Books reviewed: Pope Pius XII, Hitler’s pawn?
Robert A. Ventresca SOLDIER OF CHRIST The Life of Pope Pius XII
Frank J. Coppa THE LIFE AND PONTIFICATE OF POPE PIUS XII Between history and controversy
reviewed by John Cornwell
Frank J. Coppa THE LIFE AND PONTIFICATE OF POPE PIUS XII Between history and controversy
reviewed by John Cornwell
Eugenio Pacelli, who took the name Pius XII, was elected Pope in 1939 and died in 1958, having steered the Catholic Church through the Second World War and the early deep freeze of the Cold War. The reasons for his failure to condemn the Nazi regime forthrightly have been debated for half a century. Was he afraid that more people would suffer if he spoke out? Or was he indifferent to the fate of the victims of Nazi atrocities, including the Holocaust itself? The motives, or excuses, for his anodyne statements (he avoided direct public mention of Jews, Nazis and Hitler) can only be surmised. Official papers relating to his pontificate are still under lock and key – though Pope Francis may allow them to be scrutinized soon. As far as we know, Pius left no private journal. He neither sought nor took advice. There was no intimate friend. He ate alone throughout his pontificate, and his daily walk in the Vatican gardens was ever solitary. After the war, he neither explained his omissions publicly, nor apologized.
Studies of Pius XII tend to focus on the war years, as if he had no life before the start of his reign. But now come two new biographies by North American ecclesiastical historians – Robert A. Ventresca and Frank J. Coppa – who have broadened their account of his story to include the pre-papal period in the 1920s and 30s. Benefiting from the recent release of diplomatic papers covering the pontificate of Pius XI (1922–39), their studies reveal Pacelli to be no Nazi sympathizer, and yet the consequences of his policies, endorsed by the Holy See, arguably expedited Hitler’s plans at an early stage. According to both Coppa and Ventresca, the key to understanding Pacelli was his legal mindset and the diplomatic course established by the Holy See through the first third of the century.
Like his father and grandfather before him, Pacelli trained as a canon lawyer. His lay forebears were legal and political advisers in the service of the Holy See at a time when the Papal States were being devoured piecemeal by the emerging nation state of Italy. The Pacellis believed that greater control had to be exerted from the Vatican centre, underpinned by law. The young Fr Eugenio was recruited as secretary to a remarkable legal project, the collating and systematizing of the vast corpus of church law, with countless exceptions and scope for local discretion, into a Napoleonic-style single Code of Canon Law. The centralizing goal of the Code, published in 1917, was exemplified by a new rule – that only the pope was now entitled to nominate bishops. In the past, the local diocesan clergy, the lay faithful, and even the civil authorities, had contributed to this process in various parts of the Catholic world.
Pacelli was then ordained bishop and dispatched to Germany, where his long-term brief was to renegotiate concordats with the provincial states in order to bring them in line with the new Code. At the same time, he aimed to negotiate a Reichskonkordat, a super treaty with Germany as a whole. Despite thirteen years’ toil, Pacelli failed to achieve his aim. Germany, a pluralist confessional state, was not about to grant the Catholic Church privileged status over other denominations, even though five chancellors during the Weimar period were Catholics. By 1930, Pacelli had returned to the Vatican as Cardinal Secretary of State, where he would spend more time on relations with Germany than any other country.
His principal concern was with the role of Germany’s Centre Party, a mainly Catholic grouping which had been a powerful broker of coalitions through the 1920s. Pacelli urged Heinrich Brüning, a devout Catholic and Centre Party leader who was Chancellor from 1930 to 1932, to enter a coalition with Hitler rather than the Social Democrats. Brüning refused, being also a passionate opponent of Nazism. He recorded in his memoirs, cited by Ventresca, that Pacelli “never understood the fundamental features of German politics, or the special place of the Centre Party”. Brüning added that Pacelli also “misunderstood” the true nature of Nazism. Brüning’s damning verdict was that Pacelli despised “democracy and the parliamentary system”, preferring “rigid governments, rigid centralization”. It explained perhaps Pacelli’s preference for Hitler over the Social Democrats.
In early 1933, Hitler, now Chancellor, but not yet dictator, surprised Pacelli by putting out feelers for a Reichskonkordat. Hitler was offering guarantees assuring Catholic rights to religious practice in exchange for the Church’s withdrawal from every kind of social and political action, assembly and association – including newspapers, scouting groups and women’s associations. As a sweetener, Hitler offered extra educational funding for Catholic schools – for buildings, places and teachers. But the condition laid down by Hitler was that the Centre Party should vote for the infamous “Enabling Bill”, awarding him dictatorial powers, followed by the Party’s voluntary disestablishment. Ventresca concludes that the Reichskonkordat left German Catholics with no “meaningful electoral opposition to the Nazis”, while the “benefits and vaunted diplomatic entente [of the Reichskonkordat] with the German state were neither clear nor certain”... read more:
John Cornwell is director of the Science and Human Dimension Project at Jesus College, Cambridge. He is the author of Hitler's Pope; and most recently, of Newman’s Unquiet Grave: The reluctant saint, 2010.
Also see:
Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII: John Cornwell ...
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