Pope Pius XII ::: Project ETERNITY

The Venerable Pius XII, born Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Eugenio Pacelli (Rome, March 2, 1876 - October 9, 1958) served as the Pope from March 2, 1939 to 1958. He was the only pope to exercise his Extraordinary (Solemn) Magisterium (that is, to claim Papal Infallibility) in the 20th century when he formally defined the dogma of the Assumption in his 1950 encyclical Munificentissimus Deus. Pius's actions and inactions during World War II have become a matter of major dispute. He was proclaimed Venerable, a step on the road to sainthood, by Pope John Paul II in the 1990s.

Birth and early church career

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. Fr. Pacelli was appointed Apostolic Nuncio in Bavaria by Pope Benedict XV in 1917, and Apostolic Nuncio to the German Weimar Republic in June, 1920. Pacelli was created a cardinal on 16 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI. Within a few months, on 7 February 1930 Pope Pius appointed papal Secretary of State. During the 1930s Cardinal Pacelli arranged concordats with Bavaria, Prussia, Austria and Germany. He also made many diplomatic visits throughout Europe and the Americas, including an extensive visit to the United States in 1936.

Pacelli and the Concordat with Germany

As Papal Secretary of State, Pacelli signed a concordat with the German government (see image). The signing of the concordat proved controversial in hindsight, being described by some historians and by critics of the Roman Catholic Church as giving Hitler's regime international acceptance, given that at the time it was signed, the Enabling Act of March 23 had already granted Hitler dictatorial powers; mass arrests and book burnings had taken place, and the first official concentration camp, Dachau, had been created (though the concentration camps and their usage did not become widely known until some years later). All political parties except for the NSDAP had effectively been dissolved by July 14.

Cardinal Pacelli played a large part in the internal affairs of Germany all his life. He was Nuncio from 1917 before becoming Secretary of State. The remaining dispute should not rest on his anti-semitism during his Papacy but more rightly on his initial involvement with the Nazi Party. Papen had been a leader of the Catholic Zentrums Party and the history centres on Pacelli's involvement with the Zentrums Party leadership in 1932. According to the most notable foreign journalist present in Berlin and who was effectively expelled by Hitler as a first act of his subsequent Chancellorship, Pacelli wrote a letter to the Zentrum, which was read out by the Party leader (Monsignor Ludwig Kaas) at a central meeting in May, 1932. This stated that the Pope was worried by the rise of Communism in Germany and that he therefore advised that they support Hitler's Chancellorship. Previously on March 28 the Fulda Bishop's Conference had backed the Nazi's and in April Rome had refused to issue a condemnation of anti-semitism. A further time-line of visits and co-operation between Hitler and Rome indeed suggests complete co-ordination in a complex series of maneuvers that lead up to the final Concordat.

As far as the Zentrums (Catholic Centre Party) is concerned this ended with its voluntary dissolution on July 5 1933. The party leader Monsignor Ludwig Kaas rose shortly thereafter to hold the Care of the Fabric of St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome (a position which gave him keys and therefore unobserved access). Kaas was the negotiator directly between Rome and Adolf Hitler firstly concerning the internal German parliamentary Enabling Act negotiations during March 20-23, returning from his subsequent visit to Rome on 31 March, three days after the Fulda Bishops decision to withdraw the Church prohibition on Nazi membership. Kaas had a Private meeting with Hitler on April 2nd and the Vatican that month issued an Encyclical which not only did not condemn anti-semitism but which stated that the Holy See saw no difficulty in relationship to a "Christian Dictatorship. " Kaas relinquished the Zentrum leadership on April 6, presumably in order to both deflect suspicion over these connections made in the quid pro quo of the Enabling Act and to channel communications for the coming Concordat.

Kaas and Papen travelled secretly to Rome where Pacelli received first Kaas on April 9 and Papen on April 10. Goering and Papen were received also on April 10 by Pope Pius XI, who expressed pleasure at the appearance of a strong man in Germany (Hitler). On April 15 Kaas and Papen met Pacelli, and Monsignor Kaas was deputed to draft the terms of the Concordat whereby Catholic Confessional schools and civil-servants are protected. The draft was studied by Cardinal Pacelli and Pius XI on April 18 and on April 20 Kaas sent a birthday greeting to Adolf Hitler, in a widely disseminated public gesture in which Hitler was assured of un-flinching Papal co-operation. In the following days, Ambassadorial reports confirmed that Pacelli approved sincere co-operation by the Church to benefit and lead the Nazi Party within the Christian Weltanschauung.

As Kaas never again set foot in Germany the next intermediary became Papen who hardened his position as far as publicly calling on June 15 for the overthrow of Liberalism and for a Christian counter-revolution to 1789 (French Revolution). Hitler agreed to Papen's representation to Rome in order to finalise the Concordat; he arrived there on June 29. The British Ambassador to Germany was informed on the same day that the zentrumspartei will dissolve itself the following day. Hitler telephoned von Papen in Rome and Papen cabled German Foreign Minister von Neurath on July 3 to the effect that he, Cardinal Pacelli, Archbishop Groeber, and Monsignor Kaas, had signed all the conclusive draft of the concordat, and that the Zentrums' dissolution is certain and approved. The Catholic Centre Party then publishes its dissolution and on July 8 the German vice-Chancellor and Cardinal Pacelli formally sign the Concordat (the same day the Nazi salute is instituted within Germany.)

Some critics regard the Church relationship towards the Nazi regime as not substantially different to that it established with other non-communist states, regimes and governments. Dr Eamon Duffy, a historian of the papacy, observed that the Church under Pius XI followed a policy of establishing concordats with individual states during the 1920's and the 1930's. This included concordats with Latvia(1922), Bavaria (1924)), Poland (1925), Romania (1927), Lithuania (1927), Italy ((1929), Prussia (1929), Baden (1932), Austria (1933), Germany (1933), the Yugoslavia (1935) and Portugal (1940). These concordats were aimed at regularising relationships between the Holy See and the states, and at protecting Roman Catholic-run schools, hospitals, charities and third level institutions (all often run with public funds, including in Germany) from state seizure.

In particular the concordats were aimed at ensuring 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 three dozen formal complaints to the Nazi government, all of which were in reality drafted by Pacelli but which show only a gradual realisation of the gravity of the Nazi situation and mis-use of the Concordat. The strongest condemnation of Hitler's ideology and ecclesiastical policy was the Encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, issued in 1937.

Both Hitler and Pacelli saw the Reichskonkordat as a victory for their side. 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 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."² On the other hand, the Concordat prohibited clerics from engaging in any political activity whatsoever, a standard prohibition in a period where church leaders had their attitudes on democratic participation influenced by attudes of Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors and Pope Pius X's hostility to Catholic democrat participation, but which complicated Catholic resistance to the Nazi regime, as it has in the past Catholic participation in the French Third Republic, Italian democracy, and later Catholic resistance from the 1920s to the Mussolini regime.

Pope Pius XII

On 2 March 1939, Pacelli became the first Secretary of State since 1667 to become pope; he took the name Pope Pius XII.

World War II

Pius XII's role during World War II has been a source of major controversy. What is universally agreed is that Pope Pius XII followed a policy of public neutrality during the Second World War mirroring that of Pope Benedict XV during the First World War. Pius's main argument for that policy was twofold. That 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, Pius argued that had he condemned Nazism more aggressively, the result would have been repression of Roman Catholicism within Nazi Germany, making low level work against Nazi policies at parish and diocese level difficult, in turn cutting off secret escape routes which were used by many Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals to escape deportation to Nazi extermination camps. Historians differ in their acceptance of these justification for Pope Pius XII's policies.

The view of Pope Pius's defenders

To his defenders, Pius is said to have worked tirelessly for peace and to help Jews who were facing persecution by Nazi Germany. Through the Pontifical Aid Commission, Pius XII provided relief to the victims of the war on both sides, but especially to the Jewish people. When, following the collapse of the Italian Royal Government, the Nazis occupied Rome on 10 September 1943, Pope Pius XII opened the Holy See to Jewish refugees. Estimates have suggested that 800,000 to 1,500,000 refugees, including Jews were helped by Pope Pius, many through the granting of Vatican citizenship. It has also been alleged that Pius directly supported the network of priests who smuggled vast numbers of Jews to safety. Israel Zolli, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, was so impressed by Pius's actions that following the war he not only became a Roman Catholic, but took "Eugenio," Pope Pius XII's Christian name, as his own Christian name upon Baptism, becoming "Eugenio Zolli." Furthermore, Jewish relief agencies donated over a million dollars in gratitude to the Holy See after the end of World War II in Europe, while Pius XII was awarded the title "Righteous Gentile" by the state of Israel, and the Israeli Government announced its intention to plant 850,000 trees in his honor - one for each Jewish life he was credited with saving. Upon Pope Pius XII's death he was eulogized movingly and appreciatively by Golda Meir, at that time Israel's ambassador to the United Nations.³

The view of Pope Pius's critics

His critics, however, suggested that Pius failed to speak out publicly in strong enough terms against Nazism, arguing that an explicit condemnation by the Pope would have seriously undermined Hitler and Nazism among Germany's many Catholics. Charges were made in leftist Rolf Hochhuth's play The Deputy, later refuted, that his wartime aid to Jewish refuges from fascism was motivated primarily by motives of financial gain.

Hitler's views

Adolf Hitler made the observation that "[Pius] is the only human being who has always contradicted me and who has never obeyed me." Historians in general differ as to whether or not Pope Pius XII did enough to prevent the Holocaust and save lives, and indeed whether any intervention by him would have any impact on the number of deaths caused by Nazi policies.

Joseph Goebbels was clear about the Reich's attitudes toward the Roman Catholic Church. His 26 March 1942 entry into his diary 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)

Pope Pius's encyclicals

Among his most prominent encyclicals were

Beatifications and canonisations

During his reign, Pius XII canonised eight saints, including Pope Pius X, and beatified five people. He consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942. In 1950, using Papal Infallibility he promulgated a new dogma, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven (ie, that Mary, the mother of Jesus was taken into heaven body and soul, on account of her status as the Mother of the Son of God).

Pope Pius in later life and after his death

When Pius died, the Galeazzi-Lisi turned embalmer. Rather than slow the process of decay, the doctor-mortician's self-made technique speeded 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 from the stench. 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.

The farce over the Pope's health and treatment in death caused considerable embarrassment to the Vatican, but in the 1950s was not reported, though widely rumoured among those in Rome who had witnessed the body's decay as it lay in state, as well as being captured in photographs. (See Catholic website below.) One of the first acts of Pius' sucessor Blessed John XXIII was to ban the charlatan from the Vatican City for life.

Pope Pius XII became a candidate for sainthood under Pope John Paul II in the 1990s. He has been raised to Venerable, an early step through the process of sainthood.

Footnotes

¹ Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes p.341.

² John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII pp.130-131.

³ 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

External links

Predecessor=Pius XI|

Successor=The Blessed John XXIII}}

Pius XII, Pope

Pius XII, Pope

Pius 12

Pius 12

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