Sainthood on Hold…The Wartime Record of Pope Pius XII, by Justin Ewers

US News & World Report (November 17, 2008)
A half-century after the death of Pope Pius XII, the pontiff who led the Vatican during World War II, the passionate debate over his wartime actions and his qualifications for sainthood shows no signs of fading. Critics have long insisted that Pius was no saint, accusing him of turning a blind eye to the fate of the Jews when he failed to publicly condemn the Holocaust. Pius’s defenders disagree, and the former pope’s legacy has become the center of a ferocious battle among the Vatican, church historians, and the Jewish community—a struggle, many experts believe, that has delayed Pius’s sainthood for years. Last month, when the Vatican commemorated the 50th anniversary of Pius’s death, high-ranking members of the Roman Catholic Church seemed determined to renew the push for Pius’s beatification— a declaration that he is blessed and worthy of veneration, and the last step before sainthood. Pope Benedict XVI himself, in one of the most forceful defenses by a pope of Pius to date, declared that his predecessor, who led the church from 1939 to 1958, had done all he could—and more than most—to stop the Holocaust. “Wherever possible, he spared no effort in intervening in [Jews’] favor either directly or through instructions given to other individuals or to institutions of the Catholic Church,” said Benedict, who is ultimately responsible for deciding whether to sign the documents that would make Pius a saint. Seeming to excuse Pius’s silence during the Holocaust, when the Vatican, like the rest of Europe, was threatened by the Nazis, Benedict insisted the pope’s wartime interventions were “made secretly and silently precisely because, given the concrete situation of that difficult historical moment, only in this way was it possible to avoid the worst and save the greatest number of Jews.” This increasingly muscular defense of Pius, which experts viewed as an attempt to pave the way to sainthood, outraged many in the Jewish community. At a meeting of the Vatican’s synod of bishops last month, Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen, the first Jewish leader invited to such a Vatican gathering, urged the bishops not to make Pius a saint. Cohen, the chief rabbi of Haifa, Israel, said that Pius “should not be seen as a model.” An Israeli cabinet minister went even further, terming it “unacceptable” for Catholics to proceed with canonizing Pius. “Throughout the period of the Holocaust, the Vatican knew very well what was happening in Europe,” said Isaac Herzog, the Israeli government’s social affairs minister. “Instead of acting according to the biblical verse ‘Thou shalt not stand against the blood of thy neighbor,’ the pope kept silent—and perhaps even worse.” Pius’s critics acknowledge that the final decision on sainthood rests, of course, with the Holy See. “Normally, it’s not the business of Jews whom the Catholic Church and the pope designate worthy of consideration to be a saint,” says Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. “But this was a seminal moment in world history. The genocide of all genocides occurred on [Pius’s] watch, and the pope did not respond adequately. All he had to do was say, ‘I am informed there are mass murders being committed against the Jews, and I condemn it.’ He never said it. The Vatican doesn’t have to listen to us, but a saint would never have done that.” As the uproar over Benedict’s remarks seemed about to boil over—with one high-ranking Vatican official threatening to postpone any future papal visits to Israel in response to Jewish criticism—the Vatican began to backpedal. A spokesperson for the pope said his address had not been a sign that he was ready to proceed with beatification; it was simply a way to encourage reflection about Pius. “It isn’t right to submit [Benedict] to pressures on one side or another,” said the spokesperson, Father Federico Lombardi, who has insisted that beatification, should it occur, remains “in the kingdom of the future.” While the Vatican mulls over its options, the historical community remains deeply divided over Pius’s actions. Most scholars agree that Pius, a former Italian cardinal named Eugenio Pacelli, knew the Jews were suffering. But many don’t believe the pope did everything in his power to protect them. “He saw it as his responsibility to protect the institutional survival of the church, and everything else was secondary,” says John Pawlikowski, director of the Catholic-Jewish studies program at Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union. “There’s more than ample evidence he did something. That’s not the issue. The integrity of the Catholic Church as a moral voice would have been far better protected by speaking out.” For years, the Vatican has pushed back against this perception of the pope, criticizing, most recently, an exhibit at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust museum that describes Pius as “neutral” during the war. In a caption, the exhibit points out that when he became pope in 1939, the year World War II began, Pius shelved a statement prepared by his predecessor condemning racism and anti-Semitism; he never protested publicly when reports of the Holocaust began to reach him; and in 1942, he abstained from signing the Allied declaration condemning the extermination of the Jews. The Vatican has asked the museum to reconsider these conclusions, but Yad Vashem, with the support of many scholars, has stood its ground. “There can be no denying the fact that Pius at the beginning of the Nazi regime made a tactical decision not to directly confront it,” says David Rosen, interreligious affairs director at the American Jewish Committee. “He might have done it out of positive motives or might not have. The bottom line is, he didn’t confront it.” Historians acknowledge that the pope had reason to be wary of direct confrontation. Trapped between the dual threats of Soviet communism and German fascism, with millions of members of his church living in occupied countries, the Catholic leader didn’t have many good options. There is some evidence, in fact, that Pius was personally disgusted by the Nazis. While serving as nuncio to Germany in 1923, Pacelli wrote a letter denouncing Hitler’s failed attempt to seize power. As the Vatican’s secretary of state in the 1930s, he protested Hitler’s anti-Semitic race laws. And in 1935, Pacelli gave a speech in which he said the Nazis were “possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult.”Once he became pope, Pius does appear to have made some effort to quietly save victims of the Holocaust. Correspondence on Vatican letterhead in 1940 indicates that Pius asked members of the clergy to do whatever they could to help interned Jews. He appears to have used the resources of the church to protect an estimated 4,000 Jews living in Rome during the Nazi occupation. Newly discovered documents in British government archives show that Pius may even have been active in plots to overthrow Hitler. The diaries of Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer widely considered to have been the architect of the Holocaust, demonstrate that many in the SS thought the Vatican was attempting to hamper the Nazis’ deportation efforts. Some Jewish refugees believed the pope’s low-profile response to the Holocaust was in their best interests. “None of us wanted the pope to take an open stand. We were all fugitives, and fugitives do not wish to be pointed at,” wrote one Jewish couple who escaped to Spain with Pius’s help. “If the pope had protested, Rome would have become the center of attention. It was better that the pope said nothing.” Still, questions linger about exactly what Pius did and didn’t do during the war—and why he chose not to use the symbolic power of the papacy to condemn the Jews’ mass murder. Historians say there is one easy way to solve the mystery: For years, they have urged the Vatican to open Pius’s wartime archive, which remains sealed. “It would be nice if those documents were produced,” says Father Thomas Rausch, a Jesuit priest and professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University. “[The Vatican] has said he [tried] to shelter the Jews. It would be helpful to have some written documents to prove that beyond any question of doubt.” Jewish leaders, who met last month with Pope Benedict after the Pius anniversary ceremonies, have also taken up this argument, asking the pope to postpone beatification until after scholars have an opportunity to examine the historical record. “It’s in the Vatican’s interest to wait,” says Rosen, who was among those who met with Benedict. Many Catholics agree. “There’s no need to [pursue beatification] immediately,” says Rausch. “What’s the rush?” During the meeting, Benedict reportedly promised to “consider the matter seriously.” The Vatican’s archivist, meanwhile, has estimated it will likely be six or seven years before the archive will be open to the public. Only the pope can decide if he is willing to wait that long. l