A Film on the Life of Pius XII Coming to Cinema Catechism?

Maybe! At least two films are being produced about Pope Pius XII, but it appears that they will not be released for at least a year. Here are a couple of reports on the films.

The last years of Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli 1951-58)

This intriguing Italian documentary on the life of His Holiness Pope Pius XII concludes (see parts 1-3 and parts 4-8)--

Newsreel Archive - World Mourns Pope Pius XII 1958
(includes some footage of the Pope giving a greeting in English) --

News report on Hitler's desire to assassinate Pope Pius XII --

Benedict XVI names Pope Piux XII venerable --

Pope Pius XII - From the Conclave to the End of World War II

This quite interesting Italian documentary on the life of Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) continues below (see parts 1-3 here) --

Did Pius XII Remain Silent?

Fr. William P. Saunders
Straight Answers
April 14, 1994

To begin to understand Pius XII’s actions during the World War II, we must remember the world in which he lived. Hitler had assumed control of Germany in 1933. In July of that same year, he began not only persecuting Jews but also Christians. He infiltrated the German Evangelical Federation (the Lutheran Church), removing leaders who were opposed to his agenda. Many of these ministers died in concentration camps or prisons, like the famous Deitrich Bonhoffer.

The persecution was even more intense for the Catholic Church. Gestapo agents attended Mass and listened to every homily preached, prepared to arrest any priest attacking or criticizing the regime. Chanceries were searched for any “incriminating” documents. Communication with Rome was limited. Nazi propaganda represented the Church as unpatriotic and hoarding wealth with clerics portrayed as idle and avaricious. By 1940, all Catholic schools had been closed, and religious instruction confined to the Church itself or at home. Meanwhile, anti-Christian teaching was imparted in the public schools.

Please note that the first concentration camp was established in 1933 at Dachau, outside of Munich; this camp was not so much an “extermination camp” as one for the political prisoners, including priests. At Dachau alone, 2,700 priests were imprisoned (of which 1,000 died), and were subject to the most awful tortures, including the medical experiments of Dr. Rascher.

Such persecution was not confined to Germany. The Church in Poland also suffered severely. During the first four months of occupation following the September 1939 invasion, 700 priests were shot and 3,000 were sent to concentration camps (of which 2,600 died). By the end of the war, 3 million Polish Catholics had been killed in concentration camps. How many other Catholics — priests, religious, and laity — in other countries died for the faith during the Nazi era?

Pope Pius XI, who had condemned Nazism in his 1937 encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, died in February 1939, and Pope Pius XII followed him as the successor of St. Peter on March 12. Think of the world — and the Church — Pope Pius XII had inherited.

To make matters worse, by 1940 Hitler controlled Europe and Northern Africa, and was planning the invasion of Britain. The Vatican, officially a neutral country, was isolated. Hitler had plans to depose Pius XII, appoint his own “puppet” pope, and move the Vatican administration to Germany, plans which would have been executed if the war would have gone in the Nazi’s favor. Who then was to come to the aid of the Vatican? Pius XII, who had to insure the survival of the Church, was very much alone.

Nevertheless, Pius XII spoke out. After the invasion of Poland in September l939, he denounced the aggression of the Nazis and proposed a peace plan. In 1940, he called for the triumph over hatred, mistrust, and the spirit of “cold egoism.” The following year, he pleaded for the rights of small nations and national minorities, and condemned total warfare and religious persecution. In his Christmas message of 1942, he specifically denounced the extermination of the Jews: The New York Times praised this message, writing,

“This Christmas more than ever Pope Pius XII is a lonely voice crying out in the silence of a continent. The pulpit whence he speaks is more than ever like the Rock in which the Church was founded, a tiny island lashed and surrounded by a sea of war... When a leader hound impartially to nations on both sides condemns as heresy the new form of national state which subordinates everything to itself; when he declares that whoever wants peace must protect against ’arbitrary attacks’ the ‘juridical safety of individual’; when he assails violent occupation of territory, the exile and persecution of human beings for no reason other than race or political opinion; when he says that people must fight for a just and decent peace, a ‘total peace’— the ‘impartial’ judgment is like a verdict in our high court of justice.”

Besides these worldwide pleas for peace, the Vatican persistently issued communications to protest to Hitler which were attested to by Von Ribbentrop at the Nuremburg war trials, who said,

“I do not recollect [how many] at the moment, but I know we had a whole deskful of protests from the Vatican. There were very many we did not even read or reply to.”

Pope Pius XII also acted. According to Israeli archives, papal relief programs saved at least 860,000 Jews, more than any other agency or organization. His Holiness also allowed the Vatican diplomatic corps, which were protected by diplomatic immunity, to carry messages between the allied powers. Vatican Information Services also sent over 5 million messages for soldiers.

During the Nazi occupation of Rome (September 1943 to June 1944), Pius XII helped to raise the Gestapo’s demand of 50 kilos of gold of the Jewish community for “their safety”; unfortunately, the payment did not prevent the eventual round-up of Jews.

He also lifted cloister restrictions, allowing religious houses to offer refuge for Jews. He allowed the issuance of false baptismal certificates to Jews. These deeds do not even include the general relief efforts and distribution of food coordinated by the Vatican for the city of Rome.

We must remember that any defiance of the Nazi regime meant immediate and severe retaliation. Jean Bernard, Bishop of Luxembourg, who has detained at Dachau, later wrote,

“The detained priests trembled every time news reached us of some protest by a religious authority, but particularly by the Vatican. We all had the impression that our warders made us atone heavily for the fury these protests evoked.”

Cardinal Sapieha, Archbishop of Krakow, wrote to Pius XII in 1942,

“We must deplore that we cannot communicate Your Holiness’ letter to the faithful, for that would provide a pretext for fresh persecution. We already have many who are victims because they were suspected of being in secret communication with the Apostolic See.”

Pius XII was burdened with speaking the truth while safeguarding the survival of the Church.

When Pope Pius XII died on October 9, 1958, Golda Meir, then Israeli delegate to the United Nations, sent official condolences:

“When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace.”

Dr. Raphael Cantoni, a leader in Italy’s Jewish Assistance Committee added,

“The Church and the papacy have saved Jews as much and insofar as they could Christians. Six million of my co-religionists have been murdered by the Nazis... but there would have been many more victims had it not been for the efficacious intervention of Pius XII.”

With all of the talk of Oscar Schindler and “Schindler’s List,” someone ought to make a movie about Pius XII and his courageous efforts.

___________________

Father William Saunders is pastor of Our Lady of Hope Parish in Potomac Falls, Virginia, and Professor of Catechetics and Theology at the Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College.
Copyright © 2003 Arlington Catholic Herald

Pius XII and the Jews – Fact Sheet

860,000 lives saved—the truth about Pius XII and the Jews
National Association of Catholic Families

People often ask: why did Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, not speak out more forcefully against Hitler? Historian Fr Dermot Fenlon of the Birmingham Oratory looks at the facts and sets the record straight.

The answer is recounted by a former inmate of Dachau, Mgr Jean Bernard, later Bishop of Luxembourg:

"The detained priests trembled every time news reached us of some protest by a religious authority, but particularly by the Vatican. We all had the impression that our warders made us atone heavily for the fury these protests evoked ... whenever the way we were treated became more brutal, the Protestant pastors among the prisoners used to vent their indignation on the Catholic priests: 'Again your big naive Pope and those simpletons, your bishops, are shooting their mouths off .. why don't they get the idea once and for all, and shut up. They play the heroes and we have to pay the bill.'"

Albrecht von Kessel, an official at the German Embassy to the Holy See during the war, wrote in 1963:

"We were convinced that a fiery protest by Pius XII against the persecution of the Jews ... would certainly not have saved the life of a single Jew. Hitler, like a trapped beast, would react to any menace that he felt directed at him, with cruel violence."

The real question is, therefore, not what did the Pope say, but what did the Pope do? Actions speak louder than words. Papal policy in Nazi Europe was directed with an eye to local conditions. It was coordinated with local hierarchies. Nazi policy towards the Jews varied from country to country. Thus, although anti-Jewish measures were met in France by public protest from Archbishop Saliege of Toulouse, together with Archbishop Gerlier of Lyons and Bishop Thias of Mantauban, their protest was backed by a highly effective rescue and shelter campaign. 200,000 lives were saved. In Holland, as Fr Michael O'Carroll writes, the outcome was 'tragically different'. The Jewish historian Pinchas Lapide sums it up:

"The saddest and most thought provoking conclusion is that whilst the Catholic clergy of Holland protested more loudly, expressly and frequently against Jewish persecutions than the religious hierarchy of any other Nazi-occupied country, more Jews—some 11,000 or 79% of the total—were deported from Holland; more than anywhere else in the West."

Van Kessel's view is therefore borne out by the experience of Nazi Holland: protest merely made for more reprisals.

What of Rome itself? In 1943 the German ambassador to the Holy See, Von Weizsaecker, sent a telegram to Berlin. The telegram has been cited as damning 'evidence' against Pius XII.

"Although under pressure from all sides, the Pope has not let himself be drawn into any demonstrative censure of the deportation of Jews from Rome ... As there is probably no reason to expect other German actions against the Jews of Rome we can consider that a question so disturbing to German-Vatican relations has been liquidated."

Von Weizsaecker's telegram was in fact a warning not to proceed with the proposed deportation of the Roman Jews: 'there is probably no reason to expect other German actions against the Jews of Rome'. Von Weizsaecker's action was backed by a warning to Hitler from Pius XII: if the pursuit and arrest of Roman Jews was not halted, the Holy Father would have to make a public protest. Together the joint action of Von Weizsaecker and Pius XII ended the Nazi manhunt against the Jews of Rome. 7,000 lives were saved.

In Hungary, an estimated 80,000 baptismal certificates were issued by Church authorities to Jews. In other areas of Eastern Europe the Vatican escape network (organised via Bulgaria by the Nuncio Roncalli - later John XXIII) has impressed those writers who have studied the subject, with the effectiveness of the Church's rescue operation. David Herstig concludes his book on the subject thus:

"Those rescued by Pius are today living all over the world. There went to Israel alone from Romania 360,000 to the year 1965."

The vindication of Pius XII has been established principally by Jewish writers and from Israeli archives. It is now established that the Pope supervised a rescue network which saved 860,000 Jewish lives—more than all the international agencies put together.

After the war the Chief Rabbi of Israel thanked Pius XII for what he had done. The Chief Rabbi of Rome went one step further. He became a Catholic. He took the name Eugenio.

This article first appeared in Catholic Family #10, Autumn 1991. Electronic version of this text copyright (c) 1995 National Association of Catholic Families.

The First Years of Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII)

Jesus assured us that, if we follow Him, the world would hate us. Far from promising us a party, He told us that to be a Christian would be to know persecution, and the Church has indeed been persecuted ever since her Founder was nailed to the Cross.

The 20th century did not see any diminishing in the persecution of the Church and the faithful, and the 21st century is no different. The Church, and especially the popes, have been routinely slandered and attacked with malicious lies and twisting of facts.

In the last offering of Cinema Catechism, with the showing of The 13th Day, we explored how the "third secret" of Fatima was a vision about the persecution of the Church, that the popes would suffer much. In our next showing, The Scarlet and the Black, we will examine the question of the historical truth of the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII during World War II.

In preparation for that discussion, here is a documentary on the life of Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) --

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