Hitler's Pope : The Secret History of Pius XII

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This book is captivating. It is well researched and well written. It gives great insight into the life of Pius XII and the Catholic church. A "must read" for students of history and the Catholic church.

Rating:
Summary: Devastating account of the evils of pro-Nazism
Review: This remarkable and deeply researched book studies the career of Eugenio Pacelli who, as Pius XII, was Pope from 1939 to 1958. Cornwell shows how Pius always took a dogmatic approach to matters spiritual, an autocratic approach to matters ecclesiastical and a reactionary approach to matters temporal. In 1924, Pius XI (1922-39) forbade the Catholic Popular Party to work with the Socialist Party against Mussolini, saying it would be cooperating with evil. Later Pius dissolved the Catholic Popular Party and encouraged priests to support the Fascists. In 1930 he pressed Germany's Catholic Centre Party to shun the Social Democratic Party and to court Hitler. Pacelli was Cardinal Secretary of State in the Vatican from 1930 to 1934, second only to the Pope. He signed a concordat with Hitler in 1933, protecting the Catholic Church's power in exchange for its 'non-intervention' in politics. Hitler said, "The concordat gave Germany an opportunity and created a sense of trust that was particularly significant in the developing struggle against international Jewry." It "imposed a moral duty on Catholics to obey the Nazi rulers." Cornwell writes, "the perception of Papal endorsement of Nazism, in Germany and abroad, helped seal the fate of Europe." (Compare the Church's "antagonistic confrontation with Communism both in Italy and beyond the Iron Curtain.") The concordat led the Catholic Centre Party, the last remaining democratic party in Germany, to back the 1933 Enabling Act giving Hitler dictatorial powers, and to disband itself voluntarily in 1938. During the war, the Pope muttered only the most vague and ambiguous remarks about the Nazis' atrocities, the killing of millions of Soviet prisoners of war, the killing of six million Jews. He also kept discreetly silent about the Croat atrocities under Ante Pavelic. On 3 October 1998, Pope John Paul II beatified Archbishop Stepinac who had called on the faithful to collaborate with Pavelic. This Pope also seeks to make a saint of Pius XII. He follows Pius' traditions of dogmatism, autocracy and reaction. He imposes reactionary bishops wherever he can: three quarters of the Catholic bishops in Britain and the USA are his appointees.