CV NEWS FEED // On October 9, the 66th anniversary of Pope Pius XII’s death, Vatican News highlighted his legacy and how he saved Jews during the Holocaust.
Pope Pius XII — born Eugenio Pacelli in 1876 — was elected in 1939, six months before World War II began, the article said. The Pope’s previous service in the Vatican included being a clerk in the Secretariat of State and the Nuncio to Germany, and Pope Pius XI made him a cardinal in 1929.
The Pope’s first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, urged people to pray for the war to end.
“This was just the beginning of his mission of peace during the world war,” the article said.
Michael Hesemann, the German historian and Vatican journalist who wrote “The Pope and the Holocaust: Pius XII and the Vatican Secret Archives,” said in an interview Vatican News published on October 9, 2023, that the Pope was involved in the German military opposition group that planned to kill Hitler and stop the war.
“Pius XII not only supported this group but also acted as an intermediator with the Western Allies,” Hesemann said in the 2023 article. “He literally risked his state and head for the higher good, to get rid of Hitler and Nazism. So indeed, he was a very brave man and, behind the scenes, did everything to stop the killings.”
The Pope also spoke about the Jewish people in three public speeches and, in 1939, sought 200,000 visas for German Jews to escape the Nazis, Hesemann said. He was able to secure fewer than 10,000.
In June 1943, Pope Pius XII explained that he worked secretly to protect the Jews because speaking out publicly could increase the violence and persecution, Hesemann noted.
“Indeed, in 235 monasteries and convents, 4,205 Jews were hidden, plus 160 in Vatican City. Of 3200, we know the names, thanks to the newly discovered list. Eventually, about 6,400 of the Roman Jews, or 80% survived the Holocaust, more than anywhere else where (an) SS-razzia happened,” Hesemann concluded.
The razzias were the round-ups that were carried out.
Vatican News reported in the 2024 article that on November 29, 1945, 80 delegates from German concentration camps personally thanked the Pope in a special audience.