BOOK MALIGNS A REAL 'HERO OF THE HOLOCAUST'

by

Thomas A. Horkan, Jr.

October 28, 1999   

   Pope Pius XII, at his death in 1958, was hailed as a hero of the Holocaust years throughout the free world.  Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel, thanked him for having saved some 800,000 Jews.  The leaders of Jewish communities in Hungary, Turkey, Italy, Romania, and the United States similarly expressed their appreciation.  His reputation has undergone periodic attacks since the fictional play, The Deputy, by Rolf Hochhuth, was published in 1963, accusing him of silence and complicity in the Holocaust.

   Hochhuth was a German Protestant who looked beyond any fault of these two entities and blamed Pius XII for the Holocaust.  These attacks have been refuted by reputable authors.

   Now along comes the most vicious attack ever in Hitler’s Pope:  Secret History of Pius XII, by an English journalist, John Cornwell.

   Cornwell not only accuses the pope of silence and failing to help, but goes so far as to claim that he assisted Hitler in coming into power, helped consolidate his power by entering into what he calls the "Reich Concordat," disbanded the Catholic political party and was a hypocrite and corrupt.

   These sensationalist accusations made with spurious historical claims and broad stretches of the imagination, are as much an attack on the papacy as on Pope Pius XII.  Cornwell predicts a huge struggle in the next millennium between the power mongers in the Vatican, like Pope Pius XII, and the benevolent progressives in the image of the Pope John XXIII.  Interestingly, one columnist in Florida has already embraced that concept. I will leave this fantasy to others.

   Before becoming Pope Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli was secretary of state in the Vatican under Pope Pius XI.  He followed the lead of Popes Benedict XV and Pius XI in seeking to enter concordats with various European nations.  The concordats were designed to establish the respective roles of church and state, or you might say to establish the guidelines for "the separation of the church and state."   They set forth the rights of the church in operating parochial schools, charities, organizations, youth activities etc.  Attempts to enter into a concordat with the German Weimar Republic had been rebuffed.

   After Hitler came into power, he agreed to enter into such a concordat on the terms which the church had requested.  This was done.  The church officials in Germany had been opposed to Hitler’s election, and they were relieved to enter into the concordat.

   In 1937, Pacelli was the author of the encyclical Mitt Brennender Sorge, which was issued by Pope Pius XI, who was in declining health.  This encyclical was addressed to the church in Germany and criticized various aspects of the Nazi regime, including the mistreatment of people because of their race or nationality.  It called on Catholic Germans to remain faithful to Christ in the face of many forces being brought against the faith.  Nazi authorities sought to suppress the document.  A later encyclical of Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus, repeated the same theme.  The Gestapo seized all copies in Germany, destroyed printing presses and arrested people all in order to prevent its distribution in Germany.

   The New York Times editorialized on Christmas day 1941, "The voice of Pius XII is the only voice in the silence and darkness that developed in Europe this Christmas. . . .  He is the only ruler left on the continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all".

   Under Pius XII hundreds of thousands of Jews throughout Europe were saved from the Holocaust through false baptismal certificates, shelter in convents and other churches facilities, assistance in travel and false passports.  The rules for cloistered convents were changed for this purpose.

   What is ignored in the many recent attacks, especially in Cornwell, is the fact that many millions of non-Jews were killed in the same Holocaust, many of whom were Catholic, and whom the Pope attempted in many ways to save.

   The largest gatherings of Catholic priests in the world, up until the second World War, was the Dachau concentration camp. These priests were of many nationalities, and struggled in many ways to develop wine and bread for the consecration of the Body and Blood of Christ.  Many did not survive.

   Pope Pius XII worked hard to preserve the Catholic religion and the church during those treacherous days when its very existence was threatened, not only by Hitler and the Nazi government in Germany, but also by Joseph Stalin and the communist menace to the east.

   A lifelong diplomat, Pope Pius XII stands accused of using diplomatic language in condemning the Nazis, continuing to seek peace and failing to expressly condemn Hitler by name.  The Catholic bishops in Nazi-occupied Holland, with approval of Pope Pius XII, read a letter from the pulpit condemning the deportation of Jews to death camps.  As the result, the Nazi forces swept through Holland’s Catholic convents, monasteries, and schools, seizing all Jews who were hiding or had converted to Christianity, something they never have done before.  These Jews were deported to concentration camps where many died. Edith Stein, now canonized as a saint in the church, was one of those Jewish converts.  Pope Pius XII burned a similar statement he had prepared for publication, to avoid such a result on a much larger scale.

   While Pope Pius XII conducted himself in an exemplary manner during these years, the same cannot be said of all Catholics or church entities.  The U. S. Catholic Conference published a series of statements dealing with this, which were issued on the 50th anniversary of the Holocaust, including those of the bishops of a number of European countries and of the Vatican.

   Catholics Remember the Holocaust, Publication No. 5-290 can be ordered at 800-235-8722 or at www.nccbuscc.org.  There is also a recently-published, honest documentary history of the period entitled Pius XII and Second World War by Pierre Blet, S.J., published by Paulist Press.  A secular defense of Pope Pius XII was published in Newsweek Magazine on March 30, 1998, page 35.