Madam, - Controversial new light, according to The Irish Times and La Repubblica, has been shed on the wartime role of Pius XII (October 20th). Two days after the Jews of Rome were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz, Pope Pius said that, as far as he was concerned and up to that moment, the Germans had behaved correctly. Was he talking about the round-up? Well, no. He was responding to Sir D'Arcy Osborne, the British special envoy, who was urging him to do everything possible to save Vatican neutrality. As if he needed Sir D'Arcy's urging (Pius knew of Nazi plans to kidnap him). His response was probably a laconic put-down to a tiresome diplomat at a moment of extreme crisis. The Germans had behaved "correctly" toward the Vatican "up to this moment". Quoted in isolation, as it has been by The Irish Times, this incident serves as yet another example of what many like to see as Pius's shameful disregard of the plight of European Jews.
But apart from what he had to say on that particular occasion, what else did Pius XII say about what was happening in Europe in the early 1940s? Let me offer two examples, as reported by the New York Times.
On March 14th, 1940, that newspaper reported a papal audience granted to Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister and highest-ranking Nazi ever to visit the Vatican. Ribbentrop began by chastising the pope for siding with the allies, whereupon Pius began to read from a long list of German atrocities. The report continues: "In burning words he spoke to Herr Ribbentrop and came to the defence of Jews in Germany and Poland." A few weeks later, on April 1st, the same newspaper described how Ribbentrop emerged from a difficult meeting with Hitler - "pale and trembling as when recently he left the presence of Pope Pius XII". Was the NY Times comparing Pius to Hitler at that moment? Or was it simply noting that His Holiness, in his dealings with Ribbentrop in relation to German and Polish Jews and other Nazi atrocities, was formidable?
The following year, after his Christmas message in 1941, the NY Times declared: 'The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas. . . In calling for a 'real new order' based on 'liberty, justice and love'. . . the pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism." Was the New York Times being gullible? Or was it merely being fair and accurate? - Yours, etc,
EDMOND GRACE SJ,
35 Lower Leeson St,
Dublin 2.