Pius XII Walked Path of True Hope, Says Pope
Notes That Word of God Was His Light
VATICAN CITY, OCT. 9, 2008 (Zenit.org).- During the difficult and dark years of the Second World War, Pius XII continued to follow a path that lead to Christ, "the true hope of man," says Benedict XVI.
The Pope said this today during the homily he gave at a Mass said in St. Peter's to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Pius XII.
The German Pontiff reflected on the source of Pius XII's "courage and patience in his pontifical ministry during the troubled years of World War II and the following ones, no less complex, of reconstruction and difficult international relationship of history called 'the Cold War.'"
Benedict XVI said the Italian Pontiff's attitude was always to "abandon oneself in the hands of the merciful God."
He noted that Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli was the apostolic nuncio to Germany until 1929, where he "realized from the beginning the danger of the monstrous Nazi-Socialist ideology with its pernicious anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic root."
He was then created a cardinal and worked as Pius XI's secretary of state for nine years during "a time marked by totalitarianism: Fascist, Nazi and Soviet Communism."
The German Pontiff reflected that during the hardest moments of Pius XII's pontificate, he made the effort "to belong to Christ, the only certainty that never sets."
The word of God, then, became "the light of his path," said the Pope: "A path in which Pope Pacelli had to comfort the homeless and persecuted persons, dry the tears of suffering and the crying of so many victims of the war.
"Only Christ is the true hope of man; only entrusting the human heart to him can it open up to love that overcomes hate."
Cardinal Pacelli was elected to the Pontificate in 1939, "a ministry that began when the menacing clouds of a new world conflict grew over Europe and the rest of the world, which he tried to avoid in all ways," Benedict XVI noted. "He called out in his message on the radio on Aug. 24, 1939: The danger is imminent, but there is still time. Nothing is lost with peace. Everything can be lost with war."
Nazi occupation
"The war highlighted the love he felt for his 'beloved Rome,'" said the present Pope, "a love demonstrated by the intense charitable work he undertook in defense of the persecuted, without any distinction of religion, ethnicity, nationality or political leanings."
Benedict XVI noted that when Rome was occupied by the German Nazis, Pius XII refused to leave: "I will not leave Rome and my place, even at the cost of my life."
"His relatives and other witnesses refer furthermore to privations regarding food, heating, clothes and comfort," continued the German Pope, "to which he subjected himself voluntarily in order to share in the extremely trying conditions suffered by the people due to the bombardments and consequences of war."
The Holy Father also remembered Pius XII's 1942 Christmas radio message of December 1942: "In a voice breaking with emotion he deplored the situation of 'the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline,' a clear reference to the deportation and extermination of the Jews."
"Pius XII often acted secretly and silently," added the Pontiff, "because, in the light of the concrete realities of that complex historical moment, he saw that this was the only way to avoid the worst and save the largest possible number of Jews."
Benedict XVI noted the "expressions of gratitude from the highest authorities of the Jewish world" that Pius XII received.
The current Pontiff highlighted the words of Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir, who wrote upon Pius XII's death: "During the 10 years of Nazi terror, when our people went through the horrors of martyrdom, the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and commiserate with their victims."
She added, "We mourn a great servant of peace."
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Yad Vashem - or I should say today's Yad Vashem - is being used to dishonorably shade the truth about Pius.
The foremost Jewish Scholar of the Holocaust at its height in Hungary, Jeno Levai, insisted some years ago that it was a "particularly regrettable irony that the one person in all of occupied Europe who did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime and alleviate its consequences is today made the scapegoat for the failures of others."
The Israeli diplomat and scholar Pinchas Lapide concluded his careful review of Pius XII’s wartime activities with the following words: "The Catholic Church under the pontificate of Pius XII was instrumental in saving lives of as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands."
He went on to add that "this figure far exceeds those saved by all other Churches and rescue organizations combined." After recounting statements of appreciation from a variety of preeminent Jewish spokespersons, he noted. "No Pope in history has been thanked more heartily by Jews . . . .Several suggested in open letters that a Pope Pius XII forest of 860,000 trees be planted on the hills of Judea in order to fittingly honor the memory of the late Pontiff "("Three Popes and the Jews" pp. 214–215).
Levai in his own book did not hesitate to argue that the attacks on the Pope’s wartime record were "demonstrably malicious and fabricated . . . . The archives of the Vatican of diocesan authorities of Ribbentrop’s foreign ministry, contain a whole series of protests—direct and indirect, diplomatic and public, secret and open. The nuncios and bishops of the Catholic Church intervened again and again on the instructions of the Pope," he wrote.
From Hungarian Jews and the Papacy: The former chief rabbi of Rome during the German occupation, Emilio Zolli, concluded his firsthand account of wartime events thus: "Volumes could be written on the multiform works of Pius XII, and the countless priests, religious and laity who stood with him throughout the world during the war.
"No hero," he said, "in all of history was more militant, more fought against, none more heroic, than Pius XII in pursuing the works of true charity . . . and thus on behalf of all the suffering children of God." Zolli was so moved by Pius XII’s work that he became a Catholic after the war and took the Pope’s name (Before the Dawn).
Lapide acknowledged in his book that the Church "in an endless flood of sermons, allocutions, pastoral letters and encyclicals was a clear and unrelenting foe to all forms of racism at the time, and everyone knew it—Jews, Poles, Russians and most ominously the Nazi secret police." Their files mention recalcitrant Catholic clergy in this regard more than any other group. No other institution produced more heroes during the Holocaust than the Church: Italian, Slovak, French, Hungarian priests, nuns, and laypersons who risked and often gave their lives for the sake of persecuted Jews.
The New York Times (!) in its Christmas editorials of 1941 and 1942 praised Pius XII for his moral leadership as a "lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent" and for, among other things, assailing "the violent occupation of territory, and the exile and persecution of human beings, for no other reason than race."
Golda Meir, Israel’s representative to the United Nations, was the first of the delegates to react to the news of Pope Pius XII’s death. She sent an eloquent message: "We share in the grief of humanity at the passing away of His Holiness, Pope Pius XII. In a generation afflicted by wars and discords he upheld the highest ideals of peace and compassion. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace."
Leonard Bernstein, on learning of Pope Pius XII’s death while conducting his orchestra in New York’s Carnegie Hall, tapped his baton for a moment of silence to pay tribute to the Pope who had saved the lives of so many people without distinction of race, nationality, or religion.
The great Jewish physicist, Albert Einstein, who himself barely escaped annihilation at Nazi hands, made the point well in 1944 when he said, "Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, but the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, but they, like the universities were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to individual writers . . . . they too were mute. Only the Church," Einstein concluded, "stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. . . . I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel great affection and admiration . . . . and am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly."
So what is to become of Yad Vashem? Will the archive of the Holocaust be subverted to support these lies about Pius, just to further the leftist agenda of unworthy academics?