Opinion with Michael Coren At the beginning of this year, in a dramatic and brave move demanded for decades, the Vatican finally opened its archives concerning Pope Pius XII and his policy toward the Nazis and their victims during the Second World War. The onset of coronavirus put a temporary hold on research but, once Rome’s libraries are reopened, the legions of historians will be back at work. That’s hardly surprising, because this issue has plagued the church for decades. In the very brief period before the coronavirus pandemic closed the Vatican archives, there were already reports of deeply troubling findings. German historians read documents seeming to prove that Pius was well aware of what was happening to Europe’s Jews very early, but was far too easily persuaded by his aides to dismiss the information and keep it from the U.S. government in particular. His office was also receiving reports from Catholic leaders and activists in Ukraine and Poland about massacres, but again did nothing. There is also evidence that the Vatican later tried to hide all of this so as to protect Pius’s reputation. Far more time is required to draw absolute conclusions, but the prognosis isn’t encouraging. Known by some critics as “Hitler’s Pope,” and by defenders as someone who detested fascism and saved numerous Jewish lives, Pius has been an acutely controversial figure since his death in 1958. Born Eugenio Pacelli in 1876 into an elite Italian family, he was elected Pope in 1939, in an era that demanded enormous courage in a religious leader. While Pius had no real affection for the Nazis, he was severely under-qualified to stand up to Hitlerism. He was also very much a product of his time and his faith: obsessively frightened of Communism and what he saw as its campaign against the Church, and − because he was unaware of who would triumph in the war − terrified of alienating Berlin. He probably wasn’t anti-Semitic as such, but did embrace what was then a theology that allowed room for animus against Jewish people. In his defence, before he became Pope, Cardinal Pacelli had drafted a papal encyclical that condemned Nazi racism. As Pope, he used Vatican money to ransom Jews from the Nazis, and also hid Jewish families in the papal palace of Castel Gandolfo. In 1945, Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem thanked the pontiff, “for his life-saving efforts on behalf of the Jews during the occupation of Italy.” But that positive reputation began to change in 1963 with German playwright Rolf Hochhuth’s play “The Deputy.” It argued that Pius had supported fascism and ignored Jewish suffering. That, in turn, unleashed an entire wave of criticism. What can be said is that Pius was never specific about what was happening to the Jews and failed to address the involvement of Catholics in the death camps. If he had threatened excommunication to any Roman Catholic who participated in the arrest and murder of Jews it could have limited, even stopped, the entire horror. There would have been a terrifying response from the Nazis, but should someone who professes to be the direct successor of St. Peter, the Jewish fisherman who followed the Jewish Jesus, be concerned with that? The Dutch Carmelite friar and priest Titus Brandsma, for example, certainly wasn’t. He publicly opposed National Socialism during the war and was eventually murdered by the Nazis for his resistance. Many other Christians, with far less influence and protection than the Pope, did the same and some of them were similarly martyred. The King of Morocco, a Muslim, simply refused to obey the occupying Vichy French authorities, protected his Jewish subjects and saved their lives. Whatever revelations are produced by the archives will not only be significant in themselves, they will also inform, perhaps infect, the reputation of the contemporary church and to an extent, its relationship with the Jewish people. Much in that regard has, thank goodness, changed for the better since the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960s, but how Rome responds to all of this will be an estimable litmus test. When Pope Francis gave permission for the archives to be opened, he said, “The Church is not afraid of history.”We will see. History is as much a living companion as it is a distant ancestor, as the Catholic Church is likely to discover. The end of the virus will reveal all sorts of things we have forgotten, including the truth about Pope Pius XII. 16 | www.snowbirds.org
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