Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican

Christian Century, Feb 23, 2000 by John T. Pawlikowski

For Cornwall, all of Pius's failures come down in the end to a seriously flawed personality and spirituality. Pius left us no deeply personal reflections on his papacy, something we would need in order to evaluate his personality. But we have ample documentation of his actions and increasing evidence of how people close to him regarded his administration. This record is complex. There is now solid evidence, in part from Vatican archival materials, that Pius did more to oppose Hitler and to help Hitler's victims than many believe. That he might have done even more, for example through the papal nuncios, that he might have acted earlier and that he might have spoken more publicly are claims that need a more thorough airing than many of his Catholic defenders have allowed. But Cornwall's book presents only a very small part of that record, the part that supports his indictment.

BLET'S BOOK, on the other hand, helps demolish the thesis that Pius was "silent," at least if one means by that that he did nothing on behalf of Jews and other Nazi victims, such as the Poles and the disabled.

Blet presents a detailed description of Pius's largely behind-the-scenes interventions. While Blet can be criticized for not providing detailed citations for the material he quotes, he presents unquestionably genuine evidence. What is not so certain are some of his judgments about that evidence. Much like his late archival associate Robert Graham, Blet tends to highlight Pius's positive actions without ever questioning whether he might have acted earlier and more comprehensively. While he does engage some of the criticisms of Pius XII--such as those made by the Polish government-in-exile in London--he tends to explain them away, always giving Pius the benefit of the doubt.

Blet also fails to address the issue raised by Gerhart Riegner of the World Jewish Congress. Riegner has identified an important missing document from the published archival materials (whose existence is acknowledged in the archives) that shows the Vatican had information about the depth of the Nazi attack on the Jews considerably earlier than it has claimed. Similarly, Blet omits any reference to the strong critique of Pius made immediately after the war by Jacques Maritain, a prominent Catholic who eventually resigned his post as French ambassador to the Vatican over what he regarded as Pius's inaction on the issue of German guilt.

BLET'S VOLUME MAY finally force scholars on the Catholic Church and the Holocaust to probe far more thoroughly into the 12 published volumes of Vatican materials. The planned joint Catholic-Jewish scholarly team that is to examine these documents in depth will, one hopes, further advance this process. And full credibility will come only if the remaining archives are opened, at least on a selective basis. Both Cardinal John O'Connor and the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin called for such openness. So long as the archives remain closed, Plus XII and the Catholic Church of the time will continue to live under a moral cloud.