Hitler's Pope: manufactured evidence, calculated smears

Dr. Ronald Rychlak had just completed his book, Hitler, the War and the Pope, and the manuscript was at the publisher's, when John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII hit the bookstores.

The book portrayed the pope as anti-Semitic and indifferent to the plight of the Jews under the Nazis.

"I was completely at a loss!" Dr. Rychlak told his audience at the National Wanderer Forum in Sterling, Va., November 2. "It contradicted everything I had in my manuscript."

Following a review of Cornwell's book he wrote for Inside the Vatican magazine, the Vatican asked Dr. Rychlak to study the transcripts that Cornwell had used for his book that, he said, had left him in a state of "moral shock."

Dr. Ronald Rychlak refutes allegations against Pius XII at the Wanderer Forum.

Using Cornwell's footnotes to direct him to the right places in the transcripts, Rychlak found various testimony about Pius XII's height and weight, the fact that there was no heat in his childhood home, and that his family brought him food while he was in the seminary‹but nothing concerning Hitler, the Holocaust or the Jews.

A close examination of Hitler's Pope revealed that an opening quote by the contemplative, Thomas Merton, that appeared critical of Pius XII's relationship to the Jews had been flagrantly cut to distort its real meaning.

A letter from Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII) in 1919, central to Cornwell's book, had been egregiously mistranslated to make Pacelli appear anti-Semitic.

Perhaps most blatantly dishonest of all, the book's dust jacket had a photo of Cardinal Pacelli leaving a reception for German President Hindenburg, flanked by helmeted Weimar Republic soldiers.

The photo was taken in 1927, when Pacelli was papal nuncio to Germany; but in an obvious attempt to smear Pacelli, the dust jacket dated the photo 1939, when Hitler was in power.

Dr. Rychlak, who is associate dean of the University of Mississippi Law School, gave a slide presentation showing documentation of Pius XII's consistent stance against Nazism and anti-Semitism and his aid to the Jewish people during world War II.

During the 1920s, as papal nuncio in Germany, said Rychlak, "He gave 44 speeches. In 40 of those speeches, he condemned Nazism, racism and pagan blood cults‹the kind of stuff the Nazis were doing."

The Nazis retaliated by openly mocking him and making him the butt of vicious cartoons.

In 1938 when Hitler came to Rome to visit Mussolini, the Vatican closed. Pope Pius XI and his then-secretary of state, Pacelli, removed themselves to Castel Gandolfo.

In a pointed insult to Hitler, Pius XI remarked, "The air in Rome makes me ill."

The Nazis did not want Pacelli to become pope, said Rychlak; he had always been against Nazism and as secretary of state, he had practically determined Vatican policy toward the Nazis.

The German delegation was noticeably absent at Pius XII's coronation.

Shortly after he became pope, the Nazis invaded Poland. Six weeks later, in his first encyclical, Pius XII condemned dictators, treaty violators and racism, and urged the restoring of Poland.

"The Allies made 88,000 copies of it and dropped it behind German lines as propaganda," said Rychlak.

In 1939, when some German generals decided Hitler would lead their nation into ruin, Pius XII acted as a go-between, passing their request for help in overthrowing Hitler to the British.

The plot fell through because the British were not able to trust the Germans, but evidence of Pius XII's part in it remains in the British archives.

Early in the war, he warned the Allies, a week to 10 days in advance, that the Germans were about to invade the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Rychlak showed many headlines from the New York Times documenting Pius XII's outspoken opposition to the Nazis and their treatment of the Jews.

Typical headlines read: "Vatican Denounces Atrocities in Poland; Germans Called Worse Than Russians" and "Pope Is Emphatic About Just Peace; Jews' Rights Defended."

Albert Einstein, who escaped from Germany to the United States in 1940, wrote in Time magazine that "Only the Church stood up against the Nazis."

In 1942 the New York Times wrote, "This Christmas, more than ever, [Pius XII] is a lonely voice, crying out in the silence of the continent."

The Nazis, occupying Italy after the Italians deposed Mussolini, demanded gold from the Jews in Rome to avoid deportation to concentration camps.

"The chief rabbi of Rome went to the Vatican for a loan," said Rychlak. "The word came back, as much as you need for as long as you need it."

Jewish people and other refugees‹downed Allied pilots, gypsies, German deserters‹were fed, clothed and hidden in seminaries.

The numbers of Jews aided are indefinite: "They didn't ask how many were Jews," said Rychlak.

He showed photos of refugees sleeping on the staircases of Castel Gandolfo.

"Forty children were born in the pope's personal apartment" at Gandolfo, he said.

"Chief Rabbi Herzog of Palestine said, 'People will never forget what the Holy Father is doing for us in the most tragic hour of our history,' " noted Rychlak.

After the liberation of Rome the New York Times wrote, "The Holy See did an exemplary job of sheltering the victims of the Nazi facist regime, both Christians and Jews."

President Franklin Roosevelt expressed his gratitude for the Holy See's aid to the victims of racial and religious persecution.

"Pope Pius did what he thought was effective," Rychlak concluded.

"You can argue that he should have taken different actions, but to argue that he was an anti-Semite or indifferent is preposterous."

Nevertheless, close on the heels of Hitler's Pope have been a spate of anti-Pius XII, anti-papal books: Susan Zuccotti's Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy, David Kertzer's The Pope Against the Jews, and Michael Phayer's The Catholic Church and the Holocaust.

Gary Wills followed his attack on all of the popes, Papal Sin, with Why I Am a Catholic, a further attack on the papacy.

The most recent book, released in October, Daniel Goldhagen's A Moral Reckoning, contains no original research, but simply cites the previous books.

"The books are building on each other," said Rychlak.

"But the New Republic gave 26 pages to summarize Goldhagen's book‹the largest single article that magazine has ever given anyone!"

Dr. Rychlak thinks that the real target in this concerted campaign is Pope John Paul II.

Cornwell makes that clear in his most recent book, Breaking Faith, which, said Rychlak, is "a clear attack on John Paul II."

The reason is that John Paul, like Pius XII, is a defender of a strong, orthodox papacy, something liberals hate. They are trying to discredit both in the hopes of promoting a liberal successor to John Paul.

Dr. Rychlak suggested that his listeners ask themselves, "How come I just learned about this stuff from a law professor from Mississippi? Why didn't I learn of it on 'Sixty Minutes' or '20-20' or CNN on in the New York Times?"

They didn't, he said, because "This is part of a broad attack that's going on, an unfair attack.

"When people are manufacturing evidence, when they have to make things up, you know they have a weak case."