xviii Preface
as already intimated, much more disturbing than his wartime activities was Pius
xii’s record before becoming pope, with historians arguing that as papal nuncio in
Germany and then cardinal secretary of state during the pontificate of his prede-
cessor, he should have taken a far stronger line in denouncing both Fascism in italy
and the growing strength of the nazis. as papal nuncio to Germany from 1920 to
1929, he underestimated the burgeoning power of the nazi party, believing soviet
communism a much greater threat to the future of christianity than Fascism.
indeed as cardinal secretary of state he was instrumental in persuading Pius xi to
make enormous investments in Germany. Pacelli’s dread of italian secularism and
of the perceived even greater threat of soviet communism made him underesti-
mate the nazis and over-timid in dealing with them: many of his contemporaries
behaved similarly elsewhere. by contrast churchill commented that to destroy
Hitler he would ally with the devil himself (i.e. stalin).
so the controversy over Pius xii’s pontificate rumbles on. although books
claiming to show his deliberate and active connivance with the nazi government
in eradicating Jews have been shown to be historically unsound, recent debates
have focused rather on the papacy’s overall stance towards Jews in the twentieth
century and on the complex relationships which, as we have seen, existed between
popes, Hitler’s Germany, and Mussolini’s italy, as also between Vatican city and
the modern italian state. one of the major challenges for historians is to under-
stand the views and actions of popes themselves, both before they occupy the
throne of st Peter and afterwards, and the views of the different ‘left’ and ‘right’
wing interest groups in Roman ecclesiastical circles who exert huge influence in
the curia, itself, like any political organization, often a hotbed of political division
and manoeuvring. Recent popes and their advisers, both clerical and lay, of the
right and of the left, have often thought they could outsmart both Fascist and
communist dictators—as well as other politicians—to increase the influence of
the catholic church, before realizing that they have allied themselves with forces
well able to manipulate them for their own ends and which they are unable to
control.
nevertheless, since the 1940s popes have made strenuous efforts to improve
Jewish–christian relations. it was John xxiii (1958–1963) who authorized the
second Vatican council (1962–1965) which began to formalize the long, official
process of re-thinking the traditional role christians ascribed to Jews as christ-
killers. in 1965, the Catholic Herald, a british newspaper, quoted John xxiii:
we are conscious today that many, many centuries of blindness have cloaked our eyes
so that we can no longer see the beauty of Thy chosen people nor recognise in their
faces the features of our privileged brethren. we realize that the mark of cain stands
upon our foreheads. across the centuries our brother abel has lain in blood which we
drew, or shed tears we caused by forgetting Thy love. Forgive us for the curse we falsely
attached to their name as Jews. Forgive us for crucifying Thee a second time in their
flesh. For we know not what we did.in particular, with the help and guidance of the German Jesuit cardinal bea, John
commissioned ‘nostra aetate’, an encyclical which denied any general Jewish