Pius XII also remained silent about the murder and repression of Catholics, including clergy, in Poland, France and other occupied countries. But Pius XII never mentioned Jews or Nazis by name or apportioned blame, although the Vatican received numerous reports about the genocide in progress. Buried on page 24 of his script, he did mention “the hundreds of thousands of people who, through no fault of their own and solely because of their nation or their race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction,” notes Kertzer. While the pope’s detractors castigate him for his silence during the Holocaust, his defenders point to his 1942 Christmas Eve radio broadcast as evidence to the contrary. Drawing upon these new materials and a broad array of other sources, Kertzer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 2014’s “The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe,” has produced the most authoritative study yet - a highly damning one.
Historians have long debated Pius XII’s record during World War II and the Holocaust, but the relevant documents in the Vatican archives were not made available to researchers until 2020.
But, as Kertzer demonstrates, the two men could not have been more different. Kertzer in his latest book, “The Pope at War.” When Pius XI’s secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli, succeeded him, the new pope paid tribute to his predecessor by taking the name Pius XII. But he grew increasingly alarmed by Benito Mussolini’s embrace of Adolf Hitler, “a man he despised as an enemy of the Church and a proponent of a pagan ideology,” writes Brown University professor and biographer David I. $37.50.Įarly in his reign, Pope Pius XI cooperated with Italy’s Fascist regime. The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini and Hitlerīy David I. Book Review: 'The Pope at War' by David I.
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