Pope Pius XII
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Pope Pius XII (Latin: Pius PP. XII), born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (March 2, 1876 – October 9, 1958), reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City from March 2, 1939 to 1958. He is one of few popes in recent history to exercise his Papal Infallibility by issuing a dogmatic definition. He worked to promote peace and protect the Church during a turbulent time of war, and he decisively eliminated the Italian majority in the College of Cardinals. He had influence outside the Church during World War II and postwar reconstruction. His leadership of the Church during the period of World War II is the subject of continued controversy, especially in light of his tenure as Papal Nuncio to Germany and later as Vatican Secretary of State.
Birth and early church career
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| Reference style | His Holiness |
| Spoken style | Your Holiness |
| Religious style | Holy Father |
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Pacelli, who was of noble birth, was a grandson of Marcantonio Pacelli, founder of the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, a nephew of Ernesto Pacelli, a key financial advisor to Pope Leo XII, and a son of Filippo Pacelli, dean of the Vatican lawyers. His brother, Francesco Pacelli, became a highly regarded attorney, and was created a marchese by Pius XII.
Pacelli became a Roman Catholic priest in April, 1899. From 1904 until 1916 Fr. Pacelli assisted Cardinal Gasparri in his codification of canon law. Pope Benedict XV appointed the then Father Pacelli as Apostolic Nuncio to Bavaria in April 1917, and on May 13, 1917, Benedict consecrated him as a bishop. This was the very day of the first appearance of the Virgin Mary (to whom Pacelli had a special devotion) to three peasant children at Fatima, Portugal.
He was appointed Apostolic Nuncio to the German Weimar Republic in June, 1920.
Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli
Eugenio Pacelli served the Holy See largely as a diplomat and his role within the Church was largely centered on diplomatic negotiation with Germany. He was the Papal Nuncio in Bavaria from 1917 and from June 1920 also Nuncio to the German Weimar Republic.
Early in this Nunciate (in a private letter (dated November 14, 1923), to Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Cardinal Gasparri ) Pacelli denounced the National Socialist movement as an anti-Catholic and anti-Hebrew threat. He also remarked that Michael von Faulhaber, Bishop of Munich had condemned acts of persecution against Bavaria's Jews.
During the 1920's and 1930s Cardinal Pacelli succeeded in negotiating concordats with Bavaria, Prussia and Baden, but failed in regard to Germany.
Cardinal and Secretary of State
Pacelli was created a cardinal on 16 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI. Within a few months, on 7 February 1930 Pope Pius appointed Pacelli Cardinal Secretary of State. In 1935, Cardinal Pacelli was named as the Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church. During the 1930s Cardinal Pacelli negotiated concordats with Baden, Austria and Germany. He also made many diplomatic visits throughout Europe and the Americas, including an extensive visit to the United States in 1936.
The Reichskonkordat
In June 1933 Adolf Hitler signed a peace agreement with most of Europe, called the Four-Power Pact. In July as Secretary of State to Pope Pius XI, Pacelli signed the concordat with Germany (see image) while Foreign Secretary von Papen signed for Germany. This was shortly after Germany had signed similar agreements with the major Protestant churches in Germany.
The signing of the actual Reichskonkordat has always been controversial, having given important international acceptance to Hitler's regime. The 3 June encyclical Dilectissima Nobis, in which Pius XI protested against anti-Church policies in republican Spain, stated that the Church found no difficulty in adapting herself to various civil institutions, be they monarchic or republican, aristocratic or democratic, provided the divine rights of God and of Christian consciences were safe.
Critics of the Concordat claim it linked the Roman Catholic Church too closely with Nazism, while defenders of the concordat argue that it was an attempt to protect the Church from anti-Church policies by the new government.
Both Hitler and Pacelli saw the Reichskonkordat as a victory for their respective sides. Hitler told his cabinet on 14 July:
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- "An opportunity has been given to Germany in the Reichskonkordat and a sphere of influence has been created that will be especially significant in the urgent struggle against international Jewry."
Pacelli, in a two page article in the Vatican influenced L'Osservatore Romano on 26 July and 27 July ,dismissed Hitler's assertion that the concordat in any way represented or implied approval for national socialism, much less moral approval of it. He argued that its true purpose had been
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- "not only the official recognition (by the Reich) of the legislation of the Church (its Code of Canon Law), but the adoption of many provisions of this legislation and the protection of all Church legislation."2
The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (Pre-WW II)
Some observers regard the Church's relationship with the Nazi regime as similar to those it established with other non-communist states and governments. Dr. Eamon Duffy, a historian of the papacy, observed that the Church under Pius XI followed a consistent policy of establishing concordats with individual states during the 1920s and the 1930s. This included concordats with Latvia (1922), Bavaria (1924), Poland (1925), Romania (1927), Lithuania (1927), Italy (1929), Prussia (1929), Baden (1932), Austria (1933), Germany (1933), Yugoslavia (1935) and Portugal (1940). These concordats sought to normalize relationships between the Holy See and the German federal states whilst protecting publicly-funded Roman Catholic-run schools, hospitals, charities and third-level institutions from state seizure or persecution.
In particular the concordats were aimed at ensuring that the Church's canon law had some status and recognition within its own spheres of concern (e.g., church decrees of nullity in the area of marriage) among new or emerging states with new legal systems. Duffy suggests that the concordats provided technical procedures through which formal complaints to the states could be made by the Holy See.
Between the German Concordat's signing in 1933 and 1939, Pope Pius XI made, from 1937, three dozen formal complaints to the Nazi government, which were drafted by Pacelli but which show only a gradual realisation of the gravity of the Nazi threat and Nazi misuse of the concordat. The strongest condemnation of Hitler's ideology and ecclesiastical policy was the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, issued in 1937 by Pius XI, which was in part composed by then Cardinal Pacelli.
Becoming Pope Pius XII
Following the death of Pius XI, Cardinal Pacelli was elected Pope by the conclave on 2 March 1939, his 63rd birthday, and took the name Pius XII. He was the first Secretary of State to become pope since Clement IX in 1667. Pius XII's papal coronation was the grandest for over a hundred years.
World War II
Pius' pontificate began on the eve of the Second World War. During the war, Pope Pius XII followed a policy of public neutrality mirroring that of Pope Benedict XV during the First World War. However, as Cardinal Pacelli, Pius XII was against the Nazis' increasing political power in Germany and in August 1933 wrote to the British representative to the Holy See his disgust with the Nazis and "their persecution of the Jews, their proceedings against political opponents, the reign of terror to which the whole nation was subjected."
When he was told Hitler was a strong leader to deal with the communists, Pacelli responded that Hitler and his Nazis were infinitely worse. [1]
Pius XII established diplomatic relations with the Japanese Empire in March 1942. As the war was approaching its end in 1945, Pius XII advocated a lenient policy by the Allied leaders for the vanquished in an effort to prevent the mistakes made at the end of World War I. He attempted to negotiate an early German and Japanese surrender, but his initiatives failed.
Pius XII's role during World War II has been a source of controversy. Critics accuse him of remaining silent towards the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes. Though the Pope actually did speak out, e.g., in his Christmas message of 1942, he did so in a careful manner. Pius's main argument for that policy was twofold. That public condemnation of Hitler and Nazism would have achieved little of practical benefit, given that his condemnation could effectively be censored and so unknown to German Catholics (who in any case had been told as early as the early 1930s by the German Roman Catholic hierarchy that Nazism and Catholicism were incompatible). Secondly, Pius argued that had he condemned Nazism more aggressively, the result would have been reprisals within Germany and countries occupied by her, making the Church's efforts against Nazi policies at the parish level difficult. Indeed such a reprisal occurred, when the Dutch bishops protested against the deportation of the country's Jewish population. The occupants retaliated by singling out Jewish converts to the Church for deportation, the most notable example being Edith Stein. Accordingly, the Pope mostly concentrated on practical measures, such as hiding Jews in convents. Also an "underground railroad" of secret escape routes had been set up by prominent Catholics such as Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, who operated under the tacit, if not implicit, approval of Pope Pius XII (as portrayed in the 1983 TV-movie "The Scarlet And The Black").
According to the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, "Preserving Vatican neutrality, and the capability of the Church to continue to function where possible in occupied Europe and Nazi-allied states, was a far better strategy to save lives than Church sanctions on a regime that would have merely laughed at them."
Although today's press generally villifies Pius XII for not condemning Nazism explicitly enough, the New York Times in its Christmas editorials of 1941 and 1942 praised Pius XII for his moral leadership as a "lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent" and for, among other things, assailing "the violent occupation of territory, and the exile and persecution of human beings, for no other reason than race." On Christmas Day, 1941, during perhaps the lowest point of the war, the New York Times opined: "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas.... He is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all." Time Magazine also credited Pius XII and the Catholic Church for "fighting totalitarianism more knowingly, devoutly, and authoritatively, and for a longer time, than any other organized power" (Time, 16 August 1943). It is estimated that at a bare minimum 300,000 Jews were saved through the direct, but covert activities of the Vatican during World War II. World War II historian Martin Gilbert places the number at 800,000. Rabbi Pinchas Lapide, a former Israeli diplomat, credited Pius XII and the Catholic Church with saving 860,000 Jews. "It’s a big number, to be sure," says columnist Sidney Zion in the March 16, 2000 Houston Chronicle, "but even if we halve it and then subtract by two, we have more Jews saved by the Vatican than by the Allies." Indeed, the Vatican is credited with saving more Jews from the Holocaust than all the allied forces combined. The United States turned away boats of Jewish refugees and England did not take many refugees either. After the war had ended, Pius XII was praised by numerous Jewish organizations who had first-hand knowledge of his prudent and heroic actions in saving the lives of Jews. The head rabbi of Rome (Israel Zolli) converted to Catholicism, citing as his reason Pius XII's witness to religious fraternity.
Praise for Pius XII from prominent Jewish leaders
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- "We share in the grief of humanity [at the death of Pius XII]…. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace."
- Golda Meir
- "No keener rebuke has come to Nazism than from Pope Pius XI and his successor, Pope Pius XII."
- Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, chancellor, Jewish Theological Seminary of America
- "In the most difficult hours of which we Jews of Romania have passed through, the generous assistance of the Holy See…was decisive and salutary. It is not easy for us to find the right words to express the warmth and consolation we experienced because of the concern of the supreme pontiff, who offered a large sum to relieve the sufferings of deported Jews…. The Jews of Romania will never forget these facts of historic importance."
- Rabbi Alexander Safran, chief rabbi of Romania
- "The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion, which form the very foundation of true civilization, are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of Divine Providence in this world."
- Rabbi Isaac Herzog, chief rabbi of Israel
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- "I told [Pope Pius XII] that my first duty was to thank him, and through him the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish public for all they had done in the various countries to rescue Jews…. We are deeply grateful to the Catholic Church."
- Moshe Sharett (who later became Israel’s first foreign minister and second prime minister)
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Dr. Raphael Cantoni, director of the Italian Jewish Assistance Committee, wrote: "The Church and the papacy have saved Jews as much and in as far as they could save Christians.... Six million of my co-religionists have been murdered by the Nazis, but there could have been many more victims, had it not been for the efficacious intervention of Pius XII."
Albert Einstein also praised the efforts of Pius XII and the Catholic Church: "Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty."
Hitler's Disgust with Pius XII
Adolf Hitler said "[Pius XII] is the only human being who has always contradicted me and who has never obeyed me." Some modern historians second-guess whether or not Pope Pius XII did enough to prevent the Holocaust and save lives, and indeed whether any intervention by him would have any impact on the number of deaths caused by Nazi policies.
The relationship between the Nazis and the Roman Catholic Church plainly deteriorated further throughout the war and Joseph Goebbels was clear about the Reich's attitudes. His 26 March 1942 diary entry reads, "It's a dirty, low thing to do for the Catholic Church to continue its subversive activity in every way possible and now even to extend its propaganda to Protestant children evacuated from the regions threatened by air raids. Next to the Jews these politico-divines are about the most loathsome riffraff that we are still sheltering in the Reich. The time will come after the war for an over-all solution of this problem." (Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries, 1948, p. 146). The Nazis themselves were vehemently outraged by the what they called Pius' "anti-Nazi, pro-Jewish stance", and criticized him because of it. To cite another of numerous documented examples, in response to Pius XII's famous Christmas broadcast of 1942-which clearly condemned the Nazi slaughter of the Jews, German war documents reveal the furor Pius XII's words aroused within Nazi ranks: "In a manner never known before...the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order. His radio allocution was a masterpiece of clerical falsification of the National Socialist world-view....His speech is one long attack on everything we [the Nazis] stand for....God, [Pius XII] says, regards all peoples and races as worthy of the same consideration. Here he is clearly speaking on behalf of Jews....That this speech is directed exclusively against the New Order in Europe as seen in National Socialism is clear in the papal statement that mankind owes a debt to "all who during the war have lost their Fatherland and who, although personally blameless, have simply on account of their nationality and origin, been killed or reduced to utter distinction." Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals"(cited by Anthony Rhodes in The Vatican in the Age of Dictators: 1922-1945,1973, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, pp. 272-273).
So troubling was Pius XII's anti-Nazi activities, Hitler had formalized plans to kidnap Pius XII and replace him with a puppet pacacy that would not give Nazism any resistance. One of the more recent confirmations of this plot was reported in the Italian newspaper Avvenire which suggested that Hitler ordered SS General Karl Wolff, a senior occupation officer in Italy, to kidnap Pius. According to this account, Wolff put on civilian clothes and visited the Vatican to warn him.
Pope Pius' encyclicals
Among his most prominent encyclicals were:
- Mystici Corporis Christi: On the Mystical Body, 29 June 1943
- Communium Interpretes Doloraum: An Appeal for Prayers for Peace, 15 April 1945
- Fulgens Radiatur: Encyclical on Saint Benedict, 21 March 1947
- Mediator Dei: On the Sacred Liturgy, 20 November 1947
- Auspicia Quaedam: On Public Prayers For World Peace And Solution Of The Problem Of Palestine, 1 May 1948
- In Multiplicibus Curis: On Prayers for Peace in Palestine, 24 October 1948
- Redemptoris Nostri Cruciatus: On the Holy Places in Palestine, 15 April 1949
- Anni Sacri: On A Program For Combating Atheistic Propaganda Throughout The World, 12 March 1950
- Humani Generis: Concerning Some False Opinions Threatening to Undermine the Foundations of Catholic Doctrine, 12 August 1950
- Munificentissimus Deus, 1 November 1950 (on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven) Part of this particular encyclical is considered infallible. Perhaps contrary to popular conceptions, it is very rare for a pope to invoke papal infallibility. This was one of those rare occasions—the only one in the 20th century.
- Ingruentium Malorum: On Reciting the Rosary: Encyclical promulgated on 15 September 1951
- Fulgens Corona: Proclaiming a Marian year to Commemorate the Centenary of the Definition of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, 8 September 1953
- Ad Caeli Reginam: On Proclaiming the Queenship of Mary, Encyclical promulgated on 11 October 1954
- Datis Nuperrime: Lamenting the Sorrowful Events in Hungary, and Condemning the Ruthless Use of Force, 5 November 1956
- Miranda Prorsus: On the Communications Field: Motion Pictures, Radio, Television, 8 September 1957
Additionally, as Papal Secretary of State, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli wrote Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Anxiety) for His Holiness Pope Pius XI.
Beatifications, canonisations, and teachings
During his reign, Pius XII canonized eight saints, including Pope Pius X, and beatified five people. He consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942.
In 1950, Pius XII issued the encyclical Munificentissimus Deus and infallibly defined the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. This doctrine teaches that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was taken into Heaven body and soul after the end of her earthly life. This belief had been held by Catholic and Orthodox Christians since the early centuries of the Church (for example, by St. Gregory of Tours), but it had never been formally defined as a dogma until 1950. This definition was the only occasion in the 20th century a pope dogmatically defined a dogma ex cathedra, i.e. as Extraordinary (Solemn) Magisterium, which is connected to Papal Infallibility.
Pius XII ends the Italian Majority in the College of Cardinals
Only twice in his pontificate did Pius XII hold a consistory to create new cardinals, a decided contrast to Pius XI, who had done so seventeen times in seventeen years on the papal throne. The first occasion has been known as the "Great Consistory", of February 1946; it was the largest in the history of the Church up to that time, and brought an end to over five hundred years of Italians constituting a majority of the College. By his appointments then and in 1953 he substantially reduced the proportion of cardinals who belonged to the Roman Curia.
Criticism of Pope Pius XII
Despite almost universal high praise from Jewish and Israeli leaders after the war and upon his death, Pope Pius XII's memory had to endure criticism years after his death, started by Rolf Hochhuth's 1963 controversial fictional drama Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel (The Deputy, a Christian tragedy), which (as noted by John Cornwell in his book Hitler's Pope) falsely portrayed Pope Pius XII as a money-grabbing hypocrite who remained silent to the Holocaust. This play spawned both criticism of the Pope, but others came to his defence. The critics claimed his efforts to mitigate the Holocaust were inadequate and that his role in negotiating the Reichskonkordat may have been well-meaning but played into the hands of Adolf Hitler. His critics in this regard include John Cornwell (writer) in the book Hitler's Pope.
These questions have also re-surfaced of late because of the moves toward canonisation of Pope Pius XII. The widespread Jewish concern at the history of Pius XII interventions or lack thereof surfaced in Pope Benedict XVI's recent visit to the Cologne Synagogue when the president of that synagogue, Abraham Lehrer, asked that the Vatican's archives relating to Pope Pius XII be opened for scrutiny.
In 1999, a class action suit against the Vatican Bank and others was brought up in the United States by various Holocaust survivors, alleging collusion in war crimes by the Ustashe regime of the Independent State of Croatia. In addition, the same lawsuit concerns secreting large vaults of war loot from Croatia into Vatican accounts. The suit alleges these funds were used to finance yet more of the almost 'mythic' rat-lines mentioned in ODESSA, with secret Vatican re-location and funding of implicated Nazi and Ustashe priests and monks, mostly in South America.
Rabbi defends Pius XII
In The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis published in 2005, author Rabbi David G. Dalin presents extensive documentation culled from Church and State archives throughout Europe. Rabbi Dalin suggests that Yad Vashem should honor Pope Pius XII as a "Righteous Gentile" writing that "[t]he anti-papal polemics of ex-seminarians like Garry Wills and John Cornwell (author of Hitler’s Pope), of ex-priests like James Carroll, and or other lapsed or angry liberal Catholics exploit the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the Catholic Church today."
Others assert that critics base their opinions upon a Catholic stereotype hundreds of years out of date by vastly overrating the influence of a Papal speech on the opinions of modern Catholics, especially in a pre-dominantly Protestant country as Germany.
On September 6, 1938, in a statement published worldwide (except for censorship in fascist countries like Germany and Italy, Pius XI said:
- Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and forefather. Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do. No, no, I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we are all Semites.
In January 1939 the National Jewish Monthly reported that "the only bright spot in Italy has been the Vatican, where fine humanitarian statements by the Pope have been issuing regularly."
Defenders of Pius XII also claim that he chose action over speech, secretly hiding thousands of Jews from the Gestapo police, even in the Vatican itself. It is worth noting that Eugenio Zolli, the highest ranking Rabbi in Rome, converted to Catholicism after the War due to Pius XII's example. Zolli claimed "Pius XII did more to protect the Jews from Nazism than did all the other religions of the world put together." (See the Catholic League's special report on Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust). Rabbi David Dalin has argued that Pius should be considered a "righteous gentile" for his work in saving Jews and Rabbi Daniel Lapin agrees.
Pope Pius in later life and after his death
Pius was dogged with ill health later in life, largely due to a charlatan, Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, who posed as a medical doctor and won Pius's trust. His treatments for Pius gave the Holy Father chronic hiccups and rotting teeth. Though eventually dismissed from the Papal Household, this man gained admittance as the pope lay dying and took photographs of Pius which he tried, unsuccessfully, to sell to magazines.
When Pius died, then Galeazzi-Lisi turned embalmer. Rather than slow the process of decay, the doctor-mortician's self-made technique sped it up, leading the Holy Father's corpse to disintegrate rapidly, turning purple, with the corpse's nose falling off. The stench caused by the decay was such that guards had to be rotated every 15 minutes, otherwise they would collapse. The condition of the body became so bad that the remains were secretly removed at one point for further treatments before being returned in the morning. This caused considerable embarrassment to the Vatican and one of the first acts of Pius' successor, Pope John XXIII, was to ban the charlatan from Vatican City for life.
Footnotes
- Note 1: Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes p.341.
- Note 2: John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII pp.130-131.
- Note 3: On the question of Pius XII's attitude toward the Nazi persecutions, see also the New York Times editorial page for Christmas Day of 1941 and 1942.
Additional reading
- Rabbi David G. Dalin, The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis (Regnery, 2005). ISBN 0895260344.
- Ronald J. Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope (Our Sunday Visitor; 2000). ISBN 0879732172
- Anonymous, Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich (Publisher: Pelican Pub Co; February 2003). ISBN 1589801377 (originally published in 1941)
- Eugenio Zolli, Before the Dawn (Roman Catholic Books; Reprint edition, February 1997). ISBN 0912141468 (author is the former wartime chief rabbi of Rome who took the name "Eugenio" at his Baptism in honor of Pope Pius XII)
- John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (Viking, 1999) ISBN 0670876208
- Sr. Margherita Marchione, Pope Pius XII: Architect for Peace (Paulist Press, 2000). ISBN 080913912X
- Karl Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich (London, 1987)
- Susan Zuccotti,Under his very Windows, The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000). ISBN 0300084870
External links
- The Myth of Hitler's Pope: An Interview With Rabbi David G. Dalin
- Latest Attempts to Smear Pope Pius XII Continue to Fail
- The Vatican and Nazism in Germany and Croatia: A Photo Essay
- Hitler's Pope Plot Ignored
- The Holy See vs. the Third Reich
- Jewish Historian Praises Pius XII
- The Good Samaritan: Jewish Praise for Pope Pius XII
- Did Pius XII Remain Silent?
- Summi Pontificatus Pope Pius XII's wartime Encyclical condemning Nazism's racism and Communism's atheism
- Mit Brennender Sorge anti-Nazi encyclical promulgated by Pope Pius XI, written by future Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli), 14 March 1937. This is the only encyclical to have been originally published in German.
- Cornwell's Cheap Shot at Pius XII
- Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope" - excerpt published by Vanity Fair
- Pius XII and the Jews: The War Years, as reported by the New York Times
- Pope Pius XII: Victim of False History Right Reason
- Righteous Gentile: Pope Pius XII and the Jews Rabbi David Dalin, Ph.D.
- The Usefulness of Daniel Goldhagen The Weekly Standard
- Document on Jewish recognition of Pope Pius XII's support during WWII
- Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust - Jewish Virtual Library
- Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust - defence of Pius XII
- Simon Wiesenthal Center Learning Center Online - on Pope Pius XII
- website promoting Pope Pius XII's cause for sainthood. (Also contains image of Pope Pius lying-in-state)
- Complete Text of the Concordat between the Vatican and Germany
- Information on ODESSA – From the Jewish Virtual Library
- ZDF.de (2002). "Mythos Odessa: Wahrheit oder Legende?" ("The Myth of ODESSA: Truth or legend?") (in German)
- ODESSA and Nazis in Latin America – From The Straight Dope
- Full text of (US) House (of Representatives) Resolution 235: "Argentina urged to open Nazi files" – From Uki Goñi's website
- Aftermath, the Vatican Ratline
| Preceded by: Pietro Cardinal Gasparri |
Cardinal Secretary of State 1930–1939 |
Succeeded by: Luigi Cardinal Maglione |
| Preceded by: Pietro Cardinal Gasparri |
Camerlengo 1935–1939 |
Succeeded by: Lorenzo Cardinal Lauri |
| Preceded by: Pius XI |
Pope 1939–1958 |
Succeeded by: John XXIII |
