Hitler's Pope : The Secret History of Pius XII - Hardcover

Cornwell, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670876208 ISBN 13: 9780670876204

Publisher: Viking, 1999

Synopsis

This biography discusses Pope Pius XIII's wartime silence over the Holocaust and exposes the patent anti-Semitism that led to his fateful concordance with Hitler - a partnership that smoothed the Nazis' path to power and saw the Vatican immensely enriched, financially and politically. In examining Eugenio Pacelli's early career and subsequent rise to papal apotheosis, the author firmly indicts a Pope whom many regard as the most powerful churchman in modern history; one never held to account for the conduct of himself or his church during one of humanity's darkest hours.

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Review

This devastating account of the ecclesiastical career of Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958), who became Pope Pius XII in 1939, is all the more powerful because British historian John Cornwell maintains throughout a measured though strongly critical tone. After World War II, murmurs of Pacelli's callous indifference to the plight of Europe's Jews began to be heard. A noted commentator on Catholic issues, Cornwell began research for this book believing that "if his full story were told, Pius XII's pontificate would be exonerated." Instead, he emerged from the Vatican archives in a state of "moral shock," concluding that Pacelli displayed anti-Semitic tendencies early on and that his drive to promote papal absolutism inexorably led him to collaboration with fascist leaders. Cornwell convincingly depicts Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli pursuing Vatican diplomatic goals that crippled Germany's large Catholic political party, which might otherwise have stymied Hitler's worst excesses. The author's condemnation has special force because he portrays the admittedly eccentric Pacelli not as a monster but as a symptom of a historic wrong turn in the Catholic Church. He meticulously builds his case for the painful conclusion that "Pacelli's failure to respond to the enormity of the Holocaust was more than a personal failure, it was a failure of the papal office itself and the prevailing culture of Catholicism." --Wendy Smith

From the Publisher

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About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0670876208
• ISBN 13: 9780670876204
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448