Pope Pius XII
Pope Pius XII reigned throughout the Second World War and his conduct during the Holocaust remains the most argued-over question in modern church history. Born Eugenio Pacelli in Rome in 1876 into a family of Vatican lawyers, he was ordained in 1899, entered the Secretariat of State, and became nuncio to Bavaria and then Germany from 1917 to 1929, spending twelve years there and becoming fluent in the language and attached to the country. He was Secretary of State from 1930, negotiated the 1933 concordat with Hitler's Germany, and drafted much of Mit brennender Sorge in 1937, which condemned Nazi racial doctrine. He was elected in March 1939, months before the war. He kept the Vatican formally neutral, on the reasoning that partiality would end its capacity to mediate and would expose Catholics in occupied countries to reprisal. His Christmas broadcasts condemned the killing of people on grounds of race or descent without naming Germany or the Jews. The record on the ground is genuinely mixed. Vatican property and Roman convents sheltered thousands of Jews, and his nuncios in Hungary, Slovakia and Romania intervened directly and effectively; Rome's Jews were nonetheless rounded up in October 1943 within sight of St Peter's without public protest. His defenders argue that speaking plainly would have made things worse, citing Dutch reprisals after the bishops' protest. His critics argue that silence from the one voice with unquestioned moral standing was itself a choice. The archives opened in 2020 and scholars are still working through them. He died in 1958.
- Lived: 1876 CE – 1958 CE
- Nationality: Italian
- Roles: pope, cleric
