Polemics and Scholarship
Created | Updated Sep 17, 2006
In defence of Pope Pius XII
(This entry is a first reaction to encountering and reading a well known book that accuses Pope Pius XII of being, in the words of the title, 'Hitler's Pope'.)
An aura of polemic has surrounded John Cornwell's book, 'Hitler's Pope', which is a biography of Pope Pius XII. This book is not a scientific study and does not contain new disclosures of fact, but it launches very grave accusations against Pius XII without proofs to back them up.
These are the comments of the Jesuit scholar Pierre Blet. Fr Blet is the only surviving one of the four historians who supervised the publication of the 12 volume work on the Holy See and the Second World War. He has no hesitation in rejecting the new book as unhistorical. So do other historians and journalists, among them Clifford Longley and Kenneth Woodward.
The brother of the novelist John Le Carré (whose real name is David Cornwell), Cornwell is a former international editor of the Observer. He still writes feature articles, occasionally singling out the Vatican for criticism in the Sunday papers.
In 1984 he published 'A Thief in the Night', a book centred about the death of Pope John Paul I, which affirmed that he allowed himself to die because he felt totally abandoned. 'All of the Vatican is responsible for the death of Papa Luciani', the book concluded.
Owing to his past as a seminarian Cornwall was a credible choice of writer to rebut David Yallop's book 'In God's Name', and the story of a conspiracy to murder Luciani. With backing thus won he gained access to people whom nobody else had interviewed, such as Archbishop Marcinkus and the Pope's doctor. The result was a reverse for the Holy See, because without any particular libel 'A Thief in the Night' painted the Vatican in sinister hues: 'He died alone, in the heart of the biggest Christian community in the world. He died without the last Sacraments. He died of loneliness and for lack of love.'
Another book by the same author, 'Paranormal, an open case', had less of an impact but provoked the ire of Catholics in Italy because it affirmed that the miracle of St Januarius - the liquefaction of the blood of the martyr patron of Naples, was nothing more than a trick of the Cardinal.
In 'Hitler's Pope' Cornwell again strikes the attitude of investigator loyal to the truth, horrified by his discoveries. 'I love the Church, I wanted to defend it', he writes, only to continue: 'After an investigation that lasted a year, I reached the conclusion that I was wrong. Not only was Pius XII culpable, but he was to a degree that I could never have imagined'.
He also affirms that he has been given unprecedented access to the archives of the Secretary of State and the Jesuits. This is unlikely; from a review of the book, the author of 'Hitler's Pope' appears to have made use of material already published and available in public archives, and of course he is not the first person to have looked through the documentation of the process of beatification of Pius XII.
The book does in fact claim to contain a previously unpublished document: a type-written letter dated 18th April 1919, addressed to the Vatican Secretary of State, signed by Eugenio Pacelli, who was then the Pontifical representative in Berlin.
The future Pius XII outlines for Cardinal Gasparri the effervescent revolutionary atmosphere of post war Germany. In one passage there is a description of Levien, one of the leaders of the revolutionaries, as 'a young man... Russian and Jewish, thirty or thirty five years of age. Pallid, dirty, with expressionless eyes, a husky voice and vulgar, a truly repugnant type, but with intelligent and astute features'. According to Emma Fattorini, to claim (as the book does) that this passage proves its author had anti-Semitic feelings so deep as to support Nazism in the 1930s, constitutes both a temporal leap and inadmissible logic.
The Nazis themselves attacked Pacelli relentlessly in tirades and satire. One famous cartoon published in 'Die Brennessel', 3 August 1937, shows the Cardinal, by then Vatican Secretary of State, turning round and saying to a Communist who is bearing his red train: 'Thanks very much, my friend, and now I'll give you my blessing'. Both 'Angriff' and 'Schwarze Korps' (9 March 1939) were critical about his election to the Papacy. (Source: 'The Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich - Facts and Documents translated from the German', Burns & Oates, London, 1940.)
However, the main point is that the letter was already in the public forum; it was analysed several years earlier in Fattorini's book, 'Germania e Santa Sede. Le nunciature di Pacelli' (Il Mulino, Bologna, 1992). Blot One, as Newman might have said.
The tone of the book is set by the frontispiece, which claims to show Cardinal Pacelli, soon to be Pope, leaving the Presidential palace in Hitler's Berlin in 1939. In fact, as several people have already pointed out, the photo actually shows the then Eugenio Pacelli leaving an official visit to President Hindenburg in 1927. In 1929 he left Germany never to return. Blot Two. (However, it would be unfair to blame the choice of front cover on the author.)
The book castigates Pope Pius XII for issuing no direct condemnation of Nazism during the war, and only speaking out explicitly once Hitler was dead. This must be the central point of any case made against Pius XII.
Cornwell dismisses Pope Pius XII's 1942 Christmas Eve radio broadcast, and several other well known coded condemnations of Nazism, rather more easily than many others would, including the Nazis at the time. He condemned the 'hundreds of thousands of innocent people, killed or condemned to a slow extinction only because of their race.' To the Nazis his target was so clear that the German ambassador was dispatched to lodge a protest with the Pope.
Even if these hardly subtle protests are discounted (merely for the sake of argument – they were noted at the time by the Allied Powers, as well as the Nazis), there is no need to construct arcane theories to explain why he was not even more explicit, as we have evidence as to the real reason.
Pius XII's house-keeper, Mother Pasqualina Lehnert, saw Pius XII drafting in his own hand a savage denunciation of the Nazi regime. According to her he later burnt the text in the privacy of his Pontifical apartments. He had seen that the effect of the Papal condemnation in 1937, which he had drafted, and that of the Bishops in Holland in 1942, was only to intensify the persecutions (the latter resulted directly in the death of Edith Stein, among many others). He had also been advised by many Jewish leaders, including some who had escaped from Berlin, that such an explicit condemnation would be horrifically counter-productive.
To call this cowardice (an opinion sometimes aired amid the polemic) is unjust, for Pius XII was concerned for the safety of other people, not himself. His way of acting can be more than justified in the number of Jewish lives saved by practical action performed on his direct orders. It has been estimated that 860,000 Jews were saved; if these figures are remotely accurate it can fairly be said that nobody did more for them during the war. Several hundred were sheltered in the Papal palace in Castelgandolfo. His actions were recognised and praised at the time, as can easily be verified by flicking through the Jewish newspapers of the 1940s.
One of the greatest tributes came when Rome was liberated in 1944. In an editorial entitled 'True Brotherhood', the American Israelite in Cincinnati declared: 'It has been determined, indeed, that 7,000 of Italy's 40,000 Jews owe their lives to the Vatican... placing these golden deeds alongside the intercession of Pope Pius XII with the Regent of Hungary on behalf of Hungarian Jews, we feel an immeasurable degree of gratitude to our Catholic brethren'.
Jewish newspapers in such diverse places as Australia, South Africa, Britain, Canada and California also noted the Pope's efforts on behalf of endangered Jews. The Chief Rabbi of Rome was so impressed that he became a Catholic after the war, taking the Pope's name of Eugenio as his baptismal name. Golda Meir eulogised him on his death in 1958. A forest of trees was planted in the Negeb to commemorate the saving of Jewish lives by Pius XII. If Cornwell is right half a century later, how could all these people have been so wrong at the time?
Some accusations in the book appear to verge on the sensationalist. It is said, for instance, that Eugenio Pacelli before becoming Pope 'cast more than priestly eyes' on Mother Pasqualina, for which there is absolutely no evidence. Pacelli is also blamed somehow for the outbreak of the First World War, which is absurd.
It has been said that the allegations in Cornwell's book deserve a 'fair hearing'. In fact it can be seen that they are divided into two groups: slurs, which by definition are unfair, and other data already well known to historians - once the colourful rhetoric is stripped away.
Merely because the book is unfair, it does not automatically follow that Eugenio Pacelli is necessarily a saint. But the notion that he was 'Hitler's Pope' must in the end be accounted just as ridiculous as blaming him for the First World War.
(This entry is a first reaction to encountering and reading a well known book that accuses Pope Pius XII of being, in the words of the title, 'Hitler's Pope'.)
An aura of polemic has surrounded John Cornwell's book, 'Hitler's Pope', which is a biography of Pope Pius XII. This book is not a scientific study and does not contain new disclosures of fact, but it launches very grave accusations against Pius XII without proofs to back them up.
These are the comments of the Jesuit scholar Pierre Blet. Fr Blet is the only surviving one of the four historians who supervised the publication of the 12 volume work on the Holy See and the Second World War. He has no hesitation in rejecting the new book as unhistorical. So do other historians and journalists, among them Clifford Longley and Kenneth Woodward.
The brother of the novelist John Le Carré (whose real name is David Cornwell), Cornwell is a former international editor of the Observer. He still writes feature articles, occasionally singling out the Vatican for criticism in the Sunday papers.
In 1984 he published 'A Thief in the Night', a book centred about the death of Pope John Paul I, which affirmed that he allowed himself to die because he felt totally abandoned. 'All of the Vatican is responsible for the death of Papa Luciani', the book concluded.
Owing to his past as a seminarian Cornwall was a credible choice of writer to rebut David Yallop's book 'In God's Name', and the story of a conspiracy to murder Luciani. With backing thus won he gained access to people whom nobody else had interviewed, such as Archbishop Marcinkus and the Pope's doctor. The result was a reverse for the Holy See, because without any particular libel 'A Thief in the Night' painted the Vatican in sinister hues: 'He died alone, in the heart of the biggest Christian community in the world. He died without the last Sacraments. He died of loneliness and for lack of love.'
Another book by the same author, 'Paranormal, an open case', had less of an impact but provoked the ire of Catholics in Italy because it affirmed that the miracle of St Januarius - the liquefaction of the blood of the martyr patron of Naples, was nothing more than a trick of the Cardinal.
In 'Hitler's Pope' Cornwell again strikes the attitude of investigator loyal to the truth, horrified by his discoveries. 'I love the Church, I wanted to defend it', he writes, only to continue: 'After an investigation that lasted a year, I reached the conclusion that I was wrong. Not only was Pius XII culpable, but he was to a degree that I could never have imagined'.
He also affirms that he has been given unprecedented access to the archives of the Secretary of State and the Jesuits. This is unlikely; from a review of the book, the author of 'Hitler's Pope' appears to have made use of material already published and available in public archives, and of course he is not the first person to have looked through the documentation of the process of beatification of Pius XII.
The book does in fact claim to contain a previously unpublished document: a type-written letter dated 18th April 1919, addressed to the Vatican Secretary of State, signed by Eugenio Pacelli, who was then the Pontifical representative in Berlin.
The future Pius XII outlines for Cardinal Gasparri the effervescent revolutionary atmosphere of post war Germany. In one passage there is a description of Levien, one of the leaders of the revolutionaries, as 'a young man... Russian and Jewish, thirty or thirty five years of age. Pallid, dirty, with expressionless eyes, a husky voice and vulgar, a truly repugnant type, but with intelligent and astute features'. According to Emma Fattorini, to claim (as the book does) that this passage proves its author had anti-Semitic feelings so deep as to support Nazism in the 1930s, constitutes both a temporal leap and inadmissible logic.
The Nazis themselves attacked Pacelli relentlessly in tirades and satire. One famous cartoon published in 'Die Brennessel', 3 August 1937, shows the Cardinal, by then Vatican Secretary of State, turning round and saying to a Communist who is bearing his red train: 'Thanks very much, my friend, and now I'll give you my blessing'. Both 'Angriff' and 'Schwarze Korps' (9 March 1939) were critical about his election to the Papacy. (Source: 'The Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich - Facts and Documents translated from the German', Burns & Oates, London, 1940.)
However, the main point is that the letter was already in the public forum; it was analysed several years earlier in Fattorini's book, 'Germania e Santa Sede. Le nunciature di Pacelli' (Il Mulino, Bologna, 1992). Blot One, as Newman might have said.
The tone of the book is set by the frontispiece, which claims to show Cardinal Pacelli, soon to be Pope, leaving the Presidential palace in Hitler's Berlin in 1939. In fact, as several people have already pointed out, the photo actually shows the then Eugenio Pacelli leaving an official visit to President Hindenburg in 1927. In 1929 he left Germany never to return. Blot Two. (However, it would be unfair to blame the choice of front cover on the author.)
The book castigates Pope Pius XII for issuing no direct condemnation of Nazism during the war, and only speaking out explicitly once Hitler was dead. This must be the central point of any case made against Pius XII.
Cornwell dismisses Pope Pius XII's 1942 Christmas Eve radio broadcast, and several other well known coded condemnations of Nazism, rather more easily than many others would, including the Nazis at the time. He condemned the 'hundreds of thousands of innocent people, killed or condemned to a slow extinction only because of their race.' To the Nazis his target was so clear that the German ambassador was dispatched to lodge a protest with the Pope.
Even if these hardly subtle protests are discounted (merely for the sake of argument – they were noted at the time by the Allied Powers, as well as the Nazis), there is no need to construct arcane theories to explain why he was not even more explicit, as we have evidence as to the real reason.
Pius XII's house-keeper, Mother Pasqualina Lehnert, saw Pius XII drafting in his own hand a savage denunciation of the Nazi regime. According to her he later burnt the text in the privacy of his Pontifical apartments. He had seen that the effect of the Papal condemnation in 1937, which he had drafted, and that of the Bishops in Holland in 1942, was only to intensify the persecutions (the latter resulted directly in the death of Edith Stein, among many others). He had also been advised by many Jewish leaders, including some who had escaped from Berlin, that such an explicit condemnation would be horrifically counter-productive.
To call this cowardice (an opinion sometimes aired amid the polemic) is unjust, for Pius XII was concerned for the safety of other people, not himself. His way of acting can be more than justified in the number of Jewish lives saved by practical action performed on his direct orders. It has been estimated that 860,000 Jews were saved; if these figures are remotely accurate it can fairly be said that nobody did more for them during the war. Several hundred were sheltered in the Papal palace in Castelgandolfo. His actions were recognised and praised at the time, as can easily be verified by flicking through the Jewish newspapers of the 1940s.
One of the greatest tributes came when Rome was liberated in 1944. In an editorial entitled 'True Brotherhood', the American Israelite in Cincinnati declared: 'It has been determined, indeed, that 7,000 of Italy's 40,000 Jews owe their lives to the Vatican... placing these golden deeds alongside the intercession of Pope Pius XII with the Regent of Hungary on behalf of Hungarian Jews, we feel an immeasurable degree of gratitude to our Catholic brethren'.
Jewish newspapers in such diverse places as Australia, South Africa, Britain, Canada and California also noted the Pope's efforts on behalf of endangered Jews. The Chief Rabbi of Rome was so impressed that he became a Catholic after the war, taking the Pope's name of Eugenio as his baptismal name. Golda Meir eulogised him on his death in 1958. A forest of trees was planted in the Negeb to commemorate the saving of Jewish lives by Pius XII. If Cornwell is right half a century later, how could all these people have been so wrong at the time?
Some accusations in the book appear to verge on the sensationalist. It is said, for instance, that Eugenio Pacelli before becoming Pope 'cast more than priestly eyes' on Mother Pasqualina, for which there is absolutely no evidence. Pacelli is also blamed somehow for the outbreak of the First World War, which is absurd.
It has been said that the allegations in Cornwell's book deserve a 'fair hearing'. In fact it can be seen that they are divided into two groups: slurs, which by definition are unfair, and other data already well known to historians - once the colourful rhetoric is stripped away.
Merely because the book is unfair, it does not automatically follow that Eugenio Pacelli is necessarily a saint. But the notion that he was 'Hitler's Pope' must in the end be accounted just as ridiculous as blaming him for the First World War.
