Catholic Heroes… Pope Pius XII (1876-1958)

By DEB PIROCH

Part 1
Few Popes have been as unjustly maligned in our day and age as Pope Pius XII. He has been accused by many anti-Catholics with complicity in the Nazi Holocaust, which is heinous, when he was really responsible for saving as many as 800,000 lives (Israeli diplomat and historian Pinchas Lapide, Author of Three Popes and the Jews, 1967).
This two-part article on Pope Pius XII aims to address some of the vicious slander hurled against this saintly man, whom Pope Benedict declared venerable in 2009. As the vicious lie is still so often repeated, it behooves every Catholic to have ready answers to refute such propaganda. Ironically, the falsehood began decades after the war and even after the death of the Pope, for during his lifetime he was known for his heroic work on behalf of saving lives from the Holocaust, and praised by Jews far and wide, from Golda Meir to Albert Einstein.
Born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli into a pious family in 1876, he had relatives who had already worked for Pope Pius IX, Pope Leo XIII, and Pope Pius XI. One of four children, he would go on to study for the priesthood and was ordained with a doctorate in sacred theology on Easter Sunday 1899. He next began additional post-graduate studies, this time in canon law, while becoming apprenticed to the Vatican Secretariat of State. His thesis would prove pertinent: on the nature of concordats.
His degree was completed by 1904 and he was named a monsignor the year following. Work at the Vatican continued throughout World War I and, after the death of Pope Pius X, Successor Pope Benedict XV would appoint him papal nuncio to Germany in 1917. Some of his duties would include conveying the papal initiative to German leaders at the end of World War I to lay down their arms and surrender. He served as nuncio 12 years until 1929, when he was recalled to Rome. Rabbi and historian David Dalin wrote that out of 44 speeches Pacelli gave during that period, all but four contained some condemnation of Nazi ideology.
Catholic Culture states that Pacelli had read Mein Kampf by 1925 and termed Hitler both “obsessed” and “ready to walk over corpses.” In 1928, in part in response in part to Pacelli’s concerns, the Vatican issued a public condemnation of Nazi hatred of the Jews. Note that this was five years before Hitler was even declared chancellor during the Weimar Republic.
Back in Rome, Pacelli was named cardinal and secretary of state, responsible for advising the Pope on state relations around the world. Pacelli spoke German, as he had lived over a decade in Germany representing the Vatican, and he understood the evils of socialism. (Those who favor socialist ideas today would do well to recall that “Nazi” is short for a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.)
Ten days before Hitler became German chancellor in 1933, the Vatican and Germany signed the Reichskonkordat. Those who like to condemn Pope Pius say that in doing so, first the Church was agreeing to stay out of politics and taking an oath that it would follow the government. Second, the Church agreed to have bishops take an oath of loyalty to the government, protect the state’s interests and require clergy to do the same. Clergy and religious were also prohibited from working on behalf of political parties.
First, the Church does not work on behalf of religious parties and does not advocate for politics but positions related to morality. Second, no person, let alone a bishop, is permitted to keep any oath if the promise entails sin. If the Nazi government had been a virtuous one, the tale would have ended here. The Catechism of the Catholic Church n. 2155 states we may not “take an oath which on the basis of the circumstances could be interpreted as approval of an authority unjustly requiring it. When an oath is required by illegitimate civil authorities, it may be refused. It must be refused when it is required for purposes contrary to the dignity of persons or to ecclesial communion.”
Additionally, a bishop may dispense with any vow that is made under compulsion. And certainly, this would be the case with any vow that involved cooperation with evil. One may question, certainly, how many religious actually even took such an oath or then dispensed with it.
Pacelli, you see, knew the culture. He spoke the language. He also went some steps further: He was a canon lawyer, he had specialized in studying concordats, had served as nuncio, and then gone on to be secretary of state. When Hitler approached the Vatican about a concordat, Pacelli’s instinct? Get it in writing. He felt while Hitler could not be trusted, it could be yet one more way to pressure Germany at the international level and expose Hitler as a fraud. If nothing was signed, then Hitler would doubtless persecute the Church just the same.
Pacelli was asked, according to an older ZENIT report, whether Hitler would observe the concordat. His response: “Absolutely not. We can only hope that he will not violate all the clauses at the same time.”
To say the Church signed this agreement for selfish reasons and turned a blind eye to Hitler and the Third Reich is Unsinn, or utter nonsense. Hitler offered the agreement, and to turn it down would have been to reject the only bullet in a gun handed the Church for self-defense.
In the first five years after Pope Pius XI signed the concordat, Pacelli lodged 55 protests against the Nazis for violations. So the Holy Father’s own encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge was written, smuggled into Germany, and read from every Catholic pulpit in the land.
Pope Pius XI’s famed encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge, which means “with burning concern,” was written with the direct input of Pacelli, along with a select few others, including Clemens Cardinal von Galen, a blessed about whom we wrote in a previous column.
Written in German rather than in Latin, 300,000 copies were smuggled secretly into Germany via diplomatic briefcase to the nuncio in Berlin. He in turn passed the pages to the bishop of Berlin, who sent copies by secret courier to all the German prelates, who had thousands of copies printed under the noses of the Nazis. The text was then secretly distributed to each and every priest throughout the nation. The Pope’s words were read aloud from every German Catholic pulpit that Palm Sunday.
Of course, none of that should have been necessary. After all, the Church’s rights were guaranteed, were they not, by the concordat? The Holy Father denounced the Nazi discrimination based on race and idolatry of nation or, by implication, its leader:
“Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community — however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things — whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God” (Mit Brennender Sorge, Pius XI, March 14, 1937).
Hitler was so angry, he refused to see anyone for three days thereafter. (Part two next week.)