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Dismantling the Myth of ‘ Dismantling the myth of ‘Hitler’s Pope’ “Hitler’s Pope.” This is the charge often levelled at Pope Pius XII, who was pope from 1939-58. It is not new. It started in the 1960s with the play “The Deputy” and has waxed and waned in popularity over the years. This charge has led to controversy over Pius XII’s canonization cause. Pope St. Paul VI opened the cause in 1967, and Pope Benedict XVI declared him venerable in 2009. The Vatican opened up its archives and libraries to researchers at the beginning of March so that truth could be ascertained and, if possible, his cause could move forward. Unfortunately, the Vatican had to close the archives and send the researchers home because of the global pandemic. The archives have since reopened. Recently, the Washington Post ran an article repeating the claim that Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope,” arguing that Pius knew about the Holocaust and did nothing to stop it. This claim that Pius XII was somehow in cahoots with Hitler is a myth, and it ignores Pius’s actions, contemporary reactions and the historical context the Vatican was in during the 1930s and 1940s. Early opposition to Nazism It is important to note that Pope Pius XII was a career diplomat and relatively soft-spoken, particularly when compared to his predecessors Pius IX and Pius XI, and one of his successors, John XXIII. His two main concerns during his tenure as Vatican secretary of state and his wartime papacy were the preservation of peace and the survival of the visible Church. He had to weigh what his actions and words would mean for the millions of Catholics spread throughout Europe and the world. Pius also constrained himself, publicly at least, to proper diplomatic channels and refrained from public actions or words that could be seen as brazen violations of the concordats with Germany and Italy. Furthermore, Pius believed in making appeals to the faith of Catholics and other Christians, and that if he, even obliquely, highlighted the differences between Nazism and Catholic doctrine then, to quote Our Lord, “Whoever has ears ought to hear” (Mt 11:15). Pius XII’s opposition to the Nazis and Nazism began when he was Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, Vatican secretary of state from 1930-39 under Pope Pius XI. As secretary of state, Cardinal Pacelli launched more than 50 protests in three years over Nazi breaches of the Reichskonkordat, the treaty between the Holy See and the German government that offered certain protections to the Catholic Church. Pacelli had been instrumental in negotiating this treaty with the government before the Nazis, the Weimar Republic. The concordat with Germany was one of 40 concordats negotiated by the Vatican after the First World War; in many instances, such as the one with Germany, the purpose of the concordat was to secure the rights of the Catholic Church and the laity in the face of hostile governments. Pacelli also made his dislike of Nazism known in nondiplomatic settings. In April 1935 at Lourdes, France, Pacelli condemned the Nazi’s racial philosophy as “contrary to the Christian faith” and “a superstition of race and blood.” Pacelli called the Nazis “false prophets with the pride of Lucifer” in a letter written to Cardinal Karl Joseph Schulte of Cologne, Germany, one month before his visit to Lourdes. WHO WAS POPE PIUS XII? CNS Original name: Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli Born: March 2, 1876, in Rome Died: Oct. 9, 1958, at Castel Gandolfo, Italy Reigned as pope: March 2, 1939-Oct. 9, 1958 Career: Ordained a priest on April 2, 1899; spent much of his early priesthood serving as a diplomat and assistant within the Vatican’s Secretary of State office; appointed as nuncio to Bavaria in 1917; appointed as nuncio to Germany in 1920; was made a cardinal-priest in 1929 and soon after became the Vatican’s secretary of state, overseeing foreign policy across the world on behalf of the Holy See; was elected to the papacy in 1939, succeeding Pope Pius XI. One of Cardinal Pacelli’s most important tasks as secretary of state was helping Pope Pius XI and leading German bishops write the 1937 encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (“With Burning Anxiety”). Pope Pius XI and Pacelli decided to write this encyclical after a period of intense Nazi persecution of Catholics and numerous breaches of the concordat. This encyclical was addressed to the priests and laity of Germany and designed to remind them that the Church, the Catholic faith and God were above the rules and laws of man and secular government. The encyclical condemned Nazi racial ideology, neo-paganism, Nazi efforts to remove the Old Testament from German Bibles and education, the elevation of Adolf Hitler to nearly divine status, Nazi insistence that blood and race, not Christ, saved man, and Nazi attacks against the Church. It repeatedly condemned “the so-called myth of race and blood” (No. 17). While it is measured in tone, the encyclical clearly shows German Catholics where the Nazi government opposes Catholic doctrine and faith. Some historians believe that Pacelli himself wrote the eighth point, which states that “whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State … to an idolatrous level … is far from the true faith in God.” In 1937, Cardinal George Mundelein of Chicago criticized Hitler and the Nazis in a public speech. As Paul O’Shea relates in his book “A Cross Too Heavy: Pope Pius XII and the Jews of Europe,” the Nazis demanded that the Vatican reprimand Mundelein, which Pacelli said was not possible as long as Nazi breaches of the concordat continued. Pacelli also leaked to the press that the Vatican did not disapprove of Mundelein’s speech and favorably compared the speech to the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge. Cardinal Pacelli also reprimanded Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna when the cardinal offered support for the Nazis’ annexation of Austria and the installation of an Austrian National Socialist government in April 1938. A month later, writes O’Shea, Cardinal Pacelli publicly condemned “the array of the militant godless shaking the clenched fist of the Antichrist against everything that we hold most sacred.” After Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, an intense anti- Jewish pogrom in Germany in November 1938, Pacelli appealed to the Vatican’s nuncios around the world, especially in the Western Hemisphere, to use their influence to get governments to accept refugees from Germany. Public addresses, actions Now let us turn our attention to Pius’ public words and actions during his papacy. War was clearly on the horizon when Pacelli became Pope Pius XII on March 2, 1939. Pius desired peace above all and sought to use the best force at his disposal, the Vatican diplomatic corps, to bring peace to fruition. As such, he attempted to use the Vatican’s nuncios in European capitals to achieve an understanding among the European powers that would prevent war. He attempted to convene a conference of nations for this purpose soon after his election. When this attempt failed and war broke out, Pius attempted to convince Mussolini and his government to not join Hitler in the war. Pictured are letters from German children thanking Pope Pius XII in 1948 for gifts he sent for their first Communions. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) Pope Pius XII also gave a number of speeches concerning the war and violence against noncombatants. His first public speech on March 3, 1939, was broadcast via radio, and he pleaded for peace. This was a common element of Pius’ public speeches; he consistently made appeals for peace and, failing that, for innocent noncombatants to be spared. He made another radio address pleading for peace on Aug. 24, 1939, this one addressed to “governors and peoples in the imminent danger of war.” After the war began, Pius issued the encyclicalSummi Pontificatus in October 1939. In the encyclical, he condemned racism and anti-Semitism by discussing man’s common origin in God, Christ’s sacrifice for all mankind, and St. Paul’s declaration that in Christ there is “neither Gentile nor Jew.” He called the “forgetfulness of … our common origin and … the equality of rational nature in all men” a “pernicious error” (No. 35). Pius also condemned the totalitarian state as a danger to world peace. His most famous public address during the war was the 1942 Christmas radio address. In that address, Pius said that mankind had a solemn vow to work toward peace and restoring the law of God. Man owed this vow to specific groups of people affected by the war, particularly “those hundreds of thousands who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death.” Pope Pius XII would, in the summer of 1943, release another encyclical, Mystici corporis Christi. This encyclical again condemned racism and anti-Semitism, with declarations such as: “[The love of God] embraces all peoples, whatever their nationality or race”; “[Christ broke] ‘down the middle wall of partition … in his flesh’ by which the [Jews and Gentiles] were divided”; and “our peaceful King who taught us to love not only those who are of a different nation or race” (Nos. 6, 32, 96). The encyclical also condemned forced conversions. This is pertinent, because during the war, priests and Church officials, with and without Pius’ permission, used baptismal documents to help Jews escape. Pius also offered words and actions in defense of Europe’s Jews. These defenses were often more private than his main encyclicals and radio addresses, or carried out by other parts of the Vatican, particularly its radio network.
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