Pope Pius XII (1939-58)
Introduction
Piux XII was born Eugenio Pacelli in 1876 and became pope in 1939 at the age of 63. He was the first pope who came to be known through radio and television. He was tall and thin, with dark eyes and serious face. Pacelli trained to be a Vatican lawyer and spent several years before World War I re-casting canon law. The revised code came into effect in 1917 and provided a legal basis for concentrating power in the Vatican hierarchy.
Pius XII shaped the most aristocratic and autocratic papacy in the modern era. He daily greeted large numbers of pilgrims in public and world leaders like Charles de Gaulle (France), Winston Churchill (Britain) and General Eisenhower (USA) came to pay homage. When he walked in the Vatican gardens, workers were obliged to hide behind the bushes. Vatican staff had to take phone calls from him on their knees. Senior aides had to do what they were told; they were not allowed to ask questions or proffer suggestions. He ate alone.
Betrayed: German Catholics & Jews
In 1917, aged 41, Pacelli was made bishop and soon departed for Germany where he was to remain for 13 years. Germany had one of the largest Catholic populations. Its church was educated and sophisticated with hundreds of Catholic associations and dozens of Catholic universities and publishing houses. Pacelli sought to bring all the previous agreements (concordats) between the German church and the Vatican in line with the new Code of Canon Law and his aspirations for greater papal supremacy. In 1929, Pacelli left Germany to become a Cardinal and Secretary of State, the equivalent of Foreign Minister.
Pacelli was keen on a Reich concordat, a treaty between the Vatican and Germany as a whole, a move resisted both by Protestant leaders and Catholic politicians. In 1933, Hitler was elected chancellor. The Catholic church had rejected the Nazis and denied them the sacraments. However, over the heads of the German church, Pacelli secretly signed a concordat with Hitler that authorised the papacy to impose the new church code on the German Church. In exchange, Catholics had to withdraw from political activity. Hitler also insisted that the Catholic Centre Party be disbanded. As a result, Catholics joined the Nazi party in the millions believing it to have the support of the Pope. Hitler boasted in 1933 that “the concordat was a significant (step) in the struggle against international Jewry.”
In 1937, Pacelli persuaded Pope Pius XI to issue an encyclical denouncing the persecution of Catholics in Germany but anti-semitism was not condemned. Pius proved to be just the right pope for the Nazis’ ‘final solution’ to the Jewish problem. In his Christmas message of 1942, he trivialised the full extent of the Holocaust and never used the words Jew or Nazi. Later, he lied that he had vigorously denounced anti-semitism during the war.
Pius rightly opposed the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. In 1943, he wrote to US President Franklin D Roosevelt : “It is true that Palestine was once inhabited by the Jewish people. But there is nothing in history that proves that a people must return to the land it left 19 centuries before... If a Jewish homeland is required, it should not be too hard to find a more suitable location than Palestine. The growth of a Jewish population in Palestine would generate new and serious international problems.” Words that turned out to be prophetically true.
Fixated by the communist menace
After the war, Pius focused his whole attention on the ‘menace’ posed by Soviet communism, a stand that endeared him to the US, the dominant capitalist power. US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, came to visit him and in 1943, an alliance was formed between the Vatican and White House to promote ‘Christian Democracy’ in Europe. Large sums of money from the Vatican bank and the US as well as intervention by the CIA secured victory over the pro-Moscow Italian Communist Party in the critical 1948 general election. Pius ordered that at the end of Mass at every church in the world, prayers be said for the ‘conversion’ of Russia.
1950 - a year for power play
Pius declared 1950 as a holy year - which in fact became a celebration of his papacy. Hordes of pilgrims descended on Rome and many were forced to camp out on the outskirts of the city. St Peter’s Square became the venue for regular rallies and exhibitions of papal pomp. Shops stocked holy objects, among them a plaster statue of the pope that mechanically raised its arm in blessing. Pius declared a plenary indulgence (a papal amnesty from punishment due to sin) for those who visited certain churches in Rome.
On 1st November 1950, he proclaimed a new Dogma - which Catholics were obliged to accept on faith. It was the Dogma of the Assumption: it declared that the Virgin Mary’s body did not decay after death; she was assumed body and soul into heaven.The Protestants viewed this new Dogma as a crude display of the pope’s absolute powers. Others felt that the pope was deifying Mary. It was also in 1950 that Pius issued an encyclical Humani Generis (Of the Human Race) aimed at quashing any dissent from papal teaching.
On Women & Sexuality
Pius was pre-occupied with sexual matters. He advised Catholic youth to keep themselves chaste and in 1950 he canonised a girl, Maria Goretti, who preferred to die rather than be sexually violated. He attacked beauty contests as indecent displays and was constantly lecturing against the sexual content in films as well as jazz music! He forbade priests from accompanying women pilgrims to Rome.
He allowed women to sing in church choirs but insisted they must do so outside the altar precincts. When the first birth control appeared he forbade its use but cautiously permitted the ‘safe-period’ or ‘rhythm’ method for the first time.
His entire day was run by his German nun housekeeper, Sister Pasqualina Lehnert. She had been appointed housekeeper as a pretty young nun during his posting in Germany. She made sure that his handkerchiefs were constantly bathed in antiseptic lotion to counteract germs from human contact. People, including the pope’s nephew, had advised the pope to dismiss her. But she seems to have blackmailed Pius into keeping her by threatening to divulge secrets that would discredit the papacy. She remained his housekeeper for 40 years.
Delusions & health concerns
In the absence of any moderating influence from a consultative or advisory body, Pius began to act as a pompous know-all. He did not hesitate to lecture specialists on areas like dentistry, gynaecology, aeronautics, agriculture, literature, psychology and psychiatry. When a visitor remarked on the piles of technical manuals on his desk, he explained that he was preparing a lecture on gas central heating!
With the passing years, he became increasingly withdrawn and was afflicted by neurotic symptoms and occasional hallucinations. In 1950, he said he saw the sun spinning in a fiery display of colours but his chauffeur who was with him saw nothing. Three years later, he claimed that Jesus Christ appeared to him in his bedroom.
Pius’ personal tastes and prejudices came in the way of his decisions. He refused to sanction a cause for beatification because the candidate was a smoker. He rejected another because the ‘servant of Goa’had uttered an obscene word. With his imperious attitudes, he had no interest in Third World causes and ignored pleas to consider the beatification of Fr Joseph Vaz of Goa.
Pius was turning into a health freak and suffered a series of psychosomatic complaints. He had a choice of six doctors and his favourite was a quack called Ricardo Galeazzi-Lisi. Worried that his gums were softening, Pius accepted Ricardo’s mouth wash made up of chromic acid used in the tanning of hides. Eventually this resulted in throat problems including chronic hiccups.
In 1953, Ricardo introduced the pope to a Swiss doctor who claimed that his ‘cellular therapy’ could reverse ageing. The treatment required the injection of live cells from the brain tissue of sheep and monkeys. The pope was persuaded to try two sets of treatments in the mid-1950s.
In the autumn of 1958, the pope was again racked by a bout of hiccups and on 9 October he died of a ‘circulatory phenomenon’ at his summer palace, Castelgandolfo. Abundant tributes came from world leaders. His funeral was described by the Vatican newspaper as “the greatest in the long history of Rome, surpassing even that of Julius Caesar.”
Biographer John Cornwell assessed Pius XII as “a deeply neurotic, narcissistic and arrogant man, the very anti-thesis of the saintly model he was supposed to be.”
References
1. Hitler’s Pope - the Secret History of Pius XII, John Cornwell - Sunday Times Review, 12 Sept 1999