Pope Pius XII: God's Nazi "Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power thy right hath dashed in pieces the enemy. And in the greatness of thine excellency, thou hast overthrown them that rose up against thee, thou sendest forth thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble". (Book of Moses) Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli was born on 2 March, 1876, in Rome to an aristocratic family with ties to the Vatican. It was intended that he should be a lawyer but he chose instead the priesthood. It was a decision that did not upset his family who had a long association with the Black Nobility, and his legal training would be of great benefit as he made a swift and predictable rise through the Catholic hierarchy. He was ordained a priest on Easter Sunday, 2 April, 1899. He was destined to become the most controversial Pope of the twentieth century. Father Pacelli spent little time tending to his flock. From the start he was a Vatican high-flyer. In 1901, he entered the Department of Extroardinay Ecclesiastical Affairs where he helped to codify canon law. In no time he became an effective trouble shooter for the Vatican, travelling the world as a representative of the Pope abroad. Over the next thirty years Archbishop, Papal Nuncio, Cardinal, and Secretary of State for the Vatican. All achieved in fairly short order.
In 1929, he helped negotiate the Lateran Treaty, which re-established the Catholic Church in Italy and in turn endorsed Benito Mussolini's fascist regime providing it with the moral justification it lacked. Similarly, he negotiated a concordat with Nazi Germany with provided protection for Catholic associations and publications but more importantly it guaranteed the right of Catholic education. The quid pro quo for this was that the Catholic Centre Party was dissolved, at the stroke of a pen, removing the one strong focal point of conservative resistance to the Nazi regime. Eugenio Pacelli had a long history of negotiating with fascists. He also established a concordat with the fascist regime of Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria and was a vocal supporter of General Franco in Spain. But all this was to pale into insignificance alongside his tenure as Pope during the dark days of World War II. Pope Pius XI died on 10 February, 1939. Cardinal Pacelli was the obvious choice as his successor, and had indeed been the preferred choice of the dying Pope himself. Thought of as more worldly than most of his rivals and with world war looming, the Conclave of Cardinals that had gathered to elect the new Pope opted for the pragmatist over the faith driven. He may lack the spiritual grounding of some of the others, they thought, but his experience in the world of politics and his diplomatic cachet would be priceless in what was obviously going to be a difficult time for the Church. On 2 March, 1939, Eugenio Pacelli was elected Pope Pius XII.
In accordance with God's Will
The Holocaust Pope Pius XII, knew from the outset the probable fate of the Jews. He knew from experience the values of the Nazi regime in Germany. On 14 March, 1937, the previous Pope, Pius XI, had ordered that the Papal Encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Concern) be read out in all Catholic Churches throughout Germany. It condemned a Nazi ideology which exalted one race over all others. Any notion of racial superiority was incompatible with Christian teachings. This encyclical had been much lauded as the only time a major institution (and not just a religious one) openly condemned the Nazi's racial policies. It had been largely drafted by Cardinal Pacelli, and is often used in his defence. But nowhere in its pages does it openly condemn anti-Semitism. Indeed, its primary concern was not racialism at all but Nazi paganism which elevated the State above God as the supreme power on earth. As early as the summer of 1940, Isaac Herzog, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, begged the Pope to intervene on behalf of the Jews in Lithuania, who were at the time being murdered in their thousands by Nazi Einsatzgruppen, or extermination squads. In response Pius phoned the German Foreign Secretary Von Ribbentrop, an old friend, to voice his concerns. But no official protest was lodged. When Philippe Petain, President of the recently formed Vichy Government in France, asked if the Vatican objected to proposed anti-Jewish laws, Pius was quick to make it clear that the Church condemned anti-Semitism, but then added the rider that the legislation did not conflict with Catholic teachings. In April, 1941, Pius granted a private audience to Ante Pavelic, President of the Nazi puppet Government in Croatia. A murderous regime, so murderous in fact that even the Nazi’s felt compelled to intervene to curtail some of the excesses. Pavelic's stated aim was to convert to Catholicism, expel, or exterminate all Serbs, Jews and Gypsies in Croatia. As many as 700,000 were exterminated. Pope Pius, never as much as condemned the forced conversions. In 1945, fleeing the Soviet advance, Pavelic holed up in Rome where he was hidden and given protection by leading Catholics. Provided with a passport by the Vatican he was smuggled out of Italy to Argentina, just like so many other Nazi's who escaped justice via the Catholic ratline. Similarly, the clerico-fascist regime of Monsignor Josef Tiso in Slovakia was overwhelmingly endorsed by the Catholic hierarchy. In March, 1942, under German pressure it began to deport its Jews. As a Catholic State with direct ties to the Vatican, Pius felt obliged to intervene. By October, 1942, under Vatican pressure the deportations ceased, but by this time 58,000 Jews or 75% of the total had already been murdered. But it was an example of what direct action on the part of the Church could achieve. In April, 1947, Josef Tiso was hanged for war crimes still wearing his clerical robes. In October, 1941, Pius was asked by the American representative to the Vatican to openly condemn the atrocities against the Jews. He replied that the Vatican wished to remain neutral. Again, in January 1943, the President of the Polish Government in exile, Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz, asked the Pope to condemn the atrocities in Poland, again he refused. When Mussolini began to round up the Jews in Rome for deportation the Pope wrung his hands and did nothing.
Pope Pius XII has many supporters and apologists who would rush to his defence. It is said that he did much on a personal level to help those fleeing tyranny providing them with practical aid and financial assistance. He established safe-houses, organised escape routes, used his contacts and provided valuable information. But it is not as a man but as a Pope that he must be judged. Some would argue that he preserved the integrity of the Church at a time when its very existence was in peril. But then what use is a Church that turns a blind eye to mass- murder? In the final analysis we have to judge - was Pope Pius XII a man who did his best in impossible circumstances? Or was he as the British Government described him in 1941, "the greatest moral coward of our times".