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Pope Pius XII (Latin: Pius PP. XII), born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (March 2, 1876 – October 9, 1958), reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City from March 2, 1939 to 1958. He is one of few popes in recent history to exercise his Papal Infallibility by issuing a dogmatic definition. He worked to promote peace and protect the Church during a turbulent time of war, and he decisively eliminated the Italian majority in the College of Cardinals. He had influence outside the Church during World War II and postwar reconstruction. His leadership of the Church during the period of World War II is the subject of continued controversy, especially in light of his tenure as Papal Nuncio to Germany and later as Vatican Secretary of State.

Birth and early church career

Papal styles of Pope Pius XII
Reference style	His Holiness
Spoken style	Your Holiness
Religious style	Holy Father
Posthumous style	none

Pacelli, who was of noble birth, was a grandson of Marcantonio Pacelli, founder of the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, a nephew of Ernesto Pacelli, a key financial advisor to Pope Leo XII, and a son of Filippo Pacelli, dean of the Vatican lawyers. His brother, Francesco Pacelli, became a highly regarded attorney, and was created a marchese by Pius XII.

Pacelli became a Roman Catholic priest in April, 1899. From 1904 until 1916, Fr. Pacelli assisted Cardinal Gasparri in his codification of canon law. Pope Benedict XV appointed Fr. Pacelli as Apostolic Nuncio to Bavaria in April 1917, and on May 13 1917, Benedict consecrated him as a bishop. This was the very day of the first appearance of the Virgin Mary (to whom Pacelli had a special devotion) to three peasant children at Fatima, Portugal.

Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli

Eugenio Pacelli served the Holy See largely as a diplomat and his role within the Church was largely centered on diplomatic negotiation with Germany. He was the Papal Nuncio in Bavaria from 1917 and from June 1920 also Nuncio to the German Weimar Republic.

Early in this Nunciate (in a private letter (dated November 14, 1923), to Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Cardinal Gasparri) Pacelli denounced the National Socialist movement as an anti-Catholic and anti-Hebrew threat. He also remarked that Michael von Faulhaber, Bishop of Munich had condemned acts of persecution against Bavaria's Jews.

During the 1920s and 1930s Cardinal Pacelli succeeded in negotiating concordats with Bavaria, Prussia and Baden, but failed in regard to Germany. One of of his associates was the German priest Ludwig Kaas, who was known for his expertise in Church-state relations and politically active in the Centre Party.

Cardinal and Secretary of State

Pacelli was created a cardinal on 16 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI. Within a few months, on 7 February 1930 Pope Pius appointed Pacelli Cardinal Secretary of State. In 1935, Cardinal Pacelli was named as the Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church. During the 1930s Cardinal Pacelli negotiated concordats with Baden, Austria and Germany. He also made many diplomatic visits throughout Europe and the Americas, including an extensive visit to the United States in 1936.

The Reichskonkordat

In April 1933, shortly after coming to power in Germany, Adolf Hitler sent his Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen to Rome to offer the Holy See the Reichskonkordat that had eluded Pacelli before. Pacelli's old associate Kaas had arrived in Rome together with Papen and the Cardinal authorized Kaas to negotiate the draft of the terms with Papen. On 20 July Pacelli signed the concordat with Germany (see image), while Papen signed for Germany. This was shortly after Germany had signed similar agreements with the major Protestant churches in Germany.

The signing of the actual Reichskonkordat has always been controversial, having given important international acceptance to Hitler's regime, though it was preceded by the Four-Power Pact Hitler had signed in June 1933.

Critics of the Concordat claim it linked the Roman Catholic Church too closely with Nazism, while defenders of the concordat argue that it was an attempt to protect the Church from anti-Church policies by the new government. The 3 June encyclical Dilectissima Nobis, in which Pius XI protested against anti-Church policies in republican Spain, stated that the Church found no difficulty in adapting herself to various civil institutions, be they monarchic or republican, aristocratic or democratic, provided the divine rights of God and of Christian consciences were safe.

Both Hitler and Pacelli saw the Reichskonkordat as a victory for their respective sides. Hitler told his cabinet on 14 July:

"An opportunity has been given to Germany in the Reichskonkordat and a sphere of influence has been created that will be especially significant in the urgent struggle against international Jewry."

Pacelli, in a two page article in the Vatican influenced L'Osservatore Romano on 26 July and 27 July, dismissed Hitler's assertion that the concordat in any way represented or implied approval for national socialism, much less moral approval of it. He argued that its true purpose had been

"not only the official recognition (by the Reich) of the legislation of the Church (its Code of Canon Law), but the adoption of many provisions of this legislation and the protection of all Church legislation."

The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (Pre-WW II)

Some observers regard the Church's relationship with the Nazi regime as similar to those it established with other non-communist states and governments. Dr. Eamon Duffy, a historian of the papacy, observed that the Church under Pius XI followed a consistent policy of establishing concordats with individual states during the 1920s and the 1930s. This included concordats with Latvia (1922), Bavaria (1924), Poland (1925), Romania (1927), Lithuania (1927), Italy (1929), Prussia (1929), Baden (1932), Austria (1933), Germany (1933), Yugoslavia (1935) and Portugal (1940). These concordats sought to normalize relationships between the Holy See and the German federal states whilst protecting publicly-funded Roman Catholic-run schools, hospitals, charities and third-level institutions from state seizure or persecution.

In particular the concordats were aimed at ensuring that the Church's canon law had some status and recognition within its own spheres of concern (e.g., church decrees of nullity in the area of marriage) among new or emerging states with new legal systems. Duffy suggests that the concordats provided technical procedures through which formal complaints to the states could be made by the Holy See.

Between the German Concordat's signing in 1933 and 1939, Pope Pius XI made, from 1937, three dozen formal complaints to the Nazi government, which were drafted by Pacelli but which show only a gradual realisation of the gravity of the Nazi threat and Nazi misuse of the concordat. The strongest condemnation of Hitler's ideology and ecclesiastical policy was the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, issued in 1937 by Pius XI, which was in part composed by then Cardinal Pacelli.

Becoming Pope Pius XII

Following the death of Pius XI, Cardinal Pacelli was elected Pope by the conclave on 2 March 1939, his 63rd birthday, and took the name Pius XII. He was the first Secretary of State to become pope since Clement IX in 1667. Pius XII's papal coronation was the grandest for over a hundred years.

World War II

Pius' pontificate began on the eve of the Second World War. During the war, Pope Pius XII followed a policy of public neutrality mirroring that of Pope Benedict XV during the First World War. However, as Cardinal Pacelli, Pius XII was against the Nazis' increasing political power in Germany and in August 1933 wrote to the British representative to the Holy See his disgust with the Nazis and "their persecution of the Jews, their proceedings against political opponents, the reign of terror to which the whole nation was subjected."

When he was told Hitler was a strong leader to deal with the communists, Pacelli responded that Hitler and his Nazis were infinitely worse.

Pius XII established diplomatic relations with the Japanese Empire in March 1942. As the war was approaching its end in 1945, Pius XII advocated a lenient policy by the Allied leaders for the vanquished in an effort to prevent the mistakes made at the end of World War I. He attempted to negotiate an early German and Japanese surrender, but his initiatives failed.

Pius XII and the Holocaust

Pius XII's role during World War II has been a source of controversy. Critics accuse him of remaining silent towards the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes. Though the Pope actually did speak out, e.g., in his Christmas message of 1942, he did so in a careful manner. The main argument for this policy was twofold. First, public condemnation of Hitler and Nazism would have achieved little of practical benefit, given that his condemnation could effectively be censored and so unknown to German Catholics (who in any case had been told as early as the early 1930s by the German Roman Catholic hierarchy that Nazism and Catholicism were incompatible). Secondly, if Pius had condemned Nazism more aggressively, the result would have been reprisals within Germany and countries occupied by her, making the Church's efforts against Nazi policies at the parish level difficult. Indeed such a reprisal occurred, when the Dutch bishops protested against the deportation of the country's Jewish population. The occupants retaliated by singling out Jewish converts to the Church for deportation, the most notable example being Edith Stein. Accordingly, the Pope mostly concentrated on practical measures, such as hiding Jews in convents. Also an "underground railroad" of secret escape routes had been set up by prominent Catholics such as Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, who operated under the tacit, if not explicit, approval of Pope Pius XII (as portrayed in the 1983 TV-movie "The Scarlet And The Black"). During the war, the Pope was widely praised for making a principled stand. For example, Time Magazine credited Pius XII and the Catholic Church for "fighting totalitarianism more knowingly, devoutly, and authoritatively, and for a longer time, than any other organized power" (Time, 16 August 1943).

More recently, however, critics of the Pope's actions have argued that he could have acted more forcefully persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust, even given the constraints on his actions. This trend was started in large part by Rolf Hochhuth's 1963 controversial fictional drama Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel (The Deputy, a Christian tragedy), which falsely portrayed Pope Pius XII as a money-grabbing hypocrite who remained silent to the Holocaust. The play began a long-standing argument about the Pope's role in the Second World War. The critics claimed his efforts to mitigate the Holocaust were inadequate and that his role in negotiating the Reichskonkordat may have been well-meaning but played into the hands of Adolf Hitler.

These questions have also re-surfaced of late because of the moves toward canonisation of Pope Pius XII. The widespread Jewish concern at the history of Pius XII interventions or lack thereof surfaced in Pope Benedict XVI's recent visit to the Cologne Synagogue when the president of that synagogue, Abraham Lehrer, asked that the Vatican's archives relating to Pope Pius XII be opened for scrutiny. In 1999, a class action suit against the Vatican Bank and others was brought up in the United States by various Holocaust survivors, alleging collusion in war crimes by the Ustashe regime of the Independent State of Croatia. In addition, the same lawsuit concerns secreting large vaults of war loot from Croatia into Vatican accounts. The suit alleges these funds were used to finance yet more of the almost 'mythic' rat-lines mentioned in ODESSA, with secret Vatican re-location and funding of implicated Nazi and Ustashe priests and monks, mostly in South America.

Perhaps most well-known of Pius's recent critics has been John Cornwell in the book Hitler's Pope who concluded that "Pacelli's failure to respond to the enormity of the Holocaust was more than a personal failure, it was a failure of the papal office itself and the prevailing culture of Catholicism." Many authors have since attacked Cornwell, his sources, and his methods, including Rabbi David G. Dalin in The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis published in 2005. Rabbi Dalin suggests that Yad Vashem should honor Pope Pius XII as a "Righteous Gentile" writing that "he anti-papal polemics of ex-seminarians like Garry Wills and John Cornwell (author of Hitler’s Pope), of ex-priests like James Carroll, and or other lapsed or angry liberal Catholics exploit the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the Catholic Church today."

In an attempt to address some of this controversy, in 1999 the Vatican appointed the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission (ICJHC), a group comprised of three Jewish and three Catholic scholars to investigate the role of the Church during the Holocaust. In 2001, the ICJHC issued its preliminary finding, raising a number of questions about the way the Vatican dealt with the Holocaust, titled " The Vatican and the Holocaust: A Preliminary Report". The Comission discovered documents making it clear that Pope was aware of widespread anti-Jewish persecution in 1941 and 1942, and they suspected that the Church may have been influenced in not helping Jewish immigration by the nuncio of Chile and the Papal representative to Bolivia, who complained about the "invasion of the Jews" to their countries, where they engaged in "dishonest dealings, violence, immorality, and even disrespect for religion." (Questions 7 and 12 of the ICJHC report) The ICJHC raised a list of 47 questions about the way the Church dealt with the Holocaust, requested documents that had not been publicly released in order to continue their work, and, not receiving permission, they disbanded in July of 2001.

Despite the controversy, there is no doubt that many Jews were bravely saved by the Catholic Church during World War II. World War II historian Martin Gilbert places the number as high as 800,000. In Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican by Pierre Blet and Lawrence J. Johnson they state "Vatican diplomatic initiatives mitigated the sufferings of tens of thousands of Jews, and delayed the sad fates of thousands more." The Pope was widely praised by Jewish and Israeli leaders after the war, and upon his death, as a result of these accomplishments.

Angering Hitler

The relationship between the Nazis and the Roman Catholic Church plainly deteriorated further throughout the war and Joseph Goebbels was clear about the Reich's attitudes. His 26 March 1942 diary entry reads, "It's a dirty, low thing to do for the Catholic Church to continue its subversive activity in every way possible and now even to extend its propaganda to Protestant children evacuated from the regions threatened by air raids. Next to the Jews these politico-divines are about the most loathsome riffraff that we are still sheltering in the Reich. The time will come after the war for an over-all solution of this problem." (Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries, 1948, p. 146). The Nazis themselves were vehemently outraged by the what they called Pius' "anti-Nazi, pro-Jewish stance", and criticized him because of it. To cite another of numerous documented examples, in response to Pius XII's famous Christmas broadcast of 1942-which clearly condemned the Nazi slaughter of the Jews, German war documents reveal the furor Pius XII's words aroused within Nazi ranks: "In a manner never known before...the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order. His radio allocution was a masterpiece of clerical falsification of the National Socialist world-view....His speech is one long attack on everything we stand for....God, says, regards all peoples and races as worthy of the same consideration. Here he is clearly speaking on behalf of Jews....That this speech is directed exclusively against the New Order in Europe as seen in National Socialism is clear in the papal statement that mankind owes a debt to "all who during the war have lost their Fatherland and who, although personally blameless, have simply on account of their nationality and origin, been killed or reduced to utter distinction." Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals"(cited by Anthony Rhodes in The Vatican in the Age of Dictators: 1922-1945,1973, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, pp. 272-273).

So troubling were Pius XII's anti-Nazi activities, Hitler had formalized plans to kidnap Pius XII and replace him with a puppet pacacy that would not give Nazism any resistance. One of the more recent confirmations of this plot was reported in the Italian newspaper Avvenire which suggested that Hitler ordered SS General Karl Wolff, a senior occupation officer in Italy, to kidnap Pius. According to this account, Wolff put on civilian clothes and visited the Vatican to warn him. Adolf Hitler said " is the only human being who has always contradicted me and who has never obeyed me."

Pope Pius' encyclicals

Among his most prominent encyclicals were:

• Mystici Corporis Christi: On the Mystical Body, 29 June 1943
• Communium Interpretes Doloraum: An Appeal for Prayers for Peace, 15 April 1945
• Fulgens Radiatur: Encyclical on Saint Benedict, 21 March 1947
• Mediator Dei: On the Sacred Liturgy, 20 November 1947
• Auspicia Quaedam: On Public Prayers For World Peace And Solution Of The Problem Of Palestine, 1 May 1948
• In Multiplicibus Curis: On Prayers for Peace in Palestine, 24 October 1948
• Redemptoris Nostri Cruciatus: On the Holy Places in Palestine, 15 April 1949
• Anni Sacri: On A Program For Combating Atheistic Propaganda Throughout The World, 12 March 1950
• Humani Generis: Concerning Some False Opinions Threatening to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine, 12 August 1950
• Munificentissimus Deus, 1 November 1950 (on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven) Part of this particular encyclical is considered infallible. Perhaps contrary to popular conceptions, it is very rare for a pope to invoke papal infallibility. This was one of those rare occasions—the only one in the 20th century.
• Ingruentium Malorum: On Reciting the Rosary: Encyclical promulgated on 15 September 1951
• Fulgens Corona: Proclaiming a Marian year to Commemorate the Centenary of the Definition of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, 8 September 1953
• Ad Caeli Reginam: On Proclaiming the Queenship of Mary, Encyclical promulgated on 11 October 1954
• Datis Nuperrime: Lamenting the Sorrowful Events in Hungary, and Condemning the Ruthless Use of Force, 5 November 1956
• Miranda Prorsus: On the Communications Field: Motion Pictures, Radio, Television, 8 September 1957

Additionally, as Papal Secretary of State, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli wrote Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Anxiety) for His Holiness Pope Pius XI.

Beatifications, canonisations, and teachings

During his reign, Pius XII canonized eight saints, including Pope Pius X, and beatified five people. He consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942.

In 1950, Pius XII issued the encyclical Munificentissimus Deus and infallibly defined the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. This doctrine teaches that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was taken into Heaven body and soul after the end of her earthly life. This belief had been held by Catholic and Orthodox Christians since the early centuries of the Church (for example, by St. Gregory of Tours), but it had never been formally defined as a dogma until 1950. This definition was the only occasion in the 20th century a pope dogmatically defined a dogma ex cathedra, i.e. as Extraordinary (Solemn) Magisterium, which is connected to Papal Infallibility.

Pius XII ends the Italian Majority in the College of Cardinals

Only twice in his pontificate did Pius XII hold a consistory to create new cardinals, a decided contrast to Pius XI, who had done so seventeen times in seventeen years on the papal throne. The first occasion has been known as the "Great Consistory", of February 1946; it was the largest in the history of the Church up to that time, and brought an end to over five hundred years of Italians constituting a majority of the College. By his appointments then and in 1953 he substantially reduced the proportion of cardinals who belonged to the Roman Curia.

Pope Pius in later life and after his death

Pius was dogged with ill health later in life, largely due to a charlatan, Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, who posed as a medical doctor and won Pius's trust. His treatments for Pius gave the Holy Father chronic hiccups and rotting teeth. Though eventually dismissed from the Papal Household, this man gained admittance as the pope lay dying and took photographs of Pius which he tried, unsuccessfully, to sell to magazines.

When Pius died, then Galeazzi-Lisi turned embalmer. Rather than slow the process of decay, the doctor-mortician's self-made technique (aromatizazione) sped it up, leading the Holy Father's corpse to disintegrate rapidly, turning purple, with the corpse's nose falling off. The stench caused by the decay was such that guards had to be rotated every 15 minutes, otherwise they would collapse. The condition of the body became so bad that the remains were secretly removed at one point for further treatments before being returned in the morning. This caused considerable embarrassment to the Vatican and one of the first acts of Pius' successor, Pope John XXIII, was to ban the charlatan from Vatican City for life.

Footnotes

1. John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII pp.130-131.
2. "Pius XII-FAQs". December 5. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help)
3. "The Vatican and the Holocaust: A Preliminary Report "International Catholic-Jewish Commission" (ICJHC)". December 5. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help) Forms 47 questions.

• Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes p.341.
• On the question of Pius XII's attitude toward the Nazi persecutions, see also the New York Times editorial page for Christmas Day of 1941 and 1942.

Additional reading

• John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (Viking, 1999) ISBN 0670876208
• Rabbi David G. Dalin, The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis (Regnery, 2005). ISBN 0895260344.
• Sr. Margherita Marchione, Pope Pius XII: Architect for Peace (Paulist Press, 2000). ISBN 080913912X
• Ronald J. Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope (Our Sunday Visitor; 2000). ISBN 0879732172
• Anonymous, Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich (Publisher: Pelican Pub Co; February 2003). ISBN 1589801377 (originally published in 1941)
• Karl Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich (London, 1987)
• Eugenio Zolli, Before the Dawn (Roman Catholic Books; Reprint edition, February 1997). ISBN 0912141468 (author is the former wartime chief rabbi of Rome who took the name "Eugenio" at his Baptism in honor of Pope Pius XII)
• Susan Zuccotti,Under his very Windows, The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000). ISBN 0300084870

External links

General Information

• Official Vatican page on Pius XII
• website promoting Pope Pius XII's cause for sainthood. (Also contains image of Pope Pius lying-in-state)

Pius XII and the Holocaust

Official documents

• Summi Pontificatus Pope Pius XII's wartime Encyclical condemning Nazism's racism and Communism's atheism
• Mit Brennender Sorge anti-Nazi encyclical promulgated by Pope Pius XI, written by future Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli), 14 March 1937. This is the only encyclical to have been originally published in German.
• October 2000 Report of the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission, notice of Commission suspending work
• Complete Text of the Concordat between the Vatican and Germany

Overviews

• New Oxford Review The Pius War by Joseph Bottum
• Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust - Jewish Virtual Library
• The Case of Pius XII, an overview of various books in the New York Times Book Review
• Thomas J. Craughwell review of republished books by Pinchas E. Lapide, Anthony Rhodes and Harold C.Deutsch.

Defending Pius

• The Myth of Hitler's Pope: An Interview With Rabbi David G. Dalin
• Latest Attempts to Smear Pope Pius XII Continue to Fail
• Hitler's Pope Plot Ignored
• The Holy See vs. the Third Reich
• Jewish Historian Praises Pius XII
• The Good Samaritan: Jewish Praise for Pope Pius XII
• Did Pius XII Remain Silent?
• Cornwell's Cheap Shot at Pius XII
• Pius XII and the Jews: The War Years, as reported by the New York Times
• Righteous Gentile: Pope Pius XII and the Jews Rabbi David Dalin, Ph.D.
• The Usefulness of Daniel Goldhagen The Weekly Standard
• Document on Jewish recognition of Pope Pius XII's support during WWII
• Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust - defence of Pius XII

Questioning Pius

• Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope" - excerpt published by Vanity Fair
• Judging Pius XII from Christian Century by Kevin Madigan
• Review of "Papal Sin" by Garry Willis in the New York Times Book Review

ODESSA

• Information on ODESSA – From the Jewish Virtual Library
• ZDF.de (2002). "Mythos Odessa: Wahrheit oder Legende?" ("The Myth of ODESSA: Truth or legend?") (in German)
• ODESSA and Nazis in Latin America – From The Straight Dope
• Full text of (US) House (of Representatives) Resolution 235: "Argentina urged to open Nazi files" – From Uki Goñi's website
• Aftermath, the Vatican Ratline

• 1876 births
• 1958 deaths
• Popes
• Natives of Rome
• Diplomats of the Holy See
• World War II political leaders