Hitler's Pope

UK Cover

Hitler's Pope is a book published in 1999 by the Catholic ex-seminarian, historian, and journalist John Cornwell. It examines the actions of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi era and explores the charge that he assisted in the legitimization of Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany through the pursuit of a Reichskonkordat in 1933. It is critical of his conduct during the Second World War. The author has been praised for attempting to bring into the open the debate on the Catholic Church's relationship with the Nazis, but also accused of making unsubstantiated claims and ignoring positive evidence.

Cornwell's work

Cornwell, like other scholars, made use of the Vatican archives to research the conduct of Eugenio Pacelli, both as Nuncio to Germany and as Pope. He explains how he began his book as a defense of Pius XII from claims that he could have done more to prevent or mitigate the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews under Adolf Hitler, but that something unexpected happened along the way. "By the middle of 1997," he wrote, "nearing the end of my research, I found myself in a state I can only describe as moral shock. The material I had gathered, taking the more extensive view of Pacelli's life, amounted not to an exoneration but to a wider indictment." Cornwell, relying on what he claimed was exclusive access to Vatican and Jesuit archives (a claim which is not corroborated), argues that through a 1933 Concordat with Hitler, his anti-Semitic tendencies early on, and his drive to promote papal absolutism inexorably led him to collaboration with fascist leaders. Thus, according to Cornwell, Pope Pius XII facilitated the dictator's rise and, ultimately, the Holocaust.

Critical analysis of Cornwell's work

Ken Woodward, speaking to Newsweek, stated that Hitler's Pope has "errors of fact and ignorance of context [that] appear on almost every page." The major response to 'Hitler's Pope' came from Mississippi Law Professor Ronald J. Rychlak in his 2000 book on the subject,'Hitler, the War, and the Pope'. In it, Rychlak's original research exposed many facts, corrects Cornwell, and adds contextual perspectives that counter those presented in 'Hitler's Pope'. Rychlak was acknowledged by the Vatican to have been given special access to their closed archives for his research(he has been given three papal medals for his service to the Vatican); however, the 'exclusive access' that Cornwell claims to have gotten to Vatican and Jesuit archives is not corroborated. The Vatican denies Cornwell's assertion that he received any special access. The 'time bomb' letter Cornwell claimed was lying in the Vatican archives since 1919 was actually a letter written not by the future Pope but by his assistant, and was fully published and discussed in 'Germany and the Holy See: Pacelli's Nunciature between the Great War and the Weimar Republic', by Emma Fattorini (1992). Yet Cornwell attributes to this letter Pius' "stereotypical anti-Semitic contempt." Among other things, Rychlak also exposed Cornwell's front cover photographic manipulation and false caption stating the photo (suggesting Pius was visiting Hitler) was from 1939. Counter to Cornwell's suggestion, there is no evidence Pius ever met with Hitler.

Eventually David Dalin's 2005 book 'The Myth of Hitler's Pope' borrowed Rychlak's research to counter Cornwell also, but refocuses his readers toward Muslims, accusing Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem of being 'Hitler’s Mufti'.

In The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis published in 2005, author Rabbi David G. Dalin suggests that Yad Vashem should honor Pope Pius XII as a "Righteous Gentile," concluding 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."

Sir Martin Gilbert praised Pope Pius XII's efforts on behalf of the Jews throughout World War II. According to Miriam Zolli, the Catholic daughter of the World War II Chief Rabbi of Rome, Cornwell does not consider the context of what he calls Pius XII's silence in the face of Nazism and anti-semitism. In a 1998 interview with Inside the Vatican, she stated, "Pacelli and my father were tragic figures in a world where every moral reference point had been lost. An abyss of evil had opened up, but ordinary people did not believe it and the great ones — Roosevelt, Stalin, de Gaulle — were silent. Pius XII had understood that Hitler would not descend to pacts with anyone, that his madness was of the type that could explode in any direction, in the massacre of German Catholics or in the bombing of Rome, and he acted in the light of this knowledge. The Pope was like a person constrained to move in solitude among the lunatics of an insane asylum. He did what he could. His silence must be read in that context, as an act of prudence, not of cowardice."

Cornwell recants book's thesis

Five years after the publication of Hitler's Pope, Cornwell recanted:

I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler's Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany.

See also

• Ludwig Kaas
• Pope Pius XII
• Reichskonkordat
• The Great Scandal, relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Nazism
• A Moral Reckoning, book by Daniel Goldhagen

Additional reading

• Ronald J. Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope (Our Sunday Visitor, 2000). ISBN 0-87973-217-2
• Ronald J. Rychlak, Righteous Gentiles (Spence Publishing, 2005). ISBN 1-890626-60-0
• Ronald J. Rychlak's point by point analysis of Cornwell's 'Hitler's Pope' offering many links and detail on Cornwell's methods http://pius-xii.com/
• Ronald J. Rychlak's analysis of 60 Minutes story on Hitler's Pope http://www.catholicleague.org/research/60minutes.htm
• Jimmy Akin, How Pius XII Protected Jews (Catholic Answers, 1979-2005)
• Anonymous, Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich (Pelican Pub Co; February 2003). ISBN 1-58980-137-7 (originally published in 1941)
• Joseph Bottum, The Pius War: Responses to Critics of Pius XII (Lexington Books, 2004). ISBN 0-7391-0906-5
• James Carroll: Constantine’s Sword (Houghton Mifflin, 2002). ISBN 0-618-21908-0
• John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (Viking, 1999) ISBN 0-670-87620-8
• Rabbi David G. Dalin, The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis (Regnery, 2005). ISBN 0-89526-034-4.
• Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (Da Capo Press, 2000). ISBN 0-306-80931-1
• Sr. Margherita Marchione, Pope Pius XII: Architect for Peace (Paulist Press, 2000). ISBN 0-8091-3912-X
• Michael F. Feldkamp, Goldhagens unwillige Kirche. Alte und neue Fälschungen über Kirche und Papst während der NS-Herrschaft (München 2003). ISBN 3-7892-8127-1
• Karl Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich (London, 1987)
• Garry Wills: Papal Sin (Bantam Dell, 2001). ISBN 0-385-49411-4
• Eugenio Zolli, Before the Dawn (Roman Catholic Books; Reprint edition, February 1997). ISBN 0-912141-46-8 (author is the former wartime chief rabbi of Rome who took the name "Eugenio" at his Baptism in honor of Pope Pius XII)
• Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000). ISBN 0-300-08487-0

External links

• John Cornwell's abridged version of Hitler's Pope written for Vanity Fair.