Contemporary Church History Quarterly
Volume 32, Number 1 (Spring 2026)
Article Note: David I. Kertzer, “Eugenio Pacelli and the Vatican’s Irish Plan to Save Baptized Jews (1938–1939),” Irish Theological Quarterly 91 (2026): 3–16, doi: 10.1177/00211400251404116.
Dirk Schuster, University of Vienna
David I. Kertzer, professor at Brown University and Pulitzer Prize winner, has recently published several studies on Pope Pius XI (1857–1939) and Pope Pius XII (1876–1958) and their relationship to fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) and the National Socialist Third Reich. In his latest article, published in February 2026 in the Irish Theological Quarterly, Kertzer examines for the first time Ireland’s role in accepting Jews and Jews who had converted to Catholicism from Italy and Germany in 1938 and 1939. This short period was a decisive one for Jews and converts, especially in Italy. The Italian racial laws enacted from September 1938 onwards forced Jews and converts without Italian citizenship to leave the country within a few months; otherwise they faced deportation to their country of origin. Jews and converts from Austria and Germany who had previously fled to Italy or had been living there for some time faced immediate imprisonment in a concentration camp if deported to the Third Reich. Accordingly, Pope Pius XI received numerous requests for help from people living in Italy, both from those people directly affected as well as from clergy, as the pope was considered to have a certain position of power over Mussolini. In this way, the clergy sought to obtain support from the Curia for those individuals who had previously approached them for help. Kertzer’s sources for this case study are, on the one hand, records from the Vatican Secretary of State Relations and, on the other hand, from the Vatican Apostolic Archive, specifically the files of the Dublin nuncio Paschal Robinson. Most of the Vatican’s representatives abroad at that time came from Italy. Robinson was an exception in this regard, as he was both an Irish national as well as nuncio in Ireland.
Contrary to the repeatedly expressed claim that Pope Pius XII worked to save European Jews, the case of Ireland once again makes it clear that such efforts aimed to help not Jews but Catholics—or their ancestors—who had converted from Judaism but were still considered Jews according to the racist ideology of Italy and Germany at the time (6). It was Pacelli, as Cardinal Secretary of State, the most powerful man in the Vatican after the pope, who at the end of 1938 brought up the idea of helping converts emigrate from Italy to Ireland. Pope Pius XI welcomed this plan and was also to support it financially. In Ireland itself, a committee was established to take care of immigration, and Robinson himself approached the relevant minister with a request for temporary visas. However, the Irish government had no interest in accepting foreigners, as it feared that this could exacerbate tensions in the Irish labor market. The government demanded (financial) guarantees from the church, of £250 for each refugee accepted, which today would correspond to a purchasing power of around 25,000 USD. As one of his last official acts before his death, Pope Pius XI released the sum of £1,034 from church collections so that the competent church authorities in Ireland could provide financial guarantees for at least some refugees, as requested by Irish government representatives.
Even after the death of Pope Pius XI and the election of Pacelli as the new Pope Pius XII, the issue of converts emigrating to Ireland remained a topic of discussion in the Vatican. However, even Robinson was disappointed with the poor work of the committee appointed to deal with the matter on the ground in Ireland. In the end, only one convert from Germany, who was living in Italy at the time, received a visa for the £1,000. In addition, ten children were brought to Ireland, but they were already living in Great Britain. The ‘rescue’ of these children stemmed from the fact that they had been taken in by Protestant families in Great Britain and were now, upon arriving in Ireland, receiving a Catholic education again. On April 11, 1939, the Irish bishops decided not to organize any fundraising campaigns for the emigration of converts to Ireland. The official reason given was the fear of antisemitic campaigns against such fundraising. However, this reason shows This reason highlights the true stance of many representatives of the Catholic Church on this matter: they continued to regard these converts as Jews rather than as Catholics..
Kertzer’s contribution is therefore of great significance in that it focuses on the actual help provided to converts by the Curia and the local churches. It is always important to note that these individuals were Catholics and not Jews. Classifying these people as Jews would be a continuation of the racist ideas of the time, according to which a person is classified on the basis of their ancestry and not their faith. Thankfully, Kertzer does not do this. Rather, his contribution shows that Pacelli in particular was not concerned with saving Jews, as is repeatedly claimed, and as Kertzer explicitly states: “The Irish case reflects the actual nature of the Jews File in showing the Church’s focus on helping those the Holy See regarded as Catholics, not Jews” (6). On the other hand, Kertzer uses the example of Ireland to illustrate that there were also massive reservations about converts within the Church.
Kertzer’s research in this article complements his more substantial work on the role of the pope and the Catholic Church in dealing with Jews and Catholic converts in the late 1930s to the end of the war. His attention to Ireland’s particular role in facilitating (or inhibiting) Vatican-assisted immigration for these refugees shows that more studies with a regional focus are needed.
