(Portrait of Pope Venerable Pius XII, c. between 1938 and 1958, [Public
Domain] via Creative Commons)
Pope Pius XII (1876-1958)
became pope in in 1939, mere months before Hitler invaded Poland, starting
World War II. He had a tense relationship with the fascist dictators of the
Axis Powers and the government leaders of the Allies. Throughout the war, Pope
Pius received requests from Jewish leaders and ambassadors of Allied countries
to denounce the Nazi Party, and the systematic murders of millions of men, women
and children. Nevertheless, for most of the war, Pope Pius XII refused to
criticize Nazi Germany. When, by chance, he decided to voice any
dissatisfaction with Hitler’s policies, he reduced his complaints to vague
generalities about war and death, never mentioning the Jews.
Only after 1942 did Pope Pius
XII begin to use his powerful diplomatic influence to save Jewish lives. When
Germany sent its military to occupy Rome in 1943, thousands of Jews were hidden
in Vatican buildings and its affiliate monasteries and convents. The pope, along
with the Allied Powers and various other organizations and political leaders,
were able to pressure Hungary into ending the deportation of its Jewish
population to Germany in 1944. Pope Pius XII also convinced thirteen countries
in South America to accept Jewish refugees and he aided thousands of Bulgarian
Jews to reach what would soon become Israel. With all of these deeds, however,
Pope Pius XII rarely, if ever, condemned Hitler in a verbal public speech or a
published editorial.
Even though the pope did not
openly refute or question Hitler, Pope Pius XII took a very different stance
toward the leader of Nazi Germany from the shadowy realm of espionage and subterfuge.
Before Germany invaded France, the pope encouraged a plot to assassinate the
Nazi Führer, but before the conspirators could enact their plan, a separate
assassin failed to kill Hitler. Security understandably tightened as a result
of the attempt, and the conspirators working with the pope lost their nerve.
Next, a man named Josef Müller, a member of the German resistance, made contact
with Pope Pius XII and they began to conceive of another plot. This time they
planned to blow up Adolph Hitler’s airplane. This assassination attempt also
failed and the Gestapo arrested Josef Müller in 1943. The last assassination attempt
Pope Pius gave his blessing to (but was not a participant of the conspiracy),
was the Valkyrie plot spearheaded by Colonel Claus von Stauffenburg. The
colonel planted a bomb in the same room as the Führer on July 20, 1944, but as
always, Hitler stubbornly refused to die to any hand but his own. The Führer
survived and Stauffenberg was executed the very next day.
Pope Pius XII remains a
widely controversial person, and the debate on his deeds and misdeed will not
end soon. Critics of the pope point out that he never challenged the Holocaust during
WWII, and he only began aiding Jews once the war was nearing its end. On the
other hand, Pope Pius was aware of, and sometimes involved in, multiple plots
to assassinate Adolph Hitler spanning from 1939-1944, and he did, indeed,
eventually help multiple thousands of Jews to escape the clutches of the Nazis.
There is no simple answer on how to judge Pope Pius XII’s thoughts and actions.
Written by C. Keith Hansley.
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