It is a shame that misconceptions like this are still given so much currency. There has been a lot of excellent scholarship in the last decade showing that Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) was actually the greatest defender the Jews had during those awful times. I am speaking, for example, of Rabbi David Dalin’s book, The Myth of Hitler’s Pope (2005); Ronald Rychlak’s Righteous Gentiles: How Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church Saved Half a Million Jews from the Nazis (2005); and William Doino’s excellent survey in The Pius War (2004).

These books (and many others) describe how Pacelli hid thousands of Jews in monasteries, convents, the Vatican, and even in the papal residence of Castel Gandolfo; how he provided false baptismal certificates to Jews to protect them from Nazi persecution; how he secretly cooperated with German resisters who were plotting to overthrow Hitler; and how he issued countless protests and denunciations against the Nazis, both publicly (in his encyclicals, speeches, and through Vatican Radio) and privately.

It is hard to understand how any fair-minded person could read this literature without concluding that Pius XII and the Catholic Church did more to help the Jews than any other individual or institution. Indeed, the Israeli historian Pinchas Lapide has persuasively argued that Pacelli “was instrumental in saving at least 700,000 but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands.” Lapide, Three Popes and the Jews (1967), p. 269.

All of this seems to have been obvious enough to people at the time. Hitler himself despised Pacelli, and formulated a plan to kidnap him and seize the Vatican City. The New York Times wrote editorials praising Pacelli as “a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe” and for “putting himself squarely against Hitlerism” (NYT, 12/25/41). And on his death in 1958, Pacelli was universally praised, most particularly by Jewish leaders. For example, Golda Meir said, “When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims.” Perhaps the most eloquent tribute came from the chief rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, who witnessed Pacelli’s efforts first-hand during the Nazi occupation of Rome. After the war, Zolli converted to Catholicism and took the Christian name of Eugenio out of respect for Pacelli.

The ridiculous notion that Pius XII was some kind of Nazi sympathizer arose in 1963 with the publication of a play by Rolf Hochhuth called The Deputy, which portrayed the pope as cold-hearted and indifferent to Nazi atrocities. It has recently come to light that this play was actually the product of “a deliberate Kremlin effort to smear the Vatican” and thereby undermine the Church’s anti-communist influence in Western Europe. (This disclosure appears in an article by Ion Mihai Pacepa, who is the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. The article can be accessed at
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YTUzYmJhMGQ5Y2UxOWUzNDUyNWUwODJiOTEzYjY4NzI).

Since then, the idea of Pius XII as “soft” on fascism has been picked up by many others who, for various reasons, would like to undermine the moral authority of the Catholic Church. One of the recurring themes of these writers (most of whom are not professional historians, but rather are popular writers or journalists like John Cornwell) has been to compare Pacelli unfavorably with his predecessor, Pius XI, and/or his successor, John XXIII -- both of whom are typically portrayed as “good” popes with compassion for the Jews, as compared with Pius XII, who is portrayed as cautious and calculating. All of these claims have been authoritatively refuted by reputable scholars. See, e.g., Rychlak, Righteous Gentiles, pp. 89-91 (disproving the claim that Pius XII suppressed a draft encyclical which Pius XI had intended to issue condemning Hitler).

This latest claim by Emma Fattorini has already been pretty well discredited. William Doino explains that Pacelli ordered the destruction of Pius XI’s draft speech pursuant to standard Vatican protocols, because Pius XI himself had never reviewed or approved it (just as he had never reviewed or approved the draft encyclical Humanae Generis Unitas). Pacelli did preserve Pius XI’s own notes for the speech, and those were released to the world by John XXIII in 1959 (so it seems there’s really nothing new here). Pacelli issued his own encyclical condemning Nazism just a few months after Pius XI died (Summi Pontificatus), and it infuriated Hitler. Indeed, the Allies printed thousands of copies of Pacelli’s encyclical and dropped them by air over Axis territory as a propaganda tactic. It is simply not accurate to say that Pacelli was somehow “softer” on the Nazis than his predecessor. Indeed, Pacelli worked very closely with Pius XI on all of his policies and statements, and Pius XI hand-picked Pacelli to be his successor because he knew Pacelli would carry those policies forward, which he did.

Andrea Tornielli, whose biography of Pacelli was recently released in Italian, has also written a critique of Fattorini’s claim which can be accessed at http://www.ilgiornale.it/a.pic1?ID=181678.

In light of all these facts, it would seem that those who criticize Pius XII for his alleged inaction or caution in response to the Holocaust are really telling us more about their own prejudices and misperceptions than about actual papal history. This is not necessarily a slam against them; there are many people who have innocently come to accept such mistaken ideas about Pius XII simply because they have been repeated so many times.

I would like to share one final quote about Pius XII, which was made in 1965 by holocaust rescuer John Patrick Carroll-Abbing. He said, “Never, in those tragic days, could I have foreseen, even in my wildest imaginings, that the man who, more than any other, had tried to alleviate human suffering, had spent himself day by day in his unceasing efforts for peace, would -- twenty years later -- be made the scapegoat for men trying to free themselves from the collective guilt that obviously weighs so heavily upon them.” Carroll-Abbing, But For the Grace of God (1965), p. 48.