Blessed Eugenio?

Abstract

The most common question I am asked about Pius XII is: “Well, is he as bad as Cornwell makes him out, or do you think he should be canonized?” The question reflects the popular noncritical appreciation of Pacelli and the war years. For many, the interest in Pius XII has been shaped by several decades of sensationalism that have generated more heat than light. Black-and-white answers are momentarily pleasing, but give no long-term or honest satisfaction. If I have learned anything from this study, it has been the enormous complexity of the subject and the seemingly endless interplays between the Catholic Church, the papacy and its agencies, secular governments and their agencies, and the all too human tragedy of victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and beneficiaries of the Holocaust. There are no simple questions, no simple answers.

I am afraid that history may have cause to reprove the Holy See for a policy accommodated to its own advantage and little else. And this is very sad, above all when one has lived under Pius XI.

Eugene Cardinal Tisserant to Emmanuel Cardinal Suhard (June 11, 1940)¹

He was a complicated man with a complicated task—especially as he saw it. To help humanity without discrimination; to advance the cause of peace without assisting the forces of evil; to protect Christianity, above all Catholic Christianity, when Hitler’s Germany was at the same time the persecutor of the Church and the enemy of the Church’s enemies… How could one steer a clear, just course through such a vortex of moral ambiguities?

Saul Friedländer, “Pope Pius XII and the Third Reich”²