Pope John XXIII, that short-serving but consequential pontiff – he was in office for less than five years, but was responsible for convening the Second Vatican Council – was by all accounts a gentle, pacific and kindly man.
It was almost certainly an unpleasant surprise to him, therefore, to discover in the Vatican apartments an SS dagger which had, apparently, been gifted to his predecessor Pius XII by a repentant Nazi who had originally planned to attack Pius with it.
The story of the dagger is one of the more startling details among new information that has emerged concerning one of the most heavily scrutinised and contested subjects in modern history: the approach taken by the Holy See to the Holocaust during the Second World War.
The Vatican has released a new tranche of documents from its archives ahead of an academic conference in Rome next month.
The media have focused heavily on a letter to Pius XII from a German Jesuit and anti-Nazi, Fr Lothar Konig, written in 1942, which details the atrocities occurring at a camp in German-occupied Poland.
The emerging narrative – as pushed by The Guardian among others – is that the letter “proves” that Pius XII knew about the systematic murder of European Jewry in 1942.
The implication is that his alleged inaction and silence thereby become all the more inexcusable, and that his defenders are being dishonest by claiming that Pius did not realise how serious the situation was.
The problem is that there are two false premises here.
First, it is not in dispute that Rome was aware at an early stage of the Nazis’ organised killing in occupied Europe. The Konig letter is obviously historically important, but fundamentally it is not new information that Pius XII had a clear view of the scale and brutality of the Holocaust.
Historians who are sympathetic to Pius, such as William Doino and David Dalin (a rabbi), do not lean heavily on his ignorance as part of their case for the defence.
Second, to criticise Pius purely on the grounds that he did not speak out strongly against the Hitler regime is to ignore an important part of the debate. Actions, ultimately, are more important than words.
Eloquent and theatrical denunciations of Nazi atrocities by senior Catholic clergy would have been satisfying and powerful, but they would probably have achieved very little in practical terms, while inviting reprisals against the millions of Catholics under German control.
This was not a purely academic possibility. The Nazis reacted to the campaigns of an anti-Nazi Dutch archbishop, Johannes de Jong – among other things he advocated the denial of Communion to known Dutch Nazis – by deporting hundreds of Dutch Catholics of Jewish heritage.
And if we consider actions, the image of a heartless and anti-Jewish Pope washing his hands of Europe’s tragedy becomes impossible to sustain. Thousands upon thousands of Jews were sheltered in Rome, including in the Vatican itself.
The Irish priest Hugh O’Flaherty, played by Gregory Peck in the film “The Scarlet And The Black” was only one example of a church official who used his position to save numerous Jews, something which would not have been possible without the support of higher authorities.
Pius himself is now known to have instructed church leaders and officials to offer aid to those suffering under Nazi tyranny throughout Europe in the hardest of circumstances. He was in touch with the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany.
We should not over-correct in the face of unfair criticism and claim that the Church under Pius XII was unimpeachable in its response to the Nazis. This is obviously not the case, sadly.
Many Catholics, for various reasons, failed to stand up to the monstrous terrors of National Socialism (which of us can say with certainty that we would have been among the brave heroes?).
However, it is possible to say with some certainty that the most
serious allegations levelled against Pius – that he was indifferent to
the fate of Europe’s Jews because of personal prejudice and political
calculation, and even facilitated co-operation with Hitler in some cases
– are false.