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Before becoming pope, Cardinal Pacelli was nuncio to Germany, for which he was later accused of being a Nazi collaborator
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- Author: Juan Francisco Alonso
- Scroll, BBC News World
2 hours ago
“The most disgusting thing about bad things, about bad people, is the silence of good people.”
This phrase, attributed to the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi (18691948), perfectly illustrates the controversy that for decades surrounded the figure of Eugenio María Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (18761958), who occupied the throne of Saint Peter between 1939 and 1958 at the Vatican, under the Pius 12, especially for his actions during the Second World War.
A controversy that was revived in recent days when a letter was discovered in the Vatican archives that a German Jesuit priest, a member of the antiNazi resistance in Germany, sent to the secretary of Pius 12, Robert Lieber, in 1942 had.
In the letter, the religious man reported what happened in three concentration camps (Belzec, Auschwitz and Dachau) where Jews and opponents were sent.
The discovery of the letter confirms that highranking Vatican officials, possibly including the Pope himself, had long been aware of the extermination of Jews in the territories occupied by the forces of Adolf Hitler (18891945) and yet did not publicly denounce it.
This silence is why many historians and parts of the Jewish community view the late pope, an aspiring saint since 2009, as an accomplice to the Holocaust.
But was the papal silence due to the indifference of Pius 12 or was it part of a strategy to avoid greater evils?
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In 2020, Pope Francis ordered the opening of all archives surrounding the pontificate of Pius 12 to dispel doubts about him
Facade?
During the 19 years of his pontificate, Pius published 40 encyclicals, and although eight were published during the war, none of them mentioned the persecution and extermination of Jews and other minorities.
One of the pope’s few public mentions of the genocide committed by Hitler’s forces came on Christmas Eve 1942, the same year his secretary received the newly discovered letter.
“This vote (for a more just world) that humanity owes to the hundreds of thousands of people who, through no fault of their own, sometimes only for reasons of nationality or race, are facing death or progressive destruction,” declared Pius 12 in a radio address, without to indicate which group was destroyed.
Why? Did you care about the fate of the Jews?
“Pius 12 chose the policy of silence to save lives,” argues Dom Vicente Cárcel Ortí, author of the book “Pius 12 (19391958): The Pope, Defender and Savior of the Jews,” to BBC News Mundo in BBC Spanish.
The Spanish historian and researcher argues that the Pope chose not to publicly confront the Nazis in order to achieve two goals: on the one hand, to avoid stoking Hitler’s anger and thus prevent an intensification of the persecution of Jews and Catholics; on the other hand, a humanitarian operation is being launched in secret at the same time.
“The Pope ordered the opening of the churches, schools, monasteries and universities of Rome in order to hide the Roman Jews (…) he remained silent because he was very well informed about what was happening in occupied Europe, as this document shows has arrived.” confirmed publicly,” adds Cárcel Ortí.
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Pius 12 was a staunch anticommunist and therefore did not hesitate to greet with “joy” the triumph of Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War
According to the expert, the Pope sent nuncios (ambassadors), bishops, priests and nuns to secretly rescue thousands of persecuted people.
Some authors claim that thanks to this operation up to 900,000 people were able to escape from concentration camps.
“These things were done because the Pope had specifically ordered that everything be done to save the Jews,” says Cárcel Ortí.
Andrés Martínez Esteban, professor of church history at the University of San Damaso in Spain, agrees.
He recalls that “there is evidence in the Vatican archives that shows that when the Nazi army invaded Rome (1943), the Jewish community was asked to hand over a certain amount of gold and the Pope ordered the Roman communities to do so “To do this “all the gold they had, and thus help the Jews to make the payment.”
However, British researcher John Cornwell rejects this theory and asserts that there is little evidence for it.
“There is no doubt that many Catholics priests, nuns and believers saved many Jews throughout occupied Europe, but I find it scandalous that the Vatican claims this was done thanks to the Pope’s instructions,” said the author of the controversial book “Hitler’s Pope”. ‘.
“There is little evidence that the pope asked his subordinates to do anything to save Jews from persecution,” he adds.
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In 2009, the then Pope Benedict XVI led. the beatification process for the controversial Pius XII. a decision that was criticized by the Jewish community.
Less is more
Both Cárcel Ortí and Martínez Esteban argue that the papal silence was to some extent at the request of the German, Dutch or Polish bishops, given the consequences that any statement from an ecclesiastical authority entailed.
“In 1942, when the Dutch bishops published a letter condemning the Nazi persecution of Jews in the occupied Netherlands, the German army raided the churches and monasteries and Edith Stein was held there,” recalls Martínez Esteban.
Stein, better known today as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was a nun of Jewish origin who converted to Catholicism and died in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
Martínez Esteban explains that Pius 12 could not speak publicly about the Holocaust because there were serious threats against the Catholic Church around the world, but especially in the occupied territories.
“Let’s not forget that Rome was invaded by the Nazis,” he says.
Cárcel Ortí, in turn, argues that there are documents proving that Hitler planned to invade the Vatican, arrest Pius 12 and then take him as a prisoner to Germany, just as Napoleon Bonaparte had done with Pius 6 two centuries earlier.
Cornwell, for his part, considers Pius 12’s attitude to be questionable, not only during the war but also before the conflict.
“His actions before the war were very conducive to Nazi interests,” he says.
“He directly negotiated the Reich Concordat (agreement with the Reich), through which the Catholic Church was able to further expand its activities in Germany, especially by keeping its schools open, but in return he promised not to interfere in political matters,” he remembers .
“This negotiation led to religious people being banned from criticizing the German state and as a result the numerous Catholic newspapers disappeared,” he explains.
Pius 12 came from a Roman, aristocratic, very religious family with close ties to the papacy: his paternal grandfather held a high position in the Vatican’s financial secretariat during the pontificate of Pius 9, and one of his cousins was an advisor to Leo 13.
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According to his defenders, Pius 12 did not publicly condemn Nazism or the persecution of the Jews because he did not want to make them worse.
In 1899 he was ordained a priest and, although he never carried out pastoral work (in a parish), he rose quickly.
Until his election as Pope in 1939, Cardinal Pacelli served as Secretary of State of the Vatican (a position equivalent to Foreign Minister in Brazil) and directly took charge of negotiating the agreement between the Church and the new Nazi government.
This is because he has been nuncio there for the past decade.
According to some authors, his experiences with the Nazis in Germany were precisely the reason why his fellow cardinals elected him head of the Holy See.
They believed that their diplomatic skills would serve to quench Hitler’s thirst for war.
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The case of the Jewish nun Edith Stein is cited by experts as one of the consequences of Catholic hierarchs’ criticism of the Nazis
A campaign orchestrated by the KGB
At the end of World War II, the pope’s image appeared to be unblemished, and after his death in 1958, Jewish leaders such as Golda Meir, who was then chancellor of Israel and would become that country’s prime minister from 1969 to 1974, praised his figure.
“During the ten years of Nazi terror, when our people experienced the horrors of martyrdom, the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and sympathize with their victims,” Meir wrote.
On the other hand, Rome’s wartime chief rabbi, Israel Anton Zoller, not only converted to Catholicism in 1945, but was baptized with the name Eugene in honor of the Pope.
However, this changed in the 1960s, when the late German writer Rolf Hochhuth published his work The Pastor, in which he questioned the papal silence during the war.
“This author was financed by the secret services of the former Soviet Union (USSR), which launched a defamatory campaign against the Catholic Church during the most difficult years of the Cold War,” says Cárcel Ortí.
But what was the motivation for attacking an already dead pope?
For the historian, “Pius 12 was a staunch anticommunist and shortly after his death a major campaign was carried out against him to discredit him they even accused him of being a Nazi collaborator, although he was exactly the opposite,” says he The Specialist.
Pius 12 is credited with being the author of the encyclical “With Burning Concern,” which was published by his predecessor in 1937 and sharply condemned the policies of the Nazi regime.
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Experts believe that there are doubts about Pius XII’s actions. were sown by a campaign orchestrated by the KGB
But in April 1939, the Pope showed his more conservative side in a radio address when he proclaimed his “great joy” at the victory of General Francisco Franco (18921975) in the Spanish Civil War against his Republican and Communist rivals.
For the Bishop of Rome, the military’s triumph ensured that Spain would continue to be an “impregnable bastion of faith” against the “proselytes of materialistic atheism.”
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Some authors claim that the Pope regretted all his life that he did not have more words for the Jews.
The beatification was stopped
Experts interviewed by BBC News Mundo agree that Pope Francis’ decision to open all archives of the Pius 12 papacy will not help resolve the controversy.
“They will not clarify or obscure anything, but they will say what we already knew and anyone who has a preconceived idea about it will not change their mind,” says Cárcel Ortí.
However, for Martínez Esteban there is no real interest in investigating the actions of Pius 12.
Cornwell, on the other hand, takes a different view.
“There is almost nothing in the archives that suggests the Pope’s state of mind or his personal thoughts. There are no private letters or diaries, so many researchers speculate or suspect what Pius’ intentions were.”
When a pope dies, it is customary to burn his private letters and diaries.
And although the controversial pontiff was declared a “venerable” in 2009, his beatification process has stalled, not only because of the controversy surrounding him, but also because no miracle has yet been identified that can be attributed to him, they say in the declaration ecclesiastical authorities.