Today the Vatican Archives are opening their doors to dozens of qualified scientists. They are allowed to investigate the reign of Pope Pius XII (1939-1958). Not just a pope, but the man who had to guide the Roman Catholic Church through the difficult years of World War II.
Just before the outbreak of the war, the Italian Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli was elected pope in no time. Especially because of his diplomatic experience as a nuntius (ambassador for the Vatican) in Germany in the 1920s. Pacelli took the name Pius XII.
During the war, Pius called for peace many times and spoke out strongly against anti-Christian (read: fascist and Nazi) ideologies. But he never publicly condemned the persecution of the Jews, not even after many Roman Jews were deported to Auschwitz by the Germans in October 1943. This silence has given him much criticism to this day.
Hitler’s pope or unsung saint?
After his death, the fuss around Pius XII only started. In 1963 he was there in the play The substitute (Der Stellvertreter) by the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth for being accused of having deliberately kept silent about the Holocaust. Fearing Hitler and the damage that an open condemnation could have caused for Roman Catholics, for example in Germany.
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