II
By combining papal “neutralism” and support for the national war effort on the part of various episcopates, the Catholic Church emerged strengthened from the First World War. The second imperialist conflict posed new problems. Historian Andrea Riccardi noted that Pope Pacelli (Pius XII) could however count on a Church “characterised by strong centralisation and compact unity”.
The leadership of the religious “international” that is Catholicism, according to Riccardi, “was located outside the national sphere”. The Lateran Pacts of 1929 made it clear that “the central organs of the Holy See, the point of reference for the entire Catholic international”, were located “in the State of the Vatican City, under the direct sovereignty of the pope”. This was in line with a very long-term strategy of the papacy. Although for centuries the pope, most of his representatives around the world, and the Vatican staff had all been Italian, “the papacy did not intend to consider itself Italian” [Il potere del papa. Da Pio XII a Giovanni Paolo II (“The power of the pope. From Pius XII to John Paul II”), Laterza, 1993].
The pope of crisis
Eugenio Pacelli was elected pope on March 2nd, 1939. Six months later, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Riccardi called him the “pope of crisis” and claimed that he was chosen for the position because he was “the Holy See's best diplomat”, already “well versed in the major issues facing the papacy” [La guerra del silenzio. Pio XII, il nazismo, gli ebrei (“The war of silence. Pius XII, Nazism, and the Jews”), Laterza, 2022]. From 1917, Pacelli was nuncio
in Germany, where he remained for twelve years, experiencing first-hand the Spartacist uprising, the crisis of the Weimar Republic, and the rise of Nazism. Although he had no pastoral experience at the helm of a diocese, he was a “connoisseur of the Vatican machine”, having worked until 1917 with Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri, before holding that position himself for nine years from 1930. He was the first secretary of State to be elected pope since 1667. Through these positions, Riccardi writes, Pacelli “had participated in the development” of the line of “active impartiality” followed by Benedict XV during the Great War. The experience of the First World War was “very much alive” not only in Pius XII, but in the entire “generation of Vatican leaders who had lived through those events in positions of responsibility”.
Much the same was true for Pius XII's successors after the Second World War. Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, already a military chaplain during the First World War, would become apostolic delegate to Turkey and Greece in the Second World War and then apostolic nuncio
to France. Giovanni Battista Montini, later Paul VI, held senior positions in the Secretariat of State from 1937 onwards and, together with Cardinal Tardini, would be remembered as one of the “pope's men”. Riccardi describes them as a group “united by ideals, devoted to the papacy, bound by long-standing friendships forged during their studies and work within the ecclesiastical institutions”. Most of them “were Italian”, and they spoke Italian both among themselves and when communicating with the nunciatures
. One can discern the traits of an “elite unit”, forged through centuries-long party struggles and the direct experience of its political leadership.
The “active impartiality” of the Vatican
Pius XII, writes Riccardi, had at his disposal “the instruments of the Roman pontificate updated with the experience of the 1914-1918 war”, but what he faced “was a whole different world”. The Second World War was not a repeat of the First. Was “the model of impartiality of 1914-1918” still relevant? Faced with “the systematic and mass killings taking place”, the antisemitism of Nazism and its allies, and religious persecution in the USSR, was “the model of just war, whereby Catholic citizens should do their duty by obeying the authorities”, still applicable?
Riccardi questions the “silence” of Pius XII, which gives his book its title. The reference is to the accusation levelled at Pacelli of not having openly denounced the crimes of “totalitarian regimes”. This is an accusation that the book ultimately seeks to refute. Not because the pope “did not know”, an argument already invoked after the war to defend the Church, but because it “does not stand up to documentary evidence”. For Riccardi, the Vatican's silence must be placed within the “complexity” of the context of the time, both in terms of the international balance of power between States and the condition of the Church. This complexity confronted the strategy of the papacy at the time of the imperialist war.
The world war, writes Riccardi, “is difficult, almost impossible terrain for an international entity such as the Catholic Church, rooted in all peoples, and for a supranational entity such as the Holy See. The Catholic faithful found themselves on opposing sides and were involved in the mobilisation of public opinion in favour of war”. But this, after all, was what had already happened in the First World War. Pacelli presented himself as “the common father”, who “does not identify with any government” and does not take sides with any of his children, without however being “indifferent to their suffering”. The Vatican's impartiality, Riccardi points out, “is different from the neutrality of a State such as Switzerland, because the Church is present in the countries at war”. It is embodied in the “superiority of the Holy See over the contending parties and also over the clergy and Catholics involved in the conflict”, who are nevertheless “free to follow the attitude of their own country”. For all Catholics, in fact, “duties towards their State at war” remained. Pacelli, “a close collaborator of Benedict XV”, had witnessed first-hand the criticism levelled at the Holy See at the time for its “rigorous and inflexible maintenance of impartiality”. But, looking ahead, he saw the advantages. After the First World War, the prestige of Benedict XV “grew”.
Autonomy of the national episcopates
The increased pressure of the Second World War, however, divided the Church to the point of “questioning or jeopardising Catholic unity”. Pius XII, resuming the approach taken by Benedict XV, refrained from taking any “public initiative for peace”, as the latter had done on August 1st, 1917, with his “peace note” on the “useless slaughter”. Furthermore, as far as possible, he chose once again to “entrust to the national episcopates” the responsibility of deciding how to behave towards their national government or their occupying power, “since they were better able to assess the consequences of the Church's action”. It was a question of “emphasising the articulations” so that rigidity would not be “paid for with a fracture”. After all, who could know whether the various national Catholicisms would follow the Vatican “in the event of condemnation of their country's policy”? Or whether German Catholicism would withstand “a clash between the Holy See and Nazism”? Thus, in France, “the bishops rallied – sometimes with enthusiasm – to Pétain's regime”, a political situation that did not convince Pius XII. In the Netherlands, the bishops “were very severe against the deportation of Jews” but, in doing so, suffered Nazi reprisals. In Hungary, the episcopate, “whose primate was in the Upper House, did not oppose the antisemitic laws”. In Croatia, Monsignor Stepinac, Archbishop of Zagreb, later beatified by Pope Karol Wojtyła in 1998, supported Ante Pavelić's Ustaše regime.
In Riccardi's version, Pius XII's “silence” on the dramatic news arriving in the Vatican from all over the continent with increasing frequency was aimed at avoiding greater evils, e.g. Nazi reprisals or precluding the Church from any margin of action, however small. At the same time, he does not hide how “an attitude of prejudice towards Jews and traditional antisemitism” was widespread “even among the Curia personnel”. A mentality “marked by a thousand years of separation and contempt for Judaism had led to indifference towards the measures taken by European governments and the violence against Jews, such as in Hungary, Germany, and Italy”. The Italian episcopate itself did not perceive “Mussolini's antisemitic policy as a dramatic event”.
Existential threats
Behind papal impartiality and the decision to “make the local bishops responsible” lay another concern: “the Catholic Church would have to coexist with the victor”. At least until the American intervention in the war in 1941, the Vatican “considered the outcome of the conflict uncertain”. Pius XII considered “a Nazi victory probable”. In the eyes of the papacy, this was an existential risk. Although the Holy See was in a different legal situation than during the First World War, the Vatican was still “an island in a Europe controlled by Nazi Germany, in a state of grave uncertainty”. Hitler's anti-Catholic position and the danger posed by the USSR worried the Church. In the words of Pius XII, written after the war, the Vatican, “this small State of a few acres of land, defenceless and surrounded on all sides by outbreaks of fire”, felt fragile in the face of the “destructive wind”.
On the one hand, this called into question what Ennio Di Nolfo called “the interpretation” between Italian territory and the Vatican State, with its consequences for the Holy See's foreign policy. The Second World War reversed the relationship of the Risorgimento era. Until 1870 Italy had been a “threatening enemy” of the papacy, whose “dissolution was periodically hoped for”. After the Concordat of 1929 and in the face of the reversals of war, the Church went from “fearing Italy” to “fearing for Italy”, i.e., fearing that an Italian crisis would involve the Holy See [ed. Marco Mugnaini, Stato, Chiesa e relazioni internazionali (“State, Church and international relations”), FrancoAngeli, 2003].
Euro-Atlantic strategic link
More generally, Di Nolfo observes, the Church was “forced to rethink its international position”. This requirement for the Vatican coincided with the interests of the new power that was decisive for the European and global balance – the United States. Starting in 1939, as Massimo Franco documents, Washington decided “that it was necessary to have an ear in Rome, the heart of Mediterranean fascism allied with Hitler” [Parallel Empires, 2005]. Over time, the Vatican appeared more and more clearly to be “a permanent factor” in Italian life, reliable and both “capable of expressing a political elite in the Christian Democrats”, and able to stem the influence of Moscow. Franco goes on to write that US esteem for Alcide De Gasperi was based primarily on “his role as political delegate of the Holy See: this was De Gasperi's true merit in the eyes of Washington”. With the end of the war, “the Eurocentrism” of the Holy See gave way to “a more global view of the balance of power”. Pius XII “was preparing for an alliance with the real winner of the Second World War” and to play “a strategic role” alongside Washington.
In Riccardi's interpretation, Pius XII emerged as “head of a triumphant Church” but, at the same time, “reduced to being almost solely patriarch of the West” and “involved in the crisis of Western society”. From then on, the Yalta partition would preclude or complicate the Church's action outside the “Atlantic” camp but, at the same time, it further strengthened its ties with the old Western powers.
Now that, together with the Asian century, the era of the multipolar Church has begun, the ecclesiastical organisation is faced with the necessity of readjusting its structures and strategy. The Church's stability is challenged by the crisis in the world order. The Vatican's strategy during the two imperialist world wars, once a subject of historical debate, is becoming a current issue.
| 1978 | % | 2005 | % | 2013 | % | 2023 | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AFRICA | 16,844 | 4.0 | 32,370 | 8.0 | 41,826 | 10.1 | 55,110 | 13.5 |
| NORTH AMERICA | 71,022 | 17.1 | 53,987 | 13.3 | 48,382 | 11.7 | 41,727 | 10.3 |
| LATIN AMERICA | 49,841 | 12.0 | 67,008 | 16.5 | 74,730 | 18.0 | 76,618 | 18.8 |
| ASIA | 26,168 | 6.3 | 50,053 | 12.3 | 61,482 | 14.8 | 74,056 | 18.2 |
| EUROPE | 246,916 | 59.3 | 198,279 | 48.8 | 184,206 | 44.3 | 155,091 | 38.1 |
| OCEANIA | 5,538 | 1.3 | 4,714 | 1.1 | 4,722 | 1.1 | 4,394 | 1.1 |
| TOTAL | 416,329 | 100 | 406,411 | 100 | 415,348 | 100 | 406,996 | 100 |