Vatican dismisses writer's attack on Pope Pius XII

A BOOK accusing the wartime Pope of anti-Semitism and silence in the face of the Holocaust has been denounced by the Vatican as "shameful lies".
In Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, published this week, British author John Cornwell claims he used previously unpublished Vatican and Jesuit archive material to support his accusations.
Cornwell, a Catholic exseminarian, said he traced the "anti-Semitism" of Pius XII back to 1932 when the future Pope was appointed Papal Nuncio in Munich.
The following year, says Cornwell, in an attempt to halt the spread of Communism — for which he also says Pius blamed the Jews in the belief they were behind a Bolshevik "plot to destroy Christianity" — he alleges that the VaticanGerman Concordat, sanctioned by Pius, opened the way to Hitler's rise.
Cornwell claims that in exchange for the right to impose Canon Law on millions of German Catholics in the country Pius, whose cause for sainthood is under way, was supposed to have ordered their retreat from the political life of the country, surrendering power to Hitler. From that point on, argues Cornwell, Mgr Eugenio Pacelli did "everything he could" to suppress German Catholic anti-Nazi sentiment. He even accuses him of contributing to the cause of the First World War, and hints at unnatural relationships between Pacelli and a nun and two priests.
"The documents show him to be a deeply neurotic, narcissistic and arrogant man in his private life, the very antithesis of the saintly model he was supposed to be," said Cornwell, writing in The Sunday Times.
The Vatican last week attacked his book as calumny, while St Paul's religious publishing house in Rome — which has close links to the Holy See — announced it would bring out a book, Pius XII and the Second World War According to Secret Vatican Archives, to defend the record of Pius, ahead of the publication of Hitler's Pope.
Fr George Cottier, Pope John Paul's official theologian, meanwhile attacked Cornwell's book as being "lies, shameful lies", saying it was the latest episode in a long and continuing attack against Pius X11, which he called "dishonest scandalmongering".
Fr Cottier said that a procedure to beatify Pius had begun in 1965 and was "reaching the end of the road" and that it would "render honour to a courageous Pope".
Cornwell has so far given the impression of being surprised by the criticism. In The Sunday Times , he wrote: "I fmd myself embroiled in the fraught politics of a Church in crisis.
"At stake is the kind of Catholic Church that will emerge beyond John Paul ll's death and prevail in the new millennium.
"The heated passions involved have the potential, beginning in the United States (where liberals and traditionalists are at each other's throats), for all-out schism."
But it is with the publication this week of the book by St Paul's that the Holy See appears to be willing to wage war with Cornwell.
Written with the Pope's blessing by Fr Pierre Blet, a Jesuit considered the greatest living expert on the subject, it draws on the material of 12 volumes of archive evidence which was ordered by Pope Paul VI to be published in 1964 to clear Pius's name, which had been posthumously smeared by the play, The Vicar, written by Rolf Hochhuth, a former Hitler Youth member and son of a German army officer.
In 1963, the play, for the first time accused Pius of reticence on Nazi atrocities.
Until then, there had been years of praise from Jewish communities for his intervention in saving many hundreds of thousands of lives.
The chief rabbi of Rome, Dr Israel Zolli, was so impressed by the Pope's conduct that he converted to Catholicism as a result and even took the name Eugenio, the Pius's baptised name, as his confirmation name.
Fr Blet said: "Pope Pacelli was a friend of the Germans, but he was not pro-Nazi, and he was not an anti-Semite.
"Had he been so, he would not have endeavoured to help the Jews of Rome collect 50 kilos of gold demanded of them. Had he been pro-Nazi, he would not have passed to the British the information on the German resistance plan to kill Hitler."
In the meantime, Mgr Vitaliano Mattioli of the Pontifical Urbaniana University, has claimed on the basis of Italian and German state archives that Hitler actually plotted to deport Pius to Liechtenstein, where he was to have been kept prisoner in a castle.