Pope Pius XII appears closer to being put on the road to sainthood after Pope Benedict XVI said that the controversial wartime pontiff had "spared no effort" to save Jews from the Nazis.

Pius XII (Pope from 1939-58) is accused by critics of having remained silent during the Nazi Holocaust because of pro-German sympathies acquired during his time as papal nuncio to Berlin and then as Vatican Secretary of State, before he was elected Pope.

However Pope Benedict told Pave the Way, a US-based interfaith group that promotes Catholic-Jewish understanding, that "prejudice" against Pius XII must be overcome. Praising Pius's "courageous and paternal dedication" toward Jews, the Pope said: "Wherever possible, he spared no effort in intervening in their favour either directly or through instructions given to other individuals or to institutions of the Catholic Church".

Benedict said that Pius's interventions were "made secretly and silently, precisely because, given the concrete situation of that difficult historical moment, only in this way was it possible to avoid the worst and save the greatest number of Jews."

The process of Pius XII's beatification, the penultimate step before canonisation, has been held up by the controversy. However last year the Vatican recognised his ''heroic virtues'', a key requirement for beatification.

Benedict said: "So much has been written and said of him during these last five decades and not all of the genuine facets of his diverse pastoral activity have been examined in a just light ... One can also come to appreciate the human wisdom and pastoral intensity which guided him in his long years of ministry, especially in providing organised assistance to the Jewish people".

The German-born Pope noted that Pius's efforts on behalf of the Jews in Italy had been acknowledged by Jewish leaders and communities during and after the Second World War, citing a meeting Pius had in the Vatican in November 1945 with 80 death-camp survivors who ''thanked him personally for his generosity''.

He said that he hoped commemorations next month marking the fiftieth anniversary of Pius's death would provide an opportunity for further study "in order to come to know the historical truth, overcoming all remaining prejudice".

Supporters of Pope Pius XII claim that while he helped Jews discreetly he refrained from denouncing Hitler and the Holocaust publicly in case this made the plight of Jews and other victims of Nazism even worse.

In a dissenting note Civilta Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit journal — whose contents are vetted by the Vatican —- said that the position taken by the Holy See towards the race laws introduced by Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator, in 1938 had been so weak as to be "embarrassing".

Writing in the latest issue Father Giovanni Sale said that the Vatican, then under Pope Pius XI, with Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli — the future Pius XII — as his Secretary of State, had criticised the race laws in diplomatic notes to the Mussolini regime, but only on religious rather than "biological-racial" grounds.

He said that the Vatican had been more concerned to draw the Fascist government's attention to the need to save Jews who had converted to Catholicism from persecution than to "defend Jews as a whole". Father Sale said that there was historical evidence that Pius XI had wanted to take a stronger line than Cardinal Pacelli, who became Pope a year later.