Together in His Name

 Pope Pius XII and Hitler

By Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza

Published on The Catholic Herald, June 8, 2001.

Reprinted on June 12, 2001 with permission from Bishop Joseph Fiorenza’s office.

This past month the Houston Chronicle's Washington reporter, Cragg Hines, twice wrote about the "silence" of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust.  I responded to his distortions, which continue the big lie about this Pope.  One wonders why there seems to be a deliberate effort to discredit Pius XII when from 1939 to his death in 1958, there was universal praise for the courageous efforts he took to save hundreds of thousand of Jews and others from certain death.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, the noted historian, has said that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice in the United States. I do not believe the Houston Chronicle or Cragg Hines are prejudiced but one cannot deny that Schlesinger is right about his judgment of certain intellectual circles today which perpetuate the anti-Catholic bigotry that Pius XII was Hitler's Pope.  In these circles anti-Catholicism, which has been called "the anti-Semitism of intellectuals," is in vogue

What happened to change the universal praise of Pope Pius XII to condemnation for his alleged silence?  Let's examine the record.  Pius XII died on October 11, 1958.  The outpouring of praise and gratitude from the Jewish world for this Pope was enormous. Golda Meir, the Israeli representative to the United Nations, said, "During the ten years of Nazi terror, when our people went through the horrors of martyrdom, the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and to commiserate with their nations."  The chief Rabbi of Rome said: "More than anyone else, we had the opportunity to appreciate the great kindness, filled with compassion and magnanimity, that the Pope displayed during the terrible years of persecution and terror, when it seemed there was no hope for us.  The Jewish Post (Winnipeg) reported: "it is understandable why the death of Pope Pius XII should have called forth expressions of sincere grief from practically all sections of American Jewry. There probably was not a single ruler of our generation who did more to help the Jews in their hour of greatest tragedy... than the late Pope. The 1943-44 American Jewish Yearbook reported that Pius XII "took an unequivocal stand against the oppression of Jews throughout Europe.”

This outpouring of Jewish gratitude for Pius XII, together with the many references in The New York Times during the war years, are strong testimonies to the courageous actions taken by this Pope to save an estimated 860,000 Jews, while the Vatican was surrounded and under close surveillance by Hitler's army. What happened that changed the praise of the Pope to scorn for his "silence?"

It began in 1963, five years after Pius's death, with the play called, "The Deputy" by the German Holf  Hochhuth.  In the play the Pope was charged with indifference towards Nazism and "silence" in face of the Holocaust. This play began a series of vicious attacks on Pius's reputation that led many people to believe the myth that he was anti-Semitic and a Nazi sympathizer. It led to other books that continued the attack and repeated the "big lie" about the Pope. Once a lie is repeated often enough, especially in books widely read, even good people began to believe the lie.

In 1999 British author, John Crownwell, continued the "big lie" in a book with the provocative title, "Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII".  The book was a best-seller, despite harshly critical reviews.  Newsweek called it “scalding and deeply flawed, filled with non-existent secrets aimed to shock.”  Another review wrote: “Hitler’s Pope is a malign exercise in defamation and character assassination."  Crownwell later admitted that a purpose in writing the book was to derail the efforts to canonize Pius XII.

The newest book on the attack is Susan Zuccotti's, "Under His Very Windows, The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy."  Her accusation is that Pius XII did not speak out publicly against the destruction of the Jews.  She ignores the available tapes of Vatican Radio and the Vatican newspaper, which disproves her thesis, and the charge that the Pope only spoke in vague, diplomatic generalities about Nazism.  The leading Catholic expert on Jewish-Catholic relations, Dr. Eugene Fischer, who is highly regarded by his Jewish colleagues said that Zuccotti's book "is fundamentally tendentious, ignoring numerous facts that do not fit her preconceived notions and inventing extravagant arguments to rebut others that she feels she cannot ignore."

Why do some authors continue the myth about the "silence" of Pius XII?  How did it come to be accepted by many people, especially in universities and in much of the media?  I accept the theory of Robert P. George, who wrote the Afterword of Ronald J. Rychlak's book,  "Hitler, the War and the Pope."   He believes that anti-Catholic bigots and anti-papal Catholics have a large stake in perpetuating the myth that Pius XII was "Hitler's Pope."  It fits their agenda to undermine the credibility of the Catholic Church and the teaching authority of the Pope and the Bishops in communion with him. It is not likely that they will abandon the efforts to discredit Pius XII, because they believe it will diminish or discredit the moral authority of the Catholic Church.  The teaching of the Church as proclaimed by Pope John Paul II is the biggest obstacle to their efforts to promote abortion world-wide, as well as the acceptance of pre-marital sex, homosexual acts, physician assisted suicide, euthanasia, and other aberrations of traditional morality.  The moral authority and culture influence of the Church conflicts with their utilitarian and secular ideologies and they will not cease to do whatever they can to belittle the Church's influence around the world.

Pius XII saved the lives of many Jewish and non-Jewish victims of Hitler's evil madness: It would be a grave offense to his memory if the efforts to discredit him were to lead some to anti-Jewish feelings.  Those who are mainly responsible for defaming Pius XII are not Jews, but disgruntled Catholics and those in elite intellectual circles, who each have their own agenda to promote. They will not accept that he did all he could possibly do under the most difficult circumstances.  For what he did to foil Hitler’s plan to eliminate all European Jews, he deserves history’s praise and the world’s admiration.

© The Catholic Herald, Houston, Texas USA, June 8, 2001.

Reprinted on June 12, 2001 with permission from Bishop Joseph Fiorenza’s office by Leap of Faith

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