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} Pope Pius Twelve (Latin: Pius PP. Twelve), innate Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (March 2, 1876 – October 9, 1958), reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City from March 2, 1939 to 1958. He is one of pack popes inside recent history to exercise his Papal Infallibility by issuing a dogmatic definition. He worked to promote peace & protect a Church when you took a turbulent period of war, & he decisively eliminated the Italian majority in the College of Cardinals. He experienced influence outside a Church when you took World War II and postwar reconstruction. His leadership of a Church in the period of the period of World War II is the subject of continued controversy, especially inside weak of his tenure when Papal Nuncio to Germany & late when Vatican Secretary of State.

Birth and early church career

} Pacelli, world health organization was of noble birth, was the grandson of Marcantonio Pacelli, founder of the Vatican's newspaper, ''L'Osservatore Romano'', a nephew of Ernesto Pacelli, a key financial advisor to Pope Leo XII, and a son of Filippo Pacelli, dean of the Vatican lawyers. His brother, Francesco Pacelli, became the extremely regarded lawyer, & was created the marchese by Pius XII.

Pacelli became the Roman Catholic priest in April, 1899. From either 1904 until 1916 Fr. Pacelli assisted Cardinal Gasparri inside his codification of canon law. Pope Benedict XV appointed the so Father Pacelli when Apostolic Nuncio to Bavaria in April 1917, and in May 13 1917, Benedict consecrated him as a bishop. This was a super day of the foremost appearance of the Virgin Mary (to whom Pacelli had the favorite devotion) to deuce-ace peasant toddlers at Fatima, Portugal.

He was appointed Apostolic Nuncio to the German Weimar Republic in June, 1920.

Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli

Eugenio Pacelli served a Holy See largely as a diplomat and his role in a Church was largely centred in diplomatic negotiation using Germany. He was a Papal Nuncio within Bavaria from either either 1917 & from June 1920 also Nuncio to the German Weimar Republic.

Early therewithin Nunciate (in the personal letter (dated November 14, 1923), to Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Cardinal Gasparri ) Pacelli denounced the National Socialist movement as an anti-Catholic and anti-Hebrew threat. He as well remarked that Michael von Faulhaber, Bishop of Munich had condemned acts of persecution against Bavaria's Jews. In a period of the 1920's and 1930s Cardinal Pacelli succeeded in negotiating concordats with Bavaria, Prussia and Baden, but failed within regard to Germany.

Cardinal and Secretary of State

Pacelli was created the cardinal on 16 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI. In two or three months, in 7 February 1930 Pope Pius appointed Pacelli Cardinal Secretary of State. Within 1935, Cardinal Pacelli wwhen known as as a Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church. In a period of the 1930s Cardinal Pacelli negotiated concordats with Baden, Austria and Germany. He besides manufactured numerous diplomatic visits throughout Europe & a Americas, including an extensive visit to the United States in 1936.

The Reichskonkordat

Inside June 1933 Adolf Hitler signed a peace agreement by having virtually all of Europe, known as a Four-Power Pact. Within July when Secretary of State to Pope Pius XI, Pacelli signed the compact sustaining Germany (view image) when Foreign Secretary von Papen signed for Germany. This was shortly when Germany got gestural similar agreements by having a major Protestant churches in Germany.

in Rome. From left to right: German Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, representing Germany, Giuseppe Pizzardo, Pacelli, Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, German ambassador Rudolf Buttmann]]

A sign language of the actual Reichskonkordat has always been controversial, getting given significant international acceptance to Hitler's regime. A 3 June encyclical Dilectissima Nobis, around which Pius XI protested against anti-Church policies in republican Spain, stated that a Church noticed there are no difficulty around adapting herself to various civil institutions, exist as it monarchal or even even republican, sternotherus or popular, provided a divine rights of God & of Christian consciences were safe.

Critics of a Covenant claim it linked a Roman Catholic Church as well closely sustaining Nazism, when defenders of the compact argue that it was an attempt to protect the Church from either anti-Church policies per recently government.

Each Hitler & Pacelli saw a Reichskonkordat as a victory for their several sides. Hitler told his cabinet in 14 July: Pacelli, inside the deuce site article in the Vatican influenced ''Fifty'Osservatore Romano'' in 26 July and 27 July ,dismissed Hitler's assertion that the covenant in any way represented or even implied approval for national socialism, very much less moral approval of it. He argued that its avowedly purpose got been The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (Pre-WW II)

A few observers regard a Church's relationship by having a Nazi regime as similar to people it established sustaining more non-communist states and governments. Dr. Eamon Duffy, a historiographer of the pontificate, found that the Church under Pius XI followed a uniform policy of establishing covenant by having single states when you took the 1920s and the 1930s. This involved compact by owning Latvia (1922), Bavaria (1924), Poland (1925), Romania (1927), Lithuania (1927), Italy (1929), Prussia (1929), Baden (1932), Austria (1933), Germany (1933), Yugoslavia (1935) and Portugal (1940). These compact sought to normalize relationships between a Holy See & the German federal states when protecting publicly-funded Roman Catholic-start schools, hospitals, charities and third-level institutions from either state seizure or even persecution.

Particularly a covenant were aimed at ensuring that a Church's canon law had some status & recognition inside its have spheres of concern (e.g., church rescript of nullity in the area of marriage) among freshly or even emerging states using new legal systems. Duffy suggests that a compact provided technical indicator procedures across which formal complaints to the states can be processed per Holy Understand.

Between a German Concordat's signing around 1933 & 1939, Pope Pius XI manufactured, from either 1937, trey twelve formal complaints to the Nazi government, which were drafted by Pacelli however which indicate lone the gradual realisation of the gravity of the Nazi threat & Nazi abuse of the compact. A strongest condemnation of Hitler's ideology & ecclesiastic policy was a encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, issued within 1937 by Pius XI, which was in section composed by so Cardinal Pacelli.

Becoming Pope Pius XII

As punishment a dying of Pius XI, Cardinal Pacelli was elective Pope per conclave in 2 March 1939, his 63rd birthday, and took a title Pius XII. He was a number 1 Secretary of State to turn into pope since Clement IX in 1667. Pius XII's papal coronation was the grandest for above the hundred years.

World War II

Pius' papacy began on the eve of the Second World War. When you took the war, Pope Pius XII followed a policy of public neutrality mirroring that of Pope Benedict XV during the First World War. Nonetheless, when Cardinal Pacelli, Pius XII was against a Nazis' increasing political power around Germany & inside August 1933 wrote to the British representative to the Holy See his disgust with a Nazis & "their persecution of the Jews, their proceedings against political opponents, the reign of terror to which the whole nation was subjected."

After he was told Hitler was a hard leader to treat by having the communists, Pacelli responded that Hitler & his Nazis were infinitely worse. [http://www.catholicleague.org/pius/piusxii_faqs.html]

Pius XII established diplomatic relations by using a Japanese Empire in March 1942. When a war was approaching its prevent around 1945, Pius XII advocated a lenient policy per Allied leaders for a vanquished in an effort to stop a mistakes processed at the prevent of World War I. He attempted to negotiate an early German & Japanese surrender, however his initiatives failed.

Pius XII's role in the period of World War II has been a source of argument. Critics accuse him of remaining silent towards a Holocaust and other Nazi crimes. Though a Pope actually did speak retired, e.g., around his Christmas message of 1942, he did sol around the careful manner. Pius's independent argument for that policy was two times. That public condemnation of Hitler & Nazism would use at times achieved little of practical profit, given that his condemnation can profits become censored so unknown to German Catholics (world health organization in any pack experienced been told when early when a early Thirties per German Roman Catholic hierarchy that Nazism & Catholicism were incompatible). Second, Pius argued that got he condemned Nazism other sharply, a effect would use at times been reprisals inside Germany & countries occupied by her, making a Church's efforts against Nazi policies at a parish level difficult. Indeed such a reprisal occurred, while the Dutch bishops protested against the deportation of the united states's Jewish people. A occupier retaliated by singling out Jewish converts to a Church for deportation, the virtually all notable case existence Edith Stein. Accordingly, a Pope mostly concentrated within practical measures, like hiding Jews in convents. Too an "underground railroad" of secret escape routes experienced been install by large Catholics like Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, who operated under the tacit, if not implicit, approval of Pope Pius XII (as portrayed in the 1983 TV-movie "The Scarlet And The Black"). Based on data from a Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, "Preserving Vatican neutrality, and the capability of the Church to continue to function where possible in occupied Europe and Nazi-allied states, was a far better strategy to save lives than Church sanctions on a regime that would have merely laughed at them."

Although now's click usually villifies Pius XII for non condemning Nazism explicitly plenty, a Future York Days inside its Christmas newspaper column of 1941 & 1942 praised Pius XII for his moral leadership as a "lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent" & for, among more items, assailing "the violent occupation of territory, and the exile and persecution of human beings, for no other reason than race." In Christmas Day, 1941, in a period of mayhap a last-place point of the war, the Up to date York Days opined: "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas.... He is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all." Period Magazine as well credited Pius XII & a Catholic Church for "fighting totalitarianism more knowingly, devoutly, and authoritatively, and for a longer time, than any other organized power" (Instance, 16 August 1943). These are calculated that at the bare minimum 300,000 Jews were saved up through the directly, however covert activities of the Vatican when you took Globe War II. Globe War II historiographer Martin Gilbert wharehouses a total at 800,000. Rabbi Pinchas Lapide, a previous Israeli diplomat, credited Pius XII & the Catholic Church by owning saving 860,000 Jews. "It’s a big number, to be sure," says editorialist Sidney Zion in the March 16, 2000 Houston Chronicle, "but even if we halve it and then subtract by two, we have more Jews saved by the Vatican than by the Allies." Indeed, a Vatican is credited by having saving additional Jews from either a Holocaust than all the allied forces combined. A United States turned away boats of Jewish refugees & England did non require numbers of refugees either. Fallowing a war experienced ended, Pius XII was praised by many Jewish organizations world health organization experienced number one-h& cognition of his prudent and heroic actions inside saving a lasts of Jews. A head rabbi of Rome (Israel Zolli) converted to Catholicism, citing as his cause Pius XII's witness to religious fraternity.

Praise for Pius XII from prominent Jewish leaders

"No keener rebuke has come to Nazism than from Pope Pius XI and his successor, Pope Pius XII." Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, chancellor, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

"In the most difficult hours of which we Jews of Romania have passed through, the generous assistance of the Holy See…was decisive and salutary. It is not easy for us to find the right words to express the warmth and consolation we experienced because of the concern of the supreme pontiff, who offered a large sum to relieve the sufferings of deported Jews…. The Jews of Romania will never forget these facts of historic importance." Rabbi Alexander Safran, chief rabbi of Romania

"The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion, which form the very foundation of true civilization, are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of Divine Providence in this world." Rabbi Isaac Herzog, chief rabbi of Israel

Dr. Raphael Cantoni, director of the Italian Jewish Assistance Committee, wrote: "The Church and the papacy have saved Jews as much and in as far as they could save Christians.... Six million of my co-religionists have been murdered by the Nazis, but there could have been many more victims, had it not been for the efficacious intervention of Pius XII."

Albert Einstein also praised a efforts of Pius XII & the Catholic Church: "Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty."

Hitler's Disgust with Pius XII

Adolf Hitler said "[Pius XII] is the only human being who has always contradicted me and who has never obeyed me." Occasionally modern historiographer 2nd-believe whether or even does'nt Pope Pius XII did sufficiency to stop the Holocaust & save lives, and indeed whether any intervention by him would own any impact on the total of deaths from either Nazi policies.

A relationship between a Nazis & a Roman Catholic Church plainly deteriorated farther throughout a war & Joseph Goebbels was clear about a Reich's attitudes. His 26 March 1942 diary entry reads, "It's a dirty, low thing to do for the Catholic Church to continue its subversive activity in every way possible and now even to extend its propaganda to Protestant children evacuated from the regions threatened by air raids. Next to the Jews these politico-divines are about the most loathsome riffraff that we are still sheltering in the Reich. The time will come after the war for an over-all solution of this problem." (Lochner, A Goebbels Diaries, 1948, p. 146). A Nazis themselves were vehemently indignant per what it known as Pius' "anti-Nazi, pro-Jewish stance", & criticized him because of it. To cite a second of many documented examples, within response to Pius XII's noted Christmas broadcast of 1942-which clearly condemned a Nazi slaughter of a Jews, German war documents reveal the furor Pius XII's words aroused in Nazi ranks: "In a manner never known before...the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order. His radio allocution was a masterpiece of clerical falsification of the National Socialist world-view....His speech is one long attack on everything we [the Nazis] stand for....God, [Pius XII] says, regards all peoples and races as worthy of the same consideration. Here he is clearly speaking on behalf of Jews....That this speech is directed exclusively against the New Order in Europe as seen in National Socialism is clear in the papal statement that mankind owes a debt to "completely world health organizatiin when you took a war develop wasted their Country of origin & world health organization, although personally inculpable, st& just on account of their nationality and origin, been flushed or even decreased to utter distinction." Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals"(cited by Anthony Rhodes in The Vatican in the Age of Dictators: 1922-1945,1973, Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, pp. 272-273).

Thus perturbing was Pius XII's anti-Nazi activities, Hitler got formalized plans to kidnap Pius XII & replenish him by having the puppet pacacy that would non give Nazism any trend lines. One of a extra recent confirmations of this plot was reported in the Italian newspaper Avvenire which suggested that Hitler ordered SS General Karl Wolff, a senior occupation officer around Italy, to kidnap Pius. Based on data from this account, Wolff wear civilian textile & visited a Vatican to warn him.

Pope Pius' encyclicals
Among his virtually all large encyclical letter were: Mystici Corporis Christi: On the Mysterious System, 29 June 1943 Communium Interpretes Doloraum: An Appeal for Prayers for Peace, 15 April 1945 Fulgens Radiatur: Encyclical letter in Benedict, 21 March 1947 Intermediary Dei: On the Sacred Liturgy, 20 November 1947 Auspicia Quaedam: In Public Prayers For Globe Peace & Guide Of The Condition Of Palestine, 1 May 1948 Within Multiplicibus Curis: within Prayers for Peace in Palestine, 24 October 1948 Redemptoris Nostri Cruciatus: On the Holy within Palestine, 15 April 1949 Anni Sacri: In The Program For Combating Atheistical Propaganda Throughout The World, 12 March 1950 Humani Generis: On A few Treasonably Opinions Threatening to Weaken a Foundations of Catholic Philosophical system, 12 August 1950 Munificentissimus Deus, 1 November 1950 (on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven) ''Part of this particular encyclical letter is considered infallible. Mayhap contrary to popular conceptions, these are super uncommon for the pope to invoke papal infallibility. This was one of victims uncommon occasions—a sole a single in the 20th century. Ingruentium Malorum: In Reciting a Prayer beads: Encyclical letter promulgated in 15 September 1951 Fulgens Corona: Proclaiming a Marian month to Commemorate the Centennial of the Definition of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, 8 September 1953 Ad Caeli Reginam: In Proclaiming a Queenship of Mary, Encyclical letter promulgated in 11 October 1954 Datis Nuperrime: Lamenting a Sorrowful Cases around Hungary, & Condemning a Unpitying Utilize of Click, 5 November 1956 Miranda Prorsus: On the Communications Field: Motion Pictures, Radio, Television, 8 September 1957

In addition, when Apostolical Secretary of State, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli wrote Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Anxiety) for His Holiness Pope Pius XI.

Beatifications, canonisations, and teachings
When you took his reign, Pius XII canonized eight saints, including Pope Pius X, and beatified 5 humans. He consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942.

Around 1950, Pius XII issued a encyclical Munificentissimus Deus and infallibly defined the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. This philosophical system teaches that Mary, a mother of Jesus, was taken into Heaven body & soul when a prevent of her earthly life. This belief got been held by Catholic & Orthodox Christians since a early centuries of the Church (e.g., by St. Gregory of Tours), but it had never been formally defined as a dogma until 1950. This definition was a merely occasion in the 20th century a pope dogmatically defined a dogma ex cathedra, i personally.e. when Extraordinary (Solemn) Magisterium, which is attached to Papal Infallibility.

Pius XII ends the Italian Majority in the College of Cardinals

Exclusively twice around his pontificate did Pius XII hang on to the consistory to create new cardinals, the distinct counterpoint to Pius XI, world health organization got done thus 17 days inside xvii years on the apostolical potty. A foremost occasion hwhen been known as a "Great Consistory", of February 1946; it was the largest in the history of the Church as much as that instance, & brought an prevent to concluded 5 hundred years of Italians constituting the majority of the College. By his appointments so & within 1953 he substantially reduced the proportion of cardinals world health organization belonged to the Roman Curia.

Criticism of Pope Pius XII

Despite most universal high praise from either Jewish & Israeli leaders fallowing a war & upon his dying, Pope Pius XII's memory experienced to survive criticism years when his dying, began by Rolf Hochhuth's 1963 controversial fictional drama Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel (the Deputy, a Christian tragedy), which (when noted by John Cornwell within his book Hitler's Pope) falsely pictured Pope Pius XII as a money-grabbing pretender world health organization remained silent to the Holocaust. This play spawned two criticism of the Pope, however others come to his defence. A critics claimed his efforts to mitigate a Holocaust were inadequate & that his role inside negotiating a Reichskonkordat may have been easily-meaning however played into a paws of Adolf Hitler. His critics in that regard include John Cornwell (writer) in the book ''Hitler's Pope''.

These questions develop besides re-surfaced late because of the moves toward canonization of Pope Pius XII. A far flung Jewish concern at a history of Pius XII interventions or even deficiency thereof surfaced inside Pope Benedict XVI's recent visit to the Cologne Synagogue when a president of that tabernacle, Abraham Lehrer, asked that the Vatican's archives on to Pope Pius XII become opened for scrutiny.

Inside 1999, the class action suit against the Vatican Bank and others was brought up in the United States by various Holocaust survivors, alleging collusion in war crimes per Ustashe regime of the Independent State of Croatia. Additionally, a equivalent cause concerns secreting big vaults of war loot from either Croatia into Vatican accounts. A lawsuit alleges these funds were utilized to finance eventually sir thomas more of the just about 'fabulous' rat-ratlaround mentioned in ODESSA, with secret Vatican re-location & funding of concerned Nazi & Ustashe priests & monks, mostly inside South America.

Rabbi defends Pius XII

In ''The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis published in 2005, author Rabbi David G. Dalin presents extensive documentation culled from Church and State archives throughout Europe. Rabbi Dalin suggests that Yad Vashem should honor Pope Pius XII as a "Righteous Gentile" writing 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."

Others assert that critics base their opinions upon the Catholic stereotype hundreds of years away from date by immensely overrating the influence of the Apostolic speech on the opinions of modern Catholics, especially inside a pre-preponderantly Protestant united states when Germany.

In September 6, 1938, around the statement published worldwide (except for censorship in fascistic countries prefer Germany & Italy, Pius XI said:

Within January 1939 a National Jewish Monthly reported that "the only bright spot in Italy has been the Vatican, where fine humanitarian statements by the Pope have been issuing regularly."

Defenders of Pius XII likewise claim that he chose action'' above speech, secretly hiding hundreds to thousands of Jews from either a Gestapo police force, potentially in the Vatican itself. These are worth noting that Eugenio Zolli, a greatest higher-ranking Rabbi within Rome, converted to Catholicism fallowing a War due to Pius XII's lesson. Zolli claimed "Pius XII did more to protect the Jews from Nazism than did all the other religions of the world put together." (View a Catholic League's [http://www.catholicleague.org/pius/framemain.htm special report on Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust]). Rabbi David Dalin has argued that Pius should exist as considered the "righteous gentile" for his work inside saving Jews & Rabbi Daniel Lapin agrees.

Pope Pius in later life and after his death

Pius was dogged by owning unhealthiness afterwards around life, largely due to the charlatan, Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, who posed as a medical doctor & won Pius's trust. His treatments for Pius gave a Holy Father chronic hiccups and rotting dentition. Though finally discharged from either a Papal Personal, this human gained admittance when a pope lay anxious & took photo of Pius which he tried, unsuccessfully, to sell to magazines.

While Pius died, so Galeazzi-Lisi turned embalmer. Like than slow a run of decompose, a doctor-mortician's self-mass produced system sped it higher, leading a Holy Father's remains to decompose speedily, turning purple, using a clay's nose falling off. A stink from either a decompose was such that guards got to exist as rotated each Quarter-hour, otherwise it would collapse. A problem of a system became thus bad that the remains were secretly flushed at one point for farther treatments prior to existence returned in the morning. This stimulated considerable embarrassment to a Vatican & one of the 1st acts of Pius' successor, Pope John XXIII, was to ban the mountebank from either Vatican City for life.

Footnotes
Eamon Duffy, Saints & Evildoer: The History of the Popes p.341. John Cornwell, ''Hitler's Pope: A Secret History of Pius XII'' pp.130-131. On the wonder of Pius XII's attitude toward a Nazi persecutions, understand besides a New York Times editorial page for Christmas Day of 1941 and 1942.

Additional reading
Rabbi David G. Dalin, A Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How else Pope Pius Dozen Rescued Jews from either a Nazis (Regnery, 2005). ISBN 0895260344. Ronald J. Rychlak, Hitler, a War, & a Pope (My Sunday Visitant; 2000). ISBN 0879732172 Anonymous, Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich (Publisher: Pelican Pub Co; February 2003). ISBN 1589801377 (originally published within 1941) Eugenio Zolli, Prior to a Dawn (Roman Catholic Books; Reprint edition, February 1997). ISBN 0912141468 (creator is a previous wartime main rabbi of Rome world health organization took the title "Eugenio" at his Baptism within honor of Pope Pius XII) John Cornwell, ''Hitler's Pope: A Secret History of Pius XII (Viking, 1999) ISBN 0670876208 Sr. Margherita Marchione, Pope Pius Twelve: Designer for Peace (Paulist Click, 2000). ISBN 080913912X Karl Scholder, A Churches & a Third Reich (London, 1987) Susan Zuccotti,Under his super Windows, A Vatican & a Holocaust around Italy'' (Just released Haven & London: Yale University Click, 2000). ISBN 0300084870

The Holy See: Pius XII
Section of the Vatican's official web site. Portrait, coat of arms, archive of some of his writings and speeches.

A Catholic Response: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
Article points out that accusing Pope Pius XII of being indifferent to the Holocaust is a recent development based on fiction. At the time and immediately afterwards, the press and persecuted Jews hailed the Vatican as the one beacon in a darkened Europe.

Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
FAQ and several articles defending Pius XII.

Pius XII and the Holocaust
It is telling that the Nazis regarded Pacelli as anti-Nazi, and that Jewish sources give voluminous testimony about Pius XII's efforts on behalf of Jews. Personal page lists many books, reviews, articles, and Internet sites on the topic.

Pope Pius XII
Illustrated profile includes list of people he beatified or canonized, excerpts from his writings, links.

Columbia Encyclopedia: Pius XII
Biographical article.

In Defense of Pope Pius XII
Article by Kenneth Woodward, published in Newsweek, 30 March, 1998. Pius was neither silent nor inactive about the Holocaust. In fact, during the Second World War, he was lauded for his singular efforts to halt the carnage.

Pius XII Was No Nazi
Far from being "Hitler's Pope," Pius XII was a heroic defender of Jews during World War II. Why is this good man being defamed? Excerpt from Ralph McInerny's "The Defamation of Pius XII."

Top 100 Catholics: Pope Pius XII
Biographical sketch of Pius XII, voted one of the top Catholics of the 20th century by visitors to the Daily Catholic web site.

Pius XII as Scapegoat
Opinion piece by Michael Novak, in First Things. The recent charges against Pope Pius XII do not stand up to scrutiny. They are illogical, inconsistent, and fly in the face of facts.






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