AFTER decades of controversy the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints will next month begin examination of the recently completed dossier on the beatification of Pius XII (1939-58), the wartime pontiff accused of “turning a blind eye” to the Holocaust and failing to speak out against Nazism.
The next step, in accordance with Vatican rules, is for Pius XII’s “heroic virtues” to be recognised by the congregation’s historical and theological commissions, with the former pontiff declared “Venerable”. The beatification process then requires the approval by the congregation of a posthumous miracle — usually the “medically inexplicable” cure of a terminal illness through prayers of intercession.
That accomplished, Pius XII will be declared Blessed — probably “within two or three years”, according to Vatican insiders — and the “wartime pontiff” will be on the road to sainthood.
Meanwhile, the controversy over Pius XII shows no sign of abating. Both Jewish and Catholic scholars have complained that access to Vatican archives on Pius XII’s wartime record is restricted. Critics still allege that before his election Pius XII was “pro-German” and anti-Semitic, both as nuncio (ambassador) to Berlin and later as Secretary of State.
The polemic was recently fuelled by allegations that after the Second World War, the Vatican — with the “direct approval” of Pius XII — secretly ordered Catholic leaders to ensure that Jewish children who had been given refuge by Catholics were not returned to their families.
Abraham Foxman, head of the US Anti-Defamation League, who as a baby in wartime Poland was himself saved by his family’s Catholic nanny, said he was disturbed by recent reports giving details of a 1946 Vatican directive ordering the Catholic Church in France to ensure that Jewish children who had been taken into Catholic homes and baptised remained Catholics. Foxman said until now he had been “mystified” that his nanny, whom he had loved and to whom he was still grateful, had tried to “kidnap” him, until forced by a postwar court to return him to his parents. He said if the Vatican letter had been sent to Catholic churches in France, it had almost certainly been sent to Catholic authorities in other countries. “The letter adds ammunition to those who believe Pius XII could and should have done more,” Mr Foxman told The Jewish Week in New York. “It raises our anxiety about the the role he played.”
However, Serge Klarsfeld, the French “Nazi-hunter”, suggests the controversy over Jewish children is “a storm in a teacup”, because in reality almost none were withheld from their families. Klarsfeld, who has studied the fate of French Jewish children during the Holocaust, says he knew of “only two boys” whose Catholic foster family tried to keep them after hiding them from the Nazis. Klarsfeld said he believed Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII, who was papal nuncio in Paris after the war, would not have followed the Vatican directive. “I think Roncalli would have thrown it in the waste- paper basket,” he said.
Klarsfeld, who himself attended a Catholic school during the war, said almost all baptised Jewish children went back to Judaism when they were reunited with relatives after the war. Some Catholic groups have even questioned the document’s authenticity, saying it was “dredged up” and interpreted in a way designed to complicate the beatification process just as Jewish objections to it appear to be being toned down.
There was certainly a conciliatory atmosphere when the Pope received 160 rabbis and cantors last month — the largest Jewish delegation to enter the Vatican — just a week before the ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The Pope, who has made reconciliation between Christianity, Islam and Judaism a hallmark of his pontificate, and is still in close touch with Jewish friends from his Polish youth, became the first pontiff to visit the Rome synagogue in 1986. He prayed at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem on an historic trip to the Holy Land five years ago, and has apologised for Christian anti-Semitism.
“I invoke the abundant blessings of the Almighty on all of you,” the Pope said, adding the greeting “shalom aleichem” in Hebrew and noting that 2005 was the 40th anniversary of Nostra aetate, which rejected the charge that Jews were collectively responsible for the Crucifixion of Christ. Gary Krupp, head of the Pave the Way Foundation, a US Jewish interfaith group, hailed the Pope for “defending Jewish people at every opportunity” both as Pope and as a priest in Nazi- occupied and postwar Poland.
Rabbi Jack Bemporad, of New Jersey, said: “Posterity will surely consider the past 40 years as the most revolutionary and significant in terms of progress in relations between Jews and Catholics.” And Pius XII? He had been “timid and afraid”, Rabbi Bemporad said, but he had “done what he thought best” to save lives. “He should have spoken out, but the sad thing is he thought he did.” Pius XII had also failed to condemn the Nazis for persecuting Catholics: “Does that make him an anti-Catholic?” Krupp agreed: “What good does it do to keep harping on the past? We must look forward.”
In other words, those who oppose the beatification are “losing the battle”, according to Father Peter Gumpel, the postulator for Pius XII’s cause. Other pro-Pius XII salvos are also being fired: the Jesuit journal Civiltà cattolica — whose contents are vetted by the Vatican — recently claimed that Pius XII had saved the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews by intervening with the authorities in Budapest, while Avvenire, the Italian Catholic daily, said Karl Wolff, the head of the SS in occupied Italy, had testified to Vatican officials that far from being friendly to Pius XII, Hitler had ordered the SS to kidnap him and incarcerate him in Germany.
Whatever else happens to John Paul II’s legacy as the succession approaches, the battle over Pius XII looks set to be one of his final victories.
