In recent years, the media have accused Pope Pius XII of either helping the Nazis or being silent during the Holocaust. As an example, the January 26/1998 issue of Time magazine claims that the Catholic Church apologized for "collaborating" with the Nazis during World War ll. As you will see, Time has done a 180o in fifty years. Also, there's a new book out called Hitler's Pope by John Cornwell. Even the new Holocaust Museum in New York and the Simon Weisenthal Center unjustly criticize Pope Pius XII for being silent during World War II. Thankfully, most scholars and historians can see through the falsehoods. An examination of the facts puts to shame all the charges which are made against PiusXII, a genuine hero. The following are some points to consider:
Before he became Pope Pius XII, Cardinal Pacelli drafted the papal encyclical, MIT BRENNEDNDER SURGE, in which Pius Xl denounced Nazi paganism and racism; the document was smuggled into Germany in March, 1937 and read from all Catholic pulpits, which infuriated the Nazis;
It is well documented by Jewish scholars like Joseph Lichten of B'nai B"rich that PiusXII used the assets of the Vatican to ransom Jews from the Nazis and that the Vatican under Pius ran an extensive network of hide-outs. Even the Pope's summer residence, Castel Gondolfo, was used to hide fugitive .sews. The Pope, moreover, took personal responsibility for the children of deported Jews;
Largely as a result of the Church's efforts, the Jews in Italy had a far higher survival rate under Nazi occupation than was the case in other countries; estimates of the number of Jews saved by the Vatican's efforts range up to several hundred thousand. The Chief Rabbi of Rome converted to Catholicism at the end of the war; his surviving daughter has made appeals for the cause of truth.
In appreciation of what Plus did for the Jews; the World Jewish Congress made a large cash gift to the Vatican in 1945; in the same year, Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem sent a "special blessing" to the Pope "for his lifesaving efforts on behalf of the Jews during the Nazi occupation of Italy"; and when Plus died in 1958, Israel's Foreign Minister Golda Meir gave a him moving eulogy at the United Nations for the same reason;
What was to be gained by Pius's getting up on a soap box and lashing out at the Nazis? Both the International Red Cross and the World Council of Churches came to the same conclusion as the Vatican: relief efforts for the Jews would be more effective if the agencies remained relatively quiet; yet, you never hear anybody attacking the Red Cross for its "silence" about the Holocaust;
In 1942, the Catholic hierarchy of Amsterdam spoke out vigorously against the Nazi treatment of the Jews; the Nazi response was a redoubling of round-ups and deportations; by the end of the war, 90 percent of the Jews in Amsterdam were liquidated. Jewish relief officials were in complete agreement that a public attack by the Vatican against the Nazis would a) not have the slightest effect on Hitler and b) would seriously jeopardize the lives of Jews who were being hidden in convents, monasteries, etc.;
The Israeli consul, Pinchas E. Lapide, in his book, Three Popes and the Jews (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1967) critically examines Pope Pius XII. According to his research, the Catholic Church under Pius XII was instrumental in saving 860,000 Jews from Nazi death camps (p. 214). Could Pius have saved more lives by speaking out more forcefully? According to Lapide, the concentration camp prisoners did not want Pius to speak out openly (p. 247). As one jurist from the Nuremberg Trials said on WNBC in New York (Feb. 28, 1964), "Any words of Pius XII, directed against a madman like Hitler, would have brought on an even worse catastrophe... /and/ accelerated the massacre of Jews arid priests. "(Ibid.) Yet Pius was not totally silent either. Lapide notes a book by the Jewish historian, Jenoe Levai, entitled, The Church Did Not Keep Silent (p. 256). He admits that everyone, including himself, could have done more. If we condemn Pius, then justice would demand condemning everyone else. He concludes by quoting from the Talmud that "whosoever preserves one life, it is accounted to him by Scripture as if he had preserved a whole world; " With this he claims that Pius XII deserves a memorial forest of 860,000 trees in the Judean hills (pp. 268-9).
We must remember that the Holocaust was also anti-Christian. After Hitler revealed his true intentions, the Catholic Church opposed him. Even the famous Albert Einstein testified to that. According to the December 23, 1940 issue of Time magazine on page 38, Einstein said:
"Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, [looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that them had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed .their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks... Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly."
In another, similar statement, Einstein referred explicitly to the Catholic Church (Lapide, p. 251). This is an extraordinary testimony by an agnostic German scientist of Jewish heritage. Even though there were traitors in her ranks, the Church still opposed the Nazi movement.
The December 23, 1940 issue of Time magazine also contains an interesting article about Christians living in Germany, both Catholic and Protestant, who opposed and suffered under the Nazis. On page 38, it claims that by late 1940 over 200,000 Christians were prisoners in Nazi concentration. camps, with some estimates as high as 800,000. On page 40, it reports on the Archbishop of Munich, Michael Cardinal -von Faulhaber, who led the Catholic opposition in Germany against the Nazis. In an Advent 1933 sermon, he preached: "Let us not forget that we were saved not by German blood but by the blood of Christ!" in response to Nazi racism. In 1934 the Cardinal "narrowly missed a Nazi bullet", while in 1938 a Nazi mob broke the windows in his residence. Even though he was over seventy and in poor health, he still led the Catholic German resistance against Hitler.
The recent slander against the Church and Pope Pius X11 can be traced back to 1963 with Rolf Hochhuth's play, "The Deputy." In this play Hochhuth criticized Plus for being silent and portrayed his silence as cold indifference. Even though fiction, people took it as fact.
Pope Pius XII was a diplomat and not a radical preacher. He knew that he first needed to preserve Vatican neutrality so that Vatican City could be a refuge for war victims. The International Red Cross also remained neutral. Secondly, he knew how powerless he was against Hitler, Mussolini could quickly shut off electrical power to Vatican Radio during his broadcast (Lapide, p. 256). Finally the Nazis did not tolerate any protest and responded severely. As an example, the Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht in July 1942 protested in a pastoral letter against the Jewish persecutions in Holland. Immediately the Nazis rounded up as many Jews and Catholic non-Aryans as possible and departed them to death camps, including Blessed Edith Stein (Lapide, p. 246). Pius knew that every time he spoke out against Hitler, the Nazis could retaliate against the prisoners. His best attack against the Nazis was quiet diplomacy and behind-the-scenes action. According to The 1996 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia (V8.01) under Plus XII, "Wishing to preserve Vatican neutrality, fearing reprisals, and realizing his, impotence to stop the Holocaust, Pius nonetheless acted on an individual basis to save many jews and others with church ransoms, documents, and asylum. "
But Pope Pius XII was not completely silent either, especially in his Christmas messages. His 1941 and 1942 Christmas messages were both translated and published in The New York Times (Dec. 25, 1941,p. 20 & Dec. 25, 1942, p. 10). To prevent retaliation, he did not refer to Nazism by name, but people of that era still understood him, including the Nazis. According to The New York Times editorial on December 25, 1941 (Late Day edition, p. 24):
"The voice of 'Plus Xll is a lonely voice in the .silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas... he is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all... the Pope put himself *squarely against Hitlerism... he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace."
Also The New York Times editorial on December 25, 1942 (Late Day edition, p. 16)
states:
"This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent... Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were lifeless things."
Both editorials recognize and highly praise Pius' words against Hitler and totalitarianism.
It is easy to forget that there was only so much that the Pope could do. He had no Army or police beyond the Swiss Guard and he was not listened to by the Allied powers. Under constant surveillance and threats from the Nazis when they occupied Rome, his statements were seized and destroyed by the Gestapo. As for his influence with loyal Roman Catholics, he had already spelt out precisely and forthrightly what his views and those of the Church were in the two above-mentioned encyclicals and in constant re-affirmations of his position in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatoire. No loyal Roman Catholic need have been in any doubt at the time what the Catholic Church’s views on Nazism and racism were. The fact that some bad Catholics allowed themselves to become involved with the Nazi terror cannot be blamed on Pope Pius XII—any more than the fact that there were Jewish Kapos and a Jewish police helping the Nazis enforce their extermination policies can be blamed upon Jewish religious leaders. Pius XII plainly repudiated the perverted doctrines of the Nazis and also the immoral Fascist doctrines of Benito Mussolini (which had been condemned in the encyclical Non Abbiamo Bisogno meaning "we have no need" i.e. of Fascist doctrines).
Now there were traitors in the Church who were Nazis or helped Hitler. There were Catholics "Who committed sins of bigotry. There were also Catholics, who, out of fear or indifference, sinned through silence. The Church is full of sinners for whom Christ died. We killed Jesus with our sins (Is. 53: 5-6). But Pope Pus XII and many Catholics did not remain "silent." Could 860,000 Jewish lives be saved by "silent" indifference? In our own day, there are people who claim to be Catholic but promote and participate in abortion, assisted-suicide and artificial birth control. In the next century, will the world also falsely accuse the Church and the Pope for being silent during the "culture of death" holocaust?
If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first... Remember the word I spoke to you, "No servant is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you." John 15: I 8-20
