Pope Francis and the BBC

School has closed for the summer holidays and I have time, for the first time in a while, to resume posting!  This post came about after a conversation in my parish a week or so ago.  I was unaware of any of the events that follow which points to just how few ripples this news story generated.

The Pope and the BBC

One of my favourite TV programs has been, and still is, The Golden Girls.  Its waspish humour, deft handling of issues that, for the 1980s at least, were considered somewhat “delicate” for mainstream entertainment, and dealing with the realities of four women of a “certain age” still gives me great laughs.  Estelle Getty’s character  - Sophia Petrillo – was probably the glue that held the show together.  Sophia had a great one liner that would launch her into one of her stories – “picture this … Sicily 1910 …” – and would often earn her the incredulous look of her daughter, Dorothy, Bea Arthur, and the remark, after a suitable pause, “ma, you’re making it up”.  She usually was.  However, what is funny on a sitcom, is not funny when it is presented as historical fact.

In July 2016 Pope Francis visited Poland to join with millions of young people in World Youth Day.  As a part of the journey he made a visit to the former death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 29 July. Francis followed in the footsteps of John Paul II and Benedict XVI who also stood in what is the largest Jewish cemetery in the world.  And like his predecessors, he stood in silence.

That evening in its regular news broadcast the BBC reported on the pope’s visit.  In language that points to the growing gulf between people of faith, good people of different faith, good people of little or no faith, well-meaning journalists under pressure to produce the seconds of “sound bite” for the editors, the news said quite clearly that the Pope’s silence at Auschwitz reflected the “silence” of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust.  I want to believe the journalist was, as David Alton described in a blog entry, simply lazy and had not done their homework. 

I have not heard the BBC report and have not been able to find it, a point the blogger Catholic Voices made reference to as they re-posted Lord Alton’s blog entry.

Reading the text version of the pope’s visit to Auschwitz I was generally impressed by the level of awareness of Catholic Christian practice, even if the reporter did seem impressed by the pope’s “white robes and skullcap”.

It was this sentence that caused considerable offence:

“Silence was the response of the Catholic Church when Nazi Germany demonised Jewish people and then attempted to eradicate Jews from Europe”. 

Several generations of gradual historical amnesia and sloppy reporting meant that many people were probably not aware of the import of the journalist’s words.  Certainly there was no worldwide upset.  Reactions, such as that of Anne and Ian Dawson, have been few and far between.

The contentious statement is bald, generalised and historically inaccurate.  It demonstrates a lack of basic knowledge that could have been remedied by some equally basic research work online.  I wholeheartedly agree with Lord Alton.  This is the mark of lazy journalism.

I mention Lord Alton because within twenty-four hours he had written a measured and restrained rebuttal of the BBC’s report, especially when he referred to the comment made by the same reporter immediately after the statement about “silence”.

The BBC’s reporter clearly didn’t see the irony of stating that the Catholic Church had remained silent in the face of a genocide only to then describe how Polish Catholics were arrested and killed for sheltering Jews and how Fr. Maximilian Kolbe was executed at Auschwitz after taking the place of another prisoner. Why was he in Auscxhwitz [sic] in the first place? He had been arrested for publishing a denunciation of the Nazis in his magazine, Knight, which had a circulation of around one million people. Hardly silence, then.

I can only agree.  Lord Alton continued outlining the very familiar and accessible history of the church and its condemnation of racism and anti-Semitism along with references to action during the war.  My only complaints are to do with the references to Pinchas Lapide’s unverifiable assertion regarding the rescue of 860,000 Jews and citing Gary Krupp’s work.  Since I have written a length on both Lapide and Krupp I suggest the interested reader look for themselves.

Lana Adler, writing in The Forward on the same day penned a more perceptive article than the BBC but remained firmly positioned in the “the Catholic Church has come a long way, but there is much more to be done” camp; a position that does have validity especially when dealing with the question of the Archivo Segreto Vaticano files on Pius XII.  Adler’s criticism is a timely reminder that the last major opening of files was in 2006 but also a challenge to historians to keep looking through material that is already available.

Formal complaints were made and on 9 December the BBC admitted the report was biased and unfair.  The Editorial Complaints Unit said in its judgement:

The reporter said “Silence was the response of the Catholic Church when Nazi Germany demonised Jewish people and then attempted to eradicate Jews from Europe”. In the judgement of the ECU, this did not give due weight to public statements by successive Popes or the efforts made on the instructions of Pius XII to rescue Jews from Nazi persecution, and perpetuated a view which is at odds with the balance of evidence.

Lord Alton wrote a response to the ruling under the heading BBC owes us the truth on the Church and the Nazis. And while much of his article is well written, I am not convinced by references, again, to Lapide and the oft-toted theories of KGB plots ordered from the Kremlin to smear the memory of Pius XII.

Is there anything to be learned from one line made by a harried and hurried journalist who had not checked their facts before speaking?  Yes, there is.  My senior history students will share their wisdom: “If in doubt, check it out!”  Or as Dorothy so often said to her mother, Sophia: “Ma, that’s not true, you just made it up!”

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Pope Francis and Pope Pius XII

Francis and Pius

Pope Francis has been Bishop of Rome for the better part of two years.  Since his election in March 2013 he has taken the Catholic world by storm – by changing absolutely nothing, but doing just about everything differently.  His famous “Who am I to judge?” quote on the plane from Rio to Rome is probably the best way to see this extraordinary man who is returning the papacy to something more in line with the vision of Vatican II and more attuned to the needs of the modern world.

Francis instinctively “gets it”.  He is not a theologian or philosopher by trade although he is well versed and fluent in both disciplines.  He is not consumed by the “culture wars” that dominated much of western and first world Catholic discussion, debate and diatribe over the last twenty years although he is very familiar with the context and content of these movements.  He is not remotely interested in the liturgical angst generated among neo-conservatives and those determined to “reform the reform” of the Council, although he is clearly concerned that the liturgical life of the Church be executed with reverence, respect and, to use a common phrase, “noble simplicity”.

This pope made his agenda clear from his first appearance on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica when he bowed in acknowledgement and reverence towards the thousands gathered in the piazza.  Francis takes very seriously the pontifical title – servus servorum Dei – servant of the servants of God.  People come first, everything else takes its turn after that.  Does this mean he is not interested in theology?  Of course not; but this pope has indicated in his words and actions that theology has to be linked to the lived experience of people and not the other way around.  His gestures, too many to even include a few examples, show a shepherd who loves being in the midst of his sheep, and everyone else’s too.

Papa Francesco the first Jesuit pope is also a shrewd operator.  He has shown in his gradual series of appointments a keen awareness of the need to reform the Roman curia and make it more transparent and accountable.  To those outside the Catholic Church and unfamiliar with Catholic “church speak” Francis’ actions in the area of reform may appear strange.  However, to those of us who grew up “on the inside” and “speak the language”, this pope has been gently rattling gilded cages, stirring a few pots and letting it be known that although he smiles and laughs more than any of his predecessors, he is pope.  The irony is that one of Francis’ major reforms is de-centralisation of papal power and the empowerment of local bishops’ conferences.

A good few neo-conservative groups around the English-speaking world are unhappy.  However they are in a bind.  Having proclaimed from the roof tops since the election of John Paul II in 1978 that devotion to the Holy Father, acceptance, often unquestionably, of papal statements, regardless of their provenance or intent, is one of the litmus tests of orthodoxy, they either have to accept that Francis is THE pope and so do as they have done, or move on.  Some have gone so far to say the church is heading towards schism.  This is the talk of fantasy and delusion.

One of the neo-conservative gripes is Francis’ perceived attitude towards the cause of Pope Pius XII.

Pope Francis has said little on Pius XII.  I believe there are five main reasons for this.

1. Francis is the first pope in modern times to have no direct connection with Europe during the fascist and Nazi eras or World War II.  He was too young (born 17.12.1936) to be anyway involved.  Unlike his immediate predecessors Francis has had no experience of totalitarian regimes other than the military juntas in Argentina, which while unquestionably brutal, were not murderous in the same way the Nazis and Communists were in the 1930s through to the 1950s.  Francis is an “outsider” to the events that John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI lived through.  I suggest that this gives him an objectivity that is needed in any discussion about Pius.  Francis is sympathetic to Pius, but he is not driven by a need to defend him or the institution of the papacy.

2. Francis has his priorities as bishop of Rome.  The canonization of Pius XII is not one of them.  He has canonized a number of women and men, but these cases were in the last stages of the process by the time he was elected.  This pope does not appear to see a need for a great number of canonisations – we have enough saints for the time being!  Indeed during his visit to Albania in September the pope’s embrace of Fr Ernst Simoni and Sr Marije Kaleta who had spent many years persecuted by the regime of Enver Hoxha summed up Francis’ priorities – he is here to be a shepherd; nothing else will stand in the way of his pastoral ministry.

3. Francis is content to allow historians and archivists to do their jobs.  There have been media reports suggesting that Francis is keen to get the archives opened up and the documents made available to historians.  It would be very odd if he had the opposite opinion.  Nonetheless, Francis respects conventions and protocols when they do not impinge on more important area.  The Secret Archives of the Vatican for Pius XII will be opened - eventually.  Pope Francis will not, I think, loose any sleep over the timing.

4. Francis does not fear or seem terribly worried about church history, good or bad.  He has said on many occasions that the church has to be open and honest about its past, seek forgiveness for past wrongs and make amends.  And while this is often seen within the context of the ongoing scandals related to sex-abuse by members of the clergy, I have no doubt that the pope believes it applies to all aspects of the church’s history.  That said, there is another dimension that comes from this Latin American pope, namely his non-European frames of reference.  John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI were modern men within the contexts of their times, but they were European men.  Their world-views were shaped through European lenses.  This in no way detracts from their significant contributions to the life of the church, especially that of John XXIII, but Francis brings a world-view shaped by life outside of Europe, where the majority of the world’s Catholics now live.

5. Francis values the adult relationship between Catholics and Jews and will certainly do nothing to damage it.  I believe he considers questions about Pius XII and the Holocaust are important and valid, but are not what the dialogue and friendship in 2014 is built on.  Catholics and Jews are now at a point where the trust between both sides on many levels is so strong that argument and disagreement is, and indeed, should be a part of the relationship.  I believe Francis is saying, as his predecessors also said in their own ways, “there is no going back, we will walk forward together side by side.”

These thoughts are things that have been floating around in my head for some time.  Internet traffic on Pius XII has virtually ground to a halt since Francis’ election – and there is some good in that.  Many of the neo-conservative sites have gone very quiet as well – there is simply nothing new to say; and if loyalty to the Holy Father is one of your group’s self-identifying traits, then you can’t say what he hasn’t said!  For those of us who have been waiting for the archives to open will just have to be patient.  What gives me a cheerful optimism is Francis’ cheerful optimism – all in good time!

I took this photo when I was in Rome last year.  

I confess that I am an unabashed Francis fan!

David Kertzer Book Panel: The Pope and Mussolini ▬ February 26, 2014

Professors Kevin Madigan, Suzanne Steward-Steinberg  and Kevin Spicer join Professor David Kertzer in a discussion about "The Pope and Mussolini", at the Watson Institute. 

Professor Kertzer opened his presentation with a reference to the February edition of "First Things" and quoted from an article on Pius XI by Filup Mazurczak.  Mazurczak's article is a somewhat "rose-tinted glasses" view of the papacy of Pius XI.  The truth, as Kertzer reminded us, is somewhat more complicated.

At the heart of the book is an extensive examination of the role of the church in keeping Mussolini in power.  It is the stuff of cloak and dagger crime fiction, except it is assuredly historical fact.  Kertzer's 16,000 words of references, notes and archival file numbers dispells any notion of flights of anti-Catholic or anti-papal fantasy.  Kertzer writes history.

One of the many characters who emerge in this story is the Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi, the pope's private messenger to Mussolini.  This man was obsessed with ideas of Jewish plots and, without the pope's knowledge, "kept hectoring Mussolini that he was under threat by the Jews and he better take action against them".  Pius kept Tacchi Venturi because of his access to Il Duce not because of his antisemitic paranoia that was certainly not shared by the pope.  Tacchi Venturi proved himself so useful that Pius XII kept him in his position of unofficial mediator with Mussolini.

By mid-1930s Pius XI had doubts about Mussolini, but he was surrounded by curial officials who were determined to preserve the relationship between the Church and fascist state.  The most disturbing reality that emerges is the Italian government's reliance on the Secretariat of State and, in particular, the Secretary, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli to shape and steer Catholic opinion around the world in a pro-Italian fashion especially after the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia.

Then there is the sad deal between Mussolini and the pope just before the passing of the first antisemitic laws in Italy.  In return for the silence of the Church over Italy's new anti-Jewish laws of July 1938, the regime would ensure a steady stream of benefits, gifts and privileges.

From the outset Kertzer underscored the importance of "triangulation" of archives in order to corroborate the thousands of documents from the ASV, Italian state archives and other sources.  No fact could be allowed to stand alone; it must be put into its context against other sources.  I interpret this to be David Kertzer's all too familiar experience with the tactics of those who seek, through thinly veiled smear campaigns, to impugn the academic and personal integrity of historians who set about to do their job, and do it well. It is a point that Kevin Madigan also makes.

The presentation of all speakers makes it clear that the historical narrative is far more nuanced and complex than the "official" narrative maintained by the Vatican and elements of restorationist and neo-conservative Catholic groups.  Kertzer's book makes for uncomfortable reading, and so it should.  However, if there is to be an honest and open discussion of the role of the church, the papacy and individuals within the Vatican, the acceptance of a less than perfect history must be the starting point.

At the end what David Kertzer's research has revealed is sadly simple.  Pius XI was a tragic figure, a man with a medieval world view, limited in his ability to respond and deal with the threat and seductive charm of fascism, who came to see too late in his life that he had indeed supped with the devil. 

Kevin Madigan reviews David Kertzer's "The Pope and Mussolini".

If you haven't bought your copy of The Pope and Mussolini you are missing out on a sterling piece of historical research that establishes a new benchmark in the study of the papacy in the twentieth century and its dealings with fascism in Italy.  

David Kertzer tells a gripping story that would be worthy of Ian Fleming and the Bond novels, except that unlike Mr Bond, this story is true, disturbing and very uncomfortable.  It is another reminder that histories on the relations between the Catholic Church and the regimes of the right in the first half of last century are still evolving.  Kertzer's examination of documents from the Vatican archives along with corroboration in Italian state archives presents the most complete picture to date on the devilishly difficult path Pius XI, Cardinal Pacelli and their fellow workers in the Vatican found themselves treading from 1922 onwards.

Il Duce and Il Papa

Kevin Madigan's article, originally published on Israel-Commentary, gives a thought provoking review of Kertzer's book.  I am grateful for Professor Madigan's permission to publish his article here.

How the Vatican Aided Mussolini

National memories like personal ones, tend to be self-flattering, soothing, and often glorious. So it comes as a shock when historical research shows those memories to be false. It is even more shocking when research unearths new historical narratives that are awkward, shameful, or even intolerable. Since the end of the Second World War, both the Catholic Church and Italy have treasured heroic memories of their supposedly contentious relations with Benito Mussolini, his Fascist regime, and the anti-Semitic racial laws of 1938. The traditional, self-consoling narrative goes something like this:

Brava gente, the good people of Italy opposed Mussolini’s Fascist regime and the racial laws it produced. The Catholic Church in Italy resisted Italian Fascism. Its cantankerous pope, Pius XI, fought Mussolini and his dictatorship, as did other high-ranking Vatican churchmen. When Italy’s racial laws were published in 1938, church leaders protested them vigorously. They were appalled that Jews would be disenfranchised, marginalized professionally and educationally, ostracized socially, defined by race, and declared ethnically and culturally inferior to their European neighbors. Only semi-heathen and politically illiberal Germany could possibly have championed this sort of pre-Christian tribalism and discrimination.

David Kertzer, the distinguished historian of modern Italy at Brown University and author of the brilliant The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara,(Vintage, 1998), tells a much different story in his latest, meticulously researched, and captivating book. The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe (Random House, 529 pages) is based in large part on tens of thousands of documents made available only in 2006 in the Vatican Archives, covering the pontificate of Pius XI (1922–1939), as well as a treasure trove of newly available sources for the same period in the Jesuit archives, along with the rich Fascist archives for these years. Among Kertzer’s conclusions are that the Vatican bureaucracy, far from resisting Mussolini, enabled and sustained the Mussolini dictatorship. Several important Jesuits, including the order’s Superior General, helped support the Fascist regime and tried to muzzle papal criticism of Hitler. These Jesuits also did much to sustain the notion that there was a worldwide conspiracy of Judeo-Bolsheviks intent on subverting healthy Christian society and establishing a Communist empire in the West. Not only did the church fail to resist the 1938 racial laws; church-approved writings provided much of the rationale for discriminating against Italy’s tiny Jewish population. Among those who suppressed criticism of the Italian racial laws and sought to ease tensions between the pope, Mussolini, and Hitler was the Vatican secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli, who would succeed Pius XI in 1939.

Most of all, Pius XI and the dictator, who both came to power in 1922, depended on each other for support and for achieving mutual goals. They shared many political ideas; both loathed democracy and Communism. Pius gave sacred legitimacy and removed political obstacles to Mussolini’s Fascist regime. Mussolini restored many ecclesiastical prerogatives that had been lost over the previous decades. Only near the end of Pius XI’s pontificate, when the aging pope grew enraged with Mussolini and his friend and ally Hitler, did the unholy union begin to unravel. But the unraveling was knit up after Pacelli became Pius XII.

As he rose to power, the anti-clerical and irreligious Mussolini (his first publication: “God Does Not Exist”) felt that he needed the support of Italy’s Catholics. Among the obstacles to his rise to power had been the Italian Popular Party, founded by the Sicilian priest Luigi Sturzo in 1919 with the support of Benedict XV. Intended to draw Catholics away from the Socialists with a program of progressive Catholicism, it was by 1922 among the country’s largest parties. The Fascists saw the Popular Party as one of several countrywide organizations that blocked their path to power, and to clear the way, they beat priests, raided party meetings, and sacked party buildings. Unlike Benedict, Pius XI had never embraced the Popular Party, partly because of its professed independence from the Vatican. In addition, both the new pope and Mussolini had profound misgivings about democracy—and both hated Communism and feared a Bolshevik takeover of the West. In the eyes of Pius XI, Mussolini and the Fascists would provide an indispensable bulwark against Communism and other detestable aspects of modernity.

Eventually, the new pope concluded that it would be best to throw his support to the Fascist Party. In 1922, he had his secretary of state send a letter to bishops forbidding priests from joining any party, and in 1926 the Popular Party was disbanded altogether.

Pius XI had done a critically important favor for Mussolini, and upon Il Duce’s assumption of power in 1922, the new leader was eager to communicate his gratitude to the new pope. He ordered his men to kneel in prayer for a moment. As Kertzer observes, Mussolini was well aware that the support he had received from the church was “priceless.” Pius XI made sure that never again would the Vatican-vetted Jesuit journal Civiltà Cattolica denounce Fascism. Indeed it would legitimate it. Just before the first election held under Mussolini, in 1924, the journal reminded readers of all the benefits provided by the Fascists and of how tirelessly Mussolini had already worked to improve church-government relations.

For his part, Mussolini pleased the Vatican by restoring crucifixes to the country’s classrooms, adding church holidays to the civil calendar, and showering the church with funds to rebuild places of worship damaged in the Great War. In 1921, in one of his earliest speeches as leader, Mussolini pledged that Fascism would help restore a Christian society in Italy. He would build a Catholic state appropriate to a Catholic nation.

The two most powerful men in Italy had fallen into what Kertzer calls a “fatal embrace.” The pope had cast his lot with the former “priest-eater” for the benefits he would provide the Catholic Church in Italy. The Fascist revolution, Kertzer concludes, had become “a clerico-Fascist revolution.”

Then, crisis. In 1924, the leader of the United Socialist Party, Giacomo Matteotti, was murdered by Fascist thugs (following a broad hint from Mussolini that they should do so), after he had criticized Fascists from the Chamber of Deputies and suggested that the recent election, marred by violence, be annulled. Mussolini’s government was in trouble, and the pope “decided to do all he could to save” Mussolini and his regime. The Vatican’s daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published an editorial reminding its Catholic readers to obey the civil authorities, as Romans 13 instructed them to do. Catholic party members were given a special warning not to help bring down the Fascist regime. The pope sent an emissary to Mussolini to convey his support. In early September, the pope instructed university students that Italian Catholics could never cooperate with Socialists, a parliamentary alliance that would be required if Mussolini were to be deposed.

In the end, Fascism did not fall, “not least,” Kertzer concludes, “due to the pope’s constant efforts to undermine any possible alliance to put an end to Fascist rule.”

Flash forward to 1935, when Mussolini shocked the world by invading Ethiopia. In response, the League of Nations imposed economic sanctions on Italy, and American newspapers began to focus attention on similarities between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. President Roosevelt denounced Italian Fascism for the first time. Mussolini turned to the Vatican for help. Secretary of State Cardinal Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, was at the ready. He helped organize international resistance to the boycott. He also met with several European ambassadors and threatened that there would be no peace until the sanctions were lifted, which the League did on July 7. Cardinal Pacelli had done the first of many favors for Mussolini. Throughout Mussolini’s time in power, Pacelli was Il Duce’s most powerful and reliable ally in the Vatican. 

By that time, a confidential intermediary between Pope Pius XI and Mussolini, Father Pietro Tacchi Venturi, S.J. (1861–1956), had long been attempting to persuade Il Duce of something that many of his fellow Jesuits and Catholic intellectuals believed: that the greatest enemy of the state (and the church) was “the worldwide Jewish-Masonic plutocracy.” This had not been a part of Mussolini’s ideology. In an interview held with the widely read German Jewish journalist Emil Ludwig, he declared that he saw no racial or Jewish problem in Italy. That would change.

In a book replete with intriguing and unsavory characters, Tacchi Venturi is surely the most conniving—and among the most influential. A “powerbroker extraordinaire,” as Kertzer calls him, he hurried from one ministerial office to the other.¹ The Jesuit was discreet, but his bond with Mussolini did not go unobserved. Romans dubbed him “Mussolini’s confessor.” He had taken upon himself the task of alerting Mussolini to the threat posed by Western Jews as well as those in Central and Eastern Europe. This was not church doctrine. While Pius XI had—at least at one time—believed that the “hordes” of Jews in Eastern Europe posed a threat to the health of Christian society, he never thought Italy’s tiny Jewish community (one-tenth of 1 percent of the Italian population) was in any way an enemy of the state or the church. But Tacchi Venturi made no such distinction between Eastern and Western Jews. He believed the Jews sought revolution, embraced Bolshevism, and wished to destroy current society and dominate the world by themselves, “as their Talmud prescribes.” Mussolini was, the Jesuit tried to persuade him, the victim of a Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik conspiracy. The League of Nations, under the domination of “the Jews and Masons,” was aiming to end Fascism and the Mussolini regime. Their goal? To install a Judeo-Bolshevik “empire in Italy.”

Under pressure from the British and French, and feeling himself friendless, Mussolini was quickly seduced by this view, and he eventually saw to the passage of Italy’s 1938 racial laws. He justified them in part with the observation that the new anti-Jewish laws would be no harsher than those that the popes themselves had for centuries imposed on the Jews in the Papal States. He surely even viewed them as more liberal, for as the text of the agreement worked out secretly between Tacchi Venturi and Mussolini put it—an agreement made in the pope’s name just before the announcement of the racial laws—some of the more odious anti-Semitic restrictions would not be put back in place:

As for the Jews, the distinctive caps—of whatever color—will not be brought back, nor the ghettoes, much less will their belongings be confiscated. The Jews, in a word, can be sure that they will not be subject to treatment worse than that which was accorded them for centuries and centuries by the popes who hosted them in the Eternal City and in the lands of their temporal domain.

For Tacchi Venturi and the Jesuits who had composed anti-Semitic articles for decades in the Vatican-vetted Civiltà Cattolica, the racial laws represented the realization of all their religio-political fantasies. The Jews would at last be subject to restrictions aimed at protecting Christian society from their noxious influence. For its part, the Holy See agreed not to criticize the anti-Semitic laws. Given the history of the papacy’s merciless treatment of the Jews in Rome, it was hardly in a position to do so, even if it wished to.

Tacchi Venturi was not the only Jesuit on whom Mussolini knew he could rely or who was overjoyed at the passage of the racial laws. Elected in 1915 to his post as general superior of the order, Wodzimierz Ledóchowski (1866–1942) was the Polish priest who would hold that powerful position for over a quarter century. Ledóchowski did nothing to challenge and much to bolster the belief of both leaders in the existence of a worldwide conspiracy of Jews aimed at undermining healthy Christian societies and bolshevizing the West. He was quite open in his enthusiasm for Mussolini’s Fascist regime, so much so that he effectively neutralized much ecclesiastical and all Jesuit criticism of the regime. In 1936, for example, an article critical of Fascism was published in the Jesuit journal America. Through his ambassador, Mussolini made it known he was displeased. Ledóchowski, as superior general of the Jesuit order, immediately fired the journal’s anti-Fascist editor and replaced him with a new one, who was enthusiastic for the Fascist cause. Ledóchowski observed to the Italian ambassador to the Holy See that attacks on Musssolini for waging war in Ethiopa were “simply a pretext from which international Judaism is profiting in order to advance its attack on Western civilization.”

The view at the top of the Vatican, however, was changing. In 1936, Pope Pius XI, at the urging of the German bishops, prepared an encyclical urging the Nazi government to respect the terms of its 1933 Concordat with the church. Secretary of State Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, was reluctant to antagonize Hitler and advised the pontiff against issuing his criticism in the form of an encyclical. Instead, Pacelli suggested, the pope should simply send Hitler a letter to be shared only with the German bishops. Pius XI rebuffed Pacelli, and in March 1937, bishops and priests throughout Germany read from their pulpits the papal encyclical “With Burning Anxiety,” a critique of Nazi anti-Catholicism. At the same time, the Holy Office had been working on a separate document, recording a list of fundamental principles of Nazism that the church deemed to be in grave error. Among these principles were passages clearly taken from Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Throughout the drafting project, Ledóchowski did all he could to prevent the pope from denouncing Hitler. He urged the pope to “avoid going into questions that are very difficult and subtle.” In a handwritten letter in 1936, Ledóchowski urged the pope to issue a worldwide warning about the “terrible danger that grows more menacing each day.” The danger came from Moscow’s atheistic Communist propaganda—all the product of Jews, he said—while “the great world press, it too under Jewish control, barely speaks of it.” He advised: “An encyclical on this argument [would] lead not only the Catholics but others as well to a more energetic and better organized resistance.”

Sharing Ledóchowski’s belief that Communism posed the graver danger, Pius XI agreed to have a special encyclical prepared and, over the following months, frequently sent him drafts for his comments and suggestions. Unhappy that they said nothing about the Jews, Ledóchowski kept pushing the pope to add language linking Jews to the Communist danger. 

“It seems necessary to us in such an encyclical,” Ledóchowski advised, in reaction to one such draft:

at least to make an allusion to the Jewish influence, being certain that not only were the intellectual authors of Communism all Jews, but also that the communist movement in Russia was staged by Jews. And now, too, although not always openly in every region, if you look more deeply into it, it is the Jews who are the primary champions and promoters of Communist propaganda.

Over the course of his pontificate, Pius XI grew more suspicious of Hitler’s racism, which he took to be incompatible with the Catholic doctrine of creation. He was appalled when Mussolini invited Hitler to visit Italy. Indeed, Pius XI was so upset with the prospect of Hitler’s disgracing his beloved nation that he choked up in the company of aides and left the city for the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo. After Hitler left, Pius complained that the colossal tribute to Hitler was just the latest sign of Italy’s servility to Germany.

Pius had good reason to rue. In the diocese of Orte, for example, the Franciscans covered their friary with Nazi flags and decorated their bell tower with swastikas. As a train carrying the two Fascist leaders passed, they chanted: “Viva Mussolini! Viva Hitler!” It is not impossible that Hitler’s visit was related to the timing of Mussolini’s anti-Semitic campaign, announced shortly thereafter. “Mussolini,” Kertzer concludes, “was eager to impress the Nazi leadership and undoubtedly thought that nothing would please it more than taking aim at Italy’s Jews.”

Soon Pius XI would commission the admirable American Jesuit, Father John Lafarge, who had written a book against American racial injustice, to draft a secret encyclical on racism and anti-Semitism. Ledóchowski was outraged. “The pope is mad,” Ledóchowski thundered. The Jesuit superior general required that Lafarge be accompanied by two colleagues of his choosing as he drafted the encyclical. When the three Jesuits delivered the text to their superior Ledóchowski, they assumed the Jesuit general would send it directly on to the pope. But for seven months, Ledóchowski kept the draft encyclical far from the Throne of Peter. Pius XI died in 1939 before the so-called secret encyclical against racism could be published.

When Pacelli was elected Pius XI’s successor, Kertzer reports, “Mussolini and the other Fascist leaders felt as if they had woken up to find an irritating sore that had long plagued them was miraculously gone.” Within 48 hours of his election, Pius XII summoned the German ambassador, Diego von Bergen, and said he was eager to assure the Nazi government that he sought a new era of understanding. After telling Bergen how close he felt to the German people as a result of his many years in Munich and Berlin, the new Pope came to his main point. He understood, he said, that different countries adopted different forms of government. Amazingly, he concluded that “it was not the pope’s role to judge what system other countries chose.” While much attention has been paid to Pius XII’s relations with the genocidal Nazi regime, until now very little has been written on the same man’s earlier role in quelling criticism of the Nazi and Fascist regimes and in preserving the Vatican’s good relations with Mussolini. Indeed, there is a serious movement within the Catholic Church to make Pius XII a saint. Will the new material Kertzer has uncovered and expertly analyzed make it into his canonization dossier? Not very likely. More likely, Pacelli’s apologists, ever alert to protect Pius XII no matter what the evidence suggests, will (if recent history is any guide) accuse Kertzer of all manner of scholarly dereliction.

On the other hand, intellectually honest historians who have the requisite philological and historical expertise will credit Kertzer with a remarkable achievement in bringing to light, through researches wide in scope and profound in depth, a previously hidden history. And Roman Catholics eager to purge their church of all vestiges of anti-Semitism will welcome his exposé of this unhappy and largely unfaced history. Perhaps Francis I—pope, Jesuit, and philo-Semite—will finally enable historians to uncover this history in all its fullness.

Footnotes

1 One of the strangest chapters in Tacchi Venturi’s curious life was a mysterious attempt to murder him by a young man who got into his apartment and stabbed the Jesuit priest with a paper knife. Tacchi Venturi did everything he could to convince the police that he had been the target of an international assassination attempt. Based on oddities in the story and the physical evidence, the police disbelieved him.  In fact, the reasons for attacking him were personal and not political.  As it turned out, the attempt on his life had been made by a young man with whom, at least according to a police informant, the Jesuit priest may have had illicit relations.  As the Fascist police were not anxious to look into the personal life of the Jesuit who was so close to both Mussolini and Pius XI, or look into his possible relations with boys or young men, they were content to bring the investigation to a close.  The attacker was never found.

About the Author

Kevin J. Madigan is Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School and the author, with Jon D. Levenson, of Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews (Yale University Press, 2008).