Documents on the actions of Pius XII during the Second World War.

    The book by Father Pierre Blet, S.J., “Pius XII and the Second World War in the Vatican Archives”, which was presented yesterday in the Holy See Press Office, summarizes the 12-volume work that the French priest, together with other famous historians, published in 1982, gathering testimonies from the Vatican secret archive on the activity of Pope Pius XII during the Second World War.

    The work is based on the original documents that made known, day by day and sometimes hour by hour, the action of Pius XII.

    The first chapter, entitled “Vatican diplomacy against the war”, details all the diplomatic means that the Holy See used to bring calm in 1939, when the world situation was rapidly worsening. It also explains the secret initiatives with the various governments, solemn speeches and vibrant appeals to peoples and their leaders. At first Pius XII attempted a conference among England, France, Italy, Germany and Poland. The attempt failed, but — as Blet explains — all the powers understood the value that the Pope’s mediation could have at the most critical moments.

    In the second chapter, “Pius XII, Roosevelt and Mussolini”, Blet explains the new role assumed by the Holy See: “to limit the conflict, to restore as quickly as possible a peace founded on justice and security”, and Pius XII’s attempts to prevent Italy from entering the war. He also recounts the Holy See’s protest over the German invasion of the Netherlands, despite the displeasure and threats of the Italian fascists. “Calmly, Pius XII replied that, if it came to that, he would have no fear of ending up in a concentration camp and, referring to the most critical moments he had spent in the nunciature in Munich, added: ‘We had no fear of the uprisings directed against us the first time, nor shall we have it a second time'”, Blet explains.

    In the third chapter, “the Pope and the Church in Germany”, Blet sets out the grave situation of the Catholic faithful in Germany and Pius XII’s concern. “We want to see, to make an attempt. If they want combat, we do not fear it. But we want to see whether there is not some way to attain peace… Principles cannot be sacrificed. When we have taken every possible step and they persist in their desire for war, then we shall defend ourselves, but the world must take note that we have made every possible attempt to live in peace in Germany”, the Pontiff stated.     The fourth chapter concerns the situation of the Church in Poland. “The Church in invaded Poland” refers to the evident strategy of exterminating religion and to the firm attitude of the Holy See.

    In the fifth chapter, on “The time of the Triumph of the Reich”, Blet analyzes the situation of the Holy See in the face of what in 1940 seemed to be the Nazi triumph, and how diplomatic relations at times became a true cross for Pius XII, who never yielded to pressure. The following chapter, “From the European war to the world war”, along the same lines as the previous one, illustrates the gradual worsening of the situation: the United States and Japan were also entering the war.

    Chapter seven, “Racial laws and persecutions”, Blet devotes to a deeper look at the Church’s action toward the persecuted. The priest explains that, “having seen the failures of the efforts made to avoid the war and realizing that the prospects for restoring peace were dissolving into a future full of shadows, the Holy See decided that its task would be to bring help to the victims of the conflict, relieving their material and moral sufferings”.

    With regard to the Jews, the first efforts of the Pope and the Holy See were aimed at facilitating the emigration of Hebrews to other countries, although success was not always achieved because of German intransigence, which led the Netherlands to deport Catholic religious of Jewish race to concentration camps, such as the present patroness of Europe, Saint Edith Stein.

    The Apostolic See concentrated on blocking those deportations as far as possible. Italy assured Pius XII that the Hebrews who had taken refuge in territories under its control would not be handed over to Germany, and these words were kept until the very end.

    Pius XII ended his Christmas address in December 1942 by wishing for the end of the war and stating in this regard: “This desire, humanity owes to the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any true fault of their own, sometimes for reasons of nationality or race, are destined to death and to progressive degradation”. To this declaration Blet adds the comment made by the Nazi secret services about the pontifical address: “He [the Pope] virtually accuses the German people of injustice against the Hebrews and makes himself the spokesman of the Hebrews, war criminals”.

    The Pope concentrated on acting. In Slovakia, Romania, Croatia and Hungary the Vatican could still exercise its influence. Blet devotes chapters eight and nine to illustrating the Holy Father’s action on behalf of the Hebrews in these territories. In some cases the nuncios managed to block the deportations.

    The nuncio in Bucharest, on February 14, 1943, conveyed the thanks of the President of the Romanian Hebrew community: “The President of the Israelite community of Romania… has already come twice to thank me for the assistance and protection of the Holy See in favor of his co-religionists”. Two weeks later, Dr. Safran, Chief Rabbi of Bucharest, asked him “to transmit to the Holy Father the homage of devotion and the sincere greetings, on behalf of the whole community, which knows that it is the object of such paternal solicitude on the part of the august Pontiff”.

    The representative of the Holy See in Croatia, more or less at the same time, also wrote to Rome: “The Chief Rabbi of Zagreb has asked me to transmit his most heartfelt thanks to the Holy See for the effective help given by it in achieving the transfer of a group of Hebrew boys”. Msgr. Roncalli — the future Pope John XXIII — from Turkey in turn reported: “This very day, the secretary of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, Mr. Ch. Barlas, came to thank me and to thank the Holy See for its actions in favor of the Israelites of Slovakia”; and the same Msgr. Roncalli in June transmitted two letters that had been sent to him, one thanking him for what had been done in favor of the Hebrews and the other thanking him for the relief work carried out by the Archbishop of Zagreb, Cardinal Stepinac — beatified in 1998 by John Paul II —.

    Chapter ten is entitled “The fate of the Eternal City”. The Allied landing in Sicily, the bombing of Rome, the removal of Mussolini and the control of Rome by German troops led the Vatican — according to Blet — to a “direct confrontation with the forces of the Reich, with its army, with the Wehrmacht, with its state police, with the Gestapo”. The German ambassador to the Holy See explained the new policy: absolute neutrality from the Pope or Hitler’s reprisals would be extremely violent.

    Despite the threats, one of Pius XII’s first concerns was for the Hebrews who were in the city. Before the deportations began, the Holy Father had already lifted the canonical provisions for cloistered convents; in these and in hundreds of churches and communities thousands of Hebrews took refuge. The Pope’s energetic interventions in favor of the city produced good results, and the Germans decided to leave it without turning it into a battlefield. Between June 4 and 5 the American troops occupied the city.

    Chapter eleven of Blet’s book, “The events in France”, analyzes the role of the Holy See in France, where the nuncio was more concerned with the internal situation of the Church and with helping the persecuted. The last chapter is devoted to Pius XII’s concerns in the final months of the war. The Poles turned to the Holy Father and to the Western Allies, opposing Russian claims. The Pope strove to commit the State Department and North American Catholic public opinion to the fate of the Polish people, but at Yalta, despite the initial intentions of Roosevelt and Churchill, Poland itself and all of Eastern Europe were abandoned to Soviet power.

    Blet concludes by commenting on the phrase that De Gaulle uses to recount the audience he had in June 1944, in his Mémoires de guerre: “Pius XII judged everything from a point of view that transcends men, their events and conflicts”. “This transcendent vision, beyond every opposing interest and the conflicts of passions, will always make the task of understanding in depth the policy and personality of Pope Pius XII an arduous one”, the priest states.

    FR. BLET EXPLAINS WHY A BOOK ON PIUS XII

    VATICAN, 9 (ACI).- Yesterday in the Holy See Press Office, during the presentation of his work “Pius XII and the Second World War in the Vatican Archives”, presided over by Cardinal Pio Laghi, Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Father Pierre Blet explained why it is important to publish this work today.

    Father Blet explained that his book was a compendium of the information gathered by him and three other Jesuits in the Vatican Secret Archives and published between 1965 and 1981 in 12 volumes entitled “Acts and Documents of the Holy See relating to the Second World War”.

    “It is well known that several years after the death of Pius XII a campaign was unleashed against the Pontiff, the aims of which are far from known”, said Fr. Blet; and he explained that “to set history against legend, Paul VI, who had been one of Pius XII’s closest collaborators, decided that the documents of the Vatican Archives relating to the war should be published”.

    “However, seeing that after 15 years our volumes remained unknown to many historians, I wanted to summarize their content in a small volume”.

    In presenting the work, the priest highlighted three points relating to the conduct and activity of Pius XII during the world war: his efforts to safeguard peace and limit the war, his stance toward National Socialist power, and his action in favor of the victims of the war; illustrating each of these three points with examples from the book, enumerating the meetings, telegrams, letters and other messages between Pius XII and his nuncios and between the Pope and the diplomats of Europe and the United States.

    “The accusation most often repeated against Pius XII is that he remained silent in the face of the racial persecutions against the Jews, whom a public denunciation by the Pontiff could have saved from extermination, from the ‘final solution’ carried out by the Nazi regime and which began in 1942”.

    The priest concluded his presentation by recalling that the “public silence (of the Pope) covered a secret action through the nunciatures and the episcopal sees to try to prevent the deportations”. “Through the steps continually taken before the governments of the nations that still retained some margin of autonomy — Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary — through the nuncios and the diplomatic representatives of those nations, thousands of Jews were saved”. “It must be remembered that it was an Israeli historian who gave the figure of 850,000 Jews saved”.

Source: ACI Prensa