Arise Bharat

Pradakshina

Hitler

The book `Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII’ by British author John Cornwell,  examines the actions of Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII.  The book argues that the Pope’s stance was aimed at increasing the power of Papacy, and that he subordinated opposition to the Nazis to that goal. The author further argues that Pope Pius XII was anti-semitic and that prevented him from expressing concern and in providing aid to European Jews. He stated that Pius XII was ‘the ideal pope for Hitler’s unspeakable plan. He was Hitler’s pawn. He was Hitler’s Pope’. The Vatican maintained diplomatic relations with the Third Reich, and the new pontiff declined to condemn the Nazi invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. Some scholars say that the documents show Pius XII knew about the Holocaust as it happened, and allege that he did not want to confront or offend Hitler because he feared Communism, believed that Axis powers would win the war, and also wished to avoid alienating millions of Nazi-sympathizing Christians. A letter found among the private papers of Pope Pius XII suggests that the Holy See was told in 1942 that upto 6000 people, `above all Poles and Jews’, were being killed in furnaces everyday at Belzec, a Nazi death camp in Poland.  Jewish groups have maintained that he turned a blind eye to the genocide; many accuse him of conniving with Hitler. He neither signed an Allied Declaration in December 1942 condemning the Nazi extermination of Jews nor did he protest the deportations of Jews from Rome to Auschwitz.

Cornwell’s work was based on the testimonies from Pius’s beatification process as well as many documents of Pope Pius XII which had been opened under the seventy-five year rule by the Vatican State Secretary archives.It is said that later Cornwell had toned down his criticism. It has been reported that Vatican had since opened many more documents pertaining to that period.

The Reich Concordat (1933): Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich

The Reichskonkordat Concordat between the Holy See and the German Reich, a treaty between the Vatican and the emergent Nazi Germany, was signed on 20 July 1933 by Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (who later became Pope Pius XII), on behalf of Pope Pius XI and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen, on behalf of German government. It was ratified on 10^th September 1933 and has been in force since. The treaty guarantees the rights of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany and non-interference of the Church in politics.

Hitler with Vatican ambassador              

RC Abbot Albanus Schachleiter stands between Hitler and Müller

Mussolini

Vatican has often faced charges that it supported Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini. The 1.2 square miles of real estate in central Rome came in exchange for the Church’s support of his fascist regime. From National Book Award finalist David I. Kertzer comes the gripping story of Pope Pius XI’s secret relations with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, `The Pope and Mussolini’. The groundbreaking work, based on years of research in the Vatican and Fascist archives, including reports from Mussolini’s spies inside the highest levels of the Church, indicate Vatican’s role in the rise of Fascism in Europe.

Lateran Treaty

 The Lateran Pact between Cardinal Pietro Gasparri and Benito Mussolini. Rome 1929

Similar to the later Reich Concordat Treaty of 1933 with Germany,  Eugenio Pacelli’s brother, Francesco, successfully negotiated a concordat with Mussolini known as Lateran Treaty. It involved the dissolution of the parliamentary Catholic Italian Popular Party. Cornwell describes that this collaboration with fascist leaders started in 1929 and asserts that the result of the demise of the Popular Party was the `wholesale shift of Catholics into the Fascist Party and the collapse of democracy in Italy’.

`The book `The Pope and Mussolini’ tells the story of two men who came to power in 1922, and together changed the course of twentieth-century history. The two men Pius XI and `Il Duce’, though different in many ways, had some things in common, the foremost being distrust of democracy. `We have many interests to protect’, the Pope declared, soon after Mussolini seized control of the government in 1922. Each relied on the other to consolidate his power and achieve his political goals. Kertzer shows how Pius XI played a crucial role in making Mussolini’s dictatorship possible and keeping him in power. In exchange for Vatican support, Mussolini restored many of the privileges the Church had lost. Yet in the last years of his life, Pius XI threatened to denounce Mussolini’s anti-Semitic racial laws. Horrified by the threat to the Church-Fascist alliance, the Vatican’s inner circle, including the future Pope Pius XII, worked hard to maintain the partnership that had served both the Church and the dictator for many years. The book `Pope and Mussolini’ also portrays many men who helped enable the reign of Fascism in Italy: Father Pietro Tacchi Venturi, Pius’s personal emissary to the dictator, a wily anti-Semite known as Mussolini’s Rasputin; Victor Emmanuel III, the king of Italy, and Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, whose political skills and ambition made him Mussolini’s most powerful ally inside the Vatican, and positioned him to succeed the pontiff later as Pius XII.

Stalin

Clearly `Godless Communists’ and the Church had no problems in using each other to further their own ends.  While Stalin initially persecuted the Russian Orthodox Church, with many clergy imprisoned or executed, and churches closed, he later revived it during World War II to foster patriotic support. After Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin reversed his policy, recognizing the church’s potential to unite the population and bolster the war effort. The church reciprocated and expressed gratitude to Stalin; it saw the state as a protector of the faith and the war as a defense of Christian civilization. While the church gained some autonomy, the KGB-controlled `Committee on Religious Issues’ oversaw its activities. (Stalin studied in a theological school and later in Tiflis seminary until the 5^th year, he later left it).

Russian priests blessing Red army during WW II

Stalin’s Meeting with Church Leaders:

On 4 September 1943, Stalin met with prominent church leaders, including Metropolitans Sergius, Alexius, and Nicholas, marking a significant shift in policy.  Patriarch Sergius headed the Orthodox Church in the USSR while Stalin was in power. Patriarch Tikhon called for civil loyalty towards the Soviet Government, Metropolitan Sergius followed his path and offered both the Bolsheviks and the church believers a formula for peace, `we want  to be Orthodox, and at the same time recognize Soviet Union, as our civil homeland, whose joys and successes are our joys and successes, and whose failures are our failures’. And this is quite sincere, because as per the teachings of the Church, `all power comes from God’.