Pope Pius XII's 1942 Christmas address

Pope Pius XII's 1942 Christmas address was a speech delivered by Pope Pius XII over Vatican Radio on Christmas 1942. It is notable for its denunciation of the extermination of people on the basis of race, and followed the commencement of the Nazi Final Solution program to exterminate the Jews of Europe. The significance of the denunciation is a matter of scholarly debate.

The 1942 Christmas Address by Pope Pius XII was made in the context of the near total domination of Europe by the armies of Nazi Germany. Hitler had broken his alliance with Stalin and advanced into the Soviet Union, although his army in Stalingrad had been surrounded, decimated, starved and was about to surrender, precipitating disaster on the Eastern Front. Following decisive victories in North Africa, the Pacific and the air war in Northern Europe, the war had turned in favour of the Allies. From May 1942, the Nazis had commenced their industrialized slaughter of the Jews of Europe - the Final Solution. The brutalization of the Catholic Church in Poland had been underway for three years.

The Catholic Church had been offering condemnations of Nazi racism since the earliest days of the Nazi movement. The 1942 Christmas address is significant for the light it throws on the ongoing scholarly debate around the war time policies of Pius XII in response to what would later be termed The Holocaust (the systematic murder of Europe's Jews by the Nazis). Pius' cautious approach has been a subject of controversy. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, his "strongest statement against genocide was regarded as inadequate by the Allies, though in Germany he was regarded as an Allied sympathizer who had violated his own policy of neutrality". According to concentration camp prisoner, Father Jean Bernard of Luxembourg, treatment of clergy imprisoned in the Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp worsened when Pope Pius or the German bishops were critical of Hitler or the Nazis.

Two Popes served through the Nazi period: Pope Pius XI (1922-1939) and Pope Pius XII (1939-1958). In 1933, Pius signed a Concordat with the Germany - hoping to protect the rights of Catholics under the Nazi government. The terms of the Treaty were not kept by Hitler. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica: "From 1933 to 1936 [Pius XI] wrote several protests against the Third Reich, and his attitude toward fascist Italy changed dramatically after Nazi racial policies were introduced into Italy in 1938." Pius XI delivered three papal encyclicals challenging the new totalitarian creeds from a Catholic perspective: against Italian Fascism Non abbiamo bisogno (1931; We Do Not Need to Acquaint You); against Nazism Mit brennender Sorge (1937; “With Deep Anxiety”) and against atheistic Communism Divini redemptoris (1937; “Divine Redeemer”). He also challenged the extremist nationalism of the Action Francaise movement and anti-Semitism in the United States.

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