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Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
A Dialogue Toward Consensus and Healing

Monday, May 2, 2005

Transcript of the presentation by Fr. Gerald Fogarty, S.J., part of a Dialogue Toward Consensus and Healing, at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church

Introduction
In order to understand the approaches to Pius XII, you have to be able to see shades of grey. To begin with, I'd like to use the image of a lens. If the main lens by which you interpret World War II is the defeat of Hitler, then Pius XII comes out looking fairly good. If you use the Holocaust as the main lens for interpreting the War, then maybe he doesn't come out looking so good—unless one sees the Holocaust as one more argument for defeating Hitler. I've been doing a lot of research in the National Archives here, in the Vatican Archives, and in several European countries that have archives pertinent to the question, including Ireland. The issues are rather complicated.

I'd like to briefly discuss three major areas: (1) factors that shaped Pacelli, in his own diplomatic outlook and as the future Pope; (2) Pacelli as Secretary of State; and (3) Pacelli as Pius XII.

1. Factors that Shaped Pacelli's Diplomatic Outlook
Every person brings to their job their own background. As a result of it, Pacelli approached his own job as Secretary of State, and as Pope later on, in terms of his own diplomatic experience. His first diplomatic post was as Nuncio to Bavaria in 1915, where he also acted as a go-between from time to time to get letters from the Austro-Hungarian Empire back to Rome. They didn't use the direct channel, the Nuncio to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

1.1. Pacelli's Awareness of the United States
In 1918, after the United States had entered World War I (remember that was the first time America engaged in European activity) and the Kaiser had abdicated, the new German government sued for armistice, and they did so exclusively with Woodrow Wilson. This caused the young Archbishop Pacelli to comment to the then Cardinal Secretary of State that what most upset him about this was how all the overtures of His Holiness Pope Benedict XV had been ignored. And now the German government ignored also Clemenceau and Lloyd George, the French and British leaders, and dealt exclusively with the United States. It was something new for him, because he had to wonder: What was the United States like? Was it a product of the French Enlightenment? That, by the way, is what many, many Roman officials thought until less than 20 years ago.

In 1989, for the first time in the history of Vatican-American relations, they admitted that something else happened in 1789, other than the French Revolution. When the Archdiocese of Baltimore celebrated its bicentennial, Cardinal Cassaroli came over (he was then retired as Secretary of State) and read a lengthy position paper from the Pope about what this whole thing meant. It was the first time ever that the Vatican recognized that we were not the French Revolution. They still have trouble grappling with it sometimes.

Now, one of the issues therefore was whether or not the United States was a product of the Enlightenment. Did it lead automatically to rationalism and individualism? Do these terms sound familiar? Keep in mind, the new Pope named himself after Benedict XV, who, he said, worked for peace within Europe.

1.2. The Roman Question
One of the difficulties of the overtures being rejected was that there was a secret clause in the Allied Treaty of Paris, the secret clause Article 15. It prohibited the Vatican from having any voice in any peace negotiations, because, at that time, technically speaking, the Pope was a prisoner of the Vatican. He regarded the Italian forces as simply occupying by usurpation the city of Rome, and there existed from 1870 to 1929 what is known historically as the "Roman Question": the situation of the Pope within the city of Rome. There had been the Italian Laws of Guarantees, which technically guaranteed certain privileges to the Pope but treated him as though he were an extraordinary Italian citizen.

World War I comes—remember the Italians were on the side of the Allies. When World War II came, Churchill said, "Well, we had them the last time." But, nevertheless, this was going to shape the attitude that Pacelli had towards this rising Republic existing in a Protestant-dominated, pluralistic society. Could it really be Catholic? He had no experience of it.

In addition to that, there was the Treaty of Versailles, which so indemnified Germany that it virtually guaranteed the rise of a dictator, especially with the Great Depression of 1929. We think of the Great Depression in American terms, but it was international. And the choices were either communism—1918, with the fall of the Czars—or some type of socialism.

The Roman Question ended in 1929 with the signing of the Lateran Treaties and the Lateran Concordat, which, by a bilateral agreement, set up what we call Vatican City-State. (I still want to get my Virginia license plate that says SCV-1. It was in the news the other day, when the new Pope went by car to his old apartment. They showed the license plate—it's SCV-1. So I thought it would be good if I got some Vatican plates here.)

Diplomatic relations exist with the Holy See—basically, with the Catholic Church universal. Holy See is the technical term that's used for the Pope inserted into the international order. Even today no nation has, will have, or ever has had diplomatic relations with the Vatican City-State. The United States did not establish relations until 1984—21 years ago. Now with the establishment of Vatican City-State, there was a whole new forum for Vatican diplomacy. As soon as the Lateran Treaty was signed, Pacelli became the new Secretary of State.

2. Pacelli as Secretary of State
Pacelli looked to the past and still thought that concordats would guarantee the freedom of the Church. A concordat is a treaty between a nation and the Catholic Church, guaranteeing rights of the Church within a nation. It doesn't mean the Church necessarily approves of the nation or the government. The purpose of the concordat is to guarantee the rights of the Church, and it's a bilateral agreement.

2.1 The Concordat with Italy
Well, in the case of Italy, Pacelli should have gotten a signal, because no sooner did he take office as Secretary of State than they began to have trouble with the Italians, in terms of violations of the concordat. In 1931, Pius XI finally issued an encyclical "Non Abbiamo Bisogno," ("We Have No Need"). But, by this time, the Catholic presses were shut down. The encyclical had to be smuggled out of Italy to be published by the Associated Press in Paris.

By the way, it was smuggled out by the first American probably that Pacelli really got to know: a fairly young Monsignor Francis Spellman, from the Archdiocese of Boston. He smuggled it out by train. The Italian government got it mixed up in their archives, and they say he flew out. He didn't, because Spellman kept a diary, a copy of which I have. I've been suspected of stealing documents; I just make Xerox copies. That way, when they deny that it ever existed, I say, "Well, it existed once." So already they were having trouble with these new governments.

2.2. The Concordat with Germany
But then you have a whole new development with the election of Hitler, and the concordat signed with the Reich. Incidentally, in 1933, after Hitler had been elected, there was a letter from the Nuncio to Germany (the papal representative to Germany) back to Pacelli saying that the German bishops were quite concerned. Though they had outlawed membership in the Nazi Party, they estimated that 50% of the Catholics had probably voted for the Nazis. So they had a pastoral problem: If they continued the prohibition of membership in the Party, were their people going to pay any attention? Were they going to lose their voice altogether?

Somebody challenged me on this not too long ago, saying that I was absolutely wrong. I actually didn't say whether it was true or not, but we know that this is what the German bishops said at the time. It's in the newly opened Vatican archives. They opened everything two years ago pertaining to Germany up to 1939. So far, only two Americans I know of have gone over to use those archives.

The concordat with the Reich, I would argue, has to be put in the context of the creation of the Reichskirche, the National Church (the Lutheran Church). During that period—the spring and summer of 1933—that they were negotiating the concordat, the letters sent by Archbishop Orsenigo, the Nuncio to Germany, constantly reported on what was happening with the creation of this new Church that was completely subjugated to the State. The concordat was signed, finally ratified in September 1933. What I'm suggesting here is that the impetus for the concordat was the creation of the Reichskirche. There had been concordats with other German states before, but never with the whole Republic. As a matter of fact, Pacelli had begun negotiating with the Weimar Republic, to which he was Nuncio after World War I, as early as 1921, so this had been a long time in progress. But I think what added an impetus was what happened to the Lutherans.

So they wanted to guarantee that there would be rights for the Church. What did the concordat guarantee? First of all, freedom of religious education, that priests would not be involved in political activity, and that there would still be freedom of religious association. By late 1933, less than four months after the signing of the concordat, the United States Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, reported the violations of the concordat. As a matter of fact, he went on to say that in no way, even immediately after the ratification, did this indicate that there was going to be smooth sailing for the Catholic Church. William Dodd, by the way, finally resigned as Ambassador rather than attend the famous Nuremburg display of Nazism and so forth, but his daughter became a Nazi. So you have mixed emotions even within the family. (All this material is available in the National Archives.)

2.3. Pacelli Meets FDR
In the meantime, Pacelli was gaining some knowledge of the United States. In 1932, he had appointed Francis Spellman as the auxiliary bishop of Boston, and one purpose of the appointment was to make contact with whoever was elected president in November of 1932. As soon as Roosevelt was inaugurated, Spellman started working through Joe Kennedy to arrange a meeting between Pacelli and the President. They wanted to start negotiating some type of diplomatic relations—they weren't going to happen, as I said, until 1984.

Nevertheless, Pacelli came to the United States in 1936, and one of the reasons he came was that he wanted to meet the President. But there was a little bit of a problem: How do you have the prime minister/foreign minister of an entity with which the United States does not have diplomatic relations meet the President of the United States? (The Vatican Secretary of State is both the prime minister and the foreign minister all rolled into one.) Spellman finally worked it out with Joe Kennedy. The day after the election in 1936, Roosevelt's mother invited the visiting Cardinal to lunch. They had this meeting at Hyde Park, so officially it was not a meeting with the President of the United States—it was at his mother's house. That was the way they had to do it.

Now, one of the things they discussed there was precisely diplomatic relations between the United States and the Holy See. And Spellman made sure that he got around the country; they flew all the way out to the West Coast. Pacelli spent a month here. He had originally come as a guest of a wealthy woman in New York, and she then wrote Spellman out of her will, because he took over the business. Of course, Spellman reported in his diary, "It means nothing to me." He said it twice.

2.4. "Mit Brennender Sorge"—the Encyclical Condemning Nazism
Now back to Germany. Two years ago, they opened the Vatican archives pertaining to Germany up to 1939, between the Holy See and Germany. The documents there are fairly revealing. There's been one book published on this so far by Peter Godman called Hitler and the Vatican. The title is misleading, because it doesn't go into the 1940's; it only goes up to 1939. There was a series of articles published in Civilta Cattolica, which is the approved Jesuit journal in Rome, articles in which are always approved by the Vatican Secretary of State ahead of time. So it's not official, but it's semi-official, and it always has some type of Vatican approval. The author, Giovanni Sale, finally put all of his articles together as a book, and, as an appendix, has published all the documents in the original Italian. So these documents pertaining to Germany during this period in the 1930's are all available now in print. They are a valuable source.

One of the things they point out is that, by April 1934, Pacelli was advising Orsenigo, for instance, to do everything possible to safeguard the Jews, whether they were converted Jews or not. By the concordat, the Church had rights over anyone who was Catholic, whether they were of Jewish ancestry or not. This is one of the issues that they had standing in regard to the baptized Jews.

Then in 1937, finally things got bad enough that Cardinal Faulhaber and three other German bishops came to Rome. Faulhaber had a draft of an encyclical and worked with Pacelli. The Pope at that time, Pius XI, was quite ill, so the main drafting took place with Pacelli's assistance. Pacelli, by the way, had a very distinctive, very fine handwriting, so you can pick up any notes that he made very easily. On even a typed draft, you know which comments are his because of the very distinctive hand. He played a major role in the drafting of this encyclical.

The encyclical, "Mit Brennender Sorge" ("With Burning Sorrow") was issued on March 14, 1938. [Editor's note: an English translation is available at www.newadvent.org/library/docs_pi11mb.htm.] It condemned National Socialism, but it made the distinction between the form of government in Germany and the German people. That became important because, later on, and I'll explain this in a moment, Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago made a statement to his clergy in which he deplored the fact that the German people had accepted "an Austrian paperhanger, and, I am assured, an inept one at that." "Paperhanger" was a pejorative term, still in use when I was a kid, for someone who pretended to be a great original artist but who really just reproduced things. So that was what he meant. The difficulty was that Mundelein had identified the issue with the German people—emphasizing that the German people had accepted Hitler as their leader.

2.5. Reactions to "Mit Brennender Sorge"
In the encyclical, the Vatican tried to distinguish between the form of government and the German people. But, by 1937, the German Catholic press had been shut down, so there was no way of publicizing this encyclical except by having it read in every Catholic Church on Palm Sunday. Then the German government started confiscating copies, and anyone found with copies was arrested. There was a publisher in Munich who was trying to turn it out—he was arrested.

The one thing that sort of pulled the Nazis back slightly from the persecution of the Church was the Anschluss. Originally Cardinal Innitzer of Vienna welcomed the Nazi troops who came in. He was a "Pan-Deutscher" from what we now call the Czech Republic, the Sudetenland at that time, which had already been annexed. And he did see this whole recreation of this whole German empire. By the way, that also led a number of German Catholic theologians to join the Nazi Party later on, or by this time. Many resisted, but many others joined it, including a famous professor at the Catholic University of America. Innitzer, after he had made the statement, was summoned to Rome, where he was called upon to retract and issue a new statement.

2.6. Pacelli Tries to Contact FDR
At that time, Cardinal Pacelli wrote to his old friend Joseph Kennedy, who was then the Ambassador to the Court of St. James (Great Britain) and said, "You must get to 'our friend' [meaning Roosevelt] and show him that there's no way that Hitler can be trusted." The letter was found in the Kennedy Library about a year and a half ago by a young Jesuit scholar. It was published in America and made the New York Times, so some people said, "If we had known about this, we may have changed our views of Pius XII."

Well, I knew I had read the letter before, but I was out of town when they sent me an e-mail copy. When I got back, I found out that I had read it in the National Archives. It was in the correspondence from Vienna, so I thought, if it went to the Secretary of State as well (that's the only thing in the National Archives that's open) was it ever published? It was published in The Foreign Relations of the United States, the official State Department publication, in 1955. So it's been available in every research library throughout the world for over fifty years, but people haven't looked at it.

And it is interesting, because one of the things Pacelli asked Kennedy to do was to urge "our friend to try as much as possible to conclude what we discussed at our luncheon at Hyde Park." So it has to do with establishing diplomatic relations. Well, you can see how he's thinking: Pacelli's still thinking in terms of concordats or things that are similar—in terms of these formal relationships between states and the Church.

3. Pacelli as Pius XII
At any rate, this man, who was now shaping and reshaping Vatican diplomacy, was elected Pope. His official policy of impartiality caused a number of problems. First of all, he engaged in a negotiation with dissident German generals in 1940, to overthrow Hitler and then surrender to the British. (This is all in a book written by Owen Chadwick from Cambridge University.) It came to naught because the British were not in any position to do anything at that time. There have been some documents found in the Vatican Archives recently pertaining to this. When I asked to look at them, the man who had told me about them said, "Do you just want to look?" I said, "You know full well I want copies." But I haven't been able to get into them yet. So, impartiality was the official policy, but yet you have this behind-the-scenes maneuver to work with the German generals to overthrow Hitler.

3.1. Formal/Informal Relations with the United States
Then you have another compromise of impartiality: a sort of informal diplomatic relationship between the United States and the Holy See. Pacelli had a formal/informal relationship with a personal representative of Roosevelt to the Pope, Myron Taylor, whose assistant, Harold Titman, took up residence in the Vatican once the United States went to war. And his memoirs were published last summer.

Then there's another strange relationship I've been working on. The forerunner to the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), also had some contact, but I've given up really following the paper trail any further. Even the State Department claimed that they had no record of the existence of James Clement Donne, who was Assistant Secretary of State and was the first man ever named Career Ambassador. They give an annual award in his honor, but they claim they have no record of him. So either the intern who answered must have been highly connected, or else she was very beautiful.

3.2. The Christmas Allocution of 1942
There are other problems with interpreting Pius XII. In the Christmas allocution of 1942 (a very prolix, convoluted document), at the very end, he condemns "the extermination of those who are being killed simply because of their race or ethnic origin." That was issued on December 24th, 1942. On December 19th, 1942, there had been a statement issued by the Allies condemning what they were beginning to hear of: the atrocities in Germany. However, the Soviet Union also signed it. When the Pope was asked to sign onto that, he said "I can't without condemning what's happening in the Soviet Union as well, and they're one of your Allies." That's why he would never sign anything only from one side.

Now, while he does not specifically mention the Jews in those last 22 words of the Christmas allocution, at the time everyone got the message. For instance, earlier in that day, Harold Titman, living in the Vatican, cabled to Cordell Hall, the Secretary of State, that the speech was very long, very convoluted, and too philosophical. Even a Jesuit resident of Rome said he should get somebody else other than a German to write his speeches. But later on in the day, Titman cabled again. He said "In the first place, taken as a whole, the message may be regarded as an arraignment of totalitarianism. Furthermore, the reference to the persecution of the Jews and mass deportations is unmistakable. The Pope did not satisfy those who wanted him to discard his previous practice of confining himself to generalities and instead point a finger and name names."

The Pope had also told the Brazilian Ambassador that if he had mentioned Nazis, he would have had to mention the Bolsheviks as well. But the fact is that the Germans got the point. They boycotted the Midnight Mass. Germany had diplomatic relations with the Holy See, and their whole entourage boycotted the Midnight Mass. They had earlier boycotted the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8th.

So there's the problem of ambiguity. But, in terms of what I call "popespeak," the message was clear. In October of 1962, for example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which occurred two days after Vatican II opened, the Pope went on the radio, and he talked about how "all men of good will should be able to find another solution other than resorting to arms." He went through this whole thing about how they should go to an international body and so forth. He never mentioned Khrushchev, Kennedy, Castro, the Soviet Union, the United States, or Cuba. Everyone knew what he was talking about that week in October of 1962.

3.3. The Round-up of the Jews in Rome
Then there's another issue that comes up: the round-up of the Italian Jews in October, 1943. By this time, the Germans occupied the city of Rome. Mussolini had been overthrown; he had been forced to resign as Prime Minister under the Kingdom of Italy. The new prime minister surrendered to the Allies and then declared war on Germany. But then the Germans occupied the city of Rome, so it was sort of a tense period. And in October of 1943, the Roman Jews—a number of them—were rounded up.

Did the Pope know anything about it? There's a recent book that argues that he had to have known something about it, but that, nevertheless, his Secretary of State, in talking to the German Ambassador, said, "This is not a protest." The same exact diplomatic expression was used in response to the United States' bombing of Rome—that "This is not a protest." So certainly you can't argue in regard to the bombing of Rome that Pius XII really wanted the bombing of Rome. Likewise, you can't say that because there was no formal diplomatic protest about the round-up of the Jews, that Pius XII wasn't really opposed to it. I'm just trying to raise the question. It's too easy to dwell on certain words out of context. They had been used earlier when the British had bombed Genoa and had missed the harbor and bombed civilian populations.

3.4. Pius XII and the Allies
Now there's the problem with "silence." Throughout the War, Pius XII never spoke out against the Soviet Union. He spoke out against Communism, because that still remained a fear for him. But, while he never condemned Hitler by name, the head of German Resistance said that, in this case, the Pope was following the advice of the German Resistance. They had warned that the German propaganda machine would have turned it around and called it an attack on the German people. If Pius XII had condemned Hitler, it would have been interpreted as an attack on the German people.

By the late 1930's, most of the Catholic institutions in Germany had been shut down. Catholic schools were banned. And you have this question of silence. But, on the other side, he was silent also about the bombing of London. He was asked for a protest on that, and he didn't make it.

There's an old CIA agent I met years ago who had been in the OSS during the War. He said that his impression was that, during the War, the Vatican had been pro-American, but not pro-Ally. After all, the Soviet Union was one of the Allies. And, in light of this, there were several issues where the Vatican had reservations about the Allies, while at least not condemning the Soviet Union during that time. One was the policy adopted in early 1943 that Churchill and Roosevelt would accept only an unconditional surrender. What did that mean? They explained at the Vatican that this was what Grant had demanded from Lee at Appomattox.

I wasn't sure how many people were upon their Civil War history until I met a young German graduate student who said, "Well that's what Lee got from Grant, wasn't it? Grant demanded unconditional surrender, but then that's what he did at Appomattox." Okay, German graduate students are going to know more about American history than American graduate students.

Another issue, a bone of contention, was the imprisonment of Italian missionaries, male missionaries. Anyone of military age was put in concentration camps in occupied North Africa. Then there was also another issue, FDR's naiveté toward the Soviet Union. He tried to argue, through Myron Taylor in September of 1942, that Russia was going to open more churches and grant more freedom. The Vatican knew that wasn't true, and, by the way, Churchill was much more of a realist.

4. Conclusion
What I've tried to do tonight is to raise some questions. I'm saying that you do have to understand the man and his own personal history, as well as the man in history. You have to understand what shaped Eugenio Pacelli, who became Secretary of State. You have to consider the circumstances of being Secretary of State, the first Secretary of State since the end of the Roman Question, and the first time, nominally at least, that the Pope was totally free. And finally all of this leads into the ambiguity of Pius XII.