence against Pope Pius XII and the case that this Pope is unworthy of being declared a Saint.
First, there is the interview of John Cornwell, the author of Hitler's Pope, with 60 minutes on CBS News. At that
interview, Mr. Cornwell disclosed information about a letter he discovered from Pope Pius "expressed revulsion toward
the Jewish people". Below is an excerpt from that interview:
"(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ED BRADLEY, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What this Catholic author started
out to write with the cooperation of the Vatican he says was a sympathetic biography of Pope Pius XII. What changed his
mind, he told us, was a letter he found in which the future pope expressed revulsion towards the Jewish people.
JOHN CORNWELL (ph): It was the sort of expression that one would find in "Mein Kampf" during the same period. "
interview, Mr. Cornwell disclosed information about a letter he discovered from Pope Pius "expressed revulsion toward
the Jewish people". Below is an excerpt from that interview:
"(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ED BRADLEY, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What this Catholic author started
out to write with the cooperation of the Vatican he says was a sympathetic biography of Pope Pius XII. What changed his
mind, he told us, was a letter he found in which the future pope expressed revulsion towards the Jewish people.
JOHN CORNWELL (ph): It was the sort of expression that one would find in "Mein Kampf" during the same period. "
The evidence of malfeasance by Pope Pius XII does not stop there.
First, some history regarding Eugenio Pacelli, a/k/a as Pope Pius XII
The Pope, known as Pius XII was born in 1876 in Rome .
Pacelli lived in Germany from 1917, when he was appointed Papal Nuncio in Bavaria, until 1929. Pacelli was elected
Pope on March 2, 1939, and took the name Pius XII. As Pope, he had three official positions. He was head of his church
and was in direct communication with bishops everywhere. He was chief of state of the Vatican, with his own diplomatic
corps. He was also the Bishop of Rome.
Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) began his career in collusion with Hitler when Pacelli was a Cardinal. He signed the
Reichcordata in 1933, when Hitler first came to power. This was a boon to Hitler who was reported to comment:
"We should trap the priests by their notorious greed and self indulgence. We shall thus be able to settle everything with
them in perfect peace and harmony. I shall give them a few years' reprieve. Why should we quarrel? They will swallow
anything in order to keep their material advantages. Matters will never come to a head. They will recognize a firm will,
and we need only show them once or twice who is master. They will know which way the wind blows." [Quoted in
Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (2000), pp. 25-26]
The Concordat or pact with Hitler, signed by Pope Pius XII in pertinent part required all Bishops to swear the following:
"Before God and on the Holy Gospels I swear and promise, as becomes a
bishop, loyalty to the German Reich"
(Article 16 of the Reichsconcordat)
Thus Pope Pius was insisting that all Bishops must be subordinate and subservient to the Nazi Reich and Hitler.
Pope Pius lived up to (or rather down) to his pact with Hitler by issuing no such condemnation of Kristallnacht (the night
of broken glass) which occurred in November 1938, and which recent evidence shows he was informed of by Berlin's
papal nuncio.
To Pope Pius's credit again, he did intervene the month he was elected Pope, March 1939, and obtained 3,000 visas to
enter Brazil for European Jews who had been baptized and converted to Catholicism. Two-thirds of these were later
revoked, however, because of "improper conduct," probably meaning that the Jews started practicing Judaism once in
Brazil. At that time, the Pope did nothing to save practicing Jews.( Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p.
1136.)
Throughout the Holocaust, Pius XII was consistently besieged with pleas for help on behalf of the Jews.
In the spring of 1940, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Isaac Herzog, asked the papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi
Maglione to intercede to keep Jews in Spain from being deported to Germany. He later made a similar request for Jews
in Lithuania. The papacy did nothing.(5)(Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1136).
Within the Pope's own church, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna told Pius XII about Jewish deportations in 1941. In
1942, the Slovakian charge d'affaires, a position under the supervision of the Pope, reported to Rome that Slovakian
Jews were being systematically deported and sent to death camps.(Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p.
1137).
In October 1941, the Assistant Chief of the U.S. delegation to the Vatican, Harold Tittman, asked the Pope to condemn
the atrocities. The response came that the Holy See wanted to remain "neutral," and that condemning the atrocities
would have a negative influence on Catholics in German-held lands.(7)
In late August 1942, after more than 200,000 Ukrainian Jews had been killed, Ukrainian Metropolitan Andrej Septyckyj
wrote a long letter to the Pope, referring to the German government as a regime of terror and corruption, more
diabolical than that of the Bolsheviks. The Pope replied by quoting verses from Psalms and advising Septyckyj to "bear
adversity with serene patience."(8)
On September 18, 1942, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, wrote, "The massacres of the
Jews reach frightening proportions and forms."(9) Yet, that same month when Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the
Vatican, warned the Pope that his silence was endangering his moral prestige, the Secretary of State responded on the
Pope's behalf that it was impossible to verify rumors about crimes committed against the Jews.(10)
Wladislaw Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish government-in-exile, appealed to the Pope in January 1943 to publicly
denounce Nazi violence. Bishop Preysing of Berlin did the same, at least twice. Pius XII refused.(11)
Papal Reasons and Responses
The Pope finally gave a reason for his consistent refusals to make a public statement in December 1942. The Allied
governments issued a declaration, "German Policy of Extermination of the Jewish Race," which stated that there would
be retribution for the perpetrators of Jewish murders. When Tittman asked Secretary of State Maglione if the Pope could
issue a similar proclamation, Maglione said the papacy was "unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities."(12) One
reason for this position was that the staunchly anti-communist Pope felt he could not denounce the Nazis without
including the Communists; therefore, Pius XII would only condemn general atrocities.(13)
The Pope did speak generally against the extermination campaign. On January 18, 1940, after the death toll of Polish
civilians was estimated at 15,000, the Pope said in a broadcast, "The horror and inexcusable excesses committed on a
helpless and a homeless people have been established by the unimpeachable testimony of eye-witnesses."(14) During
his Christmas Eve radio broadcast in 1942, he referred to the "hundreds of thousands who through no fault of their own,
and solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction."(15) The Pope
never mentioned the Jews by name.
The Pope's indifference to the mistreatment of Jews was often clear. In 1941, for example, after being asked by French
Marshal Henri Philippe Petain if the Vatican would object to anti-Jewish laws, Pius XII answered that the church
condemned racism, but did not repudiate every rule against the Jews.(16) When Petain's French puppet government
introduced "Jewish statutes," the Vichy ambassador to the Holy See informed Petain that the Vatican did not consider
the legislation in conflict with Catholic teachings, as long as they were carried out with "charity" and "justice."(17)
In a September 1940 broadcast, the Vatican called its policy "neutrality," but stated in the same broadcast that where
morality was involved, no neutrality was possible.(18) This could only imply that mass murder was not a moral issue.
On September 8, 1943, the Nazis invaded Italy and, suddenly, the Vatican was the local authority. The Nazis gave the
Jews 36 hours to come up with 50 kilograms of gold or else the Nazis would take 300 hostages. The Vatican was willing
to loan 15 kilos, an offer that eventually proved unnecessary when the Jews obtained an extension for the delivery.(19)
Pius XII knew that Jewish deportations from Italy were impending. The Vatican even found out from SS First Lieutenant
Kurt Gerstein the fate of those who were to be deported.(20) Publicly, the Pope stayed silent. Privately, Pius did instruct
Catholic institutions to take in Jews. The Vatican itself hid 477 Jews and another 4,238 Jews were protected in Roman
monasteries and convents.(21)
On October 16, the Nazis arrested 1,007 Roman Jews, the majority of whom were women and children. They were taken
to Auschwitz, where 811 were gassed immediately. Of those sent to the concentration camp, 16 survived.(22)
The Pope Protests
The Pope did act behind the scenes on occasion. During the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, he, along
with the papal nuncio in Budapest, Angelo Rotta, advised the Hungarian government to be moderate in its plans
concerning the treatment of the Jews. Pius XII protested against the deportation of Jews and, when his protests were not
heeded, he cabled again and again.(23) The Pope's demands, combined with similar protests from the King of Sweden,
the International Red Cross, Britain and the United States contributed to the decision by the Hungarian regent, Admiral
Miklos Horthy, to cease deportations on July 8, 1944.(24)
In the later stages of the war, Pius XII appealed to several Latin American governments to accept “emergency
passports” that several thousand Jews had succeeded in obtaining. Due to the efforts of the Pope and the U.S. State
Department, 13 Latin American countries decided to honor these documents, despite threats from the Germans to
deport the passport holders.(25)
The Church also answered a request to save 6,000 Jewish children in Bulgaria by helping to transfer them to Palestine.
At the same time, however, Cardinal Maglione wrote to the apostolic delegate in Washington, A.G. Cicognani, saying
this did not mean the Pope supported Zionism.(26)
The Politics Behind the Policy
Historians point out that any support the Pope did give the Jews came after 1942, once U.S. officials told him that the
allies wanted total victory, and it became likely that they would get it. Furthering the notion that any intervention by Pius
XII was based on practical advantage rather than moral inclination is the fact that in late 1942, Pius XII began to advise
the German and Hungarian bishops that it would be to their ultimate political advantage to go on record as speaking out
against the massacre of the Jews. (27)
One of the only cases in which the Pope gave early support to the allies was in May 1940. He received information
about a German plan, Operation Yellow, to lay mines to deter British naval support of Holland. Pius XII gave his
permission to send coded radio messages warning papal nuncios in Brussels and The Hague of the plot. The German
radio monitoring services decoded the broadcast and went ahead with the plan.(28) This papal intervention is surprising
due to the Pope's persistent claim of neutrality, and his silence regarding almost all German atrocities.
Recent Developments
The International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission (ICJHC), a group comprised of three Jewish and three Catholic
scholars, was appointed in 1999 by the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. In October of
2000, the group of scholars finished their review of the Vatican's archives, and submitted their preliminary findings to the
Comission's then-President, Cardinal Edward I Cassidy. Their report, entitled "The Vatican and the Holocaust," laid to
rest several of the conventional defenses of Pope Pius XII.
The often-espoused view that the Pontiff was unaware of the seriousness of the situation of European Jewry during the
war was definitively found to be inaccurate. Numerous documents demonstrated that the Pope was well-informed about
the full extent of the Nazi's anti-Semitic practices. A letter from Konrad von Preysing, Bishop of Berlin, that proved that
the Pope was aware of the situation as early as January of 1941, particularly caught the attention of the commission. In
that letter, Preysing confirms that "Your Holiness is certainly informed about the situation of the Jews in Germany and
the neighboring countries. I wish to mention that I have been asked both from the Catholic and Protestant side if the
Holy See could not do something on this subject...in favor of these unfortunates." The letter, which was a direct appeal
to the Pope himself, without intermediaries, provoked no response. In 1942, an even more compelling eyewitness
account of the mass-murder of Jews in Lwow was sent to the Pope by an archbishop; this, too, garnered no response.
The commission also revealed several documents that cast a negative light on the claim that the Vatican did all it could
to facilitate emigration of the Jews out of Europe. Internal notes meant only for Vatican representatives revealed the
opposition of Vatican officials to Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine. "The Holy See has never approved of the
project of making Palestine a Jewish home...[because] Palestine is by now holier for Catholics than for Jews." Some
Catholic higher-ups violated this position of the Vatican by helping Jews to immigrate when they were able to; most did
not.
Similarly, the attempts of Jews to escape from Europe to South America were sometimes thwarted by the Vatican.
Vatican representatives in Bolivia and Chile wrote to the pontiff regarding the "invasive" and "cynically exploitative"
character of the Jewish immigrants, who were already engaged in "dishonest dealings, violence, immorality, and even
disrespect for religion." The commission concluded that these accounts probably biased Pius against aiding more Jews
in immigrating away from Nazi Europe.
The claim that the Vatican needed to remain neutral in the war has also been refuted in recent months. In January of
2001, a document recently declassified by the U.S. National Archives was discovered by the World Jewish Congress.
The document was a report in which Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, Pope Pius XII's secretary of state, detailed
and denounced several abuses committed by the Soviet Army against German inhabitants of the Soviet Union. The
report was widely viewed as demonstrating that the Vatican had no compunctions about speaking out against atrocities,
even when doing so would violate neutrality.
The preliminary report released by the IJCHC also asked the Vatican for access to non-published archival documents to
more fully investigate the Pope's role in the Holocaust. This request was refused by the Vatican, which allowed them
access only to documents from before 1923. As a result, the Commission suspended its study in July 2001, without
issuing a final report. Dr. Michael Marrus, one of the three Jewish panelists and a professor of history at the University of
Toronto, expained that the commission "ran up against a brick wall.... It would have been really halpful to have had
support from the Holy See on this issue."(29)
In 2004, news was disclosed of a diary kept by James McDonald, the League of Nations high commissioner for refugees
coming from Germany. In 1933, McDonald raised the treatment of the Jews with then Cardinal Pacelli, who was the
Vatican secretary of state. McDonald was specifically interested in helping a group of Jewish refugees in the Saar
region, a territory claimed by France and Germany that was turned over to the Germans in 1935. The Pope's defenders
cite his intercession on these Jews' behalf as evidence of his sympathy for Jews persecuted by the Nazis. According to
McDonald, however, when he disccused the matter with Pacelli, “The response was noncommittal, but left me with the
definite impression that no vigorous cooperation could be expected.”(30) Pacelli did intercede in January 1935 to help
the Jews, but only after McDonald agreed that American Jews would use their influence in Washington to protect church
properties that were being threatened by the Mexican government.(31)
In 2005, the Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, discovered a letter dated November 20, 1946, showing that Pope Pius XII
ordered Jewish babies baptized by Catholics during the Holocaust not to be returned to their parents. Some scholars
said the disclosure was not new and that the Pope's behavior was not remarkable. The more important story, according
to Rabbi David Rosen, international director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee, was that one of
the recipients of the letter, Angelo Roncalli, the papal representative in Paris, ignored the papal directive.(32)
In 2006, an Israeli scholar, Dina Porat, discovered correspondence between Haim Barlas, an emissary of the Jewish
Agency sent to Europe to save Jews in the 1940s, and Giuseppe Roncalli, who later became Pope John XXIII. Roncalli
expressed criticism of the Vatican’s silence during the war. In June 1944, Barlas sent Roncalli a copy of a report
compiled by two Jews who escaped from Auschwitz documenting the mass murder at the camp. Roncalli forwarded the
report to the Vatican, which had claimed it did not know about the report until October. Earlier, Roncalli had written to
the president of Slovakia at the behest of Barlas asking him to stop the Nazi deportations of Jews.(33)
Conclusion
The Pope's reaction to the Holocaust was complex and inconsistent. At times, he tried to help the Jews and was
successful. But these successes only highlight the amount of influence he might have had, if he not chosen to remain
silent on so many other occasions. No one knows for sure the motives behind Pius XII's actions, or lack thereof, since
the Vatican archives have only been fully opened to select researchers. Historians offer many reasons why Pope Pius
XII was not a stronger public advocate for the Jews: A fear of Nazi reprisals, a feeling that public speech would have no
effect and might harm the Jews, the idea that private intervention could accomplish more, the anxiety that acting against
the German government could provoke a schism among German Catholics, the church's traditional role of being
politically neutral and the fear of the growth of communism were the Nazis to be defeated.(34) Whatever his motivation,
it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Pope, like so many others in positions of power and influence, could have
done more to save the Jews.
Sources:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/pius.html#recent
Pope Pius XII was silent about
Kristallnacht, which began the large
scale Nazi persecution of the Jews
Kristallnacht, which began the large
scale Nazi persecution of the Jews
Scene from Kristallnacht where the Nazis rounded up 10's of thousands of
innocent Jewish civilians for the concentration camps.
innocent Jewish civilians for the concentration camps.
Pictures on left giving the Hitler salute.
On the right of a younger Pope
Benedict XVII as a member of the Nazi
Hitler Youth at the age of 17 and
wearing a Nazi uniform.
On the right of a younger Pope
Benedict XVII as a member of the Nazi
Hitler Youth at the age of 17 and
wearing a Nazi uniform.
John Cornwell says he had unusual access to Vatican archives, which to this day, the Vatican refuses to publicly
discllose. Cornwell said he started his book to exonerate the Pope, but found irrefutable evidence of serious misconduct
by Pope Pius XII.
discllose. Cornwell said he started his book to exonerate the Pope, but found irrefutable evidence of serious misconduct
by Pope Pius XII.
1. Berenbaum, Michael, The World Must Know, p. 40.
2. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 197.
3. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1136.
4. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1136.
5. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1136.
6. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.
7. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 206.
8. Hilberg, Raul, Perpetrators Victims Bystanders, p. 267.
9. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.
10. Israel Pocket Library, Holocaust, p. 133; Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.
11. Israel Pocket Library, Holocaust, p. 134.
12. Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 315.
13. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137; Hilberg, Raul, Perpetrators Victims Bystanders, p. 264.
14. Gilbert, Martin, The Second World War, p. 40.
15. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.
16. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.
17. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 200.
18. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 200.
19. Israel Pocket Library, Holocaust, p. 133.
20. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 202.
21. Gilbert, Martin, The Holocaust, p. 623.
22. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 201.
23. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1138.
24. Gilbert, Martin, The Holocaust, p. 701.
25. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 176.
26. Gutman, Israel. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1138.
27. Israel Pocket Library, Holocaust, p. 136.
28. Gilbert, Martin. The Second World War, p. 59.
29. The Jerusalem Post. "Vatican Blocks Panel's Access to Holocaust Archives." By Melissa Radler. 7/24/01
30. Peter Carlson, “A Diplomat's Diary,” Washington Post, (April 22, 2004).
31. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, (April 23, 2004).
32. Jerusalem Report, (February 7, 2005).
33. Jerusalem Post, (December 4, 2006).
34. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1139.
2. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 197.
3. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1136.
4. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1136.
5. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1136.
6. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.
7. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 206.
8. Hilberg, Raul, Perpetrators Victims Bystanders, p. 267.
9. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.
10. Israel Pocket Library, Holocaust, p. 133; Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.
11. Israel Pocket Library, Holocaust, p. 134.
12. Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews, p. 315.
13. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137; Hilberg, Raul, Perpetrators Victims Bystanders, p. 264.
14. Gilbert, Martin, The Second World War, p. 40.
15. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.
16. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1137.
17. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 200.
18. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 200.
19. Israel Pocket Library, Holocaust, p. 133.
20. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 202.
21. Gilbert, Martin, The Holocaust, p. 623.
22. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 201.
23. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1138.
24. Gilbert, Martin, The Holocaust, p. 701.
25. Perl, William, The Holocaust Conspiracy, p. 176.
26. Gutman, Israel. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1138.
27. Israel Pocket Library, Holocaust, p. 136.
28. Gilbert, Martin. The Second World War, p. 59.
29. The Jerusalem Post. "Vatican Blocks Panel's Access to Holocaust Archives." By Melissa Radler. 7/24/01
30. Peter Carlson, “A Diplomat's Diary,” Washington Post, (April 22, 2004).
31. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, (April 23, 2004).
32. Jerusalem Report, (February 7, 2005).
33. Jerusalem Post, (December 4, 2006).
34. Gutman, Israel, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, p. 1139.
Above, a picture of John Cornwell's
book about Pope Pius XII and his
connection to Adolph Hitler, the
greatest murderer of all time.
book about Pope Pius XII and his
connection to Adolph Hitler, the
greatest murderer of all time.
Above, picture of Adolph Hitler, architect of World War II and
responsible for the Holocaust and many 10's of millions of
murders of men, women and children.
responsible for the Holocaust and many 10's of millions of
murders of men, women and children.
"We should
trap the
priests by
their
notorious
greed and
self
indulgence"
...Adolph
Hitler...
trap the
priests by
their
notorious
greed and
self
indulgence"
...Adolph
Hitler...
"Before God and on the Holy Gospels I
swear and promise, as becomes a
bishop, loyalty to the German Reich "
Article 16 of the Reichsconcordat
swear and promise, as becomes a
bishop, loyalty to the German Reich "
Article 16 of the Reichsconcordat