The Legend of Hitler's Pope

Pope Pius XII was pope during WWII who saved hundreds of thousands of lives while treading very carefully in a both a Faciast Italian regime and German occupied Italy. Stories about how Pius worked with the Nazi regime began to appear decades after WWII and several years after his death.

The Legend Goes Mainstream

The British journalist John Cornwell wrote a book in 1999 that made to the New York Times best seller list. The book is full of errors and has done much to promote the legend. Ken Woodward, writing in Newsweek, stated that Hitler's Pope has "errors of fact and ignorance of context [that] appear on almost every page."

Cornwell has retracted a lot of his book "While I believe with many commentators that the pope might have done more to help the plight of the Jews, I now feel, 10 years after the publication of my book, that his scope for action was severely limited and I am prepared to state this... Nevertheless, due to his ineffectual and diplomatic language in respect of the Nazis and the Jews, I still believe that it was incumbent on him to explain his failure to speak out after the war. This he never did." In light of such remarks, one commentator asked: "So why has Mr. Cornwell not withdrawn his book, or at least altered its hateful title?"

How Pius Was Viewed

When Pope Pius XII died in 1958 he was recognized world wide for saving countless of Jewish lives. Golda Meir (future prime minister of Israel) spoke at his funeral "During the 10 years of Nazi terror, when our people went through the horrors of martyrdom, the pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and commiserate with the victimsâ". Organizations that praised Pius - people that were alive through it all:

• Moral Jewish Congress
• The Anti Defamation League
• The Synagogue Counsel of America
• The Rabbinical Counsel of American
• The American Jewish Congress
• The New York Board of Rabbis
• The American Jewish Committee

...And many more.

Other Points

He had no army, no underground organization yet he saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Ignoring that fact alone draws into question anyone or group that critizes him.

The National Holocaust Museum has a very negative display on Pope Pius yet the Jewish community is not unanimous about it and there are political motives for its existence.

Some say that Pius supported Germany because he was afraid of the Russians. The source of this idea are German documents and Cornwell.

There is no documentation about how he ignored or harmed enemies of the Germans but there is much about what he did do. There are a lot of things put forward from sources well after the WWII that contradict eyewitness accounts.

In August 1942 a group of Dutch bishops wrote a letter against the persecution of the Jews and upon it being published in a newspaper Hitler had 40,000 Jews arrested and sent to the gas chamber (Edith Stein was one of them). This is why Pius started working behind the scenes.

The Nazi's hated and feared Pius and had a plan to kidnap him. Hitler's Pope kidnapped by Hitler?