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Response to William Doino Jr. and the Film Lo vuole il Papa

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 21, Number 3 (September 2015)

Response to William Doino Jr. and the Film Lo vuole il Papa

By Susan Zuccotti, Independent Scholar

In the June 2015 edition of the Contemporary Church History Quarterly, William Doino Jr. discussed a documentary televised in Italy on April 1 entitled Lo vuole il Papa. Based on the work of historian Antonello Carvigiani, the film argued that Pope Pius XII was personally involved in the opening of convents and monasteries in Rome to thousands of Jews and other fugitives who were trying to escape arrest by the German occupiers of the Eternal City after September 1943. The film portrayed the oral testimonies of four nuns who, when they arrived as novices at four different religious houses in Rome years ago, were told by some of the older sisters about rescue efforts during the war. Accompanying each of the testimonies were brief filmed excerpts from the wartime chronicles of their institutions, recording a papal role in rescue. In addition, the documentary presented the oral testimonies of two men hidden as boys in two of the convents. Doino found the film persuasive, described it as new, and related it to other documents, accounts, and testimonies that he has discussed elsewhere and believes to be evidence of a clear papal directive for Jewish rescue in Rome.

When examined closely, the testimonies of the nuns and the chronicles are diverse in content and questionable as evidence. Let us begin with content. The first nun represented the cloistered Augustinian Sisters of the Santi Quattro Coronati, where 24 people, including at least 6 and perhaps as many as 17 Jews, were hidden. She explained that she was told that the pope had ordered the convent to open its doors to fugitives, including Jews. Relevant lines from that convent’s handwritten wartime chronicle, first made public in 2006 and thus not particularly new, confirmed her words, stating, “In this painful situation [of the German arrests and torture of fugitives beginning, the chronicler’s account, in November 1943] the Holy Father wants to save his children, including the Jews, and orders that hospitality in monasteries be given to the persecuted, and also the cloistered convents must adhere to the desire of the Supreme Pontiff [emphasis mine].”[1]

The film’s second witness was from the cloistered Cistercian Sisters of Santa Susanna, where roughly 18 military and political refugees and 26 Jews had been sheltered. This nun also referred to a papal directive for rescue, but added that the order had gone to all superiors of all Catholic institutions in Rome. How could she have known that? The accompanying lines from Santa Susanna’s handwritten war chronicle, made public in 2014, differed significantly from the nun’s testimony. The chronicler wrote, “In this situation the ecclesiastical authorities exhort and encourage and give their consent (with a maximum of caution) to opening the doors of the holy cloistered places to hide and receive as many persons as possible…[emphasis mine].”[2] Encouragement and consent from individual unknown prelates are important, but they are not the same as a papal order to all Church institutions. Words matter, and the implications differ. It is also important to note that Jews were not mentioned here, and caution was urged.

The third witness, from the convent of Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori which had sheltered 150 refugees including perhaps as many as 103 Jews, did not evoke a papal order.[3] Instead, she declared that she had been told that “The Holy Father wanted, desired, that the convent welcome these people.[emphasis mine]” Her testimony, in other words, resembled the written account from Santa Susanna. The accompanying handwritten chronicle from Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori confirmed her words, recording simply that the pope wanted institutions to take in fugitives, but “without obligation.” The fourth and final witness was from the Istituto Maria Santissima Bambina, which sheltered 123 people, including Jews. This nun was even more general, testifying simply that the sisters admitted fugitives because the pope appealed to them for charity. The accompanying typed chronicle also did not refer to a precise papal order, but it did provide insight on how rescue probably developed. It declared that at various times during the autumn of 1943 someone at the Vatican Secretariat of State requested the director of this particular institution to take in specific endangered individuals or families. The chronicle added that such a request could not be refused. But, significantly, it also declared that some 120 people, refugees or families made homeless by bombing raids, had already been accepted at the Istituto by the end of September 1943, well before the roundup of Jews in Rome on October 16 and the mass flight of surviving Jews into Catholic institutions.

We shall return to the issues of content raised in the film, but let us next examine the nature of the evidence. It is not easy to question the oral testimonies, filmed in the beautiful settings of their convents, of four elderly nuns, earnest, articulate, and confident of the accuracy of their information. But these women are providing hearsay, not first-hand, evidence. Their information apparently reached them at unspecified times for unknown reasons from unnamed associates, about whose personal histories we know nothing. The older sisters who passed along the information may have been young novices themselves during the war, with no special knowledge at that time about which fugitives were Jews or why they were there. Their own superiors may have told reluctant or fearful younger sisters that the pope wished or even ordered rescue measures to convince them to help fugitives, including atheists, Communists, and, especially, Jews, but the telling did not make it true. This evidence would not hold up in a court of law, and historians should apply similar criteria. Second, why were the young incoming nuns told such things privately in the 1950s, 60s, or 70s at all, at a time when no such accounts were being made publicly, despite the fact that Pius XII had long been criticized for not helping Jews? And why did the nuns wait until now to come forward? And why do they (and those who write about them, like Doino) stress help given to Jews, when it is clear from other records that at least half of those sheltered in religious institutions were political or military fugitives or non-Jewish civilian war refugees?

The written evidence presented in Lo vuole il Papa is equally problematic. The film provides a cursory glimpse of the volumes of war chronicles from the four convents, and then zooms in on the few lines relevant to the shelter of outsiders in each case. It gives no information about when, why, and by whom the rescue accounts were written or why they have not been made public sooner. With this technique it is impossible to detect what is obvious from a more careful study of the accounts—that they were not written during the war, and were often not even recorded by the chronicler who wrote the previous or subsequent entries. Examples abound. In the pages for 1943 and 1944 of the chronicle of the Santi Quattro Coronati, the author wrote in an entry for June 6, 1944, when Rome was liberated, that a general in the army of Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic wanted for war crimes after the conflict was sent to hide in the convent by the Vatican Secretariat of State (this attribution very specific) and stayed for five years. The war chronicle of the Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori referred to gas chambers, which would not have been understood with certainty in the first half of 1944, and to papal efforts to hide fugitives in the Pontificio Seminario Romano Maggiore (referred to as the Laterano) and Castel Gandolfo, equally secret at the time. The chronicles, then, are not wartime diaries but subsequent secondary accounts. Who wrote them, and when, and where did the information come from?

The testimony in Lo vuole il Papa of two fugitives hidden during the war is no more enlightening. Piero De Benedetti Bonaiuto found shelter at the convent of the Santi Quattro Coronati. In that convent’s war chronicle, which recorded the presence of five political fugitives or “patriots,” six Jews, and thirteen unspecified individuals, he was listed as a “patriot.” In his filmed testimony, he briefly discussed his experience in hiding and offered an opinion that special authorization would have been needed because the convent was subject to the rules of strict cloister. As a boy, he would have known nothing about a papal order. The second survivor-witness, Renato Astrologo, hid with his parents, grandmother, and three siblings in the convent of Santa Susanna. According to an article in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano on June 3, 2014, the women entered the convent on October 24, 1943, while the men hid elsewhere until the end of January 1944. The article also stated that Astrologo was a convert from Judaism to Catholicism. In his testimony, Astrologo expressed his gratitude to the sisters who had saved him and stated his understanding that an order had “come from a high place.” He also could have known nothing more specific at the time.

Lo vuole il Papa might be more persuasive if it were confirmed by the other sources Doino mentioned in his article, but that is decidedly not the case. For example, Doino refers to an article in the Palestine Post on June 22, 1944, in which a correspondent wrote that “several thousand refugees, largely Jews” had been sheltered in the papal palace at Castel Gandolfo “during the recent terror.” This allegation has been repeated endlessly, but there is no evidence that the refugees were “largely Jews.” The pope did offer shelter and sustenance at Castel Gandolfo to hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of refugees escaping Allied bombing raids and German attacks on villages near Rome in the late winter and spring of 1944. Some of those refugees may have been Jews with false papers and not known to be Jewish. But no evidence has yet been unearthed to indicate that those involved in providing assistance believed that they were helping Jews. There is, furthermore, no personal testimony from Jews about receiving such shelter, although Jewish accounts of being hidden in other religious institutions in Rome are plentiful.[4]

Doino also alludes to statements about a papal directive from priest-rescuers Paolo Dezza, Pietro Palazzini, Hugh O’Flaherty and John Patrick Carroll-Abbing; the Jewish survivor Michael Tagliacozzo; and historians Andrea Riccardi, Anna Foa, Sister Grazia Loparco, Antonello Carvigiani, and Pier Luigi Guiducci. His list is not exhaustive; he could have mentioned other secondary sources. Each of these cases must be examined carefully, in more detail than is possible here. Looking briefly at the first four primary sources, however, the Jesuit Father Dezza, rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University during the war and later a cardinal, wrote on June 28, 1964, during the controversy concerning Rolf Hochhuth’s play The Deputy critical of Pius XII, that the pope had instructed him to accept persecuted civilians and Jews.[5] Strangely, Dezza never repeated the claim in his other writings, and it is not clear if refugees were in fact hidden in his institution.

Father Palazzini, also later a cardinal, published a book in 1995 describing his role in helping hide some 145 non-Jews and 55 Jews at the Pontificio Seminario Romano Maggiore. He made no reference to a papal order in his book, but he did refer to “the guidelines provided by Pope Pius XII…to save human lives.” He added that during the war, “to rediscover [the sense of reciprocal charity], one voice was often raised among the din of arms: it was the voice of Pius XII. The refuge offered to so many people would not have been possible with his moral support, which was much more than a tacit consent.”[6]As evidence of the guidelines and support, Palazzini referred to eight papal speeches. Three of the eight, at Christmas 1942 and on June 2, his name day, in 1943 and 1944, included brief references to the pope’s compassion for those persecuted because of nationality and race, but did not directly mention religion or Jews. The other five speeches simply stressed the need for charity to all victims of war.[7]

The Irish Father Hugh O’Flaherty took enormous risks to aid escaped Allied prisoners of war during the German occupation of Rome, but Jews are rarely mentioned among those he helped.[8] The story of the American Father John Patrick Carroll-Abbing, later a monsignor, is much the same. In addition to prisoners of war, Father Carroll-Abbing worked with political fugitives, partisans, civilian refugees, homeless children, and the poor in general. In 2000, he apparently informed Doino that the pope told him many times to help Jews, but his two books about his wartime activities, published in 1952 and 1966, rarely mentioned Jews at all. He never wrote that he took personal initiatives to help Jews, that the pope told him to hide Jews, or even that Jews were hidden in Vatican properties. His single written reference to papal involvement in Jewish rescue was an indirect observation rather than a personal experience. Without declaring that the statement affected his own work, he observed that after the roundup of Jews in Rome on October 16, 1943, “word came from the Vatican that, because of the emergency, nuns would be allowed to give hospitality in their convents to Jewish men as well as their families [emphasis mine].”[9] He added that the permission was given specifically to the Sisters of Nostra Signora di Sion, who passed it along to other convents.

There is little doubt that some 187 Jews were among those hidden by the Sisters of Nostra Signora di Sion. Many of the Jews fled there on October 16, 1943, as the Germans were rounding up their families and friends in the nearby former ghetto of Rome and throughout the city. The initial rescue effort was spontaneous. Since the convent was not cloistered and operated a girls’ boarding school that was virtually empty because of the war, there was no need for immediate papal authorization to receive outsiders. The sisters have never claimed to have received a papal directive for rescue, although they stress that they informed the head of their order and that the pope ultimately knew what they were doing.[10] The situation was similar at the Istituto Pio XI, a boarding school for some 200 to 250 boys run by the Salesians. In his study of more than 80 Jewish boys sheltered there during the war, Francesco Motto found no evidence of a papal order. He too emphasized that Vatican authorities had some idea of what was happening, and that the Salesian brothers immediately involved were convinced that they were acting according to the wishes of the Holy Father.[11]

In addition to many more accounts of Jewish rescue in Church institutions that do not mention a papal directive, there are some that specifically deny it. One example of the latter is Brother Maurizio, the steward at the Fatebenefratelli Hospital that hid some 46 Jews during the German occupation. Brother Maurizio related that after admitting Jewish fugitives on October 16, 1943, the directors duly notified Vatican officials. When they received no response, they took the silence for approval and increased their efforts.[12] Father Elio Venier, later a monsignor, recalled his work at the parish church of Santa Maria della Divina Provvidenza, where about 65 Jews were sheltered. He declared that officials at the Vicariate were informed of the rescue activities because parish churches were under their jurisdiction, but he added that the pope did not get involved in such matters.[13] The French Capuchin Father Marie-Benoît who, working with Jewish and non-Jewish friends and associates, placed and supported some 2,500 Jewish refugees in both religious and secular institutions in Rome, agreed.[14] After the war, but only when asked, he explained that he had received no money and no mission from the Vatican.[15]

Other reasons to doubt the existence of an order from Pius XII for rescue relate to known papal directives that seem contrary to it. Both Francesco Motto, writing about the Salesians, and the spokeswomen for the convent of Nostra Signora di Sion refer to a letter received on October 25, 1943, declaring, “The secretary of state of His Holiness expresses the confidence that [your] conduct…will be inspired by diligent observation of the dispositions and instructions provided by the Holy See and by that discreet and prudent correctness that is always, but now more than ever, necessary.”[16] Such a call was not conducive to extensive rescue. Two months later, on December 27, six days after Italian Fascist and German SS raids on three Vatican properties, Pius XII told the director of La Civiltà Cattolica that it was necessary to be more prudent with regard to refugees and added, “Yes, exercise charity with the many piteous cases that arise, but avoid the use of false documents and any even slight appearance of fraud.”[17] The pope may not have understood that it was almost impossible for fugitives, Jewish or not, to hide in any institutions without false documents.

Another German-Fascist raid on February 3-4, 1944, this time on the huge extraterritorial Basilica di San Paolo fuori le Mura, caused some at the Vatican to pull still further away from support for the rescue of fugitives. Little could be done for the 64 victims of the raid, including five Jews, but Vatican officials publicly and vehemently protested the violation of extraterritoriality to the Germans. Privately, however, they were terrified of additional and still more brutal raids, the arrests of more of their protégés, and the possibility of diplomatic incidents. On February 6, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Luigi Maglione wrote that he had “instructed the abbot [of the monastery at San Paolo], in the name of the Holy Father, not to permit disguises in other clothing: no one should wear religious habits if he is not a priest or monk.”[18] It is not clear how broadly this prohibition was distributed, but it was not an encouragement for rescue.

Far more serious, sometime that same February a message went out from the Vatican ordering that all non-clerics sheltered in a number of properties of the Holy See be asked to leave. Strict penalties for disobedience were specified. Again, all the recipients of this order are not known, but the message clearly went to the Seminario Lombardo, the Seminario Romano Maggiore, and the Collegio dei Sacerdoti per l’Emigrazione Italiana. Directors of the institutions reluctantly obeyed, although they never left their guests in the lurch. New hiding places were found, and in some cases the fugitives returned after a time.[19] Similar orders were issued within the Vatican City itself, where at least 50 outsiders were being sheltered in the private apartments of prelates living in the Canonica di San Pietro.[20] In this case, the prelates engaged in sheltering fugitives appealed, and the order was not enforced.[21]

There is no question that thousands of Jews were sheltered in church institutions in Rome during the German occupation. One survey conducted soon after the war placed the number at 4,447, in 220 female and 60 male religious houses.[22] Another more recent analysis refers to 4,169 Jews in 234 religious houses.[23] While numbers vary, the phenomenon of rescue is clear; what is unclear is how it happened. Historians and other scholars study the story not to glorify or vilify Pope Pius XII but to try to understand the events themselves. To do so, they look to the evidence, both written and oral. When the evidence is conflicting, they examine its validity—its authenticity; the motives of those who supply it; the timing; the possibility of error, bias, or misunderstanding. They also analyze the plausibility and consistency of the evidence within a wider context—in this case, with consideration of the pope’s other actions, statements, and concerns during the Second World War. Finally, they study the precise words used in testimonies. With this in mind, let us return to the documentary film Lo vuole il Papa, examine it in the context of other evidence mentioned here, and attempt to formulate an hypothesis about Jewish rescue in Rome.

Judging from the conflicting evidence in the film and from the other testimony discussed in this article, it seems unlikely that Pius XII ordered Catholic institutions in Rome to open their doors to Jews and other fugitives. It is possible that in some cases he was involved in granting permission to cloistered convents to suspend their rules regarding outsiders, but it is not probable that he ordered them to do so.[24] We have seen here indications of the pope’s hesitancy regarding rescue, his counter-instructions, and his requests for prudence, as well as the denials of a papal directive by some religious spokesmen and the failures to mention it by others. We know from the internal discussion concerning fugitives sheltered within the Vatican City that some prelates opposed their presence and tried to make them leave. Would they have taken that position if the pope had ordered all Catholic institutions in the city to accept them? And in the broader context, Pius XII was anxious to preserve Vatican neutrality and diplomatic privileges, and protect his institution and the Catholic faithful from German reprisals. Why would the pope jeopardize these priorities when a directive for rescue in Rome was not necessary? Romans who followed the pope’s public statements knew that he had urged charity and compassion for the victims of war on many occasions. They had read the articles in L’Osservatore Romano on October 25-26 and 29, 1943, following the roundup of 1,259 Jews in Rome, which referred to “the universally paternal charity of the Supreme Pontiff…which does not pause before boundaries of nationality, or religion, or race [emphasis mine]”—a clear reference to Jews that had not been used in previous papal speeches. They were aware that after Mussolini’s puppet regime ordered Italian police and carabinieri to arrest and intern all Jews in the country on November 30, 1943, two more articles in the Vatican daily newspaper had objected vigorously, though without mentioning German measures of deportation and destruction.[25] Catholics who wanted to hear all this could hear. In rescuing Jews and other fugitives, they firmly believed they were heeding the will of their pope.

But if there was no comprehensive papal order, how did rescue develop? In many cases, as for the Salesians and the Sisters of Nostra Signora di Sion, it was initially spontaneous—fugitives came to the school or convent and asked for help. Authorization came later. But to explain many other cases, it is useful to look again at two of the written testimonies presented in Lo vuole il Papa. The chronicler for Santa Susanna wrote, “In this situation the ecclesiastical authorities exhort and encourage and give their consent (with a maximum of caution) to opening the doors of the holy cloistered places to hide and receive as many persons as possible…[emphasis mine].” Similarly, the chronicler for the Istituto Maria Santissima Bambina recorded that on several occasions during the autumn of 1943, someone at the Vatican Secretariat of State requested the director of the institution to take in specific endangered individuals or families. These claims are credible. Many individual priests and even high-ranking prelates in Rome had their own personal protégés, perhaps an anti-Fascist activist or partisan, or the Jewish spouse of a friend or family member, or a former Jewish teacher or classmate, employer or employee, doctor or nurse—the possibilities are endless. Catholic institutions taking in outsiders needed recommendations about the backgrounds, personal integrity, and, sometimes, economic reliability of prospective guests. Priests and prelates, sometimes at a high level, supplied those recommendations and undoubtedly implied that rescue was the will of the pope. Although directors of religious houses were not unwilling in any case, such recommendations and reassurances were hard to refuse.

The pope did not oppose the opening of religious houses in Rome to fugitives unless he believed that the risks to rescuers and rescued alike were excessive. Although he certainly understood much of what was going on in his own diocese (the pope was the bishop of Rome), he probably did not know the details. He did not wish to become personally involved. And while he allowed some of his advisors to act on behalf of Jews and other fugitives, he was well aware that others close to him opposed rescue.

Does it matter whether there was a broad order for Jewish rescue from Pius XII or whether rescue was rather either spontaneous or the result of the private initiatives of individual priests and prelates? The answer is yes, for two reasons. First, understanding private individual initiatives helps us better comprehend the complexities and risks of the pope’s situation on an international level and the pressures he was under from within. We may learn more about these internal pressures when the Vatican archives of the papacy of Pius XII are opened. Until then, the study of Jewish rescue in Rome provides some clues. But above all, examination of the origins of rescue helps us to appreciate how and why it happened. As we consider the nuns described in Lo vuole il Papa, along with Cardinals Pietro Palazzini and Elio Venier, the Sisters of Nostra Signora di Sion, the Salesian brothers, Father Marie-Benoît, and so many others, we see the true nature of courage, generosity, and commitment to religious and human values. It is to be hoped that Pope Pius XII himself would be among the first to want that heroism recognized.

[1]For more on the chronicle of the Sisters of the Santi Quattro Coronati, see especially 30giorni, n. 7/8, August 2006, pp. 32-46. See also Antonello Carvigiani, “Aprite le porte, salvate i perseguitati,” Nuova Storia Contemporanea, September-October 2014, 131-44. The estimate of 17 Jews sheltered is from an often-cited list published in Renzo De Felice, The Jews in Fascist Italy, trans. Robert L. Miller, (1961 and 1993; New York: Enigma Books, 2001), 751-56, 752. De Felice indicated that the list came to him from the German Jesuit Father Robert Leiber, Pius XII’s close advisor and friend, who in turn stated that it was compiled after the war by another Jesuit priest and verified in 1954. For details on the list, see Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 199-200.

[2]For more on Santa Susanna, see Carvigiani, “Aprite le porte,” 131-44. The number 26 is from De Felice, 752.

[3] The number 103 is from De Felice, 751.

[4] For details on what is known about refugees at Castel Gandolfo, see Susan Zuccotti, “Pius XII and the Rescue of Jews in Italy,” in Joshua d. Zimmerman, ed., Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 287-307, 306. It is noteworthy that Carvigiani, “Aprite le porte,” 132, cites as an authority, and with approval, statistics by Dominiek Oversteyns, De geschiedenis van de Hebreeërs in Rome tijdens de nazibezetting en vervolging in Rome (Rome: Privata, 2013), n.p., which declare that there were no Jews at Castel Gandolfo. I am not able to verify the Oversteyns citation.

[5] Dezza had been asked to contribute to a special edition of L’Osservatore della Domenica dedicated to the memory of Pius XII. His contribution is on pp. 68-69. Originally titled Der Stellvertreter, The Deputy opened in Berlin in 1963, in London as The Representative in the same year, and in New York in 1964.

[6]Pietro Palazzini, Il Clero e l’occupazione tedesca di Roma: Il ruolo del Seminario Romano Maggiore (Rome: Apes, 1995), 17 and 35.

[7] Palazzini did not mention articles in L’Osservatore Romano on October 25 and 29 and December 3 and 4, 1943, to be discussed below, which did refer to religion and Jews.

[8]See, for example, J.P. Gallagher, Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican (London: Souvenir, 1967).

[9]Carroll-Abbing, But for the Grace of God (London: Secker and Warburg, 1966), 55-56. The first book is A Chance to Live (New York: Longmans, Green, 1952). For Doino’s account of his conversation with Carroll-Abbing, see William Doino, “ The Pope Gave Me Direct Orders to Rescue Jews,” Inside the Vatican, August-September 2001, special insert, x. For details, see Susan Zuccotti, “Pius XII and the Rescue of Jews in Italy,” in Zimmerman, p. 298.

[10]The number 187 is from De Felice, 752. For details on rescue efforts at the convent of Nostra Signora di Sion, see Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 189-93.

[11] De Felice, 754, puts the number of boys sheltered at 83. For details on the Salesian rescue effort, see Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 191-92.

[12]The number 46 is from De Felice, 754. For Brother Maurizio’s testimony, see Federica Barozzi, “ ‘I percorsi della sopravvivenza,’ (8 settembre ’43-4 giugno ’44): Gli aiuti agli ebrei romani nella memoria di salvatori e salvati,” unpublished thesis, Università degli studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” 1995-96, 156.

[13]Monsignor Elio Venier, interview with this author, Rome, November 13, 1996. The number 65 is from De Felice, 755.

[14] For this estimate of refugees assisted, see Settimio Sorani, L’assistenza ai profughi ebrei in Italia (Rome: Carucci, 1983) , pp. 150-51; and Centro di documentazione ebraica contemporanea (CDEC), Milan, b. 8-A-I, f. Delasem—Settimio Sorani, “Attività della ‘Delasem’ dopo l’8 settembre 1943” by Sorani, May 16, 1944. The number given by De Felice, 755, for “Father Benedict of Bourg d’Iré” (Father Marie-Benoît, or, as he was known in Rome, Father Maria Benedetto) was too high.

[15] For details, see Susan Zuccotti, Père Marie-Benoît and Jewish Rescue (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 2013), 179-80 and 223. Vatican documents published in Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la seconde guerre mondiale (ADSS), eds. Pierre Blet, Robert A. Graham, Angelo Martini, and Burkhart Schneider (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1975), IX, docs. 433 and 487, reveal that at least one high-ranking Vatican official disapproved of Father Marie-Benoît’s dealings with the Jews and tried to get him to stop.

[16]This appeal accompanied a protective placard issued by General Rainer Stahel, German military commander of Rome, to many religious institutions throughout the city on October 25, 1943. The placard, to be posted outside each institution, read, “This building serves religious objectives, and is a dependency of the Vatican City. All searches and requisitions are prohibited.” As we shall see, this placard did not always prevent raids. For details, see Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 193.

[17]Giovanni Sale, “Roma 1943: occupazione nazista e deportazione degli ebrei romani,” La Civiltà Cattolica, IV, quaderno 3683, December 6, 2004, 417-29, 426, from a document in the archives of La Civiltà Cattolica. The pontifical institutions raided were the Seminario Lombardo, the Collegio Russo, and the Istituto Orientale.

[18]ADSS, XI, doc. 30, notes of Maglione, 126.

[19] Reference to this order may be found in the archives of the Seminario Lombardo, b.7.A.73, Diario, “Appendice,” 17-18. For details, see Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 225-28.

[20] The number 50 is from ADSS, X, doc. 53, Monsignor Guido Anchini, head of the Canonica, to Pius XII, February 13, 1944, 127-29. Nearly all the guests were men. Roughly 24 of the 50 were non-Jews, another 17 were described as non-Aryan Catholics, and 7 were described as Jews with no mention of religion. There is no record of any guests being hidden elsewhere in Vatican City.

[21] Ibid.

[22] De Felice, 751-56.

[23] Dominiek Oversteyns, De geschiedenis van de Hebreeërs in Rome tijdens de nazibezetting en vervolging in Rome (Rome: Privata, 2013), n.p, cited in Carvigiani, “Aprite le porte,” 132

[24]Rules of cloister are far more complex than is usually stated. Depending on the congregation, the rules often could be temporarily lifted by the head of the order. Also, some cloistered convents operated public spaces like guest houses, where the same strict rules did not apply. Some such convents may have employed Catholic laypersons to work in their public spaces.

[25]The articles in October were on page 1. The later articles, “Carità civile,” and “Motivazione,” appeared on December 3 and 4, both on page 1.

Article Note: “Holy See Documents From World War II Go Online. Researchers Welcome Availability of Pius XII Information”

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 2, June 2010

Article Note: “Holy See Documents From World War II Go Online. Researchers Welcome Availability of Pius XII Information” Zenit, March 25, 2010.

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University College

Scholars have long desired greater access to the Vatican Archives, not least for the era of National Socialism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust. This article, in the March 25 issue of Zenit, explains that the Vatican has now made material from the Actae Sanctae Sedis and the Acta Apostolica (the official acts of the Holy See) available online in pdf format. While some of this material had already been published in the Actes et documents du Saint-Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (Acts and Documents of the Holy See Related to the Second World War) between 1965 and 1981, it is a hopeful sign that theseVatican holdings are now appearing digitally.

To view the entire article in Zenit, go to: http://www.zenit.org/article-28755?l=english.

To view the document collection online, go to: www.vatican.va/archive/atti-ufficiali-santa-sede/index_en.htm.

Article Reprint: Iael Nidam-Orvieto, “New Research: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust”

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Article Reprint: Iael Nidam-Orvieto, “New Research: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust.” Yad Vashem Jerusalem Quarterly Magazine, Vol. 56, Tevet 5770, January 2010.

After the long-standing hostility displayed by various Israeli and Jewish authorities towards Pope Pius XII, the following article written by Dr Iael Nidam-Orvieto, Director of the Department of the Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, and printed in its January 2010 quarterly magazine, is notable:

Dilemmas, silence, active rescue, passivity. These words are often mentioned when dealing with the controversial figure of Pius XII and his papacy during WWII. The debate over his attitude and actions regarding the persecuted Jews of Europe began during the 1960s following the release of the play The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth, and continues even today, splitting public opinion as well as generations of scholars.

The critics emphasize that Pius’ main failing was his silence – his lack of a clear and direct condemnation of the annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany. Backing up this opinion is his famous radio speech of Christmas 1942, in which the Pope failed to mention the Jews or the Germans, referring more generally to the demise of hundreds of thousands of people “who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or descent, have been consigned to death or to slow decline.”

Scholars bring many explanations for this public silence: political, ideological or even personal. Some claim that Pius was pro-Nazi or antisemitic, even calling him “Hitler’s Pope.” They emphasize the failure of the Pontiff to fulfill his moral duty officially to denounce the Holocaust, or to remind the Catholic community of its ethical responsibilities.

On the other side of the debate are those who argue that Pius’ speeches clearly referred to the Jews and their suffering, and claim that the varied rescue activities carried out by Catholic clergy throughout Europe is clear proof of the inspiration they received from the Pope. These defenders maintain that the lack of a direct confrontation with the Nazi regime was a strategic choice meant to avoid worse catastrophe and enable further clandestine rescue activity.

As much of the relevant source material remains unavailable to historians – the archives of the Vatican for the period of WWII have yet to be opened – explanations on both sides are often based on assumptions or unsystematic documentation. However, over the last few years, certain archives containing relevant material have been opened, leading to an increased interest in the topic. For example, the archive of Pius XI’s papacy has been recently opened to the public, enabling research that sheds new light, among other things, on the policy of the Holy See during the 1930s and on Eugenio Pacelli’s (later Pope Pius XII) operations as Vatican Secretary of State. Documentation revealed in other archives across the world has led to the publication of new books on the topic, as well as important new insights into the existing historiography.

In March 2009, the International Institute for Holocaust Research and the Salesian Theological Institute of Saints Peter and Paul in Jerusalem organized a scholarly workshop at Yad Vashem to discuss the current state of research on Pius XII and the Holocaust.

The academic discussion was based on specific questions presented to specialized scholars from around the world expressing the range of opinions on Pius XII. The closed forum enabled a dynamic and open discussion, soon to be released as a pathbreaking publication on the topic.

One of the most innovative pieces of research presented at the workshop dealt with the rescue of Jews in Italy, especially in Rome. Thanks to vast material recently opened to some researchers, new insights were presented as to refuge activities of the “religious houses,” suggesting a more direct involvement of the Holy See, albeit one that also aided evacuees, orphans, partisans and soldiers of all nationalities, in the name of Christian charity.

A topic that revealed the gap between the participants concerned converted Jews who, as is shown in published documentation, were afforded much help by the Vatican. Since the Nazis considered them still Jewish, should the help given to those who converted be considered as aiding Jews? Or must one claim that this assistance is dubious, considering that those Jews who chose not to abandon their faith were less likely to receive the help of the Vatican?

Another debate was whether Pius XII was responsible for actions taken by clerics, both in the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust and in its aftermath, during the escape of Nazi criminals from Europe along the so-called “ratlines.” If Pius XII was involved in, encouraged or even initiated one activity, does that mean that he had equal involvement in the other?

What is undeniable is that the new documentation enables scholars to better understand the Pope’s background and opinions vis-à-vis Nazism and antisemitism. Much clearer is his aversion to National Socialism, which he considered one of the worst heresies of the modern age. While his upbringing was rooted in traditional anti-Judaism, his branding as an antisemite must be called into question.

Several scholars have suggested a new approach, one that views the complexity of the responses and how the Pope’s operations were understood and accepted by his followers and his contemporaries – both the Allied and Axis powers. The workshop was certainly the first step towards more open and sincere academic collaboration on the topic, albeit many questions remain unresolved and his legacy controversial. Only the full opening of the Vatican Archives and continued cooperation among the scholarly community will enable a more comprehensive understanding of Pius XII and the Holocaust.

Conference Announcement: International Symposium: Pius XII as the Nuncio in Germany

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2010

Conference Announcement: International Symposium: Pius XII as the Nuncio in Germany, March 24-26, 2010, Münster, Germany.

By Mark Edward Ruff

The most controversial pontiff of the 20th century is serving as the subject of an international symposium sponsored by the European research network, “Pio XI” and the Excellence-Cluster, “Religion and Politics” at the University of Münster. Featuring nearly thirty speakers from a variety of nations including, Germany, the United States, Switzerland and Italy, the conference is intended to present the findings of researchers analyzing documents from the pontificate of Pius XI that were released in 2003 and 2006. According to the conference convener, Professor Hubert Wolf of the University of Münster, these documents provide a comprehensive picture of the Roman curie between 1922 and 1939 as well as new glimpses into the person and personality of Pacelli, who served as the Papal Nuncio in Germany and the Vatican Secretary of State before his appointment as Pope in 1939. They provide the basis for a major online edition of more than 6500 documents that will be culled and edited by researchers in Münster over the next twelve years and funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

These documents shed new insights into the relations between the Roman curia and Catholic political parties across the European continent. One section of the conference will compare these relations between the Vatican and Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Bohemia and Austria. Another will compare Pacelli with other papal nuncios from the day in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, France and Austria.

Saul Friedländer, a historian at the University of California, Los Angeles and the author of a book, Pius XII and the Third Reich from 1965, was to have served as the keynote speaker. Because of his recent illness, however, the keynote roles have been given to Mordechay Lewy, Israeli Ambassador to the Vatican, and Romano Prodi, former President of the European Commission and former Prime Minister of Italy.

For more information, contact Mark Ruff at ruff@slu.edu.

March 2009 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

March 2009 — Vol. XV, no. 3

Dear Friends,

The approach of Lent is perhaps the appropriate time to reflect on issues in contemporary church history which still need to be addressed. Among these are the thorny and troubled problems of Christian-Jewish relations, on which topic there is all too little progress to be noted, and in which contemporary political factors clearly play a considerable role. But the collection of essays by both Jews and Christians, evaluating the twentieth century’s most significant document on this subject, Nostra Aetate, as reviewed below, will be of help. Intertwined is certainly the continuing controversy over the pontifical career of Pope Pius XII. There is still no agreement among scholars, and still less among lay people. In my view, this situation is unlikely to change, though it may possibly be helped as and when more documents from this Pope’s reign are finally revealed and new interpretations advanced. In the meantime new books continue to appear, some of which are less than helpful, being the product of preconceived opinions rather than accurate scholarship. Others however offer new insights.. One of the objects of this Newsletter has been to keep you advised of such publications, for better or for worse. So keep posted.

Finally I offer a few thoughts on the present controversy over Holocaust denial by a Catholic prelate who should know better, and the embarrassment he has caused for the Vatican at this touchy and delicate moment in Christian-Jewish relations.

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) Nostra Aetate. Origins, Promulgation, Impact
b) R. Michael, Catholic Antisemitism
c) D. Kurzman, A Special Mission: Hitler’s plot to seize the Vatican and kidnap Pope Pius XII
d) G. Noel, Pius XII. The Hound of Hitler

2) Journal Article: Coppa, The Vatican’s Silence during the Holocaust

3) Editorial: Holocaust Heretic Disciplined

1a) Nostra Aetate. Origins, Promulgation, Impact on Jewish-Christian Relations
Ed. Neville Lamdan and A.Melloni. Munster: LIT Verlag 2007. ISBN 978-4825-80678-1
The Catholic Church and the Jewish People: Recent Reflections from Rome
Ed. P. Cunningham, N.Hofmann and J.Sievers. New York: Fordham University Press 2007
ISBN 978-0-823-22805-8
(This review appeared first in Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 95, no 1, January 2009, and is reprinted by kind permission of the author.)

These collections are the products of conferences held to observe the fortieth anniversary in 2005 of the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate, specifically its fourth section on the Church’s understanding of Jews and Judaism. Both volumes include Jewish and Catholic authors. Both have significance for historians not only of the Council but also of subsequent Jewish-Catholic relations up to the present. The books are complementary, and the student of this history should have both of them.

The volume edited by Neville Lamden and Alberto Melloni presents the proceedings of a conference held in Jerusalem from October 30 to November 1, 2005, at the Center for the Study of Christianity at Hebrew University. The book is not divided into sections, but the fifteen essays can be roughly divided into equal groups of studies of the history of the text, its impact in the short term, and reflections on it after forty years.

Melloni examines the history of the text and its significance for the Church’s reevaluation of its most ancient interreligious relationship. Marco Morselli presented the influence of Jewish historian Jules Isaac and the Amitie Judeo-Chretienne de France in framing the issues the Council would tackle. In what the editors call “the centerpiece” paper of the conference, Paulist Father Thomas Stransky, the last surviving staff member of the Pontifical Secretariat for Christian Unity that led the drafting of the declaration, presented his “Insider’s Story” of the draft’s many theological and political adventures before the world’s bishops finally enacted it by an overwhelming vote during the last session of the Council. Annarita Caponera presents the results of her two-year study of the Secretariat archives from 1962 to 1965. Uri Bialer narrates “the view from Jerusalem” during the Council and the activities of the Israeli government to influence the outcome.

Serge Ruzer discusses how the theological agenda of Nostra Aetate required and precipitated a close look at the Jewish origins of Christianity. Robert Bonfil suggests a hermeneutic of the text from a Jewish perspective that can at once acknowledge it as a “revolutionary” change of Catholic worldview while still affirming its continuity with Catholic theology over the ages. Hans Herman Henrix outlines the effects of the declaration on Catholic attitudes in Western and Eastern Europe. Didier Pollefeyt describes the state of Catholic theology that has replaced a presumption that Christianity has superseded Judaism with an affirmation of the ongoing validity of God’s covenant with the Jewish People. Mauro Velati notes the cross-fertilization between Protestant and Catholic thinking on these issues, before and after the Council. Petra Held gives a Protestant perspective on it after forty years, David Rosen provides Israeli perspectives, and Jerome Chanes shows its impact on Catholic-Jewish relations in the United States. Finally, Zwi Werblowski and Cardinal Walter Kasper, the latter president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, sum up Jewish and Catholic perspectives. The volume concludes with an index of names.

Kasper, whose essay was last in the Lamden and Melloni volume, appears first in the Cunningham, Hofmann, and Sievers volume. He discussed interfaith possibilities with Jews and Muslims in the former; in the latter, he narrates the thirty-year history of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. Also providing histories of the commission are Cardinal Jorge Maria Mejia, Father Pierfranceso Fumagalli, and Father Norbert Hofmann, all past secretaries of the commission.

This volume is divided into sections. In the first, Riccardo di Segni (the chief rabbi of Rome) and Giuseppe Laras (the chief rabbi of Milan) give Jewish perspectives on the relationship, while Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini provides a Catholic perspective. In the second, Massimo Giuliani deals with the memory of the Shoah as “a shadow upon and a stimulus to” dialogue, as his essay title expresses.

In the third section Archbishop Bruno Forte, Erich Zenger, and Peter Hunermann establish firm foundations for a Christian theology of Judaism. In the fourth section Alberto Melloni, along with the previously mentioned papers by Mejia, Fumagalli, and Hofmann, discusses developments in “the Post-Shoah Catholic-Jewish Dialogue.” Finally, Vatican diplomat Cardinal Achille Silvestrini and Israeli diplomat Oded Ben Hur discuss the relationship between the Holy See and the State of Israel.

A helpful set of appendices to this volume includes all six drafts of what became Nostra Aetate; Joint Declarations of the International Catholic Jewish Liaison Committee from 1970, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2001, 2004, and 2006; Joint Statements of the Pontifical Commission and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel’s Delegation from 2003-06; and the 1993 Fundamental Agreement between Israel and the Holy See. The volume has a full index and an index of scriptural passages cited.

As someone who lived through much of the history narrated in these two volumes and participated in many of the theological dialogues reflected in their pages, I can only express my delight in and gratitude for them.

Eugene J. Fisher, Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs (Emeritus) United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

1b) Robert Michael, A History of Catholic Antisemitism: The Dark Side of the Church. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. Pp. ix, 282. NP. ISBN 978-0-230-60388-2.

This review appeared first in Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 95, no 1, January 2009, and is reprinted by kind permission of the author.

This book lives up to its subtitle. It presents in detail “the dark side” of Christian attitudes toward Judaism and treatment of Jews over the centuries. It occasionally mentions mitigating factors, such as St. Augustine’s argument that the Jews witness to the validity of their bible, are thus necessary to the proclamation of the gospel, and should therefore, alone among all the non-Christian religions of the Roman empire, be allowed to worship freely. But such acknowledgements are overwhelmed with negative after negative examples, to the point that readers of this book may not be able to answer the simple question: So why did Jews choose to stay in Christendom, when they could have moved to Islamic or Asian countries? This is a question the author never asks, most likely because the answer would be an acknowledgement that a true presentation of Jewish-Christian relations over the centuries would have many more bright spots in many countries over many centuries in which Jews lived peacefully and relatively prosperously with their Christian neighbors. But this shades of gray reality is, I fear, beyond the author’s intent, which is to show only “the dark side of the Church.”

In the Introduction (p. 1), the author states that Catholic “as distinguished from ‘Orthodox‘ and ‘Protestant,’ refers to those Christians who are in communion with the Holy See of Rome.” And then he immediate includes the Eastern Church Fathers, such as Chrysostum, as purveyors of “Catholic antisemitism.” Martin Luther’s anti-Jewish screeds, which were if anything even more vitriolic than Chrysostum, become a key part of the history of “Catholic” antisemitism, since the author, before devoting several pages to him, describes him simply as a “former Augustinian.” The book consistently blames the Catholic Church for the anti-Jewishness and antisemitism of all baptized Christians. I am not sure why the author feels the need to do this. Catholic sins are quite enough. One does not have to blame the Catholic Church for the sins of others. Or, alternately, the author could have admitted that what he has really written is a history of Christian, not just Catholic antisemitism.

Chapter One, “Pagans and Early Catholics,” treats the New Testament, emphasizing, of course its later and more negative passages as what it means overall, and often interweaving what the New Testament actually said with what later generations of (gentile) Christians said it said, so that most readers will find it difficult to distinguish the New Testament from the later “teaching of contempt” of the Fathers of the Church (Augustine excepted) toward the Jews. Subsequent chapters (two through five) march chronologically through the centuries, carefully culling out everything negative and for the most part ignoring what happened positively. What the author says about the Crusades in Chapter Five is summarized in the Postscript (p. 195) as “Every Crusade started out murderously attacking European Jews.” Here, he cites the classic studies by Robert Chazan and others of the First Crusade, which was qualitatively different than subsequent Crusades in its massacres of Jews and attempts to force convert them, over the protests of the local bishops, as Chazan reports but Michael fails to mention.

Chapter Six (pp. 75-100) deals with medieval “Papal Policy” while the final chapter, Ten, treats “Modern Papal Policy,” especially with regard to the Holocaust. These chapters bracket three chapters which deal, respectively, with Germany and Austria-Hungary, France, and Poland. Throughout these presentations, one is presented with mounds of details but often enough with misleading generalizations based upon them. These are too numerous to go into here. To his credit, Michael does spend more time on and attempt a more balanced approach of the question of Pope Pius XII and the Jews than many of Pius’ detractors. In my opinion, however, he does not succeed in this attempt, allowing his vision of “the Dark Side” to predominate, even when he has no evidence to back up a given claim or, indeed when what he claims happened did not in fact happen, for example that the deportations of the Jews from Rome by the Germans continued unabated after Pius’ intervention with them when, in fact, they stopped and most of the remainder of the Jews of Rome were saved, to a great extent by hiding in Catholic convents and monasteries, which Michael again fails to deal with.

One of the themes of the book, made explicit in the Postscript, entitled, “Catholic Racism,” is that there is really no distinction to be made between Patristic and Medieval Catholic anti-Jewish theological polemics and modern, racial, genocidal anti-Semitism, because he can find some quotes from some Catholics over two millennia in which Jews were disparaged even after being baptized. The limpia de raza laws against converted Jews and their descendants in Spain and Portugal are, tendentiously, portrayed as universal Catholic policy and as being given the encouragement of the bishop of Rome who, inexplicably, did not adopt them in the papal states. Yes, these Iberian laws were forerunners of Nazi laws, but they were not enacted outside their particular time and place. Likewise, neither they nor any other of the extremely numerous and noxious things that Christians did to Jews (mostly after 1096 and the First Crusade) ever came anywhere near genocide. Telling Jews that they must convert in order to stay in a country, otherwise they will have to leave, is not anywhere near the same thing as undertaking to kill all Jews no matter what they do.

The Notes to this book, pp. 205-265 are extensive and show the breadth of the author’s reading in the field. The Index, pp. 267-282, is complete and serviceable.

The author dedicates his work to “my late friend,” Fr. Edward Flannery, of blessed memory. Fr. Flannery was also my friend, as well as my predecessor in Catholic-Jewish Relations, so Michael and I have something in common. I would, however, encourage readers of this journal to stick with Fr. Flannery’ classic study on this topic, The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty Centuries of Christian Anti-Semitism, which remains the measure of the field.

Dr. Eugene J. Fisher, Retired Associate Director of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC

1c) Dan Kurzman, A Special Mission: Hitler’s Secret Plot to seize the Vatican and kidnap Pope Pius XII. Cambridge, Mass: Da Capo Press 2007 ISBN 978–0-306-81617-8

(This review by David Alvarez of St Mary’s College, California appeared first in the Catholic Historical Review, January 2009, and is reprinted by kind permission of the author)

Dan Kurzman asserts that Adolf Hitler, convinced that the fall of Benito Mussolini and Italy’s subsequent armistice with the Allies could have occurred only with the connivance of Pope Pius XII, decided in September 1943 to send German forces into Vatican City to seize the pontiff and his attendant cardinals and remove them to the principality of Liechtenstein along with whatever archives, gold, paintings, and sculpture the kidnappers could cart away. Concerned that the abduction of the pope and the looting of the Vatican would outrage Catholics around the world, SS General Karl Wolff, the one-time chief of staff to Heinrich Himmler selected by the Fuehrer to lead the operation, sabotaged the plan, in part by claiming that it would take time to gather the trained linguists, art historians, and archivists necessary for the success of the plot. According to this account, Wolff also saw his resistance to Hitler’s directive as an insurance policy. Seriously compromised by his leadership position in the SS and his association with the war crimes, atrocities, and genocidal programs of that organization, the general believed that, by thwarting Hitler’s plans, he could make friends inside the Vatican and create some anti-Hitler credentials-useful achievements in the event of the Third Reich’s defeat. Wolff’s plans required the pope to be aware of the threat. How else could the general place the pontiff in his debt? Furthermore, the argument that Hitler’s wrath, now barely contained by the sensible SS general, would only be fuelled by any word or gesture that could be interpreted as anti-German could be used to convince (blackmail) Pius to resist pressure from the Allies to condemn the extermination of Jews.

Rumours of threats to the pope and the territorial integrity of Vatican City had circulated in diplomatic and ecclesiastical circles since the outbreak of the war. Given the explicit hostility of the Nazi regime toward the Catholic Church, these rumours were taken seriously inside the Vatican and, as early as spring 1941, papal officials were considering contingency plans. Not surprisingly, such rumours proliferated after the German occupation of Rome. Did Vatican circles believe the threat was credible? Yes. Allied diplomats inside Vatican City burned their confidential files in anticipation of a German entry into the papal enclave, and staffers in the papal Secretariat of State kept packed suitcases next to their desks. Was there actually a Nazi plan to kidnap the pope? Hitler occasionally ranted about seizing the pope, but hard evidence of an abduction plot has eluded historians. It has also eluded Dan Kurzman.

The author’s footnotes are useless (often a single, vague footnote will cover several pages of text), but it seems that he relies primarily upon the postwar recollections of individuals, including the now-deceased Wolff, who claimed to have been involved in the events. Not surprisingly, the witnesses portray themselves as good guys. All, particularly the Germans, seem to have been anti-Nazi and secretly working to confound Hitler’s plans even if they had to hide their political opposition beneath SS uniforms. The testimony of some of these witnesses is, to put it mildly, suspect. Wolff, whose recollections form the basis for the story, is especially untrustworthy since even the author acknowledges that the SS officer was an amoral opportunist who, after the war, consistently twisted the truth of his wartime career in order to avoid conviction as a war criminal. The reader might wonder if Wolff manipulated the story of an alleged plot against the pope to further his postwar political rehabilitation. Suspect testimony might have been buttressed by documentary evidence, but the author (accepting Wolff’s assertions) assures us that the plot was so secret that no records were kept. In fact, there are two documentary sources relevant to a kidnapping operation, a diary entry by Joseph Goebbels after Mussolini’s arrest in July 1943 and a directive circulated by Martin Bormann to Nazi Party Gauleiters in November 1943, both of which undermine the claim of a plot. Additionally, there is the postwar testimony of Wilhelm Hoettl, director of the Vatican desk in the foreign intelligence division of Himmler’s Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), who asserted on several occasions that there was never a plan to seize the pope. Father Robert Graham, the acknowledged authority on the wartime Vatican who interviewed and corresponded with all of the characters in the drama (including Wolff),was always sceptical about the existence of a serious plot. After completing Kurzman’s sensational story, this reviewer remains no less sceptical. David Alvarez, Saint Mary’s College of California

1d) Gerard Noel, Pius XII. The Hound of Hitler. London: Continuum 2008. Pp 220. ISBN 978-189-708-34537.

As a young man, sixty years ago, Gerard Noel was granted a private audience by Pope Pius XII at his summer castle, Castel Gandolfo. He was naturally greatly impressed. But in his subsequent career as a British Catholic journalist and author, he has become more sceptical, and has now published an account of Pius’ career which places him firmly in the camp of the pope’s detractors. Noel claims that this is not a conventional biography, but rather concentrates on those factors which throw light on Pius’ private character and personality. However, like all other such writers, Noel has not had access to the Vatican’s own documentary sources for Pius’ reign, which still await cataloguing before they can be made available to the public. Instead, he draws on other secondary sources such as the book by his fellow British journalist, John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, even though this has by now been largely discredited, as Cornwell himself has acknowledged. On the more personal side of Pius’ life, Noel relies heavily on an even more dubious source. He makes much, for instance of the purported influence of the pope’s indomitable housekeeper, the German nun, Mother Pasqualina, who “looked after” him for over forty years. Noel’s reconstruction of personal conversations and exchanges between Pius and Pasqualina must at best be considered fictitious. In addition he claims he has received “insider” information from various Vatican habitués, now dead. The impact of these “revelations” is to stress the Pope’s physical ailments, particularly the increasingly frequent hallucinations from which Pius is supposed to have suffered in his final years. No corroborative evidence is produced for such suppositions.

At the same time, Noel goes out of his way to build up a case against both the political and personal attitudes of Eugenio Pacelli, whom he depicts as a narrowly self-interested ecclesiastic, who early on set himself a “Great Design” to strengthen and centralize the One True Church as the most powerful body in human society. This aim was systematically pursued, first through his work in revising the complete Code of Canon Law, and subsequently through his efforts to negotiate a whole series of Concordats between the Vatican and national governments. No less than 25 such Concordats were concluded between 1914 and 1958. These were all part of a triumphalist dream to enhance the power and influence of the Catholic Church.

Pacelli’s single-minded dedication to this ambitious programme, so Noel contends, led to disastrous political misjudgements. For example, the signing of a Concordat with Serbia in the summer of 1914 was, in Noel’s opinion, a slap in the face of the most important Catholic power, Austria-Hungary, and thus a significant factor leading to the outbreak of the first world war. The same misjudgements were to be repeated, largely due to similar reasons, when Pacelli, as Secretary of State, was responsible for the signing of the Concordat with Nazi Germany in 1933. Noel’s evaluation of this negotiation is invariably negative. He claims that Pacelli was misled by his deep-set hostility to Soviet Communism into being “flexible” towards the Nazi movement and its leaders. Indeed he even “invents” the myth, that, in earlier years, while Nuncio in Munich, Pacelli had actually encountered the young radical, Adolf Hitler, and had given him money while still down and out to support his budding anti-Communist movement. No evidence for such a slander is produced.

Likewise Noel’s setting up a scenario in which Mother Pasqualina is portrayed as a vigorous opponent of any concessions to the Nazis in contrast to Pacelli/Pius’ weak and vacillating attitudes, is a pure invention. His description of Pius’ war-time diplomacy is predictably critical, including his failure to condemn the Nazis’ most heinous crimes against the Jews. Noel’s stance on this issue is hardly original, including his belief that a more outspoken protest by the Pope would have mobilized the German Catholic population to oppose the killing and persecution of the Jews. He shares with others the same wishful thinking about the capacity of the Vatican to command the loyalty of its following in war-time, or about the supposed influence of the Pope to bring about any alteration in the power balances in strife-ridden Europe.

Admittedly, he acknowledges that Pius was a multi-layered personality with many contrasting facets, from urbane diplomat, to tortured neurotic, to silent ascetic. Towards the end of his life, Noel claims, he would become increasingly a despot, without the kind of human contact which might have saved him from the illusions of saintly dedication and devotion. This facet was enhanced by the fact that in the 1950s the revival of the Church in post-war Europe was remarkable. It resulted in a decade of seemingly positive advances. The public image of the Church was triumphant, omnipotent. But the private reality of the Pope’s immediate entourage was cold and authoritarian. Pius became more and more absorbed in writing speeches on all manner of subjects, which were delivered to the constant stream of visitors, especially of academics in a huge variety of intellectual fields. As well, Pius concentrated on more mystical topics and theological explorations where few could follow him, such as the enormous effort placed on the esoteric ceremonies during the Holy Year of 1950, when Pius formally defined the Catholic doctrine of the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in both body and soul to heavenly glory which was to become regarded as an absolute and infallible belief of the Church. Such recondite speculations led him, in Noel’s view, to become a spiritual megalomaniac, all too conscious of his declining physical powers. On the other hand, Noel does have certain positive things to say about Pius’ personality.

He defends Pius against accusations that he was pro-Nazi or anti-Semitic, and asserts with conviction that he was definitely not a puppet or pawn to any man, especially not Hitler. On the other hand, he acknowledges the known facts about Pius’ hypochondria and depressions. In conclusion he readily admits that Pius’ character is endlessly intriguing. So something of his earlier captivation still remains. Curiously he provides no explanation as to why his book has been given the strange sub-title, The Hound of Hitler, which seems entirely inappropriate. In essence, this interpretation will convince few scholars who have done their homework, but may titillate those readers who are addicted to accounts of scandal and intrigue in high places.
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2) Journal Article: Frank J. Coppa, “Between Morality and Diplomacy: The Vatican’s silence during the Holocaust,” in Journal of Church and State, Vol. 50, no. 3, Summer 2008, p. 541-568.

In 2006 Frank Coppa published an excellent survey of The Papacy, the Jews and the Holocaust. Inevitably this new article covers the same ground as his book’s Chapter 6, but expands and updates the footnotes. Coppa adopts a moderate position, being fully aware of the arguments for and against the policies of Pope Pius XII. He rightly explains the inherent conflict over the Pope’s preference for a diplomatic approach to world events rather than any strident denunciation based on a purely moralistic stance. This debate, as readers of this Newsletter are surely aware, remains unresolved. Coppa shares the view of your editor that the comprehensive opening of the Vatican archives for the period of Pope Pius XII’s reign, which have only in part become available for public scrutiny, will not lead to any startling revelations Nor will it stop this continuing debate. As he rightly remarks: “both advocates and adversaries have explored the [already published] volumes selectively, often only to support their pre-established positions on religious, ideological, political and psychological considerations, transcending the thought and policies of Pius XII.” However, he concludes: “access to the archives should reinforce the objective studies of this Pope and the scholarly narratives of his pontificate over the expression of both adversarial and apologetic accounts, and so play a part in bringing the ”Pius War” to an end”. (P. 568) This would indeed be a consummation devoutly to be wished.
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3) Editorial: A Holocaust Heretic Disciplined

The present furore over the regrettable remarks about the Holocaust made by Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of Saint Pius X is doubly unfortunate. The Society of Saint Pius X consists of a dwindling group of ultra-conservative and elderly men who broke away from the Vatican’s authority forty years ago. They opposed the decisions of the Second Vatican Council, fearing that the Church was about to descend the slippery slope of capitulation to modern secular values, and to abandon the time-honoured and unchanging doctrines of earlier centuries. Thanks to the leadership of Pope John Paul II and the present Pope Benedict XVI, this danger has been averted. Benedict now wishes to heal this rift. He has already showed consideration by allowing the restoration of celebrating the Mass in Latin. But the provocative utterances of one obscure and obstinate hold-out now threaten to upset the Vatican’s strategy of reconciliation over a much more important issue, namely the future of Catholic-Jewish relations.

The reckless and clearly deliberate distortions of history by this cranky and irrelevant bishop, for which he has neither the competence let alone the authority to make, have re-awoken deeply-felt resentments among many prominent Jewish agencies and commentators in Israel, Germany and elsewhere. It is a sad fact that, despite the frequent and sincere engagement of Pope Benedict on this subject, his pilgrimage to Auschwitz, and his fervent desire to visit Israel in the near future, the suspicion still remains that such Vatican pronouncements are only skin-deep, and that underneath the Roman Catholic Church may still harbour the kind of anti-Semitism which was so disfiguring a characteristic over so many centuries.

Forty years ago the Second Vatican Council’s notable statement Nostra Aetate declared that the Jews were the Christians “older brothers in faith”. The Church’s teaching ever since has consistently adopted this new and much more positive tone, re-echoed in Pope Benedict’s recent pronouncements. But clearly much more needs to be done to overcome the legacy of past antagonisms, or to ward off the suspicions so vocally expressed about the genuineness of Christian repentance. Very much the same applies to the Protestant and Orthodox Churches. Any recurrence of Christian anti-Semitism has to be repudiated. All Christians are now called to adopt a more positive and constructive engagement with their local Jewish communities in a common stance against the kind of bigotry and intolerance here demonstrated.
JSC

With all best wishes
John Conway