Could the Vatican, under Pius XII, have done more to condemn and prevent Nazi atrocities, especially the Holocaust? That question has been the subject of heated argument in academic and journalistic circles for many years now. My first introduction to the subject was the controversial 1999 book Hitler’s Pope, by Cambridge academic John Cornwell, which took Pius to task for his alleged indulgence of the Nazis, an indulgence that was – by Cornwell’s account – rooted in anti-Jewish prejudice. That work, which seemed persuasive to me 20 years ago as a non-Catholic undergraduate unfamiliar with the wider debate, has since been subjected to strong criticism by other scholars, including a rabbi, David Dalin. His book The Myth of Hitler’s Pope (2005) strongly defended Pius against the serious charges levelled by Cornwell and others. It was favourably reviewed by the prominent Jewish Holocaust scholar Sir Martin Gilbert. In other words, this is not simply a matter of Catholics closing ranks to shut down criticism of the papacy. Distinguished writers from outside the Church, with no pro-Christian or pro-papacy axe to grind, have looked carefully at the facts and determined that many of the accusations levelled at Pius simply do not stand up.
Interest in the topic comes in waves. In 2020 the Vatican opened up to researchers previous-ly closed archives from the period, and new or purportedly new revelations are starting to emerge. This summer an article in the US magazine he Atlantic by David Kertzer, based on his book The Pope At War, essentially restated parts of the Cornwell thesis, that Pius was soft on, and perhaps actually sympathetic to, the Nazis and the Italian Fascists, and missed many opportunities to condemn their their brutal actions loudly and unequivocally.
Clearly the argument will run and run. Quite likely further delving into historical documents will bring new perspectives. Personally, I am fascinated by one particular aspect of the dispute, namely that many of the critics of Pius and his officials are highly preoccupied with what was said by Rome, and much less bothered about what was done, which seems to me to be highly important. Actions, such as hiding Jews or providing them with routes to safety – two things with which the wartime Vatican was closely involved – are ultimately what matters most.
A characteristically modern focus on correct and morally satisfying speech rather than virtuous action marked the Kertzer piece, and was also on show at a public debate I attended some years ago in London. Both of the anti-Pius speakers focused strongly on the statements and silences of the Holy See at the crucial times. By contrast, they seemed entirely uninterested in the various actions taken by Pius and the wider Church to oppose the European tyrannies, meaning that they weren’t really engaging with the serious moral dilemma faced by leaders of Christian churches in occupied Europe: was it better to be publicly compliant while working quietly to thwart the Nazis where possible, or loudly to condemn deportations, mass murder and state terror, even if that might make things worse?
The latter was a genuine concern. Consider the case of the Netherlands, where the Church under Archbishop Johannes de Jong had been at the forefront of anti-Nazi protests, including the denial of Communion to known Dutch Nazis. In 1942 the Germans responded to a decree issued by the bishops of that country protesting against deportations from the Netherlands by rounding up more than 200 Dutch Catholics of Jewish descent. This is known to have had an effect on Pius XII’s thinking about whether to condemn explicitly the Hitler regime’s genocidal actions.
No-one claims that the Church’s record in opposing Hitler was universally good. Cathol-ic authorities in Germany and Rome were slow to understand the true monstrous nature of the National Socialist regime, although Pope Pius XI was strongly if indirectly critical of Nazism in the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (“With deep anxiety”), and the reading of that letter from all German pulpits on Palm Sunday provoked a wave of anti-Christian repression. The Reichskonkordat of 1933 did help Hitler establish the legitimacy of his new regime, and did probably encourage a certain political hesitancy among the German hierarchy.
Clearly, too, there were plenty of observant Catholics, lay and clerical, who kept quiet due to fear. There were some who, for a variety of reasons and to varying degrees, supported the Nazis. There were cases of active and enthusiastic collaboration, notably in Croatia where the brutal fascist Ustaše movement contained many Catholics. However, it is important to get the facts straight, to note the good as well as the bad, and to understand the nature of the terrible choices faced by men of goodwill like Pius, who loathed Nazism but was always keenly aware that – in a world gone mad – the fate of thousands or millions of people might depend on how he conducted the public affairs of the Church.
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