Book Review

Not as simple as it seemed

Pope and Devil: the Vatican's archives and the Third Reich

The cover of this book is very simi­lar to that of John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope, and is similarly misleading. Portrayed on the dust jacket is Eugenio Pacelli, but the Pope in this instance is not Papa Pacelli, Pius XII, but his predecessor, and Pacelli is discussed not in his pontifical role but as nuncio in Germany and as Secretary of State. Hubert Wolf, professor of church history at the University of Münster, after trawling through the recently opened section of the Vatican Archives, has produced one of the first accounts of the pontificate of Pius XI to be thoroughly bolstered by Vatican documents. This inexpertly translated text is less a volume with a single thesis, rather a collection of five separate essays on Pius XI's pontificate, the first of which, on Pacelli's years as nuncio, strays back into the more familiar territory of the reign of Benedict XV.

It is commonly said that Eugenio Pacelli, from his time in Germany, became enamoured of all things German. He certainly appears to have believed, as Secretary of State, that he understood the country as no one else around him did and so did not bother to consult on matters Germanic. Wolf insists on the contrary that, on the evidence of his regular reports to Rome, he did not understand either German culture or, more alarming for a diplomat, the realities of German politics. But then, he comments, nuncios rarely came to appreciate the culture in which they found themselves, so dominated were they by their fear of socialism and their commitment to Romanità.

Apart from a pet campaign against women's sports - the necessary female kit he thought too revealing - he was particularly obsessed with asserting, over German law and custom, the right of Rome to appoint to bishoprics. With the rise of Hitler he reflected in his reports on the rise of anti-Semitism. It horrified him - but also in his reports he was often guilty of casually using anti-Semitic language.

The second chapter deals with anti-Semitism in the Vatican. Racial anti-Semitism was undoubtedly condemned, and when the Amici Israel wanted "perfidious Jews" removed from the Good Friday liturgy, the Congregation of Rites had no problem. Ildefonso Schuster, abbot of St Paul's Outside the Walls and an expert on the history of the liturgy, was consulted. He replied favourably, and the Congregation was minded to change the text but had first to refer the matter to the Holy Office in the person of London-born Rafael Merry del Val, former Secretary of State and scourge of modernists. Cardinal del Val was appalled at the idea, forbade the change, and had Schuster, whom the translator appears to believe was a German - despite the surname, he was Italian - hauled before the tribunal of the Holy Office and forced to make an abject retraction. Merry del Val then had the Pope dissolve the Amici though the cardinal himself was one of its members. Pius XI was naturally eager to avoid seeming anti-Semitic in doing so, and the text of the decree therefore distinguished between racial anti-Semitism (condemned) and theo­logical anti-Semitism (approved).

Chapter 3 discusses the 1933 Reichskonkordat, commonly seen as the most significant evidence of Pacelli's philo-Germanism. The argument runs that, in order to achieve the concordat, Pacelli, as Secretary of State, persuaded the German bishops to withdraw their ban on Catholics being members of the Nazi Party, and then ordered the Catholic Centre Party, and seemingly the only possible parliamentary opposition to Hitler, to go into liquidation. However, on the basis of newly available documents, including Pacelli's own notes, Wolf argues convincingly against this interpretation. The dates simply do not fit. It is true that Pacelli wanted the concordat, but only in the hope that it would help avoid a new Kulturkampf. In any case, the matter did not come up until the bishops had unilaterally withdrawn their ban, and the Centre Party, without any prompting from Rome, had dissolved itself because its supporters were abandoning it in droves. Wolf points out that neither the bishops' action nor that of the Centre Party was welcomed by Pacelli. It weakened the Church's bargaining position over the concordat.

The Vatican and the persecution of the Jews is the subject of the fourth chapter. From 1933 onwards the Curia received letters from many Germans, including Edith Stein, seeking the Pope's intervention. Pacelli's replacement as nuncio in Germany was against action by the Holy See, arguing that such persecution was a part of German law, and therefore intervention by Rome would be tantamount to interfering in the country's domestic affairs. Pacelli does not seem to have passed these letters on to Pius XI, even one from a rabbi whom the Pope had befriended when Librarian in Milan. The Pope was nevertheless moved to intervene and was planning a sermon on anti-Semitism when he died, and also an encyclical. In the writing of the latter he chose to bypass the Curia, handing the task over to Jesuits. The new Pope shelved it.

How complicated the politics of anti-Semitism appeared to the Vatican is the theme of the final chapter. Wolf enquires why Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century was put on the Index, but Mein Kampf was never condemned. German racism was in fact a major preoccupation of the Curia, and in 1936 Domenico Tardini recommended that an encyclical be issued on the topic addressed, not to the bishops, but to the faithful. A new "syllabus of errors" was therefore produced, condemning a whole series of propositions drawn from the writings of Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin as well as those of Hitler. It was then recommended that a condemnation of Communism should come first - which it did: Divini Redemptoris. The task of writing Mit brennender Sorge, which followed, was given to the Cardinal of Munich, Michael von Faulhaber, but it contains a section penned directly by Pacelli forthrightly condemning racism. Finally the Congregation with oversight of Catholic education produced its own version of the "syllabus", all propositions being drawn from Hitler. The Führer, however, was never mentioned by name.

Wolf has written a very important book. It does not explain the "silence" of Pius XII, though it certainly exonerates him of the charge that he was in any way sympathetic to the regime in Germany. It also reveals a man with a misplaced confidence in his own competence.

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