Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII

Abstract

Pope Pius XII sits at the center of one of the great history battles of our time. On one side a faction will never forgive him for his actions, or lack thereof, regarding Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and the Holocaust. The other side reveres Pius quite simply as a saint. In the meantime, serious and evenhanded scholarship produces works that will hopefully add historical perspective and clarify the issue. Such a work is Robert Ventresca's excellent biography, Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII. Drawn from an enormous body of evidence and with meticulous endnotes, the author also received remarkable access to the Position, or Positio, the church's collected evidence toward the cause of Pius's canonization. Ventresca devotes a historiographic prologue to the “Pius Wars” before he divides the pontiff's life into seven largely chronological chapters. Eugenio Pacelli became Pius XII in March 1939. With the world on the verge of war, he immediately faced the crisis over Fascist Italy's Good Friday invasion of Albania. The new pontiff responded with some vagaries about conflict but issued no clear condemnation of the aggression. It was a bad omen. Soon, Germany's barbarous attack on Poland presented Pius with a far greater crucible. To deal with Nazi outrages, starting with those against the Jews, he relied on his brother bishops and the faithful throughout Europe who often took indomitable stands, actions far more determined than his, from the heroic confrontation of the Dutch bishops to the clear and forceful diplomatic approach of Angelo Rotta, the nuncio to Hungary. Neither the Dutch nor Rotta, however, achieved their goal of saving lives. Did their noble failures, then, justify the “silence” of Pius who still did quietly save lives? Moreover Soldier of Christ illustrates that Pius remained mute on other slaughters, even those against Catholics despite growing frustration and even anger, starting with many Poles who felt betrayed by their spiritual leader. No clear picture emerges regarding the pope's motivation, but it may have been some mixture of trepidation over a Red Army victory and a personal, instinctual reticence. Complicating matters, Ventresca points to rare occasions where the pontiff denounced certain actions, particularly the Allied bombing of Rome, while failing to decry Rotterdam, Coventry, or Dresden. At times throughout the text one receives hints from the author, or perhaps doubts, that in contrast to the feisty Pius XI, Pacelli may have been the wrong man for the job.