c. 1999 Religion News Service
VATICAN CITY _ The Vatican took the offensive Friday (Oct. 8), sharply rejecting charges Pope Pius XII ignored the plight of the Jews during World War II because he was anti-Semitic and supported Nazi Germany as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and communism.
The Rev. Pierre Blet, the Vatican’s leading historian of the period, said the documents on which British journalist John Cornwell based the charges in his controversial new book,”Hitler’s Pope: the Secret History of Pius XII”(Viking),”are certainly authentic.””But,”he said,”the conclusions that he drew from them are laughable as history. You can see that the author is not a historian.” Blet spoke at a Vatican news conference called to present”Pius XII and the Second World War According to the Archives of the Vatican”(Paulist Press), his one-volume summary of a 12-volume study published between 1965 and 1981.
Although the book, published originally in France in 1997, was not issued in direct response to Cornwell it served as ammunition for the Vatican’s defense of the pope, who is a candidate for sainthood.
Cornwell cites two letters as proof of Pius XII’s anti-Semitism. One recommends the Vatican reject a request for palms to be used in a Jewish religious service and the other condemns a Bolshevik revolutionary as”a Jew, pale, dirty with vacant eyes, hoarse voice, vulgar, repulsive, with a face that is both intelligent and sly.” Blet and Cardinal Pio Laghi, former papal nuncio in Washington, said both letters must be viewed in the context of their time, long before the Second Vatican Council opened the way to dialogue between Catholics and Jews.
Blet noted that although Pius XII signed the second letter he did not write it.
Asked point-blank if the pope was anti-Semitic, Blet replied:”He certainly was not. He helped the Jews.” Was Pius XII, who had served as papal nuncio (ambassador) to Germany, a Nazi sympathizer?”You must not confuse philo-Nazism with sympathy for the German regime,”Blet said.”There is no doubt that Pius XII liked Germans, but saying he was a Nazi sympathizer is something else.” A French Jesuit, Blet is the only surviving member of a team of four Jesuit historians named by Pope Paul VI in 1964 to sort through and publish documents stored in hundreds of cartons in the Vatican archives.
Paul VI acted in response to debate set off by Rolf Hochhuth’s 1963 play”The Deputy,”which attacked Pius XII for failing to condemn the killing of Jews.
Blet argued Pius XII, elected pope March 2, 1939,”had limited means at his disposal”but sought through the papal nuncio in Berlin and through Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to persuade Hitler not to attack Poland.
The pope then joined forces with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in another fruitless attempt to dissuade Mussolini from joining forces with Hitler, Blet said. Later, he said, Pius XII agreed to Roosevelt’s request that the Vatican convince U.S. Catholics the church’s opposition to communism should”not impede coming to the aid of Soviet Russia in war with Germany.” Pius XII used guarded terms to speak about Nazi persecution of the Jews in his 1942 Christmas message, referring to”people destined to die only because of their ancestry.”In a speech to the cardinals on June 2, 1943, he said some groups were”destined, even without fault on their part, to the threat of extermination.” But Blet said the pope chose to comply with the pleas of German and Polish bishops for”prudence”for fear of Nazi reprisals against Catholics as well as Jews.”Every word I say which is addressed to authorities has to be seriously thought out and measured in the interest of those very people who are suffering so as not to involuntarily make their situation even more grave,”he told the cardinals in his 1943 speech.
In addition, Blet said, there was no evidence to prove the existence of”the gas chambers of which there were whispers”in 1943.”You have to distinguish between the general persecution of the Jews, which was known, and the extermination plan. There was no proof of this,”he said.
The pope’s silence, however,”covered secret action through the nunciatures (embassies) and bishoprics to try to impede the deportations,”Blet said.”The results of this action appear in the requests for new interventions and the testimony of gratitude toward Pius XII from associations and some of the leading Jewish personalities during the conflict and after the war ended.” Blet noted Israeli historian Pinchas Lapide estimated that Pius XII’s actions saved the lives of 850,000 Jews.
Asked what might have happened if Pius XII had decided to openly defy Hitler, Blet said dryly:”You can imagine anything you want. You could imagine that if Pope Pius had excommunicated Hitler he would have come to Rome, asked for forgiveness and become a Trappist monk.”
DEA END POLK
