I wish above all to thank the two Magnificent Rectors of the Gregorian and Lateran Universities - our hosts this morning, the Reverend Father Ghirlanda and Monsignor Fisichella - for the invitation to open this conference, which is very important and timely, on the legacy of Pius XII's Magisterium.
As a premise to the work done in order to confront this subject - still little studied - one must look at the vast panorama of the work of Eugenio Pacelli, first as Cardinal Secretary of State to Pius XI and Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church. Personally, I am happy and honored to be able to do this in my capacity as his present successor in both posts.
Therefore I will re-evoke, if only in summary form, the service of Cardinal Pacelli, bearing two facts well in mind which I shall look at amply: the work of this Roman cardinal was the last stage of an itinerary in the service of the Holy See, the universal Church and every human being, without distinction - a journey that culminated in a Pontificate that was out of the ordinary, which began on the eve of the most horrifying war that humanity has known, and which in fact, was eventually shown to be, paradoxically, a work of peace, that peace which is a fruit of justice -
opus iustitiae pax - as Pacelli's motto says, which uses the root word 'pax' of his family name.
At long last, there are many signs that the debate over his person and his work - controversial to the point of becoming a veritable historiographic case - has been turning more calm and balanced lately, acknowledging the relevance and greatness of his Pontificate, beyond the exploitative polemics that is becoming less understandable because, above all, they have little to do with historical fact.
Born in Rome on March 2, 1876, to a family belonging to minor Roman nobility, and ordained a priest on April 2, 1899, the young Pacelli entered the service of the Holy See in 1901, towards the end of Leo XIII's Pontificate, starting a brilliant career that would bring him to the summit of Vatican diplomacy before the start of the First World War.
Chosen by Cardinal Pietro Gasparri to be secretary of the Commission for the revision of the Code of Canon Law in 1904, and joining the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesial Affairs the next year, he was named its undersecretary in 1911 by Pius XI, then adjunct secretary in 1912, and secretary in 1914, on the very eve of war.
In these roles of growing responsibility, Mons. Pacelli was concerned above all by the rupture of diplomatic relations with France, and was the protagonist of two difficult missions during the catastrophic war, in repeated but futile attempts at mediation carried out by the Holy See (which for more than four decades, had been increasingly more active 'at the frontiers of peace' - activity that has been very well documented and studied).
In 1917, Mons. Pacelli was named Apostolic Nuncio to Munich by Benedict XV, who on May 13th that year, personally conferred the episcopal honor on Pacelli in the Sistine Chapel.
[Which makes {Pius XII probably the only Pope to have been ordained a bishop and elected Pope in the Sistine Chapel!]
As the only papal representative on German territory, he met with the Kaiser in an attempt to sound out Germany's real intentions in the war. That encounter with Wilhelm II was solemn but unsuccessful, and was described by the Pope's diplomat in a lucid report to the Secretary of State, who was Gasparri in 1916.
Pacelli wrote:
Introduced to the Kaiser... I explained to him, according to the instructions I received, the anxious concern of the Holy Father Benedict XV, about the prolongation of the war, the growing hatreds and the accumulation of material and moral ruin which represented the suicide of civilian Europe and which would turn mankind backward on its path by centuries...
His Majesty listened to me with respectful and serious attention... I would say, nonetheless, in all frankness, that in his manner of looking intently at his interlocutor, in his gestures, and in his voice, he seemed to me - I could not say whether it was his nature or the consequence of three long and anguished years of war - rather 'exalted' and not at all normal.
He replied that Germany had not provoked the war, but that it was forced to defend itself from the destructive intentions of England, whose belligerent power - and at this point, the emperor vigorously shook his fist in the air - had to be crushed.
Five years later, a different and less credible version of the meeting by the now-dethroned sovereign in his memoirs was belied by the Holy See.
The Pontifical legation faced the disastrous postwar situation of Germany with what it called a 'diplomacy of assistance', of which Pacelli was a protagonist in a much wider context than the humanitarian activity deployed by the Holy See since 1915 in behalf of prisoners of war.
Witness to the ruin which followed the conflict, Pacelli as Nuncio in Munich - also Nuncio in Berlin since 1920 - clearly saw the dangers in the new situation provoked by the collapse of the Wilhelmine empire, the attitude of the winning powers towards Germany, the complications brought on by the successful Communist Revolution of 1917 in Russia, the risk of a possible Russo-German alliance against the western nations, the growth of German nationalism which affected many Catholics even though its roots were Protestant, and the spread of Hitler's movement.
because of all this, Mons. Pacelli supported the Weimar Republic, the collaboration between the Catholic Zentrum party and socialists, as well as German national unity. He worked towards getting Concordats which he was able to conclude with Bavaria in 1924 and with Prussia in 1929.
But in Berlin. the Nuncio's attempts to deal with Soviet emissaries - begun in 1924 and carried on for three years - were unsuccessful in trying to assure the survival of the Catholic Church in Russia.
On December 16, 1929, Pius XI made his representative in Berlin a cardinal. Pacelli left the German capital with great recognition - even in the 'adversary' press, according to a report sent later to the Vatican by the Berlin Nunciature - of his gifts and his merits.
A few weeks later, Papa Ratti named the new cardinal his Secretary of State, in a brief document dated February 7, 1930, which was completely written in his own hand - now displayed at the current exhibit at the Charlemagne Arm of the Bernini Colonnade by the Pontifical Commission on Historical Sciences to commemorate 'The Man Pacelli and His Pontificate' on the the 50th anniversary of his death, an exhibit I had the pleasure of inaugurating two days ago.
Because of its inherent interest, it is worth citing the entire papal document:
"Lord Cardinal, having believed that we should accede - which we did today, at great pain - to the request of Cardinal Pietro Gasparri to resign as our Secretary of State, we have, before the Lord, decided to call on you and name you, Eminence - as we hereby do with this legal document - to the none-too-easy and demanding succession to that high and sensitive office.
What has moved us to this nomination and what gives us full and certain confidence before everyone is your spirit of piety and prayer which can only be propitious for an abundance of divine aid, as well as the qualities and gifts that the good Lord has enriched you with, in all the high positions that have been entrusted to you till now - especially in the two Nunciatures in Bavaria and Prussia - which you have used very well for the glory of the Divine Giftgiver and in service to the Church. With all my heart, I bless you...
Thus started the last decisive stage of Pacelli's journey, before the brief Conclave which, nine years later, on his 63rd birthday, would elect him Pope - the first Roman and Secretary of State in two centuries to become Pope.
The period during which he was the prime collaborator of Pius XI was one of the most difficult and tragic times of the 20th century. It was examined in depth and studied for the first time by a reputed scholar like Fr. Pierre Blet, whom I wish to greet here today.
The international context was most difficult because of the worldwide economic crisis and the rising totalitarian tide which seemed to submerge Europe, even as - with the 'Roman question' having been resolved through the Conciliation between Italy and the Holy See
[an event commemorated in the construction and naming of the Via della Conciliazione leading to St. Peter's Square] - the church of Rome began taking on more visibly that universal breadth inherent in its calling and which the Pontificates of Pius XI and Pius XII had strongly developed and underscored, paving the way for the years of the Second Vatican Council and Pius XII's successors in the second half of the 20th century.
In this task, the activities of Secretary of State Pacelli, supported by co-workers of the first order, were fundamental. Outstanding among these collaborators were two personalities who were very different but complementary - Domenico Tardini and Giovanni Battista Montini, who were named respectively, secretary for extraordinary ecclesial affairs, and deputy secretary of state. They were both confirmed in those positions when Pacelli became Pope, who then made them both pro-Secretaries of State at the end of 19523.
As Secretary of State, Pacelli was an ecclesiastic with a preparation that was out of the ordinary and who immediately impressed all the diplomats accredited to the Holy See. Here is how he was remembered in that position 15 years later by the ambassador to the Vatican from France, Francois Charles-Roux:
He was a perfect negotiator - conscientious, persevering in bringing forth the viewpoint of the Holy See and trying to make it prevail, but at the same time, conciliatory, equitable, impartial, and scrupulously loyal. He knew how not to be irritating, even when he was obliged to be intransigent or energetically assertive in posing an objection or a complaint.
Continuous association with him reminded me of a saying by the French diplomat and statesman Choiseul that true refinement is saying the truth, sometimes with force but always with grace.
These were the qualities of Eugenio Pacelli that served the Holy See invaluably in the dark years that led to the Second World War.
It is not possible for us to dwell here on a period so dense with events and so complex from the historical viewpoint, but to indicate the scope of activity of the Holy See, a few facts on the actions of the Pope and the work of his Secretary of State will suffice to recall facts that are known but which have not always been interpreted in their historical context, and which have often been distorted.
In Italy, despite the controversial 'Conciliation', tensions between the Holy See and the Fascist regime multiplied until the crisis of 1931, when Mussolini as head of government gave an order dissolving all Catholic youth associations.
Pius XI reacted vigorously and published the encyclical
Non abbiamo bisogno (We have no need...). which was so strongly worded against the government decision that in order to publish it first outside Italy, out of fear that internal publication would be blocked, Mons. Montini was charged with travelling incognito to deliver the text to the Nunciatures in Bern and Berlin.
"This is an attempt to deal a death blow," began the papal encyclical, written in Italian, "to what was and what always will be dear to our heart as Father and Pastor of souls".
The crisis was eventually resolved, but the tensions would return many times more in the following years, in a country where the only press voice that remained truly free was the Pope's newspaper, as a lay representative like Piero Calamandrei would remind the Italian Constituutional Assembly afte World War II: "...that at a certain moment, during the years of the worst oppression, we realized that the only newspaper in which we could still find some sign of freedom - of our freedom, of the freedom common to all free men - was
L'Osservatore Romano... (and) we experienced the fact that those who bought this newspaper were subject o being clubbed down..."
Another encyclical was published in the smae year,
Nova impendet, on the gravity of the economic crisis and the worsening arms race, followed in October 1931 by another great social document to commemorate Leo XIII's encyclical
Quadragesimo anno.
The worsening social situation was again the subject the following year of
Caritate Christi, followed by
Acerhe animi on the anti-Catholic persecutions in Mexico, which broke off diplomatic relations with the Holy See.
But a crisis was also precipitated in Spain, where the recently proclaimed Republic carried out a policy which was severely adverse to the Church, with provisions that provoked a firm protest from the Holy See in 1933, starting with the encyclical
Dilectissima nobis, against the "grave offense not only against religion and the Church, but also against the principles of freedom that the new Spanish regime had declared it was based on".
"It must not be thought that our word is inspired by sentiments of aversion to this new form of government or other strictly political events that have taken place recently in Spain", the letter continued. "It is a fact known to all that the Catholic Church, which is not linked in any way to one government or another, has not found it difficult - in order to keep safe the law of God and Christian conscience - to come to terms with various civilian institutions, whether monarchic or republican, aristocratic or democratic".
"Manifest proof of this, not to mention recent facts, are the numerous Concordats and agreements reasched in the past several years with various regimes, and the diplomatic relations opened by the Vatican with various states in which, after the last great war, republican governments replaced monarchies."
This was reiterated by Cardinal Pacelli with respect to the attidue of the Church towards public authorities: "The experience of 2000 years keeps the Church from exaggerating the importance of questions related to the form of the State and the structures which such form conditions."
Proof of the moderation and realism of the Church of Rome was seen during the tragedy which would be precipitated three years later by the Spanish Civil War, with the Holy See and Pius XI himself famously opposed to the actions taken by General Franco in Spain.
What stands out, of course, among the Concordats signed by the Holy See in those years, was the one with the German Reich, which haappened in 1933, but in a situation completely different from when Pacelli left Berlin three years earlier - becsause of the growth in the meantime of German consensus favorable to Nazism.
The Holy See and most of the German bishops - unlike many German Catholics and the overwhelming majority of German Protestants - had a negative attitude, and the bishops would eventually be called to account for their initial opposition during Hitler's rise to power, against the national consensus favorable to the Nazi regime.
Just to point out one fact: At least 11,000 Catholic priests (almost half of the German clergy at the time), "received punitive measures from the Nazis that were politically or religiously motivated", which often meant ending up in concentration camps.
Among the consequences of the Concordat with Germany was the elimination from the political scene of the Catholic political party Zentrum. Nonetheless, the conflicts between the Catholic Church and Nazism grew more acute - despite the growing concerns over the Church's declarations against Communist totalitarianism and notwithstanding traditional Catholic anti-Semitism - in the wake of anti-Jewish legislation and provisions for voluntary sterilization. Against all this, the Church spoke with firmness as eawrly as 1934, above all, the Bishop of Muenster Clemens von Galen [
DIM]8pt[=DIM][who became a close friend of Cardinal Pacelli, and who was beatified by Benedict XVI in October 2005].
The Church's opposition to Nazism was clear, and in 1936, a collective letter from the German bishops asked the Pope for an enchyclical on the matter. Pius XI called to Rome the three German cardinals (Adolf Bertram, Michael von Faulhaber, and Karl Joseph Shulte), as well as the two bishops who were most outspoken against the regime, von Galen and Konrad von Preysing.
With the definitive help of Cardinal Pacelli and his faithful German collaborators (Mons. Ludwig Kaas and the Jesuits Roberty Leiber and Augustin Bea), the result was
Mit brennender Sorge (With burning concern), the 1937 encyclical which condemned the racial and pagan ideology of the Third Reich, followed a few days later by the encyclical against atheistic Communism (
Divini redemptoris) and on the bloody persecutions by Masonic laymen against Mexican Catholics (
Firmissimam constantiam).
The relationship between Pius XI and his secretary of state remains a subject to be more fully explored, but this will occur in time, and with progresive studies of Vatican archival material which was opened two years ago for the entire Pontificate of Pius XI, but which researchers have barely looked at.
The esteem that the Pope had for Pacelli would continually grow, leading Pius XI to the unprecedented innovation of sending his Scretary of State on repeated international missions. Thus, in 1934, Cardinal Pacelli crossed the Atlantic for the first time - as another future Pope had done a century earlier, when Mastai-Ferretti [who became Pius IX] went to Chile on a diplomatic mission.
Pacelli as Secretary of State and Pontifical Representative also went to Buenos Aires for an International Eucharistic Congress, and during that long trip, he visited Montevideo (Uruguay) and Rio de Janiero (Brazil), then Las Palmas in the Canary Islands and Barcelona, returning to the Vatican in 1935.
A few months later, the cardinal was in Lourdes, where his concluding homily counterposed redemption by Christ to 'the banner of social revolution', to 'a false conception of the world and of life' and to 'the superstition of race and blood'.
This condemnation of 'the idolatry of race' would be re-stated by Cardinal Pacelli when he was once again sent to France by the Pope, this time to consecrate the Basilica in Lisieux, proceeding from there to Paris, where he met with representatives of the Popular Front government.
In 1938, another International Eucharistic Congress took him to Hungary, where he reaffirmed the Church's traditonal principle of its extraneity in determining forms of government, but above all, he denounced the arms race "which has become the dominant concern of mankind in the 20th century", warning that the 'destructive fury' f new conflicts would far surpass 'the most frightening wars of the past'.
But perhaps, Pacelli's most important trip was that in autumn 1936 - a long private visit to the United States, logging thousands of miles by air, as he had already done a great deal in Germany, which farther underscored his modernity.
During that trip, the cardinal met with some eighty American bishops, adn many important political figures, including President Roosevelt who had just been re-elected,
Returning to the Vatican, the cardinal was presented by the Pope with a commemorative portrait which he dedixcated with a handwritten "Carissimo cardinale, al suo Trans-Atlantico Pan-Americo - Eugenio Pacelli feliciter redeunti" (Dearest Cardinal on his happy return from a trans-Atlantic pan-Americanrip).
Just a few days earlier, Pius XI surprised Mons. Tardini by praising his Secretary of State who was still travelling, and concluding calmly, "He will be a great Pope."
The prediction was fulfilled less than three years later just as the next great war became imminent. To try and prevent it, the new Pope, who had taken the name Pius XII, attempted a last appeal, written with the help of his deputy Montini, and delivered a week before the troops of the Third Reich invaded Poland:
A grave hour has struck once again for the great human family. A momemt of tremendous deliberation, about which we cannot be disinterested, about which our spiritual authority, which comes from God, must not be disinterested, in order to lead all souls along the ways of justice and peace. ...
We who are armed with nothing more than the power of truth, above public rivalries and passions, speak to you in the name of God, from whom all paternity in heaven and earth takes its name...
It is with the force of reason, not of arms, that justice advances. Empires that are not founded on justice are not blessed by God. Politics emancipated from morality betrays the very ones who wish it so.
The danger is imminent, but there is sitll time. Nothing is lost with peace. Everything could be lost with war... We plead, through the blood of Christ whose triumphant power in the world was his gntleness in life and in death.
Pleading thus, we know and we feel that we are joined by all who are upright in heart, all who are hungry and thirsty for justice, all those already suffering every kind of pain from the evlis of this life...
Also with us is the soul of this old Europe... which was the product of Christian faith and genius. With us, too, all of mankind who hope for justice, bread, freedom - not weapons which kill and destroy
. Papa Pacelli's appeal was in vain, as was the denunciation in his first encyclical,
Summi pontificatus, published in the first autumn of the war, which condemned "forgetting that law of human solidarity and charity, dictated and imposed by both the common origins of men and the similarity of rational nature in all men, whatever people they belong to, and by the sacrifice of redemption offered by Jesus Christ".
The encyclical also forcefully advocated 'the unity of the human race' which was at the center and in the title of the last projected encyclical by his predecessor, to whom Pius XII has sometimes been compared unfavorably without a real basis.
There was no 'hidden encyclical' by Pius XI, in the same way that Cardinal Pacelli never censored the last speech written by Pius XI for the tenth anniversary of the Conciliation with Italy, which, 20 years later, John XXIII would order published in
L'Osservatore Romano.
The condemnation in
Summi Pontificatus was aimed at 'the concept that assigns unlimited power to the State', which the encyclical called 'a pernicious error', whether for 'the internal life of nations' or for 'relations among peoples, because it shatters the unity of supranational society, takes away the basis and the value of the law for peoples, opens the way for violating the rights of others, and makes peaceful intentions and coexistence difficult".
It concluded with a most severe denunciation of 'the hour of darness' when 'the spirit of violence and discord pours over mankind the bloody cup of unnameable sorrows" and warned that "such sorrows are perhaps only 'the beginning of labor pains' (Mt 24,8) for the people, who are now engulfed in the vortex of the war, when alrady death and desolation, lamentation and misery, rule over thousnads of families".
"The death of countless human beings, including non-combatants, raises an excruciating lament, particularly for a beloved nation like Poland, which, for its faithfulness to the Church, for its merits in defense of Christian civilization, written indelibly in the pages of its history, has a right to the human and fraternal sympathy of the world."
It continues: "The duty of Christian love, fundamental principle of the Kingdom of Christ, is not an empty word but a living reality. A vast field opens itself to Christian charity in all forms. We have full confidence that all our children, especially those who are not suffering the scourge of war, may remember, emulating the divine Samaritan, that all those who are victims of war have a right to mercy adn help".
Prefigured thus in Papa Pacelli's first encyclical was not only the horrors of war but also the gigantic work of charity that the Catholic Church would deploy for everyone, without any distinction whatsoever, during the years of conflict.
Proof of this, among others, are the three million and a half documents of the Vatican Information Office, letters written in behalf of individual prisoners of war, instituted by Pius XII soon after the war started - documents covering up to 1947 which are available in the Vatican archives and which have always been open but almost completely unused.
In fact, it seems that it suffices to openn an archive - even one whose opening has perhaps been demnaded clamorously - for its contents to then be totally ignored. Evidently, there are many for whom history is important only if it can be used as a weapon.
It is known that the archives of the Holy See have been completely open up to 1939 [to the end of Pius XI's Papacy], whereas for the period of the war and the Shoah, its contents have been largely anticipated in substance by the 12 volumes of the
Actes et documents du Saint-Siege relatifs a la seconde guerre mondiale, published at the instance of Paul VI in 1965.
This impressive documentation - which adds to the immense documentation available in national and private archives elsewhere, countless testimonials and historical reconstructions of that period - confirm that the controversy over the so-called 'silence' of Pius XII, attributed to his supposed insensitivity or even outright connivance with respect to the Shoah, is merely exploitative.
This is indicated moreover by its roots in Soviet propaganda which was started during the war itself, later spilling over into Soviet propaganda during the Cold War, to be relaunched by its epigones
[inferior imitators].
As a diplomat under Benedict XV, Pacelli made every effort to get widespread condemnation as early as 1915 for the anti-Jewish violence that erupted in Poland, while in the 1930s, as Pius XI's Secretary of State, he put a stop to the anti-Jweish radio propagadna of the American Catholic priest Charles Counghlin.
With his experience in Germany, moreover, the cardinal knew Nazism and its insane ideology very well, and many times, between 1937-19039, he warned both the Americans and the British, of the danger represented by the Third Reich.
Furthermore, between the autumn of 1939 and the spring of 1940, the Pontiff supported, in an unprecedented decision, the attempt - which was soon aborted - by some German military circles, who were in touch with the British, to overthrow the Hitler regime.
After the German attack on the Soviet Union, Pius XII, and with him, the Catholic Church, refused to be associated with what came to be presented as a crusade against Communism, but rather did his best to overcome the opposition by many American Catholics to any alliance with the Soviets - despite the fact that the Pope and his closest collaborators were very much against Communism.
To represent Pius XII as indifferent to the fate of the victims of Nazism - the Poles first, and above all, the Jews - and to call him Hitler's Pope outright, even before being outrageous, canot be supported historically.
In the same way, there is no historical basis for the image of a Pope who was under the thumb of the United Sattes and was 'the chaplain of the West' - something which was always maintained and disseminated by the Soviets and by their sympathizers in the European democracies during the years of the Cold War.
In the face of the horrors of war and the tragedy which would thereafter be called the Shoah, Papa Pacelli did not remain neutral or indifferent. And that which came to be denounced - and continues to be - as his 'silence' was a conscious and anguished choice based on the clearest moral and religious judgment.
So many voices, even outside the Catholic world, have acknowledged and continue to acknowledge this.
For instance, as early as 1940, Albert Eisntein wrote in
Time magazine: "Only the Catholic Church has dared to oppose Hitler's campaign to suppress the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before this, but now I feel great affection and admiration because only the Church has had the courage and constant strength to be on the side of intellectual truth and moral freedom".
For his part, the Dominican Yves Congar, later Cardinal, noted in his diary on Vatican-II the confidences of a witness to those years, his brother Dominican Rosaire Gagnebet.
After the Fosse Ardeatine massacre
[mass execution of Italian civilians carried out in Rome on March 24, 1944, by Nazi German occupation troops as a reprisal for a partisan attack conducted the previous day], the Pope wrestled in anguish whether he should denounce it, Gagnebet recalled.
"But all the convents, all the religious houses of Rome, were full of refugees - Communists, ahteists, Jews, democrats, anti-fascists, ex-generals, etc., to the point that Pius XII had even suspended the rules for cloistered orders. If he had publicly protested the Ardeatine massacre, there would have been a mandatory search of all these places of refuge, and the results sould have been catastrophic. And that is why the Pope chose the route of diploamtic protest".
Later, when the Archbishop of Palermo, Cardinal Luigi Lavitrano, was threaten with deportation, Pius XII wrote him to say he would gladly 'face the authorities in your place', while he told the German ambassador promptly, "You will be arresting Mons. Pacelli, not the Pope".
The work of assistance deployed by Pius XII in behalf of persecuted Italians - among them, a great number of Jews in Rome and the rest of the country - was immense, and is increasingly shown by documentation being uncovered by auithoritative historians and intellectuals who are certainly not defenders of the papacy by occupation, such as Ernesto Galli della Loggia, Arrigo Levi and Piero Melograni.
New facts and documents are gradually re-emerging from this past that has not passed. Such documentation does full justice to what Papa Pacelli and his Church did in the face of the criminal persecution of the Jews, and would demand rewriting countless books and relegate to oblivion the defamatory myth of a Naziphile Pontiff.
Born in the early years of the Second World War, the Black Legend culminated in 1963 with the presentation of the play
Der Stellvertreter (The Vicar) by Rolf Hochhuth and re-launched yet again in 2003 by Constantin Costa-Gavras's film
Amen.
That this was part of an orchestrated campaign was first dneounced in Italy by Giovanni Spadolini in 1965 when the historian described 'systematic attacks by the Communist world, which has not failed to find some complicity and even condescencsion in Catholic hearts, at least in some who are not unknown, not even in Italy".
All this wqas confirmed 40 years later by an entire dossier from the German archives which shows that the heads of the Third Reich considred Papa Pacelli an enemy. These are previously unpublished Nazi documents which ended in the hands of East Germany's secret police, and which remained undisclosed until an investigation by the newspaper
La Repubblica which one would hardly call a pro-Pacelli newspaper.
[Nor pro-religion or pro-Vatican, for that matter!]
To summarize the historiographic case on the debate over Pius XII, there was an important and long interview published in
L'Osservatore Romano on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Pope's death, with Paolo Mieli, the historian who currently the editor of
Corriere della Sera.
It is a very significant text, in which Mieli, among other things, says he is convinced that history will do justice to Pius XII.
"The fraction of Jewish blood that runs in my veins," he said, "makes me prefer the Pope who helped my fellow Jews survive rather than one who would simply have made dmeonetrative gestures."
It is worthwhile to reread his conclusive judgment on Pius XII.
In many ways, he was probably the most important Pope of the 20th century. The fact that he was capable of self-questioning about his decision to be 'silent' gives me an indication of how great he was. Among many things, I was impressed by this: After the war, if Pius XII had felt any guilt at all, a bad conscience, he could have spoken openly of what he did for the Jews. But he never did.
He said not a word. He could have done so. He could have let others write about it or talk about it. He never bothered. For me, this proved the strength of his personality. He did not feel in any way that he had to defend himself.
As for a judgment on Pius XII, I have kept in my heart something written in 1964 by Robert Kempner, a Jewish magistrate of German origin, who was #2 man in the Nuremberg trials: "Any propagandistic position that the Church could have taken against Hitler would have been not merely premeditated suicide, but would have accelerated the killing of a far greater number of Jews and priests."
I therefore conclude this: For 20 years (until 1963), the public judgments about Pius XII and his conduct with the Jews were unanimous and favorable. Against that, the offensive against him counts for little. Whoever wants to study this question with intellectual honesty should start from that. The scales are just so unbalanced.
Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI have all defneended the memory of Pius XII from the historical point of view, his actions during the Second World War and with rgeard to the horrid tragedy of the Shoah.
One must not forget the honor that the Popes have rendered to the memory of the six million victims of the Shoah and the undoubtable intention to ptoceed along a way of peace, reconciliation and religious encounter with Judaism - as Paul VI did during Vatican-II anf the rest of his Pontificate, as John Paul II constantly and tenaciously preached in his time, and as Benedict XVI has repeated on so many occasions, particularly this year, during his trip the United States, Australia, and recently, to France.
As is well known, the cause of Papa Pacelli's canonization is under way - a religious fatc that deserves to be respected by everyone, and which, in its specificity, is within the exclusive competence of the Holy See.
In 1965, Paul VI announcing to Vatican-II that the causes for sainthood would get started for Pius XII and John XXIII, explained his reasons: "This supports the wishes that have been expressed for one or the other by countless faithful. This would assure for history the patrimony of their spiritual legacy. This would avoid any other reason than the reverence for sanctity and therefore, the worship of God's glory, and the edification of his Church, in reproposing their authentic and beloved figures for our veneration and for that of centuries to come".
For his part, Benedict XVI, celebrating the Mass in memory of Pius XII at St. Peter's Basilica recently, called on the faithful to pray "that the cause of (his)beatification may proceed happily".
It is an appeal I gladly welcome and to which I associate myself in remembering and celebrating a Roman Pontiff who was great, and to the greater knowledge of whom this conference will surely contribute a lot.