What kind of pontiff was Pope Pius XII?

The world seems to be divided into two camps over Pope Pius XII.

Was he an uncaring anti-Semite, an indecisive coward, and a leader so detached from the reality of World War II that he dismissed reports of Jewish deaths as exaggerations? Or was he a savvy diplomat who saved thousands of Jews from death with the help of an underground network of brave Catholics who endangered their lives to protect people from fascism? Which version is closer to the truth?

Fortunately, it is easy to see that reality tends more toward the latter than the former. Many writers have debunked the erroneous statements¹ made about the Church’s 260^th pope, as can be seen most recently in Michael Hesemann’s The Pope and the Holocaust and in Peter Bartley’s Catholics Confronting Hitler. We know that Pope Pius XII did care about Jews, he did try to stop Hitler through diplomatic means, and he did save lives by privately encouraging Catholics—particularly bishops, priests, and vowed religious—to protect those whose lives were in danger during World War II.

One good question

However, Pius XII’s enemies have raised one good question: Why didn’t the pope more strongly condemn the actions of Adolf Hitler and Nazism?

Before examining the case of Pius XII, it is important to gain some perspective about the Church’s sometimes-rocky relationships with political leaders over the past two millennia. Even setting aside those thirty-two popes² who reigned before the Roman emperor Constantine issued his Edict of Toleration toward the Church, many popes have had to deal with unjust, violent, and wicked rulers.

The assassination attempt made against Pope John Paul II in 1981, presumably ordered by communists, was not the first time that someone tried to kill the leader of the Catholic Church. While the deaths of some popes have been merely suspicious,³ the deaths of others were clearly the result of foul play.⁴ Granted, there have been some less-than-saintly popes who died because of the dangerous company they kept⁵ or because they ruled during a violent period.⁶

As the documents of Vatican II remind us, the pope, “as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the whole Church […] has full, supreme, and universal power over the Church.”⁷ However, popes have often stepped outside their role as shepherd of the Church to address important issues, such as protecting the innocent. In one of the most famous examples of successful papal diplomacy, Pope Leo I (r. 440-461) convinced Attila the Hun to turn away Rome rather than pillaging it and killing its citizens. However, Leo was less successful when the Vandal King Genseric showed up at the gates of Rome a few years later.

While today the Vatican City State is a tiny, independent city-state, popes over the centuries have sometimes governed large territories, controlled the Church’s treasuries (or its debts), and led armies into battle. Throughout Church history, popes have emphasized diplomatic efforts, defended the rights of Catholics, and used moral and spiritual arguments to support their positions. Popes have generally tried to remain neutral in international disputes.

Young Eugenio Pacelli

Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958) was born in Rome. His grandfather had served in the papal court, and his father worked as a lawyer for the Vatican. The family was wealthy and devout. Eugenio was educated by religious sisters and at prestigious schools. He became an altar boy, and he wrote poetry. At the age of eighteen, he announced to his family that he wanted to become a priest. They were delighted and probably not surprised.

Eugenio began studying theology, philosophy, history, and languages in colleges in Rome. However, after only a year, he developed health problems and returned home. Although a medical diagnosis was never given, it’s not difficult to guess what happened. Eugenio was always an excellent student and at the top of his class, the sort of driven, hard-working, disciplined young man who could work himself to exhaustion if his Italian mother was not around to watch over him. But when he moved back home with his family and became a day student, he was able to continue his studies, obtain a doctoral degree in theology, and be ordained a priest at the age of twenty-three.

Eugenio always said he only wanted to be a parish priest, and he did serve a parish immediately after ordination. But the smart young priest also earned a doctoral degree in canon law. The topic of his dissertation was concordats.

Vatican diplomacy

Most Catholics don’t use the word “concordat” on a regular basis. According to Fr. John Hardon’s Modern Catholic Dictionary, a concordat is an “official agreement between the Pope, in his spiritual capacity as the visible head of the Catholic Church, and the temporal authority of a state.” Concordats have been used by the Church since the eleventh century to establish regulations regarding the rights and liberties of the Church within a given state, but concordats became increasingly important with the establishment of liberal governments.

Back in the eleventh century, when the excommunicated Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV realized he needed the support of Pope Gregory VII to handle his rebellious lords, Henry knelt barefoot in the snow to ask the pope’s forgiveness. He may or may not have been contrite, but he was Catholic.

In general, the leaders of nineteenth and early twentieth-century liberal governments were not. Many advocated violence and promoted atheism, and, because they hated the Church, they did not respect the rights of Catholics. For that reason, Vatican diplomats sought to negotiate pacts with these governments to protect Catholics and to establish peace and justice for all citizens.

Young Father Pacelli seemed to possess the prudence, intelligence, and discretion needed to serve in the Vatican’s diplomatic corps, so he was assigned to the Secretariat of State. He was good at his job. Over time, he was given increasingly important assignments and titles. On May 13, 1917—an interesting date in world history—having recently been ordained a titular archbishop, Eugenio arrived in Munich to serve as the Church’s de facto nuncio to Germany. Although he could not convince the German government to agree to peace terms, other realities brought an end to World War I about a year later.

In 1920, he was officially named the papal nuncio to Germany. Over the next several years, he traveled all over Germany, gave speeches, and became acquainted with German leaders both inside and outside the Church. He saw how the German people suffered from unrest and hyperinflation due to the punishments inflicted on them by the Treaty of Versailles. He watched as political movements, including communists and fascists, jockeyed for control of Germany.

In 1929, Pope Pius XI asked Pacelli to serve as his Secretary of State. It was a good choice for both men; Pius XI could be hot-tempered, and Pacelli was, by now, a seasoned negotiator who could calm down the Holy Father and promote diplomatic compromises. Under his guidance, the Vatican established more concordats with European countries.

The Nazi threat

It is easy to hate Nazism now because one can see the fruit that it produced: millions of innocent people killed by war, genocide, and concentration camps. However, how many people recognized the dangers of Nazi ideology before Hitler invaded Poland in 1939?

Pope Pius XI, Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, and the German Catholic bishops certainly did. They identified those dangers in Mit Brennender Sorge. This papal encyclical, written in German, explained that Nazism’s racial laws were evil, that its religious beliefs were pantheistic, and that it was promoting a form of idolatry of the state. Copies of this encyclical were secretly distributed to Catholic churches in Germany, and it was read publicly on Palm Sunday in 1937.

It was a daring act that both shocked the world and inspired the Catholic faithful. However, the Nazis swiftly retaliated. They confiscated every copy of the encyclical they could find and imprisoned anyone who was involved. Since the Nazis controlled the German press, they tried to hide the news that the encyclical had even existed.

Then they got even with the pope. They arrested Catholic clergymen, falsely accused them of committing immoral acts, and subjected them to show trials. The torture, imprisonment, and deaths of those innocent men were the price that the Church paid for daring to call Adolf Hitler a “mad prophet” in Mit Brennender Sorge.

In 1939, Pius XI died. When the College of Cardinals gathered in the Vatican to elect his replacement, they unsurprisingly chose Eugenio Pacelli. With war looming from a militant Germany, why wouldn’t they choose an experienced diplomat who had served as a nuncio to Germany and who was also known for his strong opposition to communism?

Lest we forget, supporters of communism were not solely living in the Soviet Union at the time. In the 1930s, Communist partisans were fighting a civil war in Spain, hiding in the hills of Pacelli’s native Italy, and trying to gain control of European governments. While the dangers of Nazism, including Hitler’s “Final Solution”—the total extermination of Jews—had not yet been revealed, the dangers of communism were already well established.

As a papal nuncio, Pacelli had worked closely with the atheistic Soviet Union and knew that since 1917, Russian Christians had been deprived of churches and the sacraments. He knew that thousands of priests and pastors in Russia had been imprisoned, exiled, and executed. Although Pacelli probably did not know the total number of deaths, it is now estimated that civil wars, famine, and the ruthlessness of the Soviet government had already caused the deaths of millions of its own citizens.⁸

A wartime pope

Like many other popes, Pope Pius XII wrote encyclicals, gave speeches, canonized saints, and made reforms to canon law and the liturgy. He also defined the dogma of the Assumption of Mary. But that’s not what most people remember about his nineteen-year-long papacy.

Several months after Pius XII had been elected, World War II broke out. Just as his predecessor, Pope Benedict XV, had done during World War I, Pius carefully maintained Vatican neutrality during the war. This wasn’t simply a prudent move to keep fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from invading Catholic churches—on the assumption that he could convince his Catholic soldiers to do something like that. Pius knew that as a neutral party in the war, the Vatican could negotiate with both sides, speak up for the rights of Catholics and minorities, and keep trying to restore peace.

Some of Pius XII’s biographers like to portray him as antisemitic and imply that he was unaware of the cruelties being perpetrated by Nazis. They quote him making snarky comments that do not sound like they came from the mouth of a priest who spent his career in diplomatic circles, knowing that his every word could have international implications.

A better source of information about how Pius XII and his staff spent their days during World War II can be found in Johan Ickx’s The Pope’s Cabinet: Pius XII’s Secret War for Saving Jews. Ickx relates anecdotes from the Vatican archives, which show that Pius, in addition to performing his many other duties as pope, was constantly trying to find ways to help the thousands of individuals who asked his office for help.

During World War II, a Jewish mother wrote to the pope, saying that she had been expelled from her native Poland, was now in Italy, and wanted to emigrate to London, where her two grown sons had managed to escape. An Italian Catholic mother wrote him a frantic letter, fearful that she and her children would soon be deported to Auschwitz, all because her long-dead mother had been Jewish. A Jewish teenage boy from Yugoslavia asked the pope to find his eight-year-old sister in a camp in Croatia and bring her to Italy. The pope and his staff used all the contacts they had—in the Italian government, in foreign embassies, within the Church—to try to get these people to safety. Although they were able to save many lives through diplomatic means, in these three heartbreaking cases, they were apparently unsuccessful.

In 1939, as the head of the Catholic Church, Pius tried to convince other countries to grant visas to baptized Jews so that they could escape persecution in Germany. Today, people complain that his Brazilian Visa Project ultimately fell apart and did not help Jews who had not become Catholic. But what other world leader ordered his staff to negotiate and raise money to try to save those who were being threatened by Nazi racial laws? Who complained to Slovak leaders when thousands of Jewish girls were rounded up and deported to serve as prostitutes for Nazi soldiers? Who carefully evaluated and cross-checked reports from sources so that when he made public statements about Nazi persecution, his words were based on fact, not propaganda?

Pope Pius XII did not have armies of soldiers to fight in World War II. What he had was a Church full of Catholics who knew they were called to love God and love their neighbor. He privately ordered every bishop to act, out of Christian charity, to save the vulnerable within his own diocese, a perfect example of the principle of subsidiarity. Within the diocese of Rome, Pius quietly asked his priests and religious to risk their lives by providing safe houses for people who were displaced, mostly Jews.

How many people were saved by Pius’ actions? Only God knows. But when Allied bombers attacked papal property at Castel Gandolfo in 1944—thinking there were Germans in the nearby hills—they killed approximately 500 people out of the 15,000 people who were hiding there at the time.

Why didn’t Pope Pius XII excoriate Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in every public address he made during World War II? Because he was more concerned about restoring peace than about virtue signaling.

Whenever Catholic priests, monks, and seminarians in Nazi-occupied territories protested Nazism—and sometimes even when they hadn’t—they were arrested and sent to concentration camps. In 1942, when the Dutch bishops issued a letter protesting the treatment of Jews, the Nazis retaliated by rounding up Jews who had become Catholics, including Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

Does any reasonable person believe that Adolf Hitler would have repented of his actions and brought an end to the war if only the pope had called him a moral monster? Technically, Pius XII had already done that when he helped to write Mit Brennender Sorge. The Nazi response to public criticism was always to torture and kill innocent people.

Venerable Pius XII

In some ways, the Vatican has already settled the matter of whether Pius XII was a holy man. In 2009, having evaluated his writings and the testimony of witnesses, the Church agreed that Pius had lived a life of heroic virtue, and he was granted the title of Venerable Servant of God. The next step, beatification, would require God’s intervention through a miracle.

Pius XII had the unenviable task of being pope when one of the most wicked men ever to walk the face of the earth tried to conquer the world. If there were things he should have done as pope, he has already been made aware of those facts by our Lord. But perhaps Pius XII’s unwavering priestly dedication, deep Marian devotion, intellectual and linguistic abilities, prudence in diplomacy, and love for ordinary people, particularly in the city of Rome, were exactly what the world needed in a pope during a world war. If so, then Pius XII deserves, someday, the title of Saint.

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