Starred review from June 6, 2022
Drawing on recently unsealed documents from the Vatican archives, Pulitzer winner Kertzer (The Pope and Mussolini) delivers a devastating look at how Pope Pius XII put the preservation of the Catholic Church ahead of “courageous moral leadership” during WWII. The new evidence includes notes from secret meetings between Pius XII and a Nazi envoy that centered on the treatment of German Catholics while ignoring the invasion of Poland and other matters, and reports from the pope’s nuncios across Europe that reveal just how much he knew about the Holocaust. Kertzer also reveals that when tensions arose between Italian Fascists and the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, the pope ordered it not to publish articles that were “in apparent contrast with the supreme interests of the country.” Despite the urgent pleas of priests, rabbis, and Allied diplomats, Pius XII refused to condemn “the Nazis’ ongoing extermination of Europe’s Jews,” including the deportation of more than 1,000 Roman Jews to Auschwitz in 1943 (only 16 survived). Kertzer acknowledges that Pius XII initially had legitimate concerns that the Axis dictators would soon be in control of Europe, and therefore needed to tread lightly, but as the tide turned and evidence of atrocities mounted, his approach never changed. “As a moral leader,” Kertzer concludes, “Pius XII must be judged a failure.” Scrupulous and authoritative, this is a damning case built by a master prosecutor. Photos. Agent: Wendy Strothman, Strothman Agency.
Starred review from June 1, 2022
A deeply troubling indictment of the cautious pope who acceded in 1939 and remained "neutral" during the Fascist and Nazi wartime regimes. In this meticulously researched book, historian Kertzer, who has written extensively on modern papal history (The Pope and Mussolini, The Popes Against the Jews, etc.), makes good use of newly opened wartime archives, sealed since Pius XII's death in 1958. The evidence of Pius' silence in the face of repeated calls to stop the atrocities against the Jews and others by the Nazis and Fascists is absolutely damning. Eugenio Pacelli had been Pius XI's loyal secretary of state, and he spent considerable time appeasing the Nazis since they came to power in 1933--e.g., engineering a concordat with Hitler. Pius XI, who in the early years of his papacy helped Mussolini solidify his dictatorship, eventually became alarmed with the Italian dictator's ever tightening embrace of the Nazi regime and was indeed becoming outspokenly problematic for the two closest Axis powers. When Pius XI died in February 1939, the ever cautious, scholarly, German-speaking Pacelli became pope--and the best ally the two dictators could hope for. Throughout World War II, he maintained a timorous disposition in the face of their increasing aggression--Kertzer reminds us that "Hitler had long viewed the Duce as his role model"--despite the piles of documentation that reveal how he was frequently informed of the brutalities committed by the Nazis and their willing collaborators. During this time, countless victims beseeched him to stand up and do something as a moral leader. The pope, casting himself as a peacemaker, managed to play his cards skillfully even when the Allies invaded and took pains not to bomb the Vatican. As a result, the institution of the Catholic Church emerged largely unscathed from the war, effectively scrubbing clean its Fascist and Nazi collaboration. Kertzer is to be commended for bringing it all to light in page-turning fashion. A riveting history and valuable lesson for our time about the perils of neutrality.
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