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Serving as the basis for the latter charge was one brief, enigmatic document found in the British Foreign Office archive. In a ciphered dispatch dated 26 January 1944, the British minister to the Vatican, Sir Francis Godolphin d’Arcy Osborne, later the twelfth and last Duke of Leeds, reported that he had been summoned by Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione that very day. Maglione, who held doctorate, in canon low and theology, had been the papal nuncio in Switzerland and since 1939, had served as the Secretary of State. On 26 January, Maglione had sent for Osborne to say that "the Pope hoped that no Allied coloured troops, would be among the small number that might be garrisoned at Rome after the occupation."

Fonte : A Question of Race: Pope Pius XII and the "Coloured Troops" in Italy, Robert G. Weisbord & Michael W. Honhart, University of Rhode Island

Full article: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118941395/abstract

Para escrever este livro, John Cornwell levou a cabo uma longa e meticulosa investigação, inclusive nos próprios arquivos do Vaticano. Aliás, foi mesmo o primeiro leigo a ter acesso a toda uma documentação acerca do papa Pio XII (Eugenio Pacelli, 1876-1958), até então inacessível a investigadores laicos. À partida, John Cornwell propunha-se, pura e simplesmente, escrever uma biografia de Eugenio Pacelli, sobretudo enquanto papa Pio XII. Mas a riqueza, a diversidade e o contraste dos documentos que foi encontrando - fora e dentro do Vaticano – fizeram com que se visse obrigado a encarar os factos e a transmitir-nos, com a honestidade e a coragem a que só os verdadeiros historiadores são capazes de se mostrar fiéis, toda a verdade em questão.

A favor de John Cornwell e da verdade histórica que se esforçou por atingir e respeitar, bastará dizer que estamos perante um autor que, embora ex-seminarista e ex-católico, não é anticatólico nem anticlerical: «Amo a Igreja e quis defende-la». Convencido de que seria infundamentada a acusação de a Igreja Católica, na pessoa do papa Pio XII, nada ter feito para denunciar o extermínio dos Judeus (e não só) por Hitler e pelo aparelho nazi, autor da presente obra não mascara a verdade histórica. No decurso das pesquisas que efectuou nos arquivos da Secretaria de Estado do Vaticano e dos Jesuítas, de Roma, os factos começaram a impor-se: «Ao fim de um ano, cheguei à conclusão de que estava enganado. Não só Pio XII era culpado, mas era-o de uma maneira que eu jamais tinha imaginado» (entrevista ao Corriere della Sera, 8/9/99).

Mas culpado de quê? De um imperdoável silêncio: conseguiu permanecer mudo, perante um dos maiores crimes de toda a história - o extermínio de quase seis milhões de judeus na Europa, dominada pela infernal máquina montada por Hitler e pelos nazis. Está inequivocamente provado que, pelo menos desde o Outono de 1942, o papa Pio XII se encontrava claramente informado acerca das acções de extermínio desencadeadas pela Alemanha nazi, quer no território alemão, quer nos numerosos países que ela invadiu e ocupou. Mas, é claro, não se trata aqui apenas dos Judeus. E os muitos milhões de civis não judeus que também foram chacinados por essa mesma máquina infernal?

Fonte: Diário Ateista

Vaticano lembra Pio XII

 

 O Vaticano apresentou esta Terça-feira duas iniciativas destinadas a assinalar o 50.º aniversário da morte de Pio XII, que aconteceu a 9 de Outubro de 1958. Em conferência de imprensa, o presidente do Comité Pontifício para as Ciências Históricas (CPCH), Walter Brandmüller, lamentou que a historiografia aborde a figura e a missão dos Papas “numa chave sobretudo política”.

“É nossa esperança que a solene comemoração de um tão grande Papa possa oferecer o ponto de partida para posteriores pesquisas aprofundadas, livres de preconceitos, sobre a sua obra, baseadas sobretudo na documentação conservada nos Arquivos do Vaticano”, indicou.

No encontro com os jornalistas foram dados a conhecer o Congresso sobre o magistério deste Papa (Universidades Gregoriana e Lateranense, 6-8 de Novembro 2008) e a mostra fotográfica “Pio XII: o homem e o pontificado” (Vaticano, 21 de Outubro a 6 de Janeiro de 2009).

Mons. Brandmüller frisou que “o sucessor de Pedro (o Papa, ndr) é acima de tudo uma figura religiosa, espiritual”, algo que, defendeu, “corresponde verdadeiramente à autocompreensão de Pio XII, que já era denominado pelos seus contemporâneo como Pastor Angélico”. [more]

“É nossa intenção colocar em evidência a verdadeira dimensão do ministério petrino que, pela sua natureza, não pode ser outra que a do Sumo Pastor, isto é o anúncio da verdade do Evangelho de Cristo e a orientação espiritual da Igreja”, referiu.

O CPCH foi encarregado de projectar e organizar as manifestações que assinalam o aniversário da morte do Papa Pacelli, guiou a Igreja durante a II Guerra Mundial (foi eleito a 1 de Março de 1939).

Este responsável lamentou a ausência de uma “investigação adequada” sobre a actividade deste Papa quando era ainda Núncio Apostólico na Alemanha e Secretário de Estado do Vaticano, indicando como excepções à regra duas biografias recentes, de Philippe Chenaux e de Andrea Tornielli.

Este último estudou documentos inéditos para produzir a obra “O Papa que salvou os judeus”, dedicado à figura de Pio XII, na qual defende que a Santa Sé, na imediata ascensão ao poder por parte de Hitler, interveio em favor dos judeus para dissuadir a Alemanha nazi das políticas discriminatórias em relação a eles.

No livro existe um capítulo onde são denunciados “erros, falsidades, omissões e despropósitos presentes em muitas publicações sobre Pio XII”. Para o autor, era necessário “demonstrar ao que pode levar o uso dos documentos num único sentido e o desprezo pela voz viva das testemunhas”.

A ideia negativa sobre o Papa Pio XII começou-se a consolidar desde a obra teatral “O Vigário” escrita em 1963 por Ralf Hoch Hunt, que lançou as bases para uma visão particular de Eugénio Pacelli, que em 1939 foi eleito Papa com o nome de Pio XII.

Em 1999, John Cornwell publicou “O Papa de Hitler” e Daniel Goldhagen, em 2002, apresentou o livro “A Moral Reckoning”, ambos com visões negativas sobre o papel desempenhado por este Papa na II Guerra Mundial – supostamente por ser apoiante de Hitler e não ter mostrado compaixão perante o sofrimento do povo judaico.

Na altura da sua morte, contudo, Pio XII era muito admirado. O escritor Graham Greene disse sobre Pio XII que foi “um Papa que muitos de nós acreditam será classificado entre os maiores de sempre”.

O diplomata israelita Pinchas Lapide escreveu em 1967 que Pio XII foi providencial para salvar “pelo menos 700 mil Judeus, provavelmente até 860 mil, das mãos dos nazis”.

Michael Phayer 

Much has been written about Pope Pius XII and the Jews. His unwillingness to speak out explicitly against the murder of Jews in occupied Poland during World War II is well known. Less well known is that before the killing of Jews in death camps began, Pius had to deal with the genocide of Polish Catholics. Until recently, no one understood how the destiny of these two people intersected in the middle of World War II, an intersection that led tragically to the genocide of Jews and to a respite for Catholics.

To Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, it didn't appear that the Germans intended a genocide of ethnic Poles. For one thing, Jews were rounded up by Germans, while the ordinary people of Poland were not. But this fact leads to a mistaken conclusion. The Germans did intend genocide for ethnic Poles. This plan was two-tiered: first, the Nazis would take out the intelligentsia and church leaders; second, after the common people's labor potential had been used up, they'd be eliminated. It is generally known that the Nazis murdered between 5 and 6 million Jews during the war, mostly in gas chambers in occupied Poland. It is less widely understood that if Germany had won, Polish Catholics would have been slowly (or not so slowly) used as slave labor and then murdered. [more]

As far as the Nazis were concerned, Poland itself was to be eliminated. "We shall push the borders of our German race," SS leader Heinrich Himmler said, "five hundred kilometers to the east. All Poles will disappear from the world." In the fall of 1939--soon after the war began--the western, German-occupied half of Poland was divided in two. The northwest area was annexed to Germany, and the rest, called the General Government, was used as a dumping ground for dispossessed Poles from the northwest and as a ghetto for Jews. Hitler then ordered the killing of the Catholic intelligentsia. Later, others, called "primitive Poles," were used as a migrant work force and starved to death.

The Vatican knew of German atrocities against the Poles practically from the war's start. Pope Pius XII reacted swiftly. In December 1939, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano decried both the closing of many Polish schools and churches, and the fact that many priests and nuns were being sent to concentration camps or into exile. In January 1940, Vatican Radio reported that Jews and Poles were "being herded into separate ghettos, hermetically sealed, where they face starvation while Polish grain is shipped to Germany." Vatican Radio's accusations were remarkable. Germans were not singled out as the perpetrators, but this was hardly necessary. (Who else could have committed the atrocities in western Poland?) The broadcast went so far as to identify victims by name--Jews and Poles alike. The reference to genocide by starvation was made powerfully clear.

This statement by Vatican Radio turned out to be the strongest, most specific one that the papacy would make about wartime atrocities. Soon after, the Vatican plunged into silence. No more pointed broadcasts. No more damning coverage in L'Osservatore Romano.

Polish Catholics and their church were left to suffer in isolation, and their suffering intensified until 1942. The Germans, knowing Catholicism to be a sacramental and hierarchical religion, attacked the church at these levels. Thirty-nine of western Poland's forty-six bishops were deported, imprisoned, or otherwise put down. Priests were jailed or sent to concentration camps--2,800 to Dachau alone, of whom all but 816 died. In one diocese, 291 of 646 priests were killed. By mid-1942, only 10 priests remained in the diocese of Gnesen to administer the sacraments to 359,000 Catholics. A staggering 20 percent of Poland's clergy failed to survive the war.

Because he believed the war effort required internal unity, Hitler did not allow high-ranking subordinates such as Himmler and Martin Bormann to persecute the church to this extent in Germany. But no such restriction inhibited them in Poland, where the hierarchy were suppressed through deportation and arrest, and where religious communities were suppressed. The Nazis closed innumerable churches and used many as barracks, garages, or warehouses. They shut down seminaries, forbade ordinations, and banned Catholic organizations. Administering the sacraments was strictly limited, especially Sunday Eucharist and confession. Or, if confession was allowed, the penitent was not allowed to receive Communion (at the time, the two sacraments were usually taken together). Thus did the Nazis attempt to disrupt religious life entirely in occupied Poland.

Killing was widespread as well. Gauleiter Arthur Greiser, the Nazi administrator of the Wartheland, killed thousands of Catholics in northwestern Poland. Throughout the war, hundreds of thousands of Poles were shipped to Germany as forced laborers. The bodies of those who died in transit were thrown into roadside ditches. The Germans also sterilized young Polish men and women by using x-rays on their reproductive organs. And as they had done earlier in Germany, they killed patients in Polish mental hospitals. At a facility in Chelm, 428 children were given morphine, then shot. Many patients in medical hospitals were simply thrown out. Initially, most of those imprisoned or murdered by the Nazis were Catholic leaders in the business, political, academic, and religious realms. Until 1942, for example, there were more Catholic prisoners in Auschwitz than Jews.

The persecution of the Polish church during the first years of the war ranks among the bloodiest persecutions in Catholic history. In their despair, church leaders turned to Pope Pius, begging him to condemn the atrocities. He refused. In 1942, Bishop Adam Sapieha of Cracow wrote to the pope saying that the situation was "tragic in the extreme. We are robbed of all human rights. We are exposed to atrocities at the hands of people who lack any notion of human feeling. We live in constant, terrible fear." Sapieha warned the pope that the faithful were losing confidence and respect for Pius because he hadn't condemned the horrors. Another Polish church leader wrote to Pius that some of the faithful were now asking "whether there was a God," and whether the pope "had completely forgotten about the Poles." Hardly a month passed without the pope's receiving an appeal to speak out. Some Poles thought the pope's silence meant he was in league with Hitler. Apostolic Administrator Hilarius Breitinger of Wartheland told the pope that Poles were asking "if the pope could not help and why he keeps silent." Pius responded that he was afraid that if he condemned the atrocities, they would only worsen. Polish church leaders answered that matters could not get any worse. Pius in turn replied that it was Poland's lot to suffer for the greater glory of God.

Minority Report

If words were spelled as some are here,
Most critics would object or jere,
But few complained when we were hurled
Into an electronic wurled
Whose glitches drive us up the wall
To anger, or to alcohall
No one escapes the tape-spawned wait
That generates a caller's hait
Its messages that don't apply,
And then, "We end this call--goodby;"
The systems that collapse at work
Producing stoppages that ork
And leaving impotent those who
Don't have a clue on what to dho;
The cellphone user who ignores
The rights of other auditores
With jabberings that never cease
At volumes that disturb the pease

Devices now ubiquitous
Have thieved tranquillity from ous

--William Walden

Pius XII's severest critic was Bishop Karol Radonski (exiled from his diocese of Wloclawek). In September 1942, Radonski wrote two letters to the pope that the editors of the Vatican's World War II documents have described as "violent." After running through a laundry list of atrocities and deprivations, Radonski pointed an accusatory finger at Pope Pius, "et Papa tacet" (and the pope keeps silent). From these documents, we see that the first accusations of Pius's silence during World War II came not from outside the church, or in reference to Jews, but from inside the church, in reference to Catholics.

The highly critical letters of Bishop Radonski were the last criticism the Vatican received from Polish clergy. Beginning in late 1942, the tone of correspondence from Poland to Rome shifted dramatically. Bishop Adamski of Katowice wrote that Catholics were remaining faithful. Apostolic Administrator Breitinger wrote that Poles now understood that the pope's silence had been a "heroic silence." Sensing the mood swing, Pius responded with a letter praising the Poles for their "heroic silence." Of course they had not been silent at all, but the pope's letter was a great success. Bishop Sapieha wrote that his countrymen would never forget the pope's noble and saintly words.

What accounts for this abrupt turnaround in Vatican-Polish relations in early 1943? The answer can be found not in papal dealings with the Polish church, but in the events of the war and Hitler's evil designs. The German army's blitzkrieg into Russia in 1941 foundered with its soldiers in sight of Moscow and Leningrad. Ill prepared for winter, the army was forced to fall back. All efforts then turned to preparing for a second assault in 1942. From the beginning of the war until mid-1942, ghettoized Jews had been forced into labor on starvation diets. The Nazis called it death through attrition, and, it worked. But in contemplating a renewed confrontation with Soviet forces, the army realized that it badly needed the warm clothing and military gear the Jews were producing. At that point, the German military command wanted less attrition and more production.

But that wasn't Hitler's agenda. In July 1942, he gave Himmler the order to kill all ghettoized Jews. By then, there were six death camps in occupied Poland (excluding the later facilities at Auschwitz-Birkenau). In the second half of 1942, nearly a half-million Jews from the Warsaw ghetto were mercilessly liquidated, a process that befell all other ghettos. As eminent Holocaust scholar Christopher Browning has said, death through labor gave way to death of labor. The only work force that could now replace the Jews were Poland's Catholics, and in September 1942, the army high command ordered "that Jewish workers were now to be replaced with Poles." By the end of the year, the substitution of Catholic for Jewish workers had been completed. At the same time, criticism of the pope by Polish churchmen ended.

Carrying out the Holocaust after 1942 meant a temporary suspension of the genocidal agenda intended against Polish Catholics--their labor was too valuable. This is how the destinies of Polish Jews and Polish Catholics crossed paths. When the Germans lost at Stalingrad in the spring of 1943 and Hitler was forced to retreat, the planned genocide of Polish Catholics never resumed in earnest.

Pius XII remained unmoved by the pleas of the Polish hierarchy before 1943 to denounce German atrocities in Poland. But the bishops themselves did no better when it came to the murder of Poland's Jews. It was not until 1995, fifty years after their deafening silence, that the Polish Catholic hierarchy apologized. Pius XII never did.

Michael Phayer is professor of history emeritus at Marquette University.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Commonweal Foundation
Copyright 2005, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

Note: The Commonweal (shortened to Commonweal in 1965) is the oldest independent lay Catholic journal of opinion in the United States.

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Defending pius.

In his "Et Papa Tacet" (April 8), Michael Phayer charges that Pope Pius XII was indifferent to Hitler's persecution of Polish Catholics. Material in print, most of it for decades, tells a different story.

Phayer says that after denouncing Nazi atrocities early in the war, Vatican Radio "plunged into silence" after January 1940. The reason for this was stated in the memoirs of FDR's representative to the Holy See, Harold H. Tittmann: "The Polish bishops hastened to notify the Vatican that after each broadcast ... the various local populations suffered 'terrible reprisals, The superior general of the Jesuits, Fr. Ledochowski, personally gave the order to desist. He later [said]: 'How I hated to give the order to stop these broadcasts, especially since I am a Pole myself. But what else could I do?'" (Inside the Vatican of Pius XII).

Carlo Falconi's The Silence of Pius XII recounts a 1942 visit to Archbishop Adam Sapieha of Cracow by the Italian Msgr. Quirino Paganuzzi, who bore papal letters of support for the suffering Poles. Sapieha read the letters and immediately burned them, explaining: "If I give publicity to these things, and if they are found in my house, the head of every Pole wouldn't be enough for the reprisals [Nazi governor] Gauleiter Frank will order."

On June 2, 1943, in an address to the cardinals broadcast on Vatican Radio and clandestinely distributed in Poland, Pius XII said: "No one familiar with the history of Christian Europe can ignore or forget the saints and heroes of Poland ... For this people so harshly tried, and others, who together have been forced to drink the bitter chalice of war today, may a new future dawn worthy of their legitimate aspirations in the depths of their sufferings, in a Europe based anew on Christian foundations." Archbishop Sapieha wrote from Cracow: "The Polish people will never forget these noble and holy words" (Robert Graham, The Pope and Poland in World War II).

Phayer emphasizes the wartime criticism of the pope by the Polish Bishop Karol Radonski. He does not tell us that Radonski spent the war in London, where he could not know the pressures in his homeland that caused Sapieha to burn Pius XII's letters immediately after reading them.

The charge that Pius XII was indifferent to the sufferings of Hitler's victims is refuted by Falconi's account of the Italian military chaplain, Fr. Pirro Scavizzi: "I was enabled to deliver important papal documents in Austria, Germany, Poland, and the Ukraine, as well as secret and practical arrangements to defend and help the persecuted, and especially the Jews.... I went to see Pius XII secretly to tell him everything.... Before my eyes he wept like a child and prayed like a saint."

By ignoring available evidence, Phayer has produced not history but propaganda.

(REV.) JOHN JAY HUGHES

St. Louis, Mo.

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THE AUTHOR REPLIES:

I have never written or said that Pope Pius XII was indifferent to wartime suffering, whether that of Jews or Gentiles.

Regarding the Tittmann quote, let historians be warned that the son's edition of the father's papers that Fr. Hughes cites is far from an accurate reflection of the diplomat's voluminous official correspondence. For example, according to a letter Tittmann wrote to the State Department, Fr. Ledochowski urged Pius in December 1942 to speak out about Nazi atrocities in Poland.

The appeals from Polish bishops, including Archbishop Sapieha, to Pius XII to speak out about the atrocities being perpetrated on Catholics may be found in Actes et Documents du Saint Siege relatif a Seconde Guerre mondial, volume 3. Fr. Hughes should heed his own counsel: Actes et Documents has been in print for decades.

Yes, Bishop Radonski was in exile--as I wrote. In London he had access to the most up-to-date news from Poland because that is where the Polish government-in-exile was located.

Fr. Hughes's reference to Pius XII's June 1943, address indicates that he has completely missed the point of my article. By 1943, Germany was no longer intent on exterminating the Poles, who were needed as laborers as Hitler prepared for the second battle of Stalingrad. What Pius said in 1943 is what the Polish church wanted him to say in 1942.

Those interested in a detailed study of the question may refer to my article, "Pius XII and the Genocides of Polish Jews and Polish Catholics during the Second World War," printed in the journal Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte.

MICHAEL PHAYER

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Why did the pope help Nazis escape?

Michael Phayer

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Yet there is one important Holocaust-related matter where I think Pius clearly did act at variance with traditional Catholic teaching about justice and how the ends must never justify the means. I am referring to Pius’s role in assisting Fascist war criminals to escape to South America.

The past, a historian once ironically remarked, is unpredictable. Certainly, much of what happened in World War II falls into that category, including the saga of Pope Pius XII. Some historians view the record of his long papacy (1939-58) and wartime predicament sympathetically; others view his actions (or inactions) critically, if not harshly. The interpretations of nonhistorians vary even more widely, with some (John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope) accusing him of pursuing personal power at the expense of the Jews, while others (Ronald Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope) argue he did everything in his power to help them.

Adding to this particular confusion is the growing number of commentators who either want to promote or sidetrack Pius’s cause for sainthood. While the interpretations of historians are supposed to depend on the careful evaluation of the facts, Pius’s promoters and detractors don’t necessarily play by these rules. Disagreeable facts are ignored by some and exaggerated by others. Unfortunately, the Vatican itself has indulged in such polemics. In We Remember, the 1998 statement on the church’s role in the Holocaust, the Vatican claimed that Pius saved "hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives." It was an absurd statement. Historians have been able to document a limited number of cases in which the Vatican intervened on behalf of Jews and have identified other instances when an opportunity to do so was passed by. [more]

Given the complexity of the issues and the extreme circumstances of the war, why are some of Pius’s defenders now arguing that his response to the Holocaust was exemplary and even proof of his saintliness? Peter Gumpel, the German Jesuit priest shepherding Pius’s cause for sainthood, has gone so far as to write that "no one of whatever station or organization did as much to help the Jews as did Pius XII." Yet judging by the evidence now available to historians, that statement is as preposterous as it is naive. Whatever one feels about the difficulty of the choices Pius faced, his record with regard to the Jews is mixed at best.

Still, Pius’s promoters continue to grasp at straws. They have recently become excited about a newly released Vatican document, a report by then-Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli to the Vatican secretary of state which, they claim, shows that the future pope opposed Nazi anti-Semitism. To be sure, historians, like scientists, cannot remain committed to their theories when substantive new information casts doubt on them. If this interpretation of the newly found Pacelli letter is accurate, it would force historians critical of Pius (for example, David Ketzer, The Popes against the Jews) to rethink their claims about the role Vatican anti-Semitism played in the Holocaust. (Actually, the report was merely Pacelli’s notification to the Vatican that Munich’s Cardinal Michael Faulhaber had mentioned the Jews sympathetically in a sermon given soon after the November 1923 Nazi disturbances in Bavaria. It was not Pacelli but the cardinal who had spoken compassionately about the Jews; still, it is clear that Pacelli approved of the cardinal.)

One of the things historians look for, and try to explain, is change or inconsistency in a person’s behavior. Most historians agree that Pius’s single most pressing political concern, as a Vatican diplomat and as pope, was with how to stop the spread of Russian Bolshevism and atheistic communism. Yet even here the record is not entirely consistent. For in the middle years of the war, Pius’s fear of communism took second place to concern over the physical fate of the Vatican and the city of Rome. The possibility that Rome would be destroyed, by either the Nazis or by Allied bombing, shaped many of his actions.

It would have been remarkable for Pius XII, or any World War II leader, to make the "right" decision in each and every case. Roosevelt and Churchill were great leaders, but like most persons they made many mistakes. Neither, for example, acted in any direct way to end the Holocaust, and they, unlike Pius, had air power at their command that was capable of bombing Auschwitz. Like other wartime leaders, Pius was faced with tortuous choices. For instance, Catholic Poles were furious when he personally refused to speak out, after Vatican Radio had initially done so, against the atrocities perpetrated on Poles by the Germans. Just-released documents indicate that prior to the war the Vatican took note of Germany’s anti-Semitism. When Pacelli served as his predecessor’s secretary of state, the Vatican had consistently intervened in German affairs. Practical circumstances, the war, led him as pope to alter the course in both instances.

Presumably Pius could have been more outspoken about events in Italy. Just before the roundup of Rome’s Jews, Pius offered to lend, at most generous terms, any amount of gold the Jews needed for ransom. Yet when the Jews of Rome were seized in October 1943, Pius said nothing. Why? In 1944, Pius wrote Berlin’s Bishop Preysing that he had been deeply saddened by what was happening to the Jews, but that he could not have spoken out for fear the Germans would destroy Rome. If that were to happen, he believed, the faith of Catholics around the world would be weakened. Was this the right decision? I think not. Was it immoral not to speak out? Hardly; Pius had practical reasons for not speaking out-danger to himself and to the Vatican, danger to the thousands of Jews still in hiding in the city, and danger of a Communist uprising in Rome. Which reason was uppermost in his mind we will most likely never know.

Yet there is one important Holocaust-related matter where I think Pius clearly did act at variance with traditional Catholic teaching about justice and how the ends must never justify the means. I am referring to Pius’s role in assisting Fascist war criminals to escape to South America. By and large, Pius’s advocates have played the ostrich when it comes to the Vatican’s "ratline." Denying Pius’s complicity in the church’s smuggling of Nazi and Croatian Fascists out of Europe flies in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Uki Goni’s The Real Odessa (Granta Books, 2002, second edition) provides the conclusive documentation. Using previously unavailable material from the Public Record Office in England and from the U.S. National Archives and Record Administration, Goni clearly demonstrates that Pius knew that ecclesiastical institutions in Rome were hiding war criminals. "The British dossiers...show that the pope secretly pleaded with Washington and London on behalf of notorious criminals and Nazi collaborators," Goni writes. Why did Pius help these murderers escape justice? Because he was convinced they would carry on the fight against communism elsewhere. It turns out that Pope Pius was one of the first cold-war warriors.

In fact, the ratline conforms to a pattern of Vatican postwar action. Pius sought clemency for Arthur Greiser, who had murdered thousands of Polish Catholics and Jews (the Poles executed him anyway); and for Otto Ohlendorf, head of one of the notorious Nazi mobile killing squads (U.S. Military Governor General Lucius Clay rejected the pope’s appeal, saying that Ohlendorf was guilty of specific, heinous crimes); and for other mass murderers. After the war, the U.S. State Department complained that the Vatican was uncooperative in expelling suspected war criminals from Vatican City. The Vatican knew that Croatian Fascists brought looted gold with them from Yugoslavia after the war, but did not report this to the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold.

What do these jarring facts tell us about Pius? Why would the leader of a church that supported the state’s right to use capital punishment plead for the lives of mass murderers? If Pius was so saddened about Europe’s Jews-as he wrote Bishop Preysing in 1944-why did he later help their killers escape? Why have advocates for Pius’s canonization failed to address the ratline issue? Wouldn’t it be better for them to admit the facts and then place these failings in the full context of Eugenio Pacelli’s life? Perhaps his advocates can make an argument that, because of the Communist threat, the ratline does not disqualify Pius from sainthood. That argument has yet to be made, however.

Michael Phayer
Michael Phayer is professor of history emeritus at Marquette University.

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