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Letters AnunfairtreatmentofPope PiusXn A few facts didn't appear in your xn. During the audience, Mr. Kub must pass the human test and the Sept. 26 editorial "The Vatican and witsky gave the a huge sum divine test; God will not let the ," in which you raised of money for "charity works" and church err. the specter that Pope Pius XII may expressed his "gratitude to the have been anti-Jewish and perhaps august pontiff for his work in sup CAROLYN NAUGHTON this should influence his canoniza portofpersecuted Jews." Pius XII Silver Spring tion. This came aboutbecauseofthe decided that "the sum should go thrust ofa new book by John Corn- exclusively to needy persons of well, "Hitler's Pope: TheSecretHis Jewish origin." tory ofPius XII." The Rev. PeterGumpel, reporter I am dismayed at the way your PDllowing World War II, the fol for Pius XII's beatification and an Sept. 26 editorial "The Vatican and lowing events took place: expert on the history ofthe period, the Holocaust" appearsto legitimize • The Israeli governmentplanted said, "It is only one ofhundreds of a book by John (Cornwell condemn 800,000 trees in a forest near testimonials of affection and grat ing Pope Pius XII's World War II Jerusalem to commemorate the itude that different Jewish repre record. 800,000 Jews it estimated Pope Pius sentatives expressed to Pope The book, "Hitler's Pope: The XII had saved from . PacelU." Secret History ofPius XII," claims • The chiefrabbiin during The Rev. Pierre Blet, who was that Pius XII made unscrupulous German occupation became a one of four experts appointed by political deals withAdolfHitlerand Catholic and took Eugenio, the first Pope Paul VI to compile the Holy that the latter never could have name of Pius XII, as his Christian See's Acts and Documents of the risen to power without the cooper name because he was so impressed Second World War (the twelve vol ation of His Holiness. Vanity Fair with the workthe pontiffdid in sav umes Mr. Cornwell reviewed and magazine's printing of book ing Jews from the Nazis. supposedly used to write "Hitler's excerpts undoubtedly will add fuel • Jeno Levai, an eminent Jewish Pope") saidthatatleastthree ofthe to the anti-Catholic (and generally historian, said that during the twelve volumes contain"allthe offi anti-Christian) fire smoldering in 1930s, when the future Pius XII, cial documents in which the Jewish today's culture. then Cardinal Pacelli, was Vatican communities, the rabbis ofhalfthe I find this alarming because, at secretary of state, he lodged no world, and other refugees thank the very least, it gives lukewarm fewer than 60 protests on behalfof Pius XII and the Catholics another excuse to reject the Jews, and as pope he "did more for all the help and work in their the current pope's less-popular than anyone else to halt the crime favor." teachings. At worst, it could lend [of the Holocaust] and alleviate its In his previous book, "Thief in credibility to a false impression consequences." the Night" (1989), Mr. Cornwell that the Catholic Church hierar • Pius XII, who encouraged Ger ridiculed Pius XII as "an emaciat chy is on a par with the Nazis and, man to denounce Hitler's ed, large-eyed demigod." He therefore, a threat to national inhumane policies, received the described the pontiffas "somebody security. With this designation, compliments ofAlbert Einstein. totally remote from experience." orthodox Catholics (i.e. those loyal • Pinchas Lapide, the Israeli In "The Hiding Places of God" to the Holy See) could find their diplomat and scholar, said, "The (1991), Mr. Cornwell wrote of his freedoms ofspeech and assembly Catholic Church under the pontifi experience in the Catholic semi jeopardized, with the government cate ofPiusXII was instrumentalin nary he attended: "I took delight in attempting to monitor and ref saving the lives of as many as attempting to undermine the late the activities of regional dio 860,000 Jews from certain death at beliefs of my fellow seminarians ceses and local parishes — not Nazi hands." with what I regarded as clever unlike the current situation in Recently, Lorenzo Cremonesi, a arguments; I quarreled with the China. Jerusalem correspondent for an lecturers in class and flagrantly The Washington Times editori Italian newspaper who is doing ignored the rules of the house." He al refers to the Cornwell book as a research for a forthcoming book on declared that human beings are "damning, if fascinating, portrait the history ofIsrael's relations with "morally, psychologically and of Pope Pius XII which will sure the Holy See, found a letter in the materially better off without a ly elicit heated debate." Catholics IsraeliArchives thatalso testifies to beUefin God." need to participate in this debate the appreciation Jews expressed to Contemporary Jews praised and to counter the slanderous message the pontiff honored Pius XII after the war for of"Hitler's Pope." They also need The letter, dated Oct. 27, 1945, his help before and during the war; to be reminded that — regardless wassi^ed by Monsignor Giovan a persecuted people know who their of any human mistakes Rus XII ni Battista Montini, the future Pope ft'iends are. Ifyou check Pius XII's might have made while the Euro Paul VI, who worked in the Vatican record and the accuracy ofmany of pean warclouds were gathering— Secretariat of State at the time. the assertions in "Hitler's Pope," they still have a duty to follow the The addressee was Raffaele Can- you will be able to write a factually current pope's teachings on faith toni, president of the Italian Jew correct editorial. and mor^s, ofwhich our Lord said ish communities. It contains a As for the canonization process "the gates ofHell shall not prevail detailed account of a private con for Pius XII, don't be anxious. It is against." versation between Leo Kubwitsky, a rigorous process that must be ver then secretary-general of the ified by miracles worked through KENNETH J.LARSEN World Jewish Congress, and Pius the intercession ofthe candidate. It Laurel •uSUlA 3Uolf}lttterinakesa>adio>: «peechon1HayS,a934, \ ^nearfyajrearaRerannoiOKt^ mielletdiConcordatfrith She Vatican, ilose^l^penusllQy isxarriedtoSLl^eteKs £a^calOaDecembefZ^ ahe^otyareai»iDfa95Q3

Long-buried Vatican files reveal a new and shocking indictment of World War II's Pope Pius XII: tliat in pursuit of absolute

% I power he helped AdoLf Hitler destroy German ^ Catholic pohtical opposition, betrayed the Jews of Europe, and sealed a deeply cynica. pact with a 20tli-century devi BY

lue rinai solution. A young man, a prac was staged on Broadway in 1964, depict ticing Catholic, insisted that the case had ed Pacelli as a ruthless cynic, interested w:th a ErouD students, the never been proved. more in the Vatican's stockholdings than Raised as a Catholic during the papacy in the fate of the Jews. Most Catholics dis broached, and the discussion of Pius XII—his picture gazed down from missed Hochhuth's thesis as implausible, quickly boiled over. A young the wall of every classroom during my but the play sparked a controversy which woman asserted that Eugenio Pacelli, Pope childhood—I was only too familiar with Pius XII, the Pope during World War theallegation. It started in 1963 with a play Excerpted from HitlersPope: Tlie Secret II, had brought lasting shame on the by a young German named Rolf Hoch- History of Pius XII. by John Comwell,to be published this month by Viking; © 1999 Catholic Church by failing to denounce huth. DerStellveweter (), which by the author.

VANITY fAIR OCTOBEIi 1999 havmg reliable knowl edge of its true extent. ^ , And, worse, that he was a hypocrite, for after the war he had retrospec- tivelj'taken undue credit for speaking out boldly against the Nazis' per secution of the Jews.

n the "Holy Year" of 1950, a year in which many millions of pil grims flocked to Rome to catch a glimpse of Pacelli, he was at the zenith of his papacy. This was the Pius that people now in their mid- EugenioPaalD at 63, 50s and older remem on the way ip his ber from newsreels and coronation as Pope Pius XII, March 12,1^9. Below, newspaper photographs. PaceUi aged^, atthetime He was 74 years old of his ordln^n,1899. and still vigorous. Six feet tall, stick thin at ^ 125 pounds, light on his feet, regular in his habits, he had hardly has raged to this day. inentuaioTineiviass,ISSy altered physically from the Disturbed by the «8888l day of his coronation 11 years anger brought out in earlier. He had beautiful taper- that dinner altercation, jS- _ ing hands, a plaintive voice, Icii ; . , large dark eyes, and an aura had always been, of ^ , of holiness. It was his ejflreme Pius XlFs innocence, pallor that first arrested those I decided to write a , who met him. His skin "had new defense of his rep- a surprisingly transparent ef utation for a younger fect," observed the writer Cor- generation. I believed jMBlm the foreign office of the rado Pallenberg, "as if reflecting from the that Faceili's evident Holy See. I also drew on inside a cold, white flame." His charisma was proof of German sources relatingto was stunning. "His presence radiated a be his good faith. How Pacelli's activities in Ger nignity, calm and sanctity that I have cer could such a saintly many during the 1920sand tainly never before sensed in any human pope have betrayed the Jews? But was it 1930s, including his dealings with Adolf being," recorded the English writer James possible to find a new and conclusive ap Hitler in 1933. For months on end I ran Lees-Milne. "I immediately fell head over proach to the issue? The arguments had sacked Pacelli's files, which dated back to heels in love with him. I was so affected I so far focused mainly on his wartime con 1912, in a windowless dungeon beneath could scarcely speak without tears and was duct; however, Pacelli's Vatican career had the Borgia Tower in Vatican City. Later I conscious that my legswere trembling." started 40 years earlier. It seemed to me sat for several weeks in a dusty office in But there was another side to his that a proper investigation into Pacelli's the Jesuit headquarters, close to St. Peter's character, little known to the faithful. record would require a more extensive Square in Rome, mulling over a thousand Although he was a man of selfless, monk chronicle than any attempted in the past. pagesof transcribedtestimony given under like habits of prayer and simplicity, he So I applied for access to archival ma oath by those who had known Pacelli well was a believer in the absolute-leadership terial in the Vatican, reassuring those who during his lifetime, including his critics. principle. More than any other Vatican had charge of crucial documents that .1 By the middle of 1997,1 was in a state of official of the century, he had promoted was on the side of my subject. Six years moral shock. The material I had gathered the modern ideology of autocratic papal earlier, in a book entitled A Tlvef in the amounted not to an exoneration but to an control, the highly centralized, dictatorial Night, I had defended the Vatican against indictment more scandalous than Hoch- authority he himself assumed on March charges that Pope John Paul I had been huth's. The evidence was explosive. It 2, 1939, and maintained until his death murdered by his own aides. showed for the first time that Pacelli was in October 1958. patently, and by the proof of his own There was a time before the advent of Two key officials granted me access to words, anti-Jewish. It revealed that he had modern communications when Catholic secret material: depositions under oath helped Hitler to power and at the sametime authority was widely distributed, in the gathered 30 years ago to support the undermined potential Catholic resistance in collective decisions of the church's coun process for Pacelli's canonization, and the . It showed that he hadimplicitly cils and in coUegial power-sharing between archive of the Vatican Secretariat of State, denied and trivialized the Holocaust, despite the Pope and the bishops. The absolutism

VANITY FAJ R OCTOBER 199V of the modem papacy is largely an inven formed the 1870 primacy dogma into an centralized authority of the church. It was tion of the late 19thcentury. It developed unprecedented principle of papal power. one of the defining moments of the Refor rapidly in the first decades of this century Eugenio Pacelli, by then a brilliant young mation, which was to divide Western Chris in response to the perception of the cen Vatican lawyer, had a major part in the tendom into Catholics and Protestants. trifugal breakup of the church under an drafting of that instrument, which was array of contemporary pressures: material known as the Code of Canon Law. In May 1917, Pacelli set off for Germany ism, increasing sexual freedom, religious Pacelli had been recmited into the Vati via Switzeriand in a private railway com skepticism, and social and political liber can in 1901, at the age of 24, to specialize partment, with an additional wagon con ties. From his young manhood on, Pacelli in international affairs and church law. Pi taining 60 cases of special foods for his played a leading role in shaping the condi ous, slender, with dark luminous eyes, he delicate stomach. The Pope at that time, tions and scope of modem papal power. was an instant favorite. He was invited to Benedict XV, was shocked at this extrava collaborate on the reformulation of church gance, but Pacelli had favored status as the [ugenio Pacelli was bora in Rome in law with his immediate superior, Pietro Vatican's best diplomat. Shortlyafter he set 1876, into a family of church lawyers Gasparri, a worid-famous canon lawyer. tled in Munich, he acquired a reputation as who served the Vatican. He had an older Packaged in a single manual, the Code of a vigorous reliefworker. He traveled through sister and brother and a younger sister. His Canon Law was distributed in 1917 to war-weary Germany extending charity to parents, devout Catholics,shared an apart Catholic bishops and clergj' throughout the people of all religions and none. In an early ment in central Rome with his grandfather, world. According to this code, in the future letter to the Vatican, however, he revealed who had been a legal adviser to Pius IX, all bishops would be nominated by the himself to be less than enamored of Ger the longest-serving Pope in history. There Pope; doctrinal error would be tantamount many's Jews. On September 4, 1917, Pacelli was only one small brazier to supply heat to heresy; priests would be subjected to informed , who had become for the wholefamily, even in the depths of strict censorship in their writings; papal let cardinal secretar)' of state in the Vatican— winter. Eugenio was a modest youth, who ters to the faithful would be regarded as in the equivalent of foreign ministerand prime never appeared before his siblings unless fallible (in practice if not in principle); and minister—that a Dr. Wemer, the chief rabbi he was fully dressed in a jacket and tie. He an oath would be taken by would always come to the table with a all candidates for the priest- I' book, which he would read after having hood to submit to the sense X-r Da/iA asked the family's permission. From an as well as the strict wording ® -P early age he acted out the ritual of the of doctrine as laid down by •-! Mass, dressed in robes supplied by his the Pope. !'*' based, on his belief that the mother. He had a gift for languages and a prodigious memor)'. He was spindly and J^webehind the Bb^ik/IIWWlIt But there was aproblem, j>: • V -i-, •• !;>• V scvj' suffered from a "fastidious stomach." He The church had histori- ' nint retained a youthful piety all his life. Politi cally granted the dioce- r ; . LfllUVIIla cally and legaDy, however, he was capable ses in the provincial states l ' of great subtlet>' and cunning. of Germany a large mea- I, ^ tSlSlf « The Pacellis were fiercely loyal to the in sure of local discretion and 1. : ' Si \u > jured merit of the papacy. From 1848, the independence from Rome. had progressively lost to the emerg Germany had one of the largest Catholic of Munich, had approached the nunciature ing nation-state of their dominions, populations in the world, and its congre begging a favor. In order to celebrate the which had formed, since time immemori gation was well educated and sophisticat Festival of Tabemacles, beginningon Octo al, the midriff of the Italian peninsula. Six ed, with hundreds of Catholic associations ber 1,the Jews needed palm fronds, which years before Eugenie's birth, the city of and newspapers and many Catholic uni normally came from Italy. But the Italian Rome itself had been seized, leaving the versities and publishing houses. The his govemment had forbidden the exportation, papacy in crisis. How could the Popes re toric autonomy of Germany's Catholic via Switzerland, of a stock of palms which gard themselves as independent now that Church was enshrined in ancient church- the Jews had purchased and which were they weremere citizens of an upstart king state treaties known as concordats. being held up in Como. "The Israelitic dom? Eugenio's grandfather and father be Aged 41 and already an , Community," continued Pacelli, "are seek lieved passionately that the Popes could Pacelli was dispatched to Munich as pa ing the intervention of the Pope in the once again exert a powerful unifying au pal , or ambassador, to start the hope that he will plead on behalf of the thority over the church by the application process of eliminating all existing legal thousands of German Jews." The favor in of ecclesiastical and international law. In challenges to the new papal autocracy. At questionwas no more problematicthan the 1870, at a gathering in Rome of a prepon the same time, he was to pursue a Reich transportation of Pacelli's 60 cases of food derance of the world's bishops, known as Concordat, a treaty between the papacy stuffs had been a few months earlier. the First Vatican Council, the Pope was and Germany as a whole which would su Pacelli informed Gasparri that he had dogmatically declared infallible in matters persede all local agreements and become warned the rabbi that "wartime delays in of faith and morals. He was also declared a model of Catholic church-state relations. communication" would make things diffi the unchallenged primate of the faithful. A Reich Concordat would mean formal cult. He also told Gasparri that he did not The Pope may have lost his temporal do recognition by the German govemment of think it appropriate for the Vatican "to as minions, but spiritually he was solely in the Pope's right to impose the new Code sist them in the exercise of their Jewish charge of his universal church. of Canon Law on Germany's Catholics. cult." His letter went by the slow route During the first two decades of this Such an arrangement was fraught with overland in the diplomatic bag. Gasparri century, papal primacy and infallibility significance for a largely Protestant Ger replied by telegram on September 18 that began to creep even beyond the ample many. Nearly 400 years earlier, in Witten he entirely trusted Pacelli's "shrewdness," boundaries set by the First Vatican Coun berg, Martin Luther had publicly burned agreeing that it would not be appropriate cil, A powerful legal instrument trans a copy of Canon Law in defiance of the to help Rabbi Werner. Pacelli wrote back

VANITY PAIR OCTOBEtl 1999 on September 28, 1917, informing Gasparri that he had again seen the rabbi, who "was perfectly con vinced of the reasons I had given him and thanked me warmly for all that I had done on his behalf." Pacelli had done nothing except thwart the rabbi's request. The epi sode, small in itself, belies subse quent claims that Pacelli had a great love of the Jewish religion Pacelli, after 13years and was always motivated by its as papal nuncio in Germany, best interests. leaves Berlin to become cardinal secretaiy of state in ighteen months later he revealed the Vatican, 192B. Below,

his antipathy toward the Jews in - . ^•^SsterPasqualina Lehnert, a more blatantlyanti-Semitic fash I ran PopePii^Xirs th( i householdfor 40.yeais, at his ftineral, 1958.' Pacielli said he did not think it appropriate for the Vatica the Vatican in concordats. The German government's official in "to assist them in the S 1 charge of Vatican affairs at one point recorded the "ill feeling exercise of their Jewish cult prompted by Pacelli's "excessive I demands." Both Catholics and Protestants in Germany resisted reaching an agreement with Pacelli on a Reich Concordat be cause the nuncio's concept of a church-state relationship was too authori tarian. In his negotiations, Pacelli was not concerned about the fate of non-Catholic religious communities or institutions, or about human rights. He was principally preoccupied with the interests of the Holy See. Nothing could have been better designed to deliver Pacelli into the hands of Hitler later, when the fu ture dictator made his move in 1933.

n June 1920, Pacelli became nun cio to all of Germany, with head quarters m Berlin as well as in Mu nich, and immediately acquired a glittering reputation in diplomatic circles. of the largest and most powerful democrat end. A precondition of the negotiations The country was reeling from successive ic parties in Germany. Though it was un had involved the destruction of the parlia economic crises against the background of usual for a full-time politician, he was also mentary Catholic Italian Popular Party. the world slump and reparations payments a Roman Catholic priest. Five years Pacel- Pius XI disliked political Catholicism be to the Allies. In August 1931, Briining visit li's junior, dapper, bespectacled, and invari cause he could not control it. Like his pre ed Pacelli in the Vatican, and the two men ably carrying a smart walking stick, Kaas, decessors, he believed that Catholic party quarreled. Briining tells in his memoirs known as "the prelate," became an inti politics brought democracy into the church how Pacelli lectured him, the German chan mate collaborator of Pacelli's on every as by the back door. The result of the demise cellor, on how he should reach an under pect of Vatican diplomacy in Germany. of the Popular Party was the wholesale standing with the Nazis to "form a right- With Pacelli's encouragement, Kaas eventu drift of Catholics into the Fascist Party and wing administration" in order to help ally became the chairman of the Center the collapse of democracy in Italy. Pius XI achieve a Reich Concordat favorable to the Party, the first priest to do so in the party's and his new secretary of state, Pacelli, were Vatican. When Briining advised him not to 60-year history. Yet while Kaas was offi determined that no accommodation be interfere in German politics, Pacelli threw cially a representative of a major democratic reached with Communists anywhere in the a tantrum. Briining'sparting shot that day party, he was increasingly devoted to Pacel- world—this was the time of persecution of was the ironic observation—chilling in hind 11, to the point of becoming his alter ego. the church in Russia, Mexico, and later sight—that he trusted that "the Vatican Sister Pasqualina stated after Pacelli's Spain—but totalitarian movements and re would fare better at the hands of Hitler ... death that Kaas, who "regularlj- accompa gimes of the right were a different matter. than with himself, a devout Catholic." nied Pacelli on holiday," was linked to Briining was right on one score. Hitler him in "adoration, honest love and uncon Hitler, who had enjoyed his first great proved to be the onlychancellorprepared ditional loyalty." There were stories of success in the elections of September to grant Pacelli the sort of authoritarian acute jealousy and high emotion when 1930, was determined to seek a treaty concordat he was seeking. But the price Kaas became conscious of a rival affec with the Vatican similar to that struck by was to be catastrophic for Catholic Ger tion in Pacelli's secretary, the Jesuit Rob Mussolini, which would lead to the dis many and for Germany as a whole. ert Leiber, who was also German. banding of the German Center Party. In his Kaas was a profound believer in the politicsJ testament, Mein Kampf, he had After Hitler came to power in January benefits of a Reich Concordat, seeing a recollected that his fear of Catholicism went 1933, he made the concordat negotia parallel between papal absolutism and the back to his ragabond days in Vienna. The tions with Pacellia priority. The negoti Fiihrerprinzip, the Fascist leadership prin fact that German Catholics, politically unit ations proceeded over six months with ciple. His views coincided perfectly with ed by the Center Party, had defeated Bis constant shuttle diplomacy between the Pacelli's on church-state politics, and their marck'sKulturkampf-^he "culture struggle" Vaticanand Berlin. Hitler spent more time •MMB against the Catholic Church in on this treaty than on any other item of the 1870s—constantly worried foreign diplomacyduring his dictatorship. him. He was convinced that The Reich Concordat granted Pacellithe G^an ill tl^linnioris his movement could succeed right to impose the new Code of Canon only if political Catholicism Law on Catholics in Germany and prom joined the Nazi Party, believing that and its democratic networks ised a number of measures favorable to ., were eliminated. Catholic education, including new schools. ithad the support of the Pope. 'l\ Hitler's fear of the Catholic In exchange, Pacelli collaborated in the Church was well grounded. withdrawal of Catholics from political and ^ m Into the early 1930s the Ger- social activity. The negotiations were con man Center Party, the German ducted in secret by Pacelli, Kaas. and Catholic bishops, and the Cath Hitler's deputy chancellor, Franz von Pa- aspirations for centralized papal power olicmedia had been mainlysolidin their re pen, over the heads of German bishops were identical. Kaas's adulation of Pacelli, jection of National Socialism. They denied and the faithful. The Catholic Church in whom he put before his part}', became a Nazis the sacraments and church burials, Germany had no say in setting the condi crucial element in the betrayal of Catholic and Catholic journalists excoriated Nation tions. In the end. Hitler insisted that his democratic politics in Germany. al Socialism dailyin Germany's 400 Cath signature on the concordat would depend In 1929, Pacelli was recalled to Rome to olic newspapers. The hierarchy instructed on the Center Party's voting for the En take over the most important role under the priests to combat National Socialism at a abling Act, the legislation that was to give Pope, cardinal secretary of state. Sister Pas local level wheneverit attacked Christianity. him dictatorial powers. It was Kaas, chair qualina arrived uninvited and cunningly, ac The Munich-based weekly Der Oerade Weg man of the party but completely in thrall cording to Pacelli's sister, and along with (The Straight Path) told its readers, "Adolf to Pacelli, who bullied the delegates into two German nuns to assist her, took over Hitler preaches the law of lies. You who acceptance. Next, Hitler insisted on the the management of his Vatican residence. have fallen victim to the deceptions of one "voluntary" disbanding of the Center Par Almost immediately Kaas, although he was obsessed with despotism,wakeup!" ty, the last truly parliamentary force in still head of the German Center Party, start The vehement front of the Catholic Germany. Again, Pacelli was the prime ed to spend long periods—months at a time Church in Germany against Hitler, however, mover in this tragic Catholic surrender. —in Pacelli's Vatican apartments. was not at one with the view from inside The factthat the party voluntarily disband Shortly before Pacelli's return to Rome, the Vatican—a view that was now being ed itself, rather than go down fighting, had his brother, Francesco, had successfuUy ne shaped and promoted by Eugenio Pacelli. a profound psychological effect, depriving gotiated on behalf of Pius XI, the current In 1930 the influential Catholic politi Germany of the last democratic focus of Pope, a concordat with Mussolini as part cian Heinrich Briining, a First World War potential noncompliance and resistance. of an agreement known as the Lateran veteran, became the leader of a brief new In the political vacuum created by its sur Treaty. The rancor between the Vatican government coalition, dominated by the render, Catholics inthe millions joined the and the state of Italy was officiaDy at an majority Socialists and the Center Party. Nazi Party, believing that it had the sup-

VANITY FAIR OCTOBER 1999 , gent struggle against interna- man cardinals and two influential bishops f tional Jewry." He was claiming arrived at the Vatican to plead for a vigor I that the Catholic Church had ous protest over Nazi persecution of the I publicly given its blessing, at Catholic Church, which had been deprived C. » I home and abroad, to the poli- of all forms of activity beyond church ser I cies of National Socialism, in- vices. Pius XI at last decided to issue an [ eluding its anti-Semitic stand. At encyclical, a lener addressed to all the ;.t;~ the same time, under the terms Catholic faithful of the world. Written un of the concordat, Catholic criti der Pacelli's direction, it was caUed Mil cism of acts deemed political by Bmviender Sorge(With Deep Anxiety), and the Nazis could now be regarded it was a forthright statement of the plight as "foreign interference." The great of the church in Germany. But there was German Catholic Church, at the no explicit condemnation of anti-Semitism, •••-1M».,1 .. j • "••"'-.IM. ^ insistence of Rome, fell silent. In even in relation to Jews who had con "* **»«• "t^T'*'—- '•U. ..^ . the future all complaints against the verted to Catholicism. Worse still, the sub "•"Z[:"\' °- Nazis would be channeled through text against (National Socialism Pacelli. There were some notable and Hitler were not mentioned by name) was blunted by the publication five days later of an even more con demnatory encyclical by Pius XI fi against Communism.

iiyT he encyclical Mil Brennender I Sorge. though too little and too I late, revealed that the Catholic I^Hp Church all along had the power Above, a signed letter from to shake the regime. A few days Pacelli to the Vatican identifying later, Hermann Goring, one of Bolshevik revolutionaries in 9^^ Hitler's closest aides and his com- Munich as Jews, 1919. Right, mmg mander ofthe Luftwaffe, delivered Hitler salutes supporters IPmi a two-hour harangue to a Nazi as- in Weimar, 1930. sembly against the Catholic cler- SV- However, Roman centralizing PPIPP had paralyzed the German Cath olic Church and its powerful web "A gang of young women, Jews likef ' exceptions, for example the of associations. Unlike the courageous grass .; sermons preached in 1933 roots acti\ism that had combated Bismarck's all the rest of tiiem, hung. by Cardinal Michael von persecutions in the 1870s, German Ca Faulhaber, the Archbishop tholicism now looked obediently to Rome around the offip^vi^ provocativeitive of Munich, in which he de for guidance. Although Pacellicollaborated nounced the Nazis for their in the writing and the distribution of the en I demeanot:''te.V' rejection of the Old Testa- cyclical, he quickly undermined its effects ' ^ ment as a Jewish text. by reassuring the Reich's ambassador in ^ • The concordat immediate- Rome. "Pacelli received me with decided •v • ly drew the German church friendliness," the diplomat reported back 1. ; ..f into complicity with the to Berlin, "and emphatically assured me Nazis. Even as Pacelli was during the conversation that normal and port of the Pope. The German bishopsca granted special advantages in the concor friendly relations with us would be restored pitulated to Pacelli's policy of centraliza dat for German Catholic education. Hitler as soon as possible." tion, and German Catholic democrats was trampling on the education rights of In the summer of 1938, as Pius XI lay found themselves politically leaderless. Jews throughout the country. At the same dying, he became belatedly anxious about After the Reich Concordat was signed, time, Catholic priests were being drawn anti-Semitism throughout Europe. He com Pacelli declared it an unparalleled triumph into Nazi collaboration with the attesta missioned another encyclical, to be written for the Holy See. In an article in L 'Ossen-a- tion bureaucracy, which established Jew exclusively on the Jewish question. The toreRomano, the Vatican-controlled newspa ish ancestry. Pacelh, despite the immense text, which never saw the light of day, has per, he announced that the treaty indicated centralized power he nowwielded through only recently been discovered. It was writ the total recognition and acceptance of the the Code of Canon Law, said and did noth ten by three Jesuit scholars, but PaceUi church's law by the German state. ing. The attestation machiner>' would lead presumably had charge of the project. It inexorably to the selection of millions des was to be called Unitas But Hitler was the true victor, and the tined for the death camps. (The Unity of the Human Race). For all Jews were the concordat's first victims. As Nazi anti-Semitism mounted in Ger its good intentions and its repudiation of On July 14, 1933, after the initialing of many during the 1930s, Pacelli failed to violent anti-Semitism, the document is re the treaty, the Cabinet minutes record complain, even on behalf of Jews who had plete with the anti-Jewishness that Pacelli Hitler as saying that the concordat had become Catholics, acknowledging that the had displayed in his early period in Ger created an atmosphere of confidence that issue was a matter of German internal pol many. The Jews, the text claims, were re would be "especially significant in the ur- icy. Eventually, in January 1937, three Ger- sponsible for their own fate. God had cho-

VANITY FAIR OCTOBER 1999 sen them to make way for Christ's redemp make concessions over Germany's territo hacked to death with a.xes. The local priest tion, but they denied and killed him. And rial claims. After Hitler's invasion of Po was forced to recite the prayers forthe dy now, "blinded by their dream of worldly land, on September 1, 1939. he declined to ing while his son was chopped to pieces gain and material success." they deserved condemn Germany, to the bafflement of before his eyes. Then the priest was tor the "worldly and spiritual ruin" that they the Allies. His first public statement, the tured. His hair and beard were torn off, had brought down upon themselves. encyclical known in the English-speaking his eyes were gouged out. Finally he was The document warns that to defend the world as Darkness over the Earth, was full skinned alive. The very next month Pacel Jews as "Christian principles and humani of papal rhetoric and equivocations. li greeted Pavelic at the Vatican. ty" demand could involve the unaccept Throughout the war, the Croat atroci able risk of being ensnared by secular Then something extraordinary occurred, ties continued. By the most recent schol politics—not least an association with Bol revealing that whatever had motivated arly reckoning. 487,000 Orthodox Serbs shevism. The encyclical was delivered in Pacelli in his equivocal approach to the and 27,000 Gypsies were massacred; in the fall of 1938 to the Jesuits in Rome, Nazi onslaught in did not betoken addition, approximately 30,000 out of a who sat on it. To this day we do not know cowardice or a likingfor Hitler, In Novem population of 45,000 Jews were killed. why it was not completed and handed to ber 1939, in deepest secrecy, Pacelli be Despite a close relationship between the Pius XI. For all its drawbacks, it was a came intimately and dangerously involved Ustashe regime and the Catholicbishops, clear protest against Nazi attacks on Jews and a constant flow of and so might have done some good. But . - information about the it appears likely that the Jesuits, and Pa- Pacelli campaigned to removeVfi bIdCkblack ' massacres, Pacelli said celli, whose influence as secretaryof state and did nothing. In fact, of the Vatican was paramount since the French troops from the Rhindand, Pope was moribund, were reluctant to in I6l3nd' iij- hewarmcontinued wishes toto theextend Us- flame the Nazis by its publication. Pacelli, convinced they were raping W0m6nwomen ' • leadership. The when he became Pope, would bury the . only feasible explana document deep in the secret archives. and abusing children. tion for Pacelli's silence ' ^ was his perception of On February 10, 1939, Pius XI died, at Croatia as a Catholic the age of 81. Pacelli. then 63. was bridgehead into the elected Pope by the College of Cardi East. The Vatican and nals in just three baUots. on March 2. He the local bishops ap was crowned on March 12. on the eve of in what was probablythe most viable plot proved of mass conversion in Croatia (even Hitler's march into Prague, Between his to depose Hitler during the war. though it was the resuh of fear rather election and his coronation he held a cru The plot centered on a group of anti- than conviction), because the>' believed cial meeting with the German cardinals. Nazi generals committedto returning Ger that this could spell the beginning of a Keen to affirm Hitler publicly, he showed man}' to democracy. The coup might spark return of the Orthodox Christians there them a tetterof good wishes which began. a civil war, and the>' wanted assurances that to papal allegiance. Pacelli was not a man "To the Illustrious Herr .^dolf Hitler." the West would not take advantage of the to condone mass murder, but he evidently Should he. he asked them. st>'le the Fiihrer ensuing chaos. PiusXII agreed to act as go- chose to turn a blind eye on Ustashe atroc "Most Illustrious"? He decided that that between for the plottersand the Allies. Had ities rather than hindera unique opportu might be going too far. He told the cardi his complicit)' in the plot been discovered it nity' to extend the powerof the papacy. nals that Pius XI had said that keeping a might have proved disastrous for the Vatican papal nuncio in Berlin "conflicts with our and for manythousands of German clergy. Dacelli came to learn of the Nazi plans honor." But his predecessor, he said, had As it happened, leaders in London dragged to exterminate the Jews of Europe been mistaken. He was going to maintain their feet, and the plotters eventuaUy fell si shortly after they were laid in Janu normal diplomatic relations with Hitler. lent. The episode demonstrates that, while ary 1942. The deportations to the death The following month, at Pacellis express Pacelli seemed weak to some. pusiUanimity camps had begun in December 1941 and wish, Archbishop , the Ber and indecisiveness were hardly in his nature, would continue through 1944. All during lin nuncio, hosted a gala reception in hon Pacelli's first wartime act of reticence in 1942, Pacelli received reliable informa or of Hitler's 50th birthday. A birthday failing to speak out against Fascist brutality tion on the details of the Final Solution, greeting to the Fiihrer from the bishops of occurred in the summer of 1941, following much of it supplied by the British, Germany would become an annual tradi Hitler's invasion of Yugosla\'ia and the for French, and Americanrepresentatives resi tion until the war's end. mation of the Catholic and Fascist state of dent in the Vatican. On March 17, 1942, Pacelli's coronation was the most tri- Croatia. In a wave of appalling ethnic representatives of Jewish organizations umphalist in a hundred years. His style of cleansing, the Croat Fascist separatists, assembled in Switzerland sent a memo papacy, for all his personal humility, was known as the Ustashe, under the leader randum to Pacelli via the papal nuncio unprecedentedly pompous. He always ate ship of Ante Pavelic, the Croat Fiihrer, in Bern, cataloguing violent anti-Semitic alone. Vatican bureaucrats were obliged to embarked on a campaignof enforced con measures in Germany and in its allied take phone calls from him on their knees. versions, deportations,and mass exiermina- and conquered territories. Their plea fo When he took his afternoon walk, thegar tion targeting a population of 2.2 million cused attention on Slovakia, Croatia, Hun deners had to hide in the bushes. Senior Serb Orthodox Christians and a smaller gary, and unoccupied France, where, they oflicials were not allowed to ask him ques number of Jews and Gypsies. According to believed, the Pope's intervention might yet tions or present a point of \ iew. the Italian writer Carlo Falconi, as early as be effective. Apart from an intervention As Europe plunged toward war. Pacelli April, in a tj'pical act of atrocity, a band of in the case of Slovakia, where the presi cast himself in the role ofjudgeof judges. Ustashe had rounded up 331 Serbs in a dent was Monsignor Josef Tiso, a Catholic But he continued to seekto appease Hitler place called Otocac. The victims were priest, nopapal initiatives resulted. During by attempting to persuade the Poles to forced to dig their own graves before being the same month, contisui.d on pace is?

VANITY FA OCTOBER 1999 CONTlSL'l-D FROM PAGE 182 & StrCam Of marked down for death or gradual exex- and trivializadon. He had scaled down the dispatches describing the fate of some tinction." That was the strongest publicdHc doomed millions to "hundreds of thou- 90,000 Jews reached the Vatican from denunciation of the Final Solution thathat sands" without uttering the word "Jews," various sources in Eastern Europe. The Pacelli would make in the whole courseirse while making the pointed qualification Jewish organizations' long memorandum of the war. "sometimes only by reason of their nation- would be excluded from the wartime doc It was not merely a paltry statement.snt. ality or race." Nowhere was the term "Na- uments published by the Vatican between The chasm between the enormity of the zi" mentioned. Hitler himself could not 1965 and 1981. liquidation of the Jewish people and this have wished for a more convoluted and in- On June 16, 1942, Harold Tittmann, the form of evasive language was profoundlyidly nocuous reaction from the Vicar of Christ U.S. representative to the Vatican, told scandalous. He might have been referringring to the greatest crime in history. Washington that Pacelli was diverting him to many categories of victims at the handsnds self, ostrichlike, into purely religious con of various belligerents in the conflict.lict. n ut what was Pacelli's principal moti cerns and that the moral authority won for Clearly the choice of ambiguous wordingving K vation for this trivialization and de- the papacy by Pius XI was being eroded. was intended to placate those who urgedged U nial? The Allies' diplomats in the Vat- Ai the end of that month, the London Dai him to protest, while avoiding offense5 to ican believed that he was remaining ly Telegraph announced that more than a the Nazi regime. But these considerationsions impartial in order to earn a crucial role in million Jews had been killed in Europe and are overshadowed by the implicit denialnial future peace negotiations. In that it was the aim of the Nazis "to wipe the race from the European ree of truth. But a recapit- ilation of new evidence I continent." The article was re- printedin Vie New York Times. Iiislavetheregatheredwas clearly showsa thatde- On July 21 there was a protest Pacelli saw the Jews as alien rally on behalf of Europe's Jews -][1 and undeserving of his re in New York's Madison Square ^ ji spect and compassion. He Garden. In the following weeks felt no sense of moral out the British. American, and Brazil- rage at their plight. The doc ian representatives to the Vatican uments show that: tried to persuade Pacelli to speak ^ 1. He had nourished a out against the Nazi atrocities. BS striking antipathy toward But still he said nothing. ^ the Jews as early as 1917 in Germany, which con In September 1942. President II tradicts later claims that Franklin Roosevelt sent his per- his omissions were per sonal representative, the former formed in good faith and head of U.S. Steel Myron Taylor, fmk ¥1 to plead with Pacelli to make a statement about the extermination of the Jews. Taylor traveled haz Papai nuncio Cesare Orsenigo ardously through enerry territory to reach with Hitler at a New Year's reception ; created an atmosphere that the Vatican. Still Pacelli refused to speak. in Berlin, 1935. Below, Pacelli, Pacelli's excuse was that he must rise above with and Hitler's ; would be "significant in the belligerent parties. As late as Decem deputy chancellor Franz von Papen ber 18, Francis d'Arcy Osborne. Britain's seated on his right, at the envoy in the Vatican, handed Cardinal signingof the Reich Concordat r the urgent strugie against i , Pacelli's deputy secre at the Vatican, 1933. tary of state, a dossier replete with informa tion on the Jewish deporta- tions and mass killings in hopes that the Pope would denounce the Nazi regime in a Christmas message. On December 24, 1942, having made draft after draft, Pacelli at last said something. In his Christmas Eve broad- cast to the world on Vatican a Radio, he said that men of goodwill owed a vow to bring society "back to its immov- able center of gravity in divine law." He went on: "Humanity owes this vow to those hun- dreds of thousands who, with- out any fault of their own, sometimes only by reason of their nationality or race, are

OCTOBER 1999 that he "loved" the Jews and respected intervention on their behalf could only entered the Roman ghetto area and round their religion. draw the church into alliances with forces ed up more than 1,000 Jews, imprisoning 2. From the end of the First World inimical to Catholicism. them in the very shadow of the Vatican. War to the lost encyclical of 1938, Pacel- Pacelli's failure to utter a candid word How did Pacelliacquit himself? li betrayed a fear and contempt of Ju on the Final Solution proclaimed to the On the morning of the roundup, which daism based on his belief that the Jews world that the Vicar of Christ was not had been prompted by Adolf Eichmann, were behind the Bolshevik plot to de roused to pity or anger. From this point of who was in charge of the organization of stroy Christendom. VMIPK the Final Solution from his head- 3. Pacelli acknowledged to rep- j 1^:^;fe.f. •-:V quarters in Berlin, the German resentatives of the Third Reich j p ambassador in Rome pleaded that the regime's anti-Semitic jPacelli^ ' failure to utter a with the Vatican to issue a public policies were a matter of Ger- | ; protest. By this stage of the war, many's internal politics. The j word; on the Rnai Solution told Mussolini had been deposed and Reich Concordat between Hitler rescued by Adolf Hitler to run and the Vatican, as Hitler was the world that the Vicar of ChristKr.^,;; the puppet Salo regime in the quick to grasp, created an ideal • North of Italy. The German au- climate for Jewish persecution. was libt roused to pity or anger J thorities in Rome, both diplo- 4. Pacelli failed to sanction pro- ^ mats and military commanders, test by German Catholic bishops fearing a backlash of the Italian against anti-Semitism, and he did km&S BHi populace, hoped that an immedi not attempt to intervene in the ate and vigorous papal denuncia process by which Catholic clergy collaboo- view, he was the ideal Pope for Hitler's un- tion might stop the SS in their tracks and rated in racial certification to identify Jews.s. speakable plan. His denial and minimiza- prevent further arrests. Pacelli refused. In 5. After Pius XI's Mil Brennender Sorge.',e. tion of the Holocaust were all the more the end, the German diplomats drafted a denouncing the Nazi regime (althoughih scandalous in that they were uttered from letter of protest on the Pope's behalf and not by name), Pacelli attempted to mititi- a seemingly impartial moral high ground, prevailed on a resident German to gate the effect of the encyclical by givingng sign it for Berlins benefit. Meanwhile, the private diplomatic reassurances to Berliniin T" here was another, more immediate indi- deportation of the imprisoned Jews went despite his awareness of widespread Naziizi cation of Pacelli's moral dislocation. It ahead on October 18. persecution of Jews. occurred before the liberation of Rome, When U.S. charge d'affaires Harold Titt- 6. Pacelli was convinced that the Jewskvs when he was the sole Italian authority in mann visited Pacelli that day, he found had brought misfortune on their own heads;is: the city. On October 16, 1943, SS troops the pontiffanxious that the "Communist" partisans would take advantage ofa cycle him would benefit only the Communists. solidarity with the Jews of Rome either His silence on the deportation of Rome's during their terrible ordeal or after their of papal protest, followed by SS reprisals, deaths. This spiritual silence inthe face of followed by a civilian backlash. As a con Jews, in other words, was not an act of cowardice or fear of the Germans. He an atrocity committed at the heart of sequence, hewas not inclined to lift a fin Christendom, in the shadow of the shrine ger for the Jewish deportees, who were wanted to maintain the Nazi-occupation status quo until such time as the city could of the first apostle, persists to this day and nowtraveling in cattle cars to the Austrian implicates all Catholics. This silence pro border, bound for Auschwitz. Church offi be liberated by the Allies. claims that Pacelli had no genuine spiritu cials reported on the desperate plight of But what of the deportedJews? Five days after the train had set off from the al sympathy even for the Jews of Rome, the deportees as they passed slowly who were members of the community of through city after city. Still Pacelli refused Tiburtina station in Rome, an estimated 1,060 had been gassed at Auschwitz and his birth. Andyet, on learning of the death to intervene. of Adolf Hitler, Archbishop In the Jesuit archives in Rome, I found Birkenau; 149 men and 47 women were of Beriin ordered all the priests of his a secret document sworn to under oath detained for slave labor, but only 15 sur vived the war, and only one of those was archdiocese "to hold a solemn Requiem by Karl Wolff, the SS commander in in memory of the Fiihrer." Italy. The text reveals that Hitler had a woman, Settimia Spizzichino, who had served as a human guinea pig of Dr. Josef There were nevertheless Jews who gave asked Wolff in the fall of 1943 to prepare Pacellithe benefit of the doubt. On Thurs a plan to evacuate the Pope and the Vati Mengele, the Nazi medical doctor who performed atrocious experiments on hu day, November 29, 1945, Pacelli met some can treasures to Liechtenstein. After sev 80 representatives of Jewish refugees who eral weeks of investigation, Wolff conclud man victims. After the liberation, she was found alive in a heap of corpses. expressed their thanks "for his generosity ed that an attempt to invade the Vatican toward those persecuted during the Nazi- and its properties, or to seize the Pope Fascist period," One must respect a trib in response to a papal protest, would But there was amore profound failure than Pacelli's unwillingness to help the ute made by people who hadsuffered and prompt a backlash throughout Italy that survived, and we cannot belittle Pacelli's would seriously hinder the Nazi war ef Jews of Rome rounded up on October 16. Pacelli's reticencewas not just a diplo efforts on the level of charitable relief, no fort. Hitler therefore dropped his plan to tably his directive that enclosed religious kidnap Pacelli, acknowledging what Pa matic silence in response to the political pressures ofthe moment, not just a failure houses in Rome should take in Jews hid celli appeared to ignore, that thestrongest ing from the SS. social and political force in Italy in late to be morally outraged. It was a stunmng religious and ritualistic silence. To my By the same token, we must respect 1943 was the Catholic Church, and that the voice of Settimia Spizzichino, the sole its potential for thwarting the SS was knowledge, there is no record of a single public papal prayer, lit votive candle, Roman Jewish woman survivor from the immense. death camps. Speaking in a BBC inter- Pacelli was concerned that a protest by psalm, lamentation, or Mass celebrated in

1

GENEVe-iaaO:

MA^RSHALL FIELDS

I, . view in 1995 she said, "1 came back from just as we condemned on various occa corruption of his mortal remains a symbol Auschwitz on my own. I lost my mother, sions in the past the persecutions that a of the absolute corruption of his papacy. two sisters, a niece, and one brother. Pius fanatical anti-Semitism inflicted on the XII could have warned us about what Hebrew People." His grandiloquent self- '" he Second Vatican Council was called was going to happen. We might have es exculpation a year after the war had end by John XXIII, who succeeded Pacel caped from Rome and joined the parti ed showed him to be not only an ideal li in 1958. precisely to reject Pacelli's sans. He played right into the Germans' Pope for the Nazis' Final Solution but monolith in preference for a collegial, de hands. It all happened right under his also a hypocrite. centralized, human, Christian community nose. But he was an anti-Semitic Pope, a The postwar period of Pacelli's papacy, on the move. There was a new emphasis pro-German Pope. He didn't take a sin through the 1950s, saw the apotheosis of on history, accessible liturgy, community, gle risk. And when they say the Pope is like Jesus Christ, it ^ guiding metaphor of the church is not true. He did not save a » of the future was of a "pilgrim single child. Nothing." ^ people of God." Expectations We are obligedto accept that ran high, but there was no lack these contrasting views of Pacel- IH^ ofthecontentionHoly Spirit,andandanxietylove.asoldThe li are not mutually exclusive. ^ habits and disciplines died hard. There were signs from the very It gives aCatholic no satis outset that papal and Vatican faction to accuse a Pope of il< hegemony would not easily ac- acquiescing in the plans of h) quiesce. that the Old Guard Hitler, But one of the saddest llv would attempt a comeback. ironies of Pacelli's papacy cen As we approach the end of ters on the implications of his this century, the hopeful energy own pastoral self-image. At g|' of the Second Vatican Council, the beginning of a promotion or Vatican II, as it came to be al film he commissioned about K| called, appears to many a spent himself during the war, called S force. The church of Pius XII is Tlw AngcUc Pasior, the camera jjg reasserting itself in confirmation frequently focuses on the stat 2 of a pyramidal church model; ue of the Good Shepherd in Q faith in the primacy of the man H in the white robe dictating in H solitude from the pinnacle. In I the twilight years of John Paul According to the sole Roman ® II's long reign, the Catholic Jewish woman survivor * • Church gives apen-asive im pression of dysfunction despite from the death camps, Pius Xil his historic influence on the col lapse of Communist tyranny in Poland and the Vatican's enthu "was an anti-Semitic Pope, the ideology of papal power as siasm for entering its third millennium a pro-German Pope." he presided over a monolithic, with a cleansed conscience. triumphalist Catholic Church in As the theologian Professor Adrian open confrontation with Com- Hastings comments, "The great tide pow ered by Vatican II has, at least institution ||||||[|| But it could not hold. The ally, spent its force. The old landscapehas internal structures and morale once more emerged and Vatican II is now the Vatican gardens. The parable of the of the church in Pacelli's final years be being read in Rome far more in the spirit good shepherd tells of the pastor who so gan to show signs of fragmentation and of the First Vatican Council and within loves each of his sheep that he will do all, decay, leading to a yearning for reassess the context of Pius XII's model of Ca risk all. go to any pains, to save one mem ment and renewal. In old age he became tholicism." A future titanic struggle be ber of his flock that is lost or in danger. increasingly narrow-minded, eccentric, tween the progressives and the traditional To his everlastingshame, and to the shame and hypochondriacal. He experienced ists is in prospect, with the potential for a of the Catholic Church, Pacelli disdained religious visions, suffered from chronic cataclysmic schism, especially in North to recognize the Jews of Rome as mem hiccups, and received monkey-brain-cell America, wherea split has opened up be bers of his Roman flock, even though injections for longevity. He had no love tween bishops compliant with Rome and they had dwelled in the Eternal City since for, or trust in, those who had to follow academic Catholicism, which is increas before the birth of Christ. him. He failed to replace his secretary of ingly independent and dissident. And yet there was still something worse. state when he died, and for years he de Pacelli, whose canonization process is After the liberation of Rome, when every clined to appoint a full complement of now well advanced, has become the icon, perception of restraint on his freedom was cardinals. He died at the age of 82 on 40 years after his death, of those tradi lifted, he claimed retrospective moral su October 9, 1958. His corpse decomposed tionalists who read and revise the provi periority for having spoken and acted on rapidly in the autumnal Roman heat. At sions of the Second Vatican Council from behalf of the Jews. Addressing a Palestin his lying-in-state, a guard fainted from the viewpoint of Pacelli's ideologyof pa ian group on August 3, 1946, he said, the stench. Later, his nose turned black pal power—an ideology that has proved "We disapprove of all recourse to force ... and fell off. Some saw in this sudden disastrous in the century's history. •

VANITY FAIR OCTOBER 1999