Why Is the Vatican Opening the Files on ‘Hitler’s Pope’? By Barbie Nadeau, Noga Tarnopolsky
ROME–When Pope
Francis announced that he’d be opening the Vatican’s secret archives
from the World War II papacy of Paul XII, many wondered, “Why now?” Papal archives
traditionally are opened at least 70 years after a pope’s death, meaning no one
expected the secrets of Paul XII, who died in 1958, to be made accessible until
2028. By deciding to open
them on May 2, 2020, Francis seems to be sending a message, though no one is
quite certain just what that is.
Entire Jewish
Roman families were ripped from their homes and brought to this place and then
deported to concentration camps. Of more than 2,000 people, only 16 survived - Plaque on a
building where Jews were held in sight of the Vatican walls
In his announcement,
Francis acknowledged that the archives of Pius, who is often dubbed “Hitler’s
Pope,” may not be entirely favorable, but he claimed the Church is “not afraid
of history.” He said Pius had “moments of grave difficulties, tormented
decisions of human and Christian prudence, that to some could appear as
reticence.”
Whatever might be
revealed in the secret archives, it remains an indisputable fact that thousands
of Jewish people were pulled from their homes in Rome and taken to the
concentration camps under the shadow of the Vatican. A poignant plaque on the
Via Lungara, just a stone's throw from the gates of Vatican City, still
commemorates one of the most horrific incidents: “On 16 October 1943 entire
Jewish Roman families were ripped from their homes and brought to this place
and then deported to concentration camps. Of more than 2,000 people, only 16
survived.”
Rabbi Abraham Skorka,
an Argentine rabbi and professor at the St. Joseph’s University Institute for
Jewish-Catholic Relations in Philadelphia, is a longtime friend of the pope
from the pontiff’s days as Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio in Buenos Aires. The two co-authored
the 2000 book on contemporary theology On
Heaven and Earth. Skorka told The
Daily Beast he is “not sure opening the archives will substantially modify the
polemic” that still rages regarding the wartime actions of Pius XII, who some
Catholics claim may actually have helped save Jewish lives by not condemning
Hitler publicly.
But Skorka says the
simple answer is: promises made, promises kept. “He said he’d do it. It is that
simple. This is further evidence of the commitment Bergoglio has with the truth
itself, more than with the results that may emerge from any investigation of
the material.” Francis, who met with
a delegation from the American Jewish Committee the day after announcing the
opening of the archives in Rome, lamented recent incidents of anti-Semitism as
part of a “climate of wickedness and fury, in which an excessive and depraved
hatred is taking root.” According to Skorka,
“What Bergoglio says is, ‘We have to open the archives and see what really
happened and the truth must flourish in all its aspects.’ He’s saying, ‘Let us
move ahead and learn from history.’”
Francis said he is
sure that upon further study, scholars would find “during periods of the
greatest darkness and cruelty, the small flame lit of humanitarian initiatives,
of hidden but active diplomacy.”
But Lorenzo Cremonesi,
a member of the Vatican-appointed commission of Catholics and Jews that, in
2000, revealed that Pius XII knew about the Holocaust as early as June 1942,
cautioned against giving the Catholic Church credit for “the initiatives of local
churches in many countries who on their own took action to save Jews.” “Church machinery,” he
said, was something else.
Pius has been stalled
on the Vatican trajectory towards sainthood since
Pope Benedict XVI, a German, endorsed him in 2009 and thus made him
“venerable.” Benedict was just 12 years old when Pius was elected, and he often
has referred to him as “my first pope.” Benedict has been a long-time backer of
Pius’s innocence during the war, and instead has consistently said that the
pope worked behind the scenes to protect Jews.
Some believe the
opening of these archives early is a special favor to the retired pope, whose
health has been failing since he resigned in 2013. If the archives prove that Pius
did work to protect Jews, his cause for sainthood would surely advance–he
already has
several miracles credited to him. A Vatican source told The Daily
Beast that Benedict would love to be alive for the beatification of Pius, but
that won't happen until the archives of his papacy are opened. For the old group of
Argentine friends that remain in close contact with the current pope, Pius’
reputation seems of lesser interest than that of Francis. And Benedict’s legacy
is of even less interest.
Another of Bergoglio’s
old friends from Buenos Aires, Alberto Zimerman, head of interreligious
dialogue for the umbrella association of Jewish organizations in Argentina,
said that Francis had decided upon this “risky course for the church” not
having seen any of the classified documents himself. “We could find
anything there,” Zimerman told The Daily Beast, invoking the pope’s willingness
to “undertake any challenge.” For decades, scholars
studying the World War II pope’s actions have argued that the Vatican did
nothing to stop the atrocities, and while some Catholics tout Pius’s “secret
diplomacy,” many Jews see it quite differently. Rabbi David Rosen, the
International Director of Interreligious Affairs for the American Jewish
Committee, who has advocated for the archives’ opening for more than 30 years,
and who met with Pope Francis last week, said that there was only “the greatest
respect and collaboration” between Jewish groups and the Vatican team now
cataloging the documents. But “in the end,” he told The Daily Beast, “there is
a debate between the church and the Jewish people regarding what Pius XII did.”
“For the Catholic
Church, he made a tactical decision he thought would be best,” Rosen says. “For
Jews, the very thought that anything could be worse than the Holocaust means we
will never have a shared historical view of this moment.” Rosen specified that
there are questions of historical fact still “lacking in clarity,” including
“instructions emitted from the Vatican, areas where Pius XII may have been
directly involved, and information transmitted and actions taken, not
necessarily by the pope but by other agencies of the Vatican.” The same Jewish group
that met Francis in Rome last week has, for years, pressured the Vatican to
reveal what many assume will be Paul XII’s blind eye to the atrocities that
unfolded under the reign of both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini during his
papacy.
In a recent radio
interview, David Kertzer, author of The Pope and Mussolini, likened
the church’s approach to the atrocities of the Holocaust to those of the
clerical sex abuse scandal now ravaging the church's reputation. “In this case maybe
there's some parallel to the more recent pederasty sex scandal in the Church,”
Kertzer said. “The perspective of the Vatican was largely ‘the first priority
has to be to protect the institutional Church and everything else comes second.’”
Kertzer told The Daily
Beast that he would be among the first to visit the archives. He believes Pius
was concerned that the Nazi regime would work against the church and so did
what they could to work against its power base without taking into account the helpless
victims caught in the middle. “I think we may well find more documentation that
will show that this is exactly the kind of consideration that was overriding
the Pope’s decision making at the time.” Opening the archives
will not satisfy everyone. I think they will hide a lot of things,” says Cremonesi, a special envoy for the Italian daily Corriere della
Seraand an expert on Vatican-Jewish relations. “We know that Pius XII was
very open to the German cause—not to Hitler—but to Germany, because he saw the
Germans as a bastion against the Communists, and the Communists were the
primary concern of the Vatican.”
Explaining the
church’s indifference to the genocide of European Jewry, Cremonesi said, “Pius
really believed that the only good Jew was a converted Jew.” Rabbi Israel Zolli,
the Chief Rabbi of Rome, who famously survived the war under Vatican protection
and later converted to Catholicism, “was the paragon for Pius,” Cremonesi
says. “Perfection.” While it will take a
year for the Vatican to catalogue the hundreds of thousands of documents, there
is still worry that the Vatican won’t be entirely up front. The entire archives
are already indexed, a librarian with the Vatican archives told The Daily Beast
on background. There would, in essence, be no way to cover up huge gaps since
many historians are going to be checking the files against already available
documents–unless those record were destroyed long ago.
Many countries that
had diplomatic relations with the Holy See during World War II have already
made those documents available. Now scholars want to know what internal memos
the Vatican attached to notes it received at the time concerned that the
Vatican was not doing enough. “We know the attitude
of the church,” Cremonesi said, using as an example the 1904 encounter between
Pius X and Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, who described the meeting in
a detailed diary entry.
“When you go to the
Vatican to look it up, there’s nothing,” Cremonesi said, chuckling. “No little
note like you find in British archives saying ‘document classified,’ or even a
line saying ‘this morning his Holiness held meetings.’ There is nothing.” “I put my hands in
fire,” he says: “If there is anything annoying in those papers, the Vatican
will not reveal it.” Skorka noted that
Francis, 82, the first non-European pope, grew up in the melting pot of Buenos
Aires, with Jewish friends from childhood. He recalled that during the
conversations that led to the publication of their book, Bergoglio said that of
the “many genocides in the 20th century” - he mentioned the Armenians -”the
genocide of the Jews is singular. It set about to eliminate the Jewish people
and the spirituality that transcended from its history.”
“For people like him
and me, who believe in the God of Israel, it means the Holocaust was an attempt
to destroy this God on earth,” Skorka said. Pope Francis’ decision
to open the Vatican archive, Skorka implied, is an attempt to restore that God
for humanity.
