Vatican historian comes to Pius XII's defense - rejecting charges that Pope Plus XII ignored the plight of the Jews during World War II - Brief Article

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 22, 1999

The Vatican took the offensive Oct. 8, sharply rejecting charges that Pope Plus XII ignored the plight of the Jews during World War II because he was anti-Semitic and supported Nazi Germany as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and communism.

Jesuit Fr. Pierre Blet, the Vatican's leading historian of the period, said the documents on which British journalist John Cornwell based the charges in his controversial new book, Hitler's Pope: the Secret History of Plus XII, "are certainly authentic."

"But," he said, "the conclusions that he drew from them are laughable as history."

Blet spoke at a Vatican news conference called to present Pius XII and the Second World War According to the Archives of the Vatican, his one-volume summary of a 12-volume study published between 1965 and 1981.

Although the book, published originally in 1997, was not issued in direct response to Cornwell, it served as ammunition for the Vatican's defense of the pope, who is a candidate for sainthood.

Cornwell cites two letters as proof of Pius XII's anti-Semitism. One recommends the Vatican reject a request for palms to be used in a Jewish religious service and the other condemns a Bolshevik revolutionary as "a Jew, pale, dirty with vacant eyes, hoarse voice, vulgar, repulsive, with a face that is both intelligent and sly."

Blet said both letters must be viewed in the context of their time, long before the Second Vatican Council opened the way to dialogue between Catholics and Jews. Blet noted that although Pius XII signed the second letter he did not write it.

Asked point-blank if the pope was anti-Semitic, Blet replied: "He certainly was not the helped the Jews."

Blet is the only surviving member of a team of four Jesuit historians named by Pope Paul VI in 1964 to sort through and publish documents in the Vatican archives. Paul VI acted in response to Rolf Hochhuth's 1963 play The Deputy, which attacked Plus XII for failing to condemn the killing of Jews.

Blet argued that Plus XII, elected pope March 2, 1939, "had limited means at his disposal" but sought to persuade Hitler not to attack Poland. The pope then joined forces with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a fruitless attempt to dissuade Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from joining forces with Hitler, Blet said.

Pius XII used guarded terms to speak about Nazi persecution of the Jews in his 1942 Christmas message, referring to "people destined to die only because of their ancestry."

Blet said the pope chose to comply with the pleas of German and Polish bishops for "prudence" for fear of Nazi reprisals against Catholics and Jews. The pope's silence, however, "covered secret action through the nunciatures and bishoprics to try to impede the deportations," Blet said.

Asked what might have happened if Pius XII had decided to openly defy Hitler, Blet said dryly: "You can imagine anything you want. You could imagine that if Pope Pius had excommunicated Hitler, he would have come to Rome, asked for forgiveness and become a Trappist monk."