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Background. Two Popes served through the Nazi period: Pope Pius XI (1922–1939) and Pope Pius XII (1939–1958). The Holy See strongly criticized Nazism through the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, with Cardinal Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) being a particularly outspoken critic. [15]
May 5, 2020 · Pope Pius XII led the Catholic Church during the tumult of World War II, but his silence on the fate of the millions of Jews killed during the Holocaust has clouded his legacy with...
- Pacelli in Germany
- Elected Pope
- Cries For Help
- Papal Reasons & Responses
- The Pope Protests
- Politics Behind The Policy
- Contemporary Developments
- Orphans
- Opening The Archives
- Revelations from The Archive
The pope was born in 1876 in Rome as Eugenio Pacelli. He studied philosophy at the Gregorian University, learned theology at Sant Apollinare, and was ordained in 1899. He entered the Secretariat of State for the Vaticanin 1901, became a cardinal in 1929, and was appointed Secretary of State in 1930. Pacelli lived in Germany from 1917, when he was a...
Pius XI died on February 10, 1939. Pacelli was elected pope on March 2, 1939, and took the name Pius XII. As pope, he had three official positions. He was head of his church and directly communicated with bishops everywhere. He was chief of state of the Vatican, with his diplomatic corps. He was also the Bishop of Rome. In theory, at least, his vie...
Throughout the Holocaust, Pius XII was consistently besieged with pleas for help on behalf of the Jews. In the spring of 1940, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Isaac Herzog, asked the papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione, to intercede to keep Jews in Spain from being deported to Germany. He later made a similar request for Jews in Lithuan...
By 1942, the Vatican was undoubtedly aware of the Final Solution. U.S. Bishops released a statement in October 1942 which, unlike the pope’s public remarks, explicitly mentions the treatment of Jews: The pope finally gave a reason for his consistent refusals to make a public statement in December 1942. The Allied governments issued a declaration, “...
The pope did act behind the scenes on occasion. During the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, he, along with the papal nuncio in Budapest, Angelo Rotta, advised the Hungarian government to be moderate in its plans concerning the treatment of the Jews. Pius XII protested against the deportation of Jews, and when his protests were not heeded...
Historians point out that any support the pope did give the Jews came after 1942, once U.S. officials told him that the allies wanted total victory, and it became likely that they would get it. Furthering the notion that any intervention by Pius XII was based on practical advantage rather than moral inclination is the fact that in late 1942, Pius X...
The International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission (ICJHC), a group of three Jewish and three Catholic scholars, was appointed in 1999 by the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. In October 2000, the group of scholars finished their review of the Vatican’s archives and submitted their preliminary findings to the Commiss...
In June 1945, it was estimated that 1,200 Jewish children remained in non-Jewish families or institutions. Others were hidden in Poland, the Netherlands, and other countries. “To the Jews of Europe who had survived the war, and to the Jews in America who were looking on,” noted Kertzer, “the idea that thousands of those orphaned children might be l...
After decades of Jewish groups and historians asking the Vatican to open its archives to allow them to see all the documents related to the pope and the Holocaust, Pope Francisannounced on March 3, 2019, that they would be made accessible in March 2020. In announcing the decision, Francis said Pius’s legacy had been treated with “some prejudice and...
Just a week after opening, the archives were closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak; nevertheless, seven German researchers from the University of Münster who did gain access to the vast archives had already found material supporting critics of the pope’s wartime behavior. Documents indicated the pope had information early in the war about the murder ...
New revelations emerge from the long-secret Vatican archive about what Pope Pius XII knew — and did — about the Nazis mass murder of Jews.
Sep 17, 2023 · CNN — Wartime Pope Pius XII knew details about the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews in the Holocaust as early as 1942, according to a letter found in the Vatican archives that conflicts...
Feb 1, 2022 · Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) personally saved at least 15,000 Jews, and knew early about the Holocaust, says German historian Michael Feldkamp, who offers proof from his findings in the Vatican archives. He says Pius XII sent a report on the Holocaust to the American government shortly after the Wannsee Conference, but they did not believe him.
Sep 16, 2023 · By Elisabetta Povoledo. Reporting from Rome. Sept. 16, 2023. A letter found among the private papers of Pope Pius XII suggests that the Holy See was told in 1942 that up to 6,000 people,...
