Some thoughts from reading ADSS Volume 7

I was emailed earlier today by a colleague who had some questions about how the Vatican Secretariat of State worked and how involved the Holy See was in the collapse of the fascist regime in Italy in 1943.  What follows is the substance of my response. 

The response is based on my reading of ADSS Volume 7 Le Saint-Siège La Première Guerre mondiale et Novembre 1942 - Décembre 1943 (1973).  The volume contains 506 documents with footnotes and index.  It also contains an introductory essay of 67 pages that is, in effect, a summary of the volume.  The volume deals with the "conventional war", not with the atrocities, although there is some mention.


One example is contained in Document 282 (p 473) dated 8 July 1943 of Angelo Roncalli, Apostolic Delegate to Turkey, to Giovanni Montini, Secretariat of State, Rome.  Roncalli relates a private meeting with the German ambassador, Franz von Papen during which mention is made of "the Katyn affair" (discovery by the Germans of the mass graves of Polish officers murdered by the NKVD in 1940 on the orders of Stalin).  von Papen then went on to say:

 ...  with a sad smile that it was necessary first of all to forget the millions of Jews expelled and suppressed in Poland, and that in any case this was a good chance for the Reich to make a change in its treatment of the Poles. (p 474) 

The document was an account of a meeting, written with a minimum of detail, but with what I can only imagine from what we know of Roncalli, an exceedingly heavy heart.  It is also a reminder to see what the document says, not what it does not.  An historical argument cannot hang on one document, however unpleasant.




Now to my thoughts from my reading of ADSS 7.

The daily workings of the Vatican Secretariat of State mirrored any number of other agencies of like nature, with the one glaring exception, it was a supra-national identity that sought to promote its agenda through an extensive, but ultimately powerless, group of diplomats. The powerless aspect was what I believe forced Vatican diplomacy to master the craft of diplomacy to an almost perfect degree. Stalin's remark "how many divisions has the Pope?" sums it up. Pius had not way of enforcing his will - it was done entirely through connections, argument, moral persuasion and old fashioned, gentlemens' agreements.




From what I have read in ADSS follows a familiar pattern. The Cardinal Secretary of State and his office received dozens (probably more) pieces of information throughout the day. Most of the ADSS documents record the form of the information - telegram, letter, memo, diplomatic correspondence, private mail from FDR to Pius (most of which has been published - 1947).




Cardinal Maglione, the Secretary of State, along with Monsignors Domenico Tardini and Giovanni Montini (later Pope Paul VI) sorted through the material, determined which would receive priority and would be shown to the Pope. It goes without saying that anything considered of top priority went to Pius' desk - many of the documents have a note at the end Visto dal Santo Padre or similar (see / shown to the Holy Father).


Often there are other notes with directions given by Pius, such as "instruct Nuncio X to do A, B or C", or "make no reply". There are also notes taken by one or other or the men mentioned, clarifying points of discussion with either the Pope or another figure, such as a representative of a foreign power etc. And there are drafts for letters, telegrams etc.


The footnotes indicate a lot of material that is not included in ADSS because it has been published elsewhere such as in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS). However, in my own reading I have gone looking for additional material because there has been so much published since the last volume of ADSS was published in 1981. I have found a lot of detail on many of the people mentioned throughout and created an extensive list of names, dates and roles - largely through google searches. The footnotes also indicate that there is material the editors saw but chose not to use - the reasons for this are not clear. However, I am prepared to accept that in choosing documents for publication the editors were keen to get as wide a cross-section of Vatican activity as possible, so space is probably the main reason for leaving some material out. Although having said that I am surprised, (or aghast) that two seminal pieces of Holocaust related documentation never made it into ADSS - the Riegner Report and Richard Vrba's Auschwitz Protocols, both of which were known of. Indeed the Riegner Report is mentioned in footnotes.




My reference to the Vatican "being in the know" refers in this instance to the collapse of Italy from early 1943 onwards. It was an open secret that Galeazzo Ciano commented on in his diary that the Vatican was in league with other anti-fascist groups in Italy trying to find a way of getting Italy out of the war and keeping the Germans out of Italy. From early1943 many of the documents in ADSS 7 are concerned with 1) preventing the bombing of Rome, 2) getting Italy out of the war, 3) having Rome declared "Open City, 4) preserving the fiction of Vatican neutrality (ironic given the above), 5) convincing President Roosevelt (FDR) and, to a lesser extent, Churchill, that bombing Italian cities was counter-productive and only encouraging communist activities, 6) concerns for Sicily after the 9 July invasion and the prospect of an impending invasion of the peninsula, and 7) several other issues, but one that was growing in intensity - the fear of a Soviet dominated Europe.




How involved was Pius in all this? Knowing that no major decision was made without his direct input and often at his explicit direction, the simple answer is - the Pope was involved in every aspect of all the issues mentioned above. ADSS published a lot of the war-time correspondence between FDR and Pius, and much of that includes appeals to spare Rome. And when that did not work as well as the Vatican hoped, they went to the US bishops and appealed to them to whip up support among Catholics. It is also very interesting to note the change in direction in Vatican policy from mid-1941 with regard to the USA. Pius threw in his lot with the US from an earlier date than I suspect was believed in earlier work.


Why?

Pius had met FDR in 1936 and clearly liked the man. The liking was mutual. Both distrusted the politics of the left, although FDR was more pragmatic about it and when one mentions "left" politics in the US case it does mean something quite different to what a conservative Italian/European Catholic understood by the word. In any case, both men respected each other and believed both were working for the good of humanity. I think Pius' positive estimation of FDR convinced him, along with the loyalty of the American bishops who worked tirelessly supporting the Vatican cause (not surprising, many Catholics were horrified at the thought of Rome being bombed, and were more horrified at the thought of the Holy Father being held hostage by Hitler), and the economic and industrial power of America, that the US would be the only force able to defeat Germany. It is important to rremember that until mid-1943 the prospect of a German victory remained a very real possibility. From 1943 onwards Pius' relied more and more on appeals to FDR than to any other Allied leader.



The letters between Pius and FDR.

The published material is general in nature - lots of appeals for common values, respect for America as the guarantor of freedom for Europe etc.

It is the material that was not published that is far more revealing! Memos from Amleto Cicognani, the Apostolic Delegate in Washington to Maglione, Sumner-Wells and others in FDR's administration on issues such as the bombing of Rome and other Italian cities, the desire of Italy to get out of the war, calls for support Rome "Open City", the situation of the monarchy, and urging support for the new government after the deposition of Mussolini, point to a high degree of frank discussion and diplomatic "argy bargy". The amount of tooing and frooing between June and September 1943 is considerable. There is disagreement, frustration and sometimes a sense of desperation from the Vatican side as things appear to be going ahead and then be suddenly derailed.

The second bombing of Rome on 13 August is a case in point. I believe the Vatican had felt it had secured a deal from the US and the UK that Rome would not be bombed again after 16 July. The diplomatic seesaw to have the city declared "Open" took quite a while and then the Allies bombed the city again "striking military targets". On a global scale this might not seem all that much, but for the Vatican it was integral to the policy to preserve Rome and ensure that chaos did not ensue, the communists did not get active and the Germans remained on the sidelines. Of course, we see this with hindsight, but the tenor of many of the documents reveals very real fears.



Volume 7 deals with the "conventional" war, not with victims. At the moment I am up to late August - document 357 out of 506. I will be working on that side once I get through this volume and Volume 11 (which will take me up to the end of the war).

Gabriel Wilensky on Pius XII and the current state of research.

One of the things that I have thought long and hard about in the furore over Eugenio Pacelli is what Gabriel Wilensky discusses in this post of his from the blog "Politics Net News".  I agree with most of his proposition and I rather like his chutzpah in saying like it is! Yes, there is some refinement that could be done and some other points added - such as the Dutch Catholic Bishops statement in July 1942 and the sermons preached by Jules-Gerard Saliege, archbishop of Toulouse - but the general thrust is clear.

The truth about Pope Pius XII: Are we getting it?

By Gabriel Wilensky

When it comes to the role of the churches and of Pope Pius XII during WWII, the world seems to be divided into three camps: those who are neutral or don't care, those who defend the actions of the churches and the Pope at all costs and sometimes by twisting and stretching facts to make them fit with their position, and by those who think that the churches and the Pope simply accepted the fate of the Jews as something they deserved and/or as an acceptable casualty of war. Most of the times apologists for the churches or the Pope accuse those in the latter group of not "getting it" and of being unable to see that the Pope worked tirelessly to save Jews.

Actually, I think we "get it" all right. I think it's them that are failing to understand. Why would millions of people around the globe, including the world's foremost Holocaust scholars and historians fail to be persuaded by their arguments and their documentation? Do they ever ask themselves this question? Are we all malicious, bigoted, or just plain stupid? Apologists for the Pope gather documents and testimonials, and organize symposiums to discuss all this. But none of the most respected Holocaust scholars ever attend these symposiums. Why is that? Historians go to symposiums and conferences all the time, and they would jump at the possibility to get exposure to new documents. But as the defenders of the Pope bitterly complain, mainstream scholars do not attend their symposiums. Not even via teleconference. So, it isn't a financial reason. No, they simply do not want to attend. Why do you think that is? Could it have something to do with their belief that the research performed by the apologists is poor? Could it be that mainstream scholars believe the interpretation of the data the apologist are presenting is wrong? Could it be these scholars suspect the affidavits they've got? Could it be they suspect their motives? Could it be they see an attempt to mislead the layman by presenting facts to mean things they don't mean?

The reason why papal apologists are not getting traction with mainstream scholars is because scholars think that discussing history with them is akin to discussing religion with religious fundamentalists. In essence, it's a futile effort, like arguing with someone who believes the Earth is flat. No amount of evidence, no amount of argument and disputation seems to move them form their preconceived, immutable position. So, no reputable scholars want to join them in their symposiums because they do not want to lend their prestige to the event, and because they know they would be talking to a wall.

I think the world would change its mind about Pope Pius if his defenders found that he had acted like the leaders in the Danish and Norwegian Lutheran Churches or the Orthodox Church in Bulgaria, or even like some of his own bishops in the Catholic Church in France, for instance. When the Germans were about to deport Bulgaria's Jews, the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church successfully mobilized the faithful to prevent just that. When the Germans were about to deport Denmark's Jews, the leaders of the Danish Lutheran Church mobilized the faithful to prevent just that as well. In a letter of protest sent to the German authorities before the deportations from Denmark began in October 1943, which was read from the pulpit in churches in Denmark, Bishop Hans Fuglsang-Damgaard, with the support of all the Danish Church's bishops, said:



"Whenever persecutions are undertaken for racial or religious reasons against the Jews, it is the duty of the Christian Church to raise a protest against it for the following reasons:



. . . Because the persecution of the Jews is irreconcilable with the humanitarian concept of love of neighbors which follows from the message which the Church of Jesus Christ is commissioned to proclaim. With Christ there is no respect of persons, and he has taught us that every man is precious in the eyes of God. . . .



. . . race and religion can never be in themselves a reason to deprive a man of his rights, freedom or property. . . . We shall therefore struggle to ensure the continued guarantee to our Jewish brothers and sisters [of] the same freedom which we ourselves treasure more than life.



. . . We are obliged by our conscience to maintain the law and to protest against any violation of human rights. Therefore we desire to declare unambiguously our allegiance to the word, we must obey God rather than man."



Scholarly and world opinion about Pope Pius XII would change in his favor if he were found to have publicly said something like this. His moral standing would be restored if he was found to have spoken plainly and clearly through pastoral letters, encyclicals, Vatican Radio broadcasts or through his bishops from the pulpits of all churches so everyone would know that he specifically instructed the faithful to act, not just to save Jews, but to stop denouncing, hunting them down, deporting them, and murdering them.

But not through veiled messages no one understood. Not through secret missions. Not through silence, which was interpreted as tacit approval. There was nothing "heroic" about the Pope's supposed "discreet" behind the scenes work on behalf of the Jews. There was nothing "heroic" about his silence, and even less of his obtuse, vague messages. As a consequence of the Pope's inaction (or at least ineffective action), the Germans deported over 1000 Roman Jews to their deaths with what was perceived to be carte blanche from the Pope. As a consequence of what Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard and all the Danish Lutheran Church's bishops did, and what Archbishop Krill and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church did, the Danish and Bulgarian people were mobilized to save Jews, which was accomplished in a myriad ways by regular people, without vast resources, and in front of and in defiance of Nazi eyes. These people surely feared the Gestapo as much as anyone else. Yet the Danes and Bulgarians spoke out, they told the faithful in no uncertain terms what was happening and what they should and should not do, they mobilized, and as a result almost all Danish and Bulgarians Jews survived the war. And the saddest part of this story? The rescue of Denmark's Jews took place two weeks before the deportation of the Jews of Rome. Pope Pius chose not to follow this proven example.

Gabriel Wilensky can be found (and followed) at:
Six Million Crucifixions: How Christian Teachings About Jews Paved the Road to the Holocaust


http://www.SixMillionCrucifixions.com


Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sixmillionbook

Pius XII and the Distorting Ellipsis - from First Things

This article is a timely reminder of the demands of accuracy in reading and translating documentary evidence.  Pacelli's speeches made in Budapest at the Eucharistic Congress in May 1938 are of interest in gauging something of his understanding of the lurch from crisis to crisis on the continent. 

It is interesting though, that niether Rychlak or Doino make no mention of the antisemitic legislation promulgated in the Hungarian parliament passed with the votes of most of the Catholic bishops who sat in the chamber. Nor do the authors express comment at the context surrounding Pacelli's public addresses in a country that begun a serious process of civil exclusion of Hungarian Jewry. 

The Cardinal preached on the Church's duty in the world.  "The Church's duty in the apostolic service of justice is typified by universal love; it is therefore impossible for it to take sides and rigidly stand by any party." (reported in the London Tablet June 4, 1938).  It would be difficult to see how a diplomat of such political astuteness as Pacelli could not have known of Hungary's antisemitic legislation and the fundamental injustice that it had wrought on Hungarian society through the application of Horthy's Christian National Principle.  Jews were being forced out of public life, excluded from universities and the professions.  Conversion provided a way out, but this was to prove a short-lived reprieve.

So, yes, the article is a useful reminder about translation, but it also reminds the reader of the dangers of leaving out significant contextual events that can place Pacelli's speech into a more accurate sphere.

Pius XII and the Distorting Ellipsis



Sep 16, 2010


Ronald J. Rychlak and William Doino, Jr.


As charge after charge that Pope Pius XII failed to resist the Germans or even that he was indeed “Hitler’s Pope” has been refuted, the critics have advanced new and more remote accusations. First, critics attacked him for what he said or did (or failed to say or do) during the war. When those accusations were proved to be without merit, they charged him with failures after the war.


When those were refuted, they shifted to the pope’s actions before he was pope. John Cornwell, the author of Hitler’s Pope, based his case on two letters, one written in 1917 and the other in 1919. On The O’Reilly Factor, he agreed that action to thwart Hitler would have to have been taken by 1933, and that the pope could have done nothing in 1938 or 1939. Pius XII did not become pope until 1939.

The current charge claims that in a presentation Pius XII gave at an International Eucharistic Congress in Hungary in 1938—when he was still Eugenio Pacelli, Vatican Secretary of State—he referred to Jews as enemies of Christ and the Catholic Church. (It should be noted that the Germans had refused to send a delegation to the congress when they learned that Pacelli would be there, and permitted no news of it to be transmitted in Germany. Pacelli had, after all, berated them the year before when he went to France for the Pope.)

The critics claim that on May 25, 1938, just after the Anschluss (the German annexation of Austria), but before the Shoah or even the outbreak of World War II, Pacelli said:

Jesus conquers! He who so often was the recipient of the rage of his enemies, he who suffered the persecutions of those of whom he was one, he shall be triumphant in the future as well. . . . As opposed to the foes of Jesus, who cried out to his face, “Crucify him!” we sing him hymns of our loyalty and our love. We act in this fashion, not out of bitterness, not out of a sense of superiority, not out of arrogance toward those whose lips curse him and whose hearts reject him even today.


One major critic of Pius, Moshe Y. Herczl, claimed that Pacelli was clearly assailing Jews: “Pacelli relied on his audience, realizing that hints would suffice. . . . He was sure that his audience understood him well.” Cornwell concurred: “Pacelli, representative of the Pope at the Eucharistic congress, was making it clear that the ‘comprehensive love’ he preached at the meeting did not include the Jews.” Michael Phayer added that Pacelli, was “making reference to Jews ‘whose lips curse [Christ] and whose hearts reject him even today.’”

There is reason to be suspicious of this quotation, and the anti-Semitic interpretation applied to it.


First, no one at the time thought that Pacelli was speaking of Jews. He spoke of the “military godless” and those who wanted to “impose a new Christianity,” statements applicable only to the Communists and Nazis. Time magazine reported on the Eucharistic Congress and noted that while the host cardinal’s opening speech had “contained no hint of the fact that he is firmly anti-Nazi,”

Papal Legate Pacelli, without descending from the high religious plane of the Congress, was more specific about Catholicism’s enemies “the lugubrious array of the militant godless, shaking the clenched fist of anti-Christ.” Cried he: “Where now are Herod and Pilate, Nero and Diocletian, and Julian the Apostate, and all the persecutors of the First Century? St. Ambrose replies: ‘The Christians who have been massacred have won the victory; the vanquished were their persecutors.’ Ashes and dust are the enemies of Christianity; ashes and dust are all that they have desired, pursued perhaps even tasted for a short moment of power and terrestrial glory.”

Second, look at the quotation the papal critics use. One has to wonder what the ellipsis is replacing. Despite the importance of this quotation to the argument of many papal critics, it seems that none of them traced it back to its origin.

Recently on the Australian blog Galus Australis, for example, Gabriel Wilensky wrote: “[W]ho cares if the conference was about atheist Nazis or the health benefits of eating spinach?” Wilensky, author of a book titled Six Million Crucifixions, continued: “The pope was talking about the Jews. The pope was not referring to Nazi lips that curse Christ and Nazi hearts who still reject Christ even today. He was referring to the Jews. You know this.”

A defender of Pius, Gary Krupp, asked Wilensky whether he had reviewed the original text of the speech. Wilensky admitted that he did not have “the entire speech . . . nor do I have the original quotes in French. I assume you ask for the original in French for the sake of archival completeness, and not because you suspect the paragraph I quoted is mistranslated and/or is a misrepresentation of the original?”

Krupp, of course did suspect a mistranslation (or worse), and he was right.

With the assistance of Vatican historian (and relator of Pope Pius XII’s sainthood cause) Fr. Peter Gumpel, we reviewed the text of the speech as it was published in Discorsi e Panegirici. The quote as given by the critics does not appear therein. The ellipsis was used to link very diverse passages from different pages of Pacelli’s speech, producing a complete distortion of Pacelli’s words. (To be certain that we were not overlooking anything, we reviewed transcripts from all seven of the talks he gave in Hungary.)

Early in the talk, Pacelli spoke about biblical history. He recalled the Passion of Christ, and he mentioned the defiance of disciples, the solitude of Gethsemane, the crowning of thorns, the cynicism of Herod, and the opportunism of Pilate.

He referred to the masses that called for the Crucifixion and said they had been “deceived and excited by propaganda, lies, insults and imprecations at the foot of the Cross.” Those identified as enemies of Christ included Pontius Pilate, Herod, the Roman soldiers, the Sanhedrin, and their followers. He did not call out “all Jews” or “the Jews.”

About two pages later in the manuscript, Pacelli referred to those who were persecuting the Church at that time by doing things like expelling religion and perverting Christianity. Jews were not doing this, but Nazi Germany certainly was. The future pope was clearly equating the Nazis, not Jews, to those who persecuted the Church at earlier times.

Pacelli then returned to the theme of Christ’s sufferings during the Passion which were being repeated against the Mystical Body of Christ in modern times contrasting them with the Church’s offering of love: “Let us replace the cry of ‘Crucify’ made by Christ’s enemies, with the ‘Hosanna’ of our fidelity and our love.” Pacelli was rebuking the totalitarians of his day, not the Jews of earlier times.

Nowhere in the address did he mention or single out Jews as the specific, much less sole, enemies of Jesus Christ, past or present. Nowhere did he depict them as speaking “ out to his face,” or cite any passages from Scripture (e.g., Mathew 27: 26: “His blood be on us, and our children”) that have been misread for centuries to foment anti-Semitism. There is no legitimate way to argue that Pacelli was blaming Jews when he spoke about the enemies of Christ.

Where did the distorted quotation come from? The first use in English was by Herczl, in his Christianity and the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry (1993). Perhaps Herczl himself or the people who helped with the book falsified the quotation, but that seems unlikely. All are or were successful professionals who had no logical reason to manipulate the quotation. He, and those who have used the quote since, however, accepted too uncritically a very unreliable source.

Herczl was not present at the speech and did not even look at Pacelli’s script which can be found in Discorsi e Panegirici, a collection of Pius’s early writings first published in 1939, or even the Italian version that appeared in the Vatican newspaper. In his book, he cited a Hungarian newspaper, Nemzeti Ujsag (National Journal), with a long and controversial history as a political outlet.

According to Herczl, at the time in question Nemzeti Ujsag called itself “The Political Christian Daily Newspaper,” and he described it as “the semi-official newspaper of the Catholic Church.” That is in keeping with what National Socialists claimed at that time, which was the kind of lie Pacelli complained about in his talk.

The evidence is against Herczl. As its name implies and as numerous articles in the newspaper itself attest, Nemzeti Ujsag was a political journal, not a religious one. It was, at least in the relevant years, overtly anti-Semitic and truly despicable. Randolph L. Braham, a noted scholar in the field, called it a voice of National Socialism. Herczl himself notes that the newspaper could be considered as part of an anti-Semitic coalition, along with the “Awakening Hungarians,” an early fascist group, and the Christian Socialists, which were in Hungary strongly anti-Semitic.

It is likely that the newspaper manufactured the quotation to support its anti-Semitic position. Pacelli, after all, was criticizing the exact political position the paper held. Then as now, Vatican support was a very useful thing to claim.

Herczl and those who followed him should have been skeptical of this source. Neither he nor anyone else would have accepted what that paper said about Jews, yet with several other reliable sources available, why did he turn to an unreliable source for this crucial information about Pacelli? More importantly, why have critics like Phayer and Cornwell simply repeated the charge, relying upon this English translation of a Hebrew translation from a Hungarian translation of a speech originally made in French by a native Italian speaker?

The manufactured quotation blatantly distorted the words of the future pope. Inasmuch that quote was inconsistent with so much other evidence of Pacelli’s character, it should have been strictly scrutinized. Instead it was readily accepted and insufficiently analyzed by critics eager to discredit the papacy and the Catholic Church. They should be ashamed.



Ronald J. Rychlak is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law. His most recent book is a revised and expanded edition of Hitler, the War, and the Pope (OSV). William Doino, Jr., is a contributor to The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII (Lexington Books).


RESOURCES

The Time magazine report on the Eucharistic Congress, Religion: Eucharist in Budapest.


The exchange between Wilensky and Krupp.


Ronald L. Braham The Christian Churches of Hungary and the Holocaust.


William Doino’s Pius XII Did Help the Jews from The Times.


William Doino’s The Silence of Saul Friedlander from “On the Square.”


For an extensive collection of articles on the subject from all sides, see Pius XII and the Holocaust.

"Pope and Devil" More reviews.

Hubert Wolf's book is receiving considerable well-deserved international attention. 

This selection of reviews is taken from Amazon's page on the book.

The Vatican’s dealings with the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich have long been swathed in myth and speculation. After almost seventy years, the crucial records for the years leading up to 1939 were finally opened to the public, revealing the bitter conflicts that raged behind the walls of the Holy See. Anti-Semites and philo-Semites, adroit diplomats and dogmatic fundamentalists, influential bishops and powerful cardinals argued passionately over the best way to contend with the intellectual and political currents of the modern age: liberalism, communism, fascism, and National Socialism. Hubert Wolf explains why a philo-Semitic association was dissolved even as anti-Semitism was condemned, how the Vatican concluded a concordat with the Third Reich in 1933, why Hitler’s Mein Kampf was never proscribed by the Church, and what factors surrounded the Pope’s silence on the persecution of the Jews.

In rich detail, Wolf presents astonishing findings from the recently opened Vatican archives—discoveries that clarify the relations between National Socialism and the Vatican. He illuminates the thinking of the popes, cardinals, and bishops who saw themselves in a historic struggle against evil. Never have the inner workings of the Vatican—its most important decisions and actions—been portrayed so fully and vividly.

Author: Hubert Wolf is Professor of Church History at the University of Münster.

Reviews

“Pope and Devil is a must-read for anybody interested in the Vatican’s relationship with Germany in the tumultuous years leading up to World War II, including the hotly debated issue of ‘the silence of Pius XII.’ This book brings new complexity and insight to the debate on Pius XII’s ‘silence.’”—John W. O’Malley, S.J., author of What Happened at Vatican II

“[An] excellent examination of the Pius XI archives...No stranger to the dark side of church history, and intimately familiar with ecclesiastical dogma, politics, and procedure, Wolf presents sensitive material with admirable evenhandedness, avoiding both apology and easy condemnation...Pope and Devil gives us a behind-the-scenes exploration of what made the Vatican tick, providing the sort of background information with which political historians contextualize the decisions of secular leaders like Churchill or Roosevelt. Wolf shows that in the last months of his life Ratti became consumed with the issue of Nazi-inspired racism, and devoted much of his waning energy to it; while Pacelli, for his part, "was clear in his rejection of racial anti-Semitism, and...believed that the church had a general responsibility to support human rights." Both men, however, understood their responsibilities in the light of traditional Catholic priorities. Both viewed Catholic dogma as immutable; and both consistently put Catholic institutional objectives--understood as an essential requirement of salvation--first and foremost.”—Michael R. Marrus, Commonweal

“Hubert Wolf’s extraordinarily lucid and well-researched Pope and Devil performs the much valued task of throwing light into dark corners sans the sensationalism and tendentious argumentation that have defined too much scholarship in the area...Pope and Devil takes the reader through the labyrinthine corridors of Vatican diplomacy in the 1920s and 1930s, the political turmoil that defined those papal strategies that tried to make sense of or at least limit the damage of the rising totalitarianism inundating Europe, and the intrigue and politicking that characterized the often fraught relationship among such parties as the nuncios or Vatican ambassadors in Berlin and Munich, the papal Secretary of State and the Head of the Supreme Congregation more commonly known as the Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition. No easy feat and Wolf manages it in a way that is both enlightening and entertaining.”—Michael W. Higgins, New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal


“The Vatican’s dealings with the Third Reich during the reign of Pius XII’s predecessor, Pius XI (1922-1939), have received rather less attention. But since the archives for that pontificate were opened in 2006, our understanding has increased enormously. Herbert Wolf’s book contributes greatly to that understanding.”—John Pollard, Times Higher Education


“Wolf’s absorbing study shows in fascinating detail how ready Pius XI was to sup with authoritarian devils of both left and right in hopes of striking the best balance he could.”—Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman

“Wolf has written a very important book. It does not explain the ‘silence’ of Pius VII, though it certainly exonerates him of the charge that he was in any way sympathetic to the regime in Germany. It also reveals a man with a misplaced confidence in his own competence.”—Michael Walsh, The Tablet

La Shana Tova

Today is the second day of Tishri and the second day of Rosh Hashana 5771. 

Leshana Tova Tikoseiv Vesichoseim Le'Alter LeChaim Tovim U'Leshalom "May you be inscribed and sealed for a Good Year and for a Good and Peaceful Life"

The Secretary's Notes - Pacelli and Pius XI

In late August a news article was published online describing a new set of documents compiled from the Vatican Secret Archives.  The one I use here cam via the Irish blog Clerical Whispers  It is of considerable interest. 

The documents refer to the notes Pacelli took during his private audiences with Pius XI over the years 1930 until 1939.  Pacelli was a detail-oriented man; he recorded excellent notes which makes it easier for the historian to piece together aspects of papal decision making processes that have sometime been rather opaque and hard to understand. 

Hubert Wolf makes salient comments on these documents in his book Pope and Devil (2010).  One of the points the following article does not mention, and which Wolf writes about at some length, is the absence of notes at particular moments such as September 1935 when the Nuremberg Laws were passed.  It could be that Pacelli was on vacation or it could be that no notes were recorded because the matter was not discussed.  I hope more material will surface to help us understand more completely how Pius XI and his Secretary of State operated. 

Nonetheless, the collecting and publishing of these texts will be of value to historians.  As I have mentioned before, the wait for the records from the war years is a good thing if it challenges students and scholars to read the available material thoroughly and critically.

The article:

While recently released documentation written by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli in the 1930's does little to dispel the "black legend" of Pope Pius XII, it does provide insight into his character.


During the 10 years he served as secretary of state to Pope Pius XI, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pius XII, took detailed notes of the Pontiff's every audience.


L'Osservatore Romano (LOR) welcomed the release of what are called the "audience pages" in an extensive spread in their Sunday edition.

The "pages" were the notes taken by Pope Pius XI's secretary of state, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, during private daily audiences between himself and the Pope as well as those the Pontiff had with diplomats, Church officials and others.

Cardinal Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII, documented 1,956 such audiences over the course of the decade he served as secretary of state, from 1930-39. He left 2,627 pages of notes which have been collected, edited and now published by representatives from the Vatican's Secret Archives.

LOR's director, Gian Vian, called the entries an "until now unknown source of extraordinary interest for contemporary history."

The collection, he said, "with precision and immediacy, takes account of numerous questions, illuminating the routine work procedure in the heart of the Holy See. Through this emerges the wise energy of government of Pius XI, alongside the intelligence and absolute loyalty of Pacelli."

Current Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone wrote in the publication's preface that the documentation bears witness to the "thousands and thousands of issues (which) occupied the time and thought of Pius XI and Cardinal Pacelli over so many years … "

The subjects, he explained, range "from the most minute requests for subsidies ... to the relevant ecclesiastical and political questions, so much more complicated as the years advanced that separated the wounds of the First World War from those of the Second."

Cardinal Bertone also pointed out that with the passage of time, through documentation such as this, the future Pope Pius XII's "human and Christian stature, as a diplomat, secretary of state and Pontiff, beyond preconceived and distorted 'colorings,' is ever better delineated."

Many people impatiently await the release of documents from the Vatican archives, which they hope will shed light on Pius XII's actions during the Second World War.

He has been labeled 'the silent Pope" or "Hitler's Pope" by critics for allegedly remaining "quiet" as the Holocaust took so many lives, including those of more than 1,000 Roman Jews who were deported to Auschwitz in Oct. 1943.

But many other scholars, led by Pope Benedict XVI, continue to staunchly defend the war-time Pope for having done what was within his power to provide aid, assistance and protection to all civilians, including Jews, often in secrecy.

The lack of open access to the Vatican archives concerning Pius XII's pontificate has left many questions in the air, but answers appear to be on the horizon as the Holy See is working to organize and release the extensive war-time documentation in the coming years.

Few answers, however, will be found in this regard in this most recent publication, as the prefect of the Archives, Archbishop Sergio Pagano, explained in an additional LOR article.

The point of the notes, he said, was to document issues dealing principally with the correspondence between the secretariat of state and a variety of ecclesiastic, government and civil offices and individuals.

He explained that while "it's obvious to think that subjects of politics or government of the Church, (and) obviously even more relevant (issues), were the subject of the attention of the Pope and his secretary of state ... at least as far as we can say today, Pacelli did not take notes (of these conversations), or at the most he limited himself to writing some annotations on the very documents that were the object of discussion."

Concluding, Archbishop Pagano noted the diligence of the future Pope during his meetings with Pope Pius XI, saying that "no one" at that time in the secretariat of state documented "with equal systematic method, continuity and precision as did the secretary of state Pacelli."

Responding to Gary Krupp

After yesterday's post I received an email from Gary Krupp, founder of Pave The Way, on organisation with an impressive record of philanthropic work designed to build bridges between, among others, different faith communities.  PTW has invested much time and effort in collecting an enormous amount of data on Eugenio Pacelli.  I have corresponded with Gary over the last couple of years and while I respect his desire to build bridges over Pius XII, I do not agree with the conclusions PTW have reached and published. 

After reading Gary's email, which is published below in the previous post, I thought that his challenges deserved a more serious response.

My comments appear in red type.

Paul, Let me make this simple for you. Here are just a few of the actual documents, which support Michael Hesemann's claim:


http://www.ptwf.org/Downloads/Jan_39%20_Docs.pdf

The documents presented consist of -

1.  A dispatch list, dated 30 November 1938, indicating, in Italian, to whom a message was to be sent.  In this case it is the list of Nuncios and Apostolic Delegates asking their assistance in helping persecuted converted Jews from Italy and Germany.  (It is reproduced in Actes et Documents Volume 6, pages 49-50)  It was sent under Pacelli's signature.

2.  Document 9 January 1939.  Latin letter requesting in the name of the Pope, Pius XI, the formation of assistance committees for non-Aryan converts.  (ADSS 6, pages 48-49)

3.  A dispatch list, dated 9 January 1939, indicating, in Italian, to whom the previous appeal was to be sent.

4. Letter 16 January 1939, in English, from the Archbishop of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh, Scotland, Andrew Thomas McDonald OSB (1871-1950) acknowledging receipt of Pacelli's letter.  McDonald informed Pacelli that a committee to assist the "stricken sufferers" has been operating for several weeks.  McDonald said he would try to encourage a national response.

5. Cutting from The Irish Press, 10 December 1938.  Report on the London meeting to address the worsening situation in Germany attended by the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Arthur Hinsley.  Cardinal Pacelli's message from the Pope was mentioned. (Referred to in ADSS 6, page 539)
Do you claim that these documents are doctored or fraudulent or that they do not say what they say?

The documents are not doctored or fraudulent.  However what they say is markedly different from what Michael Hesemann has alleged they say.  See my comments in an earlier post.

http://paulonpius.blogspot.com/2010/07/pius-xii-saved-200000-jews-after-1938.html

Hesemann's claim that Pacelli may have been responsible trying to get 200,000 Jews, converted or not, out of Germany is simply not supported by these documents.


Paul, Do you believe that there were 200,000 converted Jews in Germany November 30, 1938 just after Kristallnacht?

No I do not. The Jewish population in the Old Reich was around 202,000.  The statistics were collected by the Nazis.  They had no reason to lie.  It was official policy to get as many Jews out of Germany as physically possible.


If so, what documented evidence do you have which, can prove your theory?

Again, I have written on this subject.  In summary, there were not 200,000 converted Jews in the Greater German Reich at the end of November 1938.  The total Jewish population, based on Nazi statistics in the 1939 census, came to 259,000.  It is beyond the realms of any realistic assertion to suggest that 200,000 of these Jews were converts. Read my post.

http://paulonpius.blogspot.com/2010/07/population-figures-on-non-aryan.htmlBy the way, anyone who accesses our website will only see actual documents and eyewitness testimonies. They are free to draw their own conclusions. The mainstream historians books you believe this person should read, seemingly to be from those who only condemn Pope Pius XII.

"Condemn" is far too harsh a word and unfair.  Mainstream historians do what Michael Hesemann does not.  They examine the evidence and attempt to reconstruct the historical record without a predetermined agenda.  The crusade to canonise Pius XII is sinking rather badly when claims such as those promoted by Hesemann are published as historical fact.

Let me recommend Prof. Ron Rychlak’s recently updated book Hitler the War and The Pope.

I read the earlier edition and was unconvinced by his arguments.  Any endeavour that begins with a presumption or conclusion runs the risk of prejudicing any line of argument from the outset.  Reproducing copious amount of newspaper reports and published documentation with no serious contextual work is not satisfying.
Gary, I admire your commitment to seeking resolution for many of the world's trouble spots, but I ask, yet again, to allow historians to get on with what they do.  Having read Michael Hesemann's "claims" I believe he is doing your organisation damage and eroding your credibility.
 
Regards,
 
Paul