Pope Pius XII From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Pius XII Papacy began 2 March 1939 Papacy ended 9 October 1958 Predecessor Pius XI Successor John XXIII Orders Ordination 2 April 1899 13 May 1917 Consecration by Pope Benedict XV Created 16 December 1929 Cardinal Personal details Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Birth name Giovanni Pacelli 2 March 1876 Born Rome, Kingdom of Italy 9 October 1958 (aged 82) Died Castel Gandolfo, Italy Opus Justitiae Pax Motto (The work of justice and peace) Signature Coat of arms Other Popes named Pius Venerable Servant of God Pope Pius XII (Latin: Pius PP. XII; Italian: Pio XII), born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (2 March 1876 – 9 October 1958), reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958. Before election to the papacy, Pacelli served as secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, papal nuncio and Cardinal Secretary of State, in which capacity he worked to conclude treaties with European and Latin American nations, most notably the Reichskonkordat with Nazi Germany. The concordat of 1933 which saw the self-destruction of the Centre (Catholic) Party, on the orders of the Holy See, and Pius' leadership of the Catholic Church during World War II, including his "decision to stay silent in public about the fate of the Jews",[1] remain the subject of controversy. After the war Pius XII advocated peace and reconciliation, including lenient policies towards Axis and Axis-satellite nations. The Church experienced severe persecution and mass deportations of Catholic clergy in the Eastern Bloc. In light of his overt involvement in Italian politics – anyone who voted for a Communist candidate in the 1948 elections was threatened with automatic excommunication – Pius XII became known as a staunch opponent of the Italian Communist Party. Pius XII explicitly invoked ex cathedra papal infallibility with the dogma of the Assumption of Mary in his 1950 Apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus.[2] His magisterium includes almost 1,000 addresses and radio broadcasts. His forty-one encyclicals include Mystici Corporis, the Church as the Body of Christ; Mediator Dei on liturgy reform; and Humani generis on the Church's positions on theology and evolution. He eliminated the Italian majority in the College of Cardinals in 1946. Contents 1 Early life 2 Church career 3 Papacy 4 Church reforms 5 Theology 6 Canonisations and beatifications 7 World War II 8 Holocaust 9 Post–World War II 10 Later life, illness and death 11 Cause for canonization 12 Views, interpretations, and scholarship 13 See also 14 References 15 External links Early life Main article: Early life of Pope Pius XII Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli was born on 2 March 1876 in Rome into a family of intense Catholic piety with a history of ties to the papacy (the "Black Nobility"). His parents were Filippo Pacelli (1837–1916) and Virginia (née Graziosi) Pacelli (1844–1920). His grandfather, Marcantonio Pacelli, had been Under-Secretary in the Papal Ministry of Finances[3] and then Secretary of the Interior under Pope Pius IX from 1851–70 and helped found the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano in 1861.[4] His cousin, Ernesto Pacelli, was a key financial advisor to Pope Leo XIII; his father, Filippo Pacelli, a Franciscan tertiary,[5] was the dean of the Sacra Rota Romana; and his brother, Francesco Pacelli, became a lay canon lawyer and the legal advisor to Pius XI, in which role he negotiated the Lateran Treaty in 1929, the pact with Benito Mussolini, bringing an end to the Roman Question. Eugenio Pacelli at the age of six in 1882 Together with his brother Francesco and his two sisters, Giuseppina and Elisabetta, he grew up in the centre of Rome. Having attended a kindergarten run by two nuns, and then a private Catholic elementary school, in two rooms of a building close to the Piazza Venezia,[6] by the age of ten he was enrolled at the Liceo Ennio Quirino Visconti Institute. This was a state school situated in the Collegio Romano, former site of the Jesuit university in Rome, and was animated by a generally anti-Catholic and anticlerical spirit.[7] He was an altar boy at the Chiesa Nuova and his preferred play as a youth was to act out the celebration of Mass in his bedroom. One year he played out the entire Holy Week ceremonies. He liked music, particularly Beethoven, J.S. Bach, Mozart and Mendelssohn, and read Dante, Alessandro Manzoni and Cicero. His favourite spiritual reading at this time was Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ and other religious reading included St. Augustine and the work of the seventeenth century French bishop Bossuet. Bossuet remained an influence throughout his life.[8] In 1894, aged 18, Pacelli began his theology studies at the prestigious Tridentine Collegio Capranica Seminary, and in November of the same year, registered to take a philosophy course at the Jesuit Gregoriana University. At the end of the first academic year however, in the summer of 1895, he dropped out of both the Capranica and the Gregorian University. According to his sister Elisabetta, the food at the Capranica was to blame.[9] Having received a special dispensation he continued his studies from home under the faculty of the Seminarium Romanum located in the Palazzo Sant'Appollinaire, later the Lateran University. From 1895–96, he studied philosophy at University of Rome La Sapienza. At home he wore his soutane and Roman collar throughout the day and continued to be influenced by Father Giuseppe Lais, an Oratorian priest, a figure who had watched over Pacelli's religious progress since the age of eight. In 1899 he completed his education in "Sacred Theology" with a doctoral degree awarded on the basis of a short dissertation and an oral examination in Latin.[10] Church career Priest and Monsignor Pacelli on the day of his ordination, 2 April 1899;apart from his post-ordination studies, the young priest did some part-time work in the field of pastoral care-spiritual counsellor to pupils of the Cenacle Convent in Rome, as well as a regular visitor to the Convent of the Assumption. These duties encompassed the only pastoral work he performed during his entire career in the Church.[11] While all other candidates from the Rome diocese were ordained in the Basilica of St. John Lateran,[12] Pacelli was ordained a priest on Easter Sunday, 2 April 1899, alone in the private oratory of an auxiliary bishop of Rome, by Bishop Francesco di Paola Cassetta, vice-regent of Rome and a family friend. Pacelli received his first assignment as a curate at Chiesa Nuova.[13] In 1901 he was brought into the Vatican bureaucracy and entered the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, a sub-office of the Vatican Secretariat of State. Monsignor Pietro Gasparri, the recently appointed undersecretary at the Department of Extraordinary Affairs, had underscored his proposal to Pacelli to work in the 'Vatican's equivalent of the Foreign office' by highlighting the 'necessity of defending the Church from the onslaughts of secularism and liberalism throughout Europe.'[11] Pacelli became an apprendista, an apprentice, in Gasparri's department. In January 1901 he was also chosen, by Pope Leo XIII himself, according to an official account, to deliver condolences on behalf of the Vatican to Edward VII of the UK after the death of Queen Victoria.[14] The Serbian Concordat, 24 June 1914. Present for the Vatican were Cardinal Merry del Val and next to him, Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli. Pacelli had negotiated and drafted the document over the previous eighteen months. Cardinal Merry del Val remarked, 'If we say that we cannot trust the Serbs, all the more reason for pinning them down with a concordat' – "an ominous foreshadowing of the argument employed by Pacelli to justify the Reich Concordat".[15] By 1904 Pacelli received his doctorate. The theme of his thesis was the nature of concordats and the function of canon law when a concordat falls into abeyance. Promoted to the position of minutante, he prepared digests of reports that had been sent to the Secretariat from all over the world and in the same year became a papal chamberlain. In 1905 he received the title domestic prelate.[13] From 1904 until 1916, he assisted Cardinal Pietro Gasparri in his codification of canon law with the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs.[16] Canon law, the body of internal laws of the Catholic Church, had gathered over centuries in a multitude of decrees, rules, and regulations. The decision to create a code, rather than a compilation or collection of laws or canons, involved "abstraction, fitting laws to succinct formulae divorced from historical and social origins"; under Pius X's direction, the Code of Canon Law sought to create "conformity, centralization, discipline". John Cornwell: " the text, together with the Anti- Modernist Oath, became the means by which the Holy See was to establish and sustain the new, unequal, and unprecedented power relationship that had arisen between the papacy and the Church. Gaspari and Pacelli were its principal architects. The task was to absorb Pacelli for thirteen years."[17] In 1908, Pacelli served as a Vatican representative on the International Eucharistic Congress, accompanying Rafael Merry del Val[18] to London,[14] where he met Winston Churchill.[19] In 1911, he represented the Holy See at the coronation of King George V.[16] Pacelli became the under-secretary in 1911, adjunct-secretary in 1912 (a position he received under Pope Pius X and retained under Pope Benedict XV) and secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs in 1914—succeeding Gasparri, who was promoted to Cardinal Secretary of State.[16] On 24 June 1914, just four days before Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, Pacelli, together with Cardinal Merry del Val, represented the Vatican when the Serbian Concordat was signed.