SUdfffiiUeraiKdiesavadio speechfinWay9,3934, »eariya3fearjafierannounce !Uie9leich£oncoRlati^3he Vatican.Aisei^flope^us )isseamed^SLIRetef^ Sa^caonVeconber ahe*»otyireaf'4Dfl9ra: 'i ' TlfraR Long-buried Vatican files reveal a new anc ; shocking indictment of World War IPs Jj; : - I • • H.t.-,. in n. ; Pope Pius XII: that in pursuit of absolute power he helped Adolf Hitler destroy German ^ Catholic political opposition, betrayed the Europe, and sealed a deeply cynica pact with a 20th-century devi!. BBI BY JOHN CORNWELL the Final Solution. A young man, a prac was staged on Broadway in 1964. depict UnewheneveningI wasseveralhavingyearsdinnerago ticing Catholic, insisted that the case had ed Pacelli as a ruthless cynic, interested with a group of students, the never been proved. more in the Vatican's stockholdings than topic of the papacy was Raised as a Catholicduring 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 the allegation. It started in 1963 with a play Excerpted from Hitler's Pope: TheSeci-et II, had brought lasting shame on the by a young German named Rolf Hoch- History ofPius XII. bj' John Comwell. to be published this month byViking; © 1999 Catholic Church by failing to denounce huth. DerStellverti-eter (The Deputy), which by the author. VANITY FAIR OCTOBER 1999 having reliable knowl- i edge of its true extent. And, worse, that he was a hypocrite, for after the war he had retrospec tively taken undue credit for speaking out boldly against the Nazis' per secution of the Jews. In 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 i zenith of his papacy. This was the Pius that people now in their mid- Eui^nio Paeedi at 63, 50s and older remem on the vvay tb his ber from newsreels and coronation as Pope Pius XII, newspaper photographs. March 12,1939. Behw, He was 74 years old Pacelli aged^, at thetime and still vigorous. Six ofhisordination, 1899. feet tail, stick thin at n 125 pounds, light on Eugenio Pacelli acted out his feet, regular in his habits, he had hardly has raged to this day. t' the ritual of the Mass,!SS,s, . altered physically from the Disturbed by the •v I day ofhis coronation 11 years anger brought out in dressed in robes t earlier. He had beautiful taper- that dinner altercation, Jm •. ing hands, a plaintive voice, and convinced, as I lvl»'.v,. large dark eyes, and an aura had always been, of ^ ' " of holiness. It was his extreme Pius XII's innocence, ^ pallor that first arrested those 1 decided to write a V-. who met him. His skin "had neu' defense ofhis rep- ^ a surprisingly transparent ef utation for a younger fect," observed the writer Cor- generation. I believed • the foreign office of the rado Pallenberg, "as if reflecting from the that Pacelli's evident Holy See. I also drew on inside a cold, white flame." His charisma holiness was proof of German sources relating to 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 legs were 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. pages of transcribed testimony 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 J 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 Thief in the amounted not to an exoneration but to an control, the highly centralized, dictatorial Nighi, 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 lime before the advent of Two key ofiicials granted me access to words, anti-Jewish. It revealed that he had modem communications when Catholic secret material; depositions under oath helped Hitler to powerand at the same time 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 Germany. It showed that he had implicitly cils and in coUegial power-sharing between archive of the Vatican Secretariat of State, denied andtrivialized theHolocaust, despite the Pope and the bishops. The absolutism VANITY FAIR OCTOBER 1999 of the modern papacy is largely an inven formed the 1870 primacy dogma into an centralized authority of the church. It was tion of the late 19th century. It developed unprecedented principle of papal power. one of the defining moments of the Refor rapidlyin 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 recruited into the Vati via Switzerland 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 born 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 world-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 relief worker. 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 cleigythroughout the people of all religions and none. In an early ment in central Rome with his grandfather, world. According to this code, in the fijture 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 smaD brazier to supply heat to heresy; priests would be subjected to informed PietroGasparri,whohad become for the whole family, evenin the depths of strictcensorship in their writings; papal let cardinal secretary 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 minister and prime never appeared before his siblings unless fallible (in practiceif not in principle); and minister—thata Dr. Werner, the chief rabbi he was ftiUy dressed in a jacket and tie. He an oath would be taken by .MiiiiiiL- ..Li would always come to the table with a all candidates for the priest book, which he would read after having hood to submit to the sense • pono asked the family's permission.