A controversial wartime Pope accused by historians of being too compliant towards Hitler was praised by former Jewish prisoners for preventing their deportation to death camps, documents released from the Vatican's secret archives have revealed. Pius XII, who was elected in 1939, has been accused of turning a blind eye to the Nazis' extermination of the Jews in Europe, including a round-up by the Gestapo of 2,000 Italian Jews in Rome's Ghetto area in 1943.
The Vatican has until now refused to release any documents from Pius's papacy, despite calls for them to be made available by Jewish groups and historians, who in the past have dubbed the Italian pontiff "Hitler's Pope" and accused him of being anti-Semitic.
But in an historic move, seven documents from the so-called "closed period" went on display last week in an exhibition of 100 historic items from the Vatican Secret Archives.
They suggested that the Pope showed more concern for the plight of Jews during the war than he is often credited with.
In 1941 he sent a Vatican official, Francesco Borgongini-Duca, to check on the welfare of Jews and other prisoners being held in seven internment camps in southern Italy.
In April 1942 a rabbi and a doctor who were being held in one of the camps wrote a long letter to thank the Pope for clothing that the Vatican sent to interned children and for his concern for prisoners.
The document to cast Pius in the most flattering light is a letter from October 1944, after Italy signed an armistice with the Allies and switched sides, in which former inmates expressed their gratitude for his support during their imprisonment.
"While in nearly all the countries of Europe we were persecuted, imprisoned and threatened with death because we belong to the Jewish people and profess the Jewish faith, Your Holiness not only sent notable and generous gifts to our camp through the apostolic nuncio... but also showed your fatherly interest in our physical and spiritual well-being," they wrote in German.
"(You) intrepidly raised your universally venerated voice against our enemies – still so powerful at that time – to openly support our rights to human dignity. When in 1942 we were under the threat of deportation to Poland, Your Holiness extended your fatherly hand to protect us and prevented the deportation of the Jews imprisoned in Italy, thereby saving us from almost certain death."
The document was carefully chosen by Vatican archivists to bolster the case that Pius did all he could to help the Jews during the war.
But it is just one of two million papers from his 1939-1958 papacy and will not stop scholars and Jewish organisations from asking for the release of the entire archive.
Monsignor Sergio Pagano, the head of the Secret Archives, promised that the full archive would be made available "within one or two years", although he said the final decision would depend on Pope Benedict XVI.
The Catholic Church has long argued that Pius secretly saved many Jews by allowing them to hide in monasteries and convents and that he held back from being more critical of Hitler because he feared it would prompt even more savage persecution.
But German-born Benedict's decision to advance Pius further along the path to sainthood angered many Jewish groups, who said the process should be frozen until the Pope's wartime record had been fully assessed.
In April 1942 a rabbi and a doctor who were being held in one of the camps wrote a long letter to thank the Pope for clothing that the Vatican sent to interned children and for his concern for prisoners.
The document to cast Pius in the most flattering light is a letter from October 1944, after Italy signed an armistice with the Allies and switched sides, in which former inmates expressed their gratitude for his support during their imprisonment.
"While in nearly all the countries of Europe we were persecuted, imprisoned and threatened with death because we belong to the Jewish people and profess the Jewish faith, Your Holiness not only sent notable and generous gifts to our camp through the apostolic nuncio... but also showed your fatherly interest in our physical and spiritual well-being," they wrote in German.
"(You) intrepidly raised your universally venerated voice against our enemies – still so powerful at that time – to openly support our rights to human dignity. When in 1942 we were under the threat of deportation to Poland, Your Holiness extended your fatherly hand to protect us and prevented the deportation of the Jews imprisoned in Italy, thereby saving us from almost certain death."
The document was carefully chosen by Vatican archivists to bolster the case that Pius did all he could to help the Jews during the war.
But it is just one of two million papers from his 1939-1958 papacy and will not stop scholars and Jewish organisations from asking for the release of the entire archive.
Monsignor Sergio Pagano, the head of the Secret Archives, promised that the full archive would be made available "within one or two years", although he said the final decision would depend on Pope Benedict XVI.
The Catholic Church has long argued that Pius secretly saved many Jews by allowing them to hide in monasteries and convents and that he held back from being more critical of Hitler because he feared it would prompt even more savage persecution.
But German-born Benedict's decision to advance Pius further along the path to sainthood angered many Jewish groups, who said the process should be frozen until the Pope's wartime record had been fully assessed.