Styles of
Pope Pius XII |
 |
| Reference style |
His Holiness |
| Spoken style |
Your Holiness |
| Religious style |
Holy Father |
| Posthumous style |
Venerable |
Pope Pius XII (Latin: Pius PP. XII), born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni
Pacelli (March 2, 1876 – October
9, 1958), reigned as the 260th pope, the head of the
Roman Catholic Church and sovereign of
Vatican City, from March 2, 1939 until his death.
Before election to the papacy, Pacelli served as secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs,
papal nuncio and cardinal secretary of
state, in which roles he worked to conclude treaties with European nations, most notably
the Reichskonkordat with Germany. His leadership
of the Catholic Church during World War II and The
Holocaust remains the subject of continued historical controversy. After World War II, he was a vocal supporter of lenient
policies toward vanquished nations and a staunch opponent of communism.
Apart from Pius IX, Pius XII is the only pope to have invoked papal infallibility
(as opposed to the more general infallibility of the Church) by issuing an
apostolic constitution, Munificentissimus Deus, which defined ex
cathedra the dogma of the Assumption of
Mary. He also promulgated forty encyclicals, including
Humani Generis, which is still relevant to the Church's position on
evolution. He also decisively eliminated the Italian majority in the College of Cardinals with the Grand Consistory in
1946. His ongoing canonization
process progressed to the venerable stage on September
2, 2000 under Pope John Paul II.
Early life
-
Pacelli was born in Rome on March 2 1876 into a well-off aristocratic family with a history of ties to the papacy
(the "Black Nobility"). His grandfather, Marcantonio Pacelli was Under-Secretary in the
Papal Ministry of Finances[1] and then Secretary of the
Interior under Pope Pius IX from 1851 to 1870 and founded the Vatican's newspaper,
L'Osservatore Romano in 1861;[2] his cousin, Ernesto Pacelli, was a key financial advisor to
Pope Leo XIII; his father, Filippo Pacelli, was the dean of the Sacra Rota Romana; and his brother, Francesco Pacelli, became a lay
canon lawyer, credited for his role in negotiating the Lateran Treaty in 1929, bringing an end to the Roman Question, whom Pius XII would later name a marchese.[3] At the age of twelve Pacelli announced his intentions to enter
the priesthood instead of becoming a lawyer. Most of what is known about Pacelli's early life comes from a comprehensive
biography by Sister Margherita Marchione.[4]
After completing state primary schools, Pacelli received his secondary, classical education
at the Visconti Institute.[5] In
1894, at the age of eighteen, he entered the Almo Capranica Seminary to begin study for the
priesthood and enrolled at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the
Appolinare Institute of Lateran University.[5] From 1895–1896, he studied philosophy at
University of Rome La Sapienza.[5] In 1899, he received degrees in theology and in utroque iure (civil and
canon law).[5] At the seminary, he received a special dispensation to
live at home for health reasons.[5]
Church career
Pacelli on ordination day April 2, 1899
Priest and Monsignor
He was ordained a priest on Easter Sunday, April 2 1899 by Bishop Francesco
Paolo Cassetta — the vice-regent of Rome and a family friend — and received his first assignment as a curate at Chiesa Nuova, where he had served as an altar boy.[6] In 1901, he entered the
Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical
Affairs, a sub-office of the Vatican Secretariat of State, where
he became a minutante, at the recommendation of Cardinal Vannutelli, another
family friend.[6]
In 1904 Pacelli became a papal chamberlain and in 1905 a domestic prelate.[6] From 1904 until 1916, Father Pacelli assisted Cardinal
Gasparri in his codification of canon law with the Department of
Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs.[7] He was also chosen by Pope Leo XIII to deliver
condolences on behalf of the Vatican to Edward VII of the United
Kingdom after the death of Queen
Victoria.[8] In 1908, he served
as a Vatican representative on the International Eucharistic Congress
in London,[8] where he met with
Winston Churchill.[9] In 1911, he represented the Holy See at the coronation of King George
V.[7]
In 1908 and 1911, Pacelli turned down professorships in canon law at a Roman university and The Catholic University of America, respectively. Pacelli became the under-secretary
in 1911, adjunct-secretary in 1912 (a position he received under Pope Pius X and retained
under Pope Benedict XV) and secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical
Affairs in 1914 — succeeding Gasparri, who was promoted to Cardinal Secretary of
State.[7] As secretary,
Pacelli concluded a concordat with Serbia four days before Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo.[10] During World War I, Pacelli maintained the Vatican's registry of prisoners of
war. In 1915, he travelled to Vienna to assist Monsignor Scapinelli — the apostolic nuncio to Vienna — in his negotiations with Franz Joseph I
of Austria regarding Italy.[11]
Archbishop and Papal nuncio
Pope Benedict XV appointed Pacelli as papal nuncio
to Bavaria on April 23, 1917,
consecrating him as a titular Bishop of Sardis and
immediately elevating him to be archbishop in the Sistine
Chapel on May 13, 1917, before he left for Bavaria, where he
would meet with King Ludwig III on May 28, and later with Kaiser Wilhelm II.[12] As there was no nuncio to Prussia at the time,
Pacelli was, for all practical purposes, the nuncio to all of the German Empire, having his nunciature extended to
Germany and Prussia officially in June 23, 1920 and 1925
respectively.[13] Many of Pacelli's Munich staff would stay
with him for the rest of his life, including Sister Pasqualina Lehnert — housekeeper,
friend, and adviser to Pacelli for 41 years.
During the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 Pacelli was one of
the few foreign diplomats to remain in Munich. He faced down a small group of Spartacist revolutionaries and reportedly convinced them to leave the offices of the nunciature
without incident. The oft-repeated anecdote — reminiscent of Pope Leo I turning
Attila the Hun away from the gates of Rome — is often cited as a formative experience
which informed Pacelli's later impressions of Communism and leftist movements in
general.[14] Similarly, he later dispersed a mob attacking
his car by raising his cross and blessing his assailants, as related by Bishop Fulton
Sheen — the recipient of the cross — on television.[15]
On the night of the Beer Hall Putsch, Franz
Matt, the only member of the Bavarian cabinet not present at the Bürgerbräu
Keller, was having dinner with Pacelli and Michael Cardinal von
Faulhaber.[16]
During the 1920s, Pacelli succeeded in negotiating concordats with Latvia (1922), Bavaria (1925),[17] Poland (1925), Romania (1927), and
the Free State of Prussia (1929), but failed in regard to Germany. Under his
tenure the nunciature was moved to Berlin, where one of his associates was the German priest
Ludwig Kaas, who was known for his expertise in Church-state relations and was politically
active in the Centre Party.[18]
Cardinal Secretary of State and Camerlengo
Pacelli was made a cardinal on 16 December, 1929 by
Pope Pius XI, and within a few months, on 7 February
1930, Pius XI appointed him Cardinal Secretary of
State. In 1935, Cardinal Pacelli was named Camerlengo of the Roman Church.
As Cardinal Secretary of State, Pacelli signed concordats with many non-Communist states, including Baden (1932),[19] Austria (1933), Germany (1933), Yugoslavia (1935) and Portugal (1940). The Lateran treaties with Italy (1929) were concluded before Pacelli rose to
the office of Secretariat. Such concordats allowed the Catholic Church to organize youth groups, make ecclesiastical
appointments, run schools, hospitals, and charities, or even conduct religious services. They also ensured that canon law would
be recognized within some spheres (e.g. church decrees of nullity in the area of
marriage).[20]
He also made many diplomatic visits throughout Europe and the Americas, including an extensive visit to the United States in 1936 where he met with Charles Coughlin and
Franklin D. Roosevelt, who appointed a personal envoy — who did not require Senate
confirmation — to the Holy See in December 1939, re-establishing a diplomatic tradition that
had been broken since 1870 when the pope lost temporal power.[21]
Pacelli presided as Papal Legate over the International Eucharistic Congress in Buenos
Aires, Argentina on October 10–14, 1934, and in Budapest on May 25–30, 1938.[22]
Some historians have argued that Pacelli, as Cardinal Secretary of State, dissuaded Pope Pius
XI — who was nearing death at the time[23] — from
condemning Kristallnacht in November 1938,[24] when he was informed of it by the papal nuncio in Berlin.[25] Likewise the prepared encyclical
Humani Generis Unitas, which was ready in September 1938 and contained an open and clear condemnation of all
racism and anti-semitism, might have been prevented from
release by Pacelli, who did not promulgate the encyclical as pope.
Reichskonkordat
-
The Reichskonkordat, signed on July 20,
1933, between Germany and the Holy See remains the most important and controversial of Pacelli's
concordats. A national concordat with Germany was one of Pacelli's main objectives as secretary of state.
As nuncio during the 1920s, he had made unsuccessful attempts to obtain German agreement for
such a treaty, and between 1930 and 1933 he attempted to initiate negotiations with representatives of successive German
governments, but the opposition of Protestant and Socialist parties, the instability of national governments and the care of the
individual states to guard their autonomy thwarted this aim. In particular, the questions of denominational schools and pastoral
work in the armed forces prevented any agreement on the national level, despite talks in the winter of 1932.[26][27]
Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30 January
1933 and sought to gain international respectability and to remove internal opposition by
representatives of the Church and the Catholic Centre Party. He sent his vice
chancellor Franz von Papen, a Catholic nobleman and former member of the Centre Party,
to Rome to offer negotiations about a Reichskonkordat.[28] On behalf of Cardinal Pacelli, his long-time associate Prelate Ludwig
Kaas, the outgoing chairman of the Centre Party, negotiated first drafts of the terms with Papen.[29] The concordat was finally signed, by Pacelli for the Vatican and von
Papen for Germany, on 20 July and ratified on September
10, 1933.[30]
Between 1933 to 1939, Pacelli issued 55 protests of violations of the Reichskonkordat. Most notably, early in 1937,
Pacelli asked several German cardinals, including Michael Cardinal von
Faulhaber to help him write a protest of Nazi violations of the Reichskonkordat; this was to become Pius XI's
encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge. The encyclical, condemning the view that
"exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form
of State ... above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level", was written in German instead of Latin and read in German churches on Palm Sunday 1937.[31]
Papacy
Election and coronation
-
Pius XII, wearing a
papal tiara, blesses people at a Pontifical High Mass in St. Peter's
Basilica.
Pope Pius XII's Coat of Arms featured a
dove, a symbol of
peace
Pope Pius XI died on February 10, 1939. Several historians
have interpreted the conclave to choose his successor as facing a choice between a diplomatic or spiritual candidate, and they
view Pacelli's diplomatic experience, especially with Germany, as one of the deciding factors in his election on March 2, 1939, his 63rd birthday, after only one day of deliberation and three
ballots.[32][33] Pacelli took the name of Pius XII, the same papal name as his predecessor, a
title used exclusively by Italian Popes. He was the first cardinal secretary of state to be elected
Pope since Clement IX in 1667.[34] He was also one of only two men known to have served as Camerlengo immediately prior to being elected as pope (the other being Gioacchino Cardinal Pecci, who was elected as Pope Leo XIII). His
coronation took place March 12, 1939.
Theology
Pope Pius XII accepted the Rhythm Method as a moral form of family planning, although only in limited circumstances, in two speeches on October 29, 1951, and
November 26, 1951.[35] Some Catholics interpreted the
1930 encyclical Casti Connubii by Pope Pius XI to allow moral use of Rhythm,[36] and internal rulings of the Catholic Church in
1853 and 1880[37] stated that periodic abstinence was a
moral way to avoid pregnancy. However, some historians consider these two speeches by Pius XII to be the first explicit Church
acceptance of the method.[38] The Catholic Church's
modern view on family planning was further developed in the 1968 encyclical Humanae
Vitae by Pope Paul VI[39] and in Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body.[40]
Pius was an energetic proponent of the theory of the Big Bang. As he told the
Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1951: "...it would seem that
present-day science, with one sweep back across the centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to the August instant of the
primordial Fiat Lux [Let there be Light], when along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation,
and the elements split and churned and formed into millions of galaxies."[41]
Apostolic constitutions
Pius exercised Papal Infallibility in defining dogma when he issued, on
November 1 1950 an apostolic constitution, Munificentissimus
Deus, wherein he defined ex cathedra the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven.[42] He consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942, in accordance with the second "secret" of Our Lady of Fatima.
His other apostolic constitutions are Provida Mater Ecclesia (February 2, 1947), Bis Saeculari Die (September
27, 1948), Sponsa Christi (November 21, 1950), and Exsul Familia (August 1,
1952).
Encyclicals
-
Summi Pontificatus, Pius's first encyclical, promulgated in 1939 condemned the "ever-increasing host of Christ's enemies."[43]
Humani Generis, promulgated in 1950, acknowledged that evolution might accurately describe the biological origins of human life, but at the same time criticized
those who "imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution... explains the origin of all things". The encyclical reiterated the
Church's teaching that, whatever the physical origins of human beings, the human soul was directly created by God.[44] While Humani Generis was significant as the first
occasion on which a pope explicitly addressed the topic of evolution at length, it did not represent a change in doctrine for the
Roman Catholic Church. As early as 1868, Cardinal John Henry Newman wrote, "the theory of Darwin, true or not, is not necessarily atheistic; on the
contrary, it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of divine providence and skill."[45]
Pope John Paul II went further in acknowledging the success of evolutionary theory
in his 1996 Message to Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He called evolution "more than a hypothesis" and said, "It is
indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various
fields of knowledge."[46]
Divino Afflante Spiritu, published in 1943, encouraged Christian
theologians to revisit original versions of the Bible in Greek and Hebrew. Noting improvements in archaeology, the encyclical reversed Pope Leo XIII's
Providentissimus Deus (1893), which had only advocated going back to the
original texts to resolve ambiguity in the Latin Vulgate.[47]
Canonizations and beatifications
During his reign, Pius XII canonized thirty-four saints, including Saints
Margaret of Hungary, Gemma Galgani,
Mother Cabrini, Catherine Labouré,
John de Britto, Joseph Cafasso, Saint Louis de Montfort, Nicholas of Flue, Joan of France, Duchess of Berry, Maria Goretti,
Dominic Savio,[48]
Pope Pius X, Peter Chanel, Mary Euphrasia Pelletier, Michael Garicoits,
Jeanne de Lestonnac, Anthony Mary
Claret, Bartolomea Capitanio, Vincenza
Gerosa, and Ignatius of Laconi. He beatified six people, including Justin de Jacobis and
Rose Venerini. He named Saint Casimir the
patron saint of all youth.
Grand Consistory
Only twice in his pontificate did Pius XII hold a consistory to create new
cardinals, in contrast to Pius XI, who had done so seventeen times in seventeen
years. Pius XII chose not to name new cardinals during World War II, and the number of cardinals shrank to 38, with
Cardinal Denis Dougherty being the only living U.S. cardinal. The first occasion
on February 18, 1946 — which has become known as the "Grand Consistory" — yielded the elevation of a record thirty-two new
cardinals (previously Leo X's elevation of thirty-one cardinals in 1517 had held this title). John Paul II would later surpass this number
on February 21, 2001, elevating forty-four cardinals. Together with the first post-war consistory in 1953—where Msgr. Tardini and Msgr. Montini were notably not
elevated[49]—the "Grand Consistory" brought an end to
over five hundred years of Italians constituting a majority of the College of
Cardinals.[50]
Earlier, in 1945, Pius XII had dispensed with the complicated papal conclave
procedures which attempted to ensure secrecy while preventing Cardinals from voting for themselves, compensating for this change
by raising the requisite majority from two-thirds to two thirds plus one.
World War II
Pius XII's pontificate began on the eve of World War II. During the war, the Pope
followed a policy of neutrality mirroring that of Pope Benedict XV during
World War I.
In April 1939, after the submission of Charles Maurras and the intervention of the
Carmel of Lisieux, Pius XII ended his predecessor's ban on Action Française, an
organization described by some authors as virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Communist.[51][52]
In 1939, the Pope employed Jewish cartographer Roberto Almagia to work on old maps in the Vatican library. Almagia had been at
the University of Rome since 1915 but was dismissed after Mussolini's anti-Jewish legislation of 1938. The Pope's appointment of
two Jews to the Vatican Academy of Science as well as the hiring of Almagia were reported by the New York Times in the editions
of November 11, 1939, and January 10, 1940.[53]
During Soviet Union's aggression on Finland, the Winter
War, Pius XII condemned the Soviet attack on 26 December 1939 in a speech at the Vatican. Later he donated a signed and sealed prayer on behalf of Finland.[54]
On 18 January 1940, after over 15,000 Polish civilians had
been killed, Pius XII said in a radio broadcast, "The horror and inexcusable excesses committed on a helpless and a homeless
people have been established by the unimpeachable testimony of eye-witnesses."[55]
After Germany invaded the Low Countries during 1940, Pius XII sent expressions of
sympathy to the Queen of the Netherlands, the King of Belgium, and the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. When Mussolini learned of the
warnings and the telegrams of sympathy, he took them as a personal affront and had his ambassador to the Vatican file an official
protest, charging that Pius XII had taken sides against Italy's ally Germany. Mussolini's foreign minister claimed that Pius XII
was "ready to let himself be deported to a concentration camp, rather than do anything against his conscience".[56]
In the spring of 1940, a group of German generals seeking to overthrow Hitler and make peace with the British approached Pope
Pius XII, who acted as a negotiator between the British and the abortive plot.[57]
In April 1941, Pius XII granted a private audience to Ante Pavelić, the leader of the
newly proclaimed Croatian state (rather than the diplomatic audience
Pavelić had wanted).[58] Pius was criticised for his
reception of Pavelić: an unattributed British Foreign Office memo on the
subject described Pius as "the greatest moral coward of our age".[59] The Vatican did not officially recognise Pavelić's regime. Pius XII did not publicly condemn the
expulsions and forced conversions to Catholicism perpetrated on Serbs by Pavelić;[60] however, the Holy See did expressly repudiate the forced conversions in a memorandum dated January
25, 1942, from the Vatican Secretiat of State to the Yugoslavian Legation.[61]
In 1941, Pius XII interpreted Divini Redemptoris, an encyclical of Pope Pius XI, which forbade Catholics to help Communists, as not applying to military
assistance to the Soviet Union. This interpretation assuaged American Catholics who had
previously opposed Lend-Lease arrangements with the Soviet Union.[62]
In March 1942, Pius XII established diplomatic relations with the Japanese Empire. In
May 1942, Kazimierz Papée, Polish ambassador to the Vatican, complained that Pius had failed to condemn the recent wave of
atrocities in Poland; when Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione replied that the Vatican could not document individual
atrocities, Papée declared, "when something becomes notorious, proof is not required."[63]
Pius XII's famous Christmas broadcasts on the Vatican
Radio delivered in 1941 and 1942 (the latter of which at 26 pages and over 5000 words took more than 45 minutes to
deliver) remain a "lightning rod" in debates about Pope Pius XII during the war, particularly the Holocaust.[64] In his 1941 Christmas broadcast he was calling for a new world order
marked by Christian peace. The majority of the 1942 speech spoke generally about human rights and civil society; at the very end
of the speech, Pius seems to turn to current events, albeit not specifically, referring to "all who during the war have lost
their Fatherland and who, although personally blameless, have simply on account of their nationality and origin, been killed or
reduced to utter destitution."[65]
New York Times editorials called Pius XII "a lonely voice in the silence and
darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas" in 1941[66]
and "lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent" in 1942.[67]
As the war was approaching its end in 1945, Pius advocated a lenient policy by the Allied leaders in an effort to prevent what he perceived to be the mistakes made at the end of
World War I.[68]
The Holocaust
Pius engineered an agreement — formally approved on June 23, 1939 — with Brazilian
President Getúlio Vargas to issue 3,000
visas to "non-Aryan Catholics". However, over the next eighteen months Brazil’s Conselho
de Imigração e Colonização (CIC) continued to tighten the restrictions on their issuance — including requiring a baptismal certificate dated before 1933, a substantial monetary transfer to the Banco do Brasil, and approval by the Brazilian Propaganda Office in Berlin — culminating in the cancellation of the program fourteen months later, after fewer than 1,000 visas had
been issued, amid suspicions of "improper conduct" (i.e. continuing to practice Judaism) among
those who had received visas.[69][25]
Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione received a request from
Chief Rabbi of Palestine Isaac Herzog in the Spring of 1940 to intercede on behalf of Lithuanian
Jews about to be deported to Germany.[25] Pius called Ribbentrop on March 11, repeatedly protesting against the treatment of Jews.[70]
In 1941, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna
informed Pius of Jewish deportations in Vienna.[65] Later that year, when asked by French Marshal Philippe
Pétain if the Vatican objected to anti-Jewish laws, Pius responded that the church condemned anti-semitism, but would not
comment on specific rules.[65]
Similarly, when Pétain's puppet government adopted the "Jewish statutes," the
Vichy ambassador to the Vatican, Léon Bérard, was told that
the legislation did not conflict with Catholic teachings.[71] Valerio Valeri, the nuncio
to France was "embarrassed" when he learned of this publicly from Pétain[72] and personally checked the information with Cardinal Secretary of State
Maglione[73] who confirmed the Vatican's
position.[74] In September 1941 Pius objected to a
Slovakian Jewish Code,[75] which, unlike the earlier
Vichy codes, prohibited intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews.[76] In October 1941 Harold Tittman, a U.S. delegate to the Vatican, asked the pope to condemn the
atrocities against Jews; Pius replied that the Vatican wished to remain "neutral,"[77] reiterating the neutrality policy which Pius invoked as early as September 1940.[78]
In 1942, the Slovakian charge d'affaires, told Pius that Slovakian Jews were being sent to concentration camps.[65] On March 11, 1942, several days before the first
transport was due to leave, the charge d'affaires in Bratislava reported to the Vatican: "I
have been assured that this atrocious plan is the handwork of.....Prime Minister (Tuka),
who confirmed the plan... he dared to tell me - he who makes such a show of his Catholicism - that he saw nothing inhuman or
un-Christian in it...the deportation of 80,000 persons to Poland, is equivalent to condemning a great number of them to certain
death." The Vatican protested to the Slovak government that it "deplore(s) these...measures which gravely hurt the natural human
rights of persons, merely because of their race."[79]
On September 18, 1942, Pius received a letter from
Monsignor Montini (future Pope Paul VI), saying, "the
massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms."[65] Later that month, Myron Taylor, U.S.
representative to the Vatican, warned Pius that the Vatican's "moral prestige" was being injured by silence on European
atrocities — a warning which was echoed simultaneously by representatives from Great Britain, Brazil, Uruguay, Belgium, and
Poland[80] — the Cardinal Secretary of State replied that the rumors about genocide could not be
verified.[81] In December 1942, when Tittman asked
Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione if Pius would issue a proclamation
similar to the Allied declaration "German Policy of Extermination of the Jewish Race," Maglione replied that the Vatican
was "unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities."[82]
In late 1942, Pius XII advised German and Hungarian bishops that speaking out against the massacres in the eastern front would
be politically advantageous.[83] On April 7, 1943, Msgr. Tardini,
one of Pius’s closest advisors, told Pius that it would be politically advantageous after the war to take steps to help Slovakian
Jews.[84]
In January 1943, Pius would again refuse to publicly denounce the Nazi violence against Jews, following requests to do so from
Władysław Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish government-in-exile, and
Bishop Konrad von Preysing of Berlin.[85] On September 26, 1943, following the German occupation of northern Italy, Nazi
officials gave Jewish leaders in Rome 36 hours to produce 50 kilograms of gold (or the equivalent) threatening to take 300
hostages. Then Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli recounts in his memoir, that he was
selected to go to the Vatican and seek help.[86] The
Vatican offered to loan 15 kilos, but the offer proved unnecessary when the Jews received an extension.[87] Soon afterwards, when deportations from Italy were imminent, 477 Jews
were hidden in the Vatican itself and another 4,238 were protected in Roman monasteries and convents.[88]
On April 30, 1943, Pius wrote to Bishop Von Preysing of Berlin to say : "We give to the pastors who are working on the
local level the duty of determining if and to what degree the danger of reprisals and of various forms of oppression occasioned
by episcopal declarations...ad maiora mala vitanda (to avoid worse)...seem to advise caution. Here lies one of the
reasons, why We impose self-restraint on Ourselves in our speeches; the experience, that we made in 1942 with papal addresses,
which We authorized to be forwarded to the Believers, justifies our opinion, as far as We see. (...) The Holy See has done
whatever was in its power, with charitable, financial and moral assistance. To say nothing of the substantial sums which we spent
in American money for the fares of immigrants."[89]
On October 28 1943, Weizsacker, the German Ambassador to the
Vatican, telegrammed Berlin that "...the Pope has not yet let himself be persuaded to make an official condemnation of the
deportation of the Roman Jews. (...) Since it is currently thought that the Germans will take no further steps against the Jews
in Rome, the question of our relations with the Vatican may be considered closed."[90]
In March 1944, through the papal nuncio in Budapest, Angelo
Rotta urged the Hungarian government to moderate its treatment of the Jews.[91] These protests, along with others from the
King of Sweden, the International Red Cross, the United States, and Britain led to the cessation of deportations on
8 July, 1944.[92] Also in 1944, Pius appealed to 13 Latin American governments to accept "emergency passports",
although it also took the intervention of the U.S. State Department for those countries to honor the documents.[93]
When the church transferred 6,000 Jewish children in Bulgaria to Palestine, Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione reiterated that the Holy See was not a supporter of
Zionism.[91]
In August 2006 extracts from the 60-year-old diary of a nun of the Convent of
Santi Quattro Coronati[94] were published in the Italian press, stating that Pope Pius XII ordered Rome's convents and
monasteries to hide Jews during the Second World War.[95]
Post-World War II
Pius's anti-Communist activities became more potent following the war. In 1948, Pius declared that any Italian Catholic who
supported Communist candidates in the parliamentary elections of that year would
be excommunicated and also encouraged Azione
Cattolica to support the Christian Democratic Party. In
1949, he authorized the Holy Office to excommunicate any Catholic who joined or collaborated with the Communist Party. He also publicly condemned the Soviet crackdown on the
1956 Hungarian Revolution.[96]
After the war, Pius also became an outspoken advocate of clemency and forgiveness for all, including war criminals. He also
applied pressure through his U.S. nuncio to commute the
sentences of Germans convicted by the occupation authorities. The Vatican also asked for a blanket pardon for all those who had
received death sentences, after the ban on execution of war criminals was lifted in 1948.[97]
Pius concluded concordats with Francisco Franco's Spain in 1953 and Raf
