Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust

The start of the pontificate of Pius XII occurred at the time of the Second World War and the Nazi Holocaust, which saw the industrialized mass murder of millions of Jews and others by Adolf Hitler's Germany. Pius employed diplomacy to aid the victims of the Nazis during the war and, through directing his Church to provide discreet aid to Jews and others, saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Pius maintained links to the German Resistance, and shared intelligence with the Allies. His strongest public condemnation of genocide was, however, considered inadequate by the Allied Powers, while the Nazis viewed him as an Allied sympathizer who had dishonoured his policy of Vatican neutrality.

Some post-war critics have accused Pius of either being overly cautious, or of "not doing enough," or even of "silence" in the face of the Holocaust. Yet, supporters have held that he saved thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of Jews by ordering his Church to provide them with sanctuary and aid, and that he provided moral and intellectual leadership in opposition to the violent racism of Nazi ideology.

Pius XII had served as a Vatican diplomat in Germany prior to the war and as Vatican Secretary of State under Pius XI. In this capacity he had been a critic of Nazism and helped draft the 1937 Mit brennender Sorge anti-Nazi encyclical. In his 1939 Summi Pontificatus first papal encyclical, Pius XII expressed dismay at the invasion of Poland; reiterated Catholic teaching against racism and antisemitism; and endorsed resistance against those opposed to the ethical principles of the "Revelation on Sinai" and the Sermon on the Mount. At Christmas 1942, once evidence of the industrial slaughter of the Jews had emerged, he voiced concern at the murder of "hundreds of thousands" of "faultless" people because of their "nationality or race." Pius intervened to attempt to block Nazi deportations of Jews in various countries from 1942–1944. Upon his death in 1958, Pius was praised emphatically by the Israeli Foreign Minister, and other world leaders. But his insistence on Vatican neutrality and avoidance of naming the Nazis as the evildoers of the conflict became the foundation for contemporary and later criticisms from some quarters. Studies of the Vatican archives and international diplomatic correspondence continue.

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