Il papa di Hitler

Cornwell has written a devastating condemnation of Cardinal Pacelli (later Pius XII). So far, I have read the chapters describing Pacelli's utterly immoral role in bringing Hitler to a position of dictatorial power by passage of the Enabling Act in 1933. To summarize ... Pacelli was fixated on reachi Leggi tutto

The beatification process has begun to make Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) a saint. Aside from whatever we might think about how saints are created by the church as an institution, I suspect everyone would agree that any saint should have a reasonably spotless reputation. John Henry Newman, a famous Bri Leggi tutto

I've cried twice this year when I read a book. This was one of them. The scene was that rubber-necking German soldiers were driving past the Vatican, their trucks filled with Italian Jewish deportees on their way to certain death. This was happening with the full knowledge of people within the Vatic Leggi tutto

Еудженио Пачели е светското име на папа Пий XII. Неговият понтификат продължава от началото на 1939 г. до смъртта му през 1958 г. Пий ХII е спорна историческа личност, често обвинявана за своята пасивност по време на Втора световна война и скритите му симпатии към нацистка Германия. Еудженио Пачели е Leggi tutto

John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (Viking, 1999) I feel guilty abandoning this book. The subject matter is tailor made to suit my tastes, and so many reviews of the book have focused, incorrectly, on Cornwell's seeming obsession with attacking the Roman Catholic Church and Leggi tutto

On p. 310 of Hitler's Pope , John Cornwell , after numbering the deported Roman Jews at 1,060, notes that "an unspecified number of Jews" were sheltered from deportation by the Vatican. This number is freely available, Cornwell must have known it well: about 5,000. As this would have undercut his thes Leggi tutto

A well-written biography of one of history's footnotes: Pope Pius XII.

One of the enduring controversies of the Catholic Church has been its role, or perhaps more appropriately its lack of role, in speaking out against the Holocaust. Pope Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, has been accused of cowardice, anti-Semitism, a lack of concern for worldly affairs, a bias towards Germa Leggi tutto

I wasn't all that enthusiastic about reading this book when a friend loaned it to me. I'm not Catholic nor Jewish, nor German nor Italian (Pius XII was Italian). I knew there was controversy over whether Pius had helped shelter Jews in Rome, or had helped the Nazis round them up, or something, but I Leggi tutto

Cornwall's book is a tremendous research effort and highly readable. He started out trying to disprove accusations that Pope Pius XII had stopped his church from protesting Nazi atrocities. But the research leads to a far more painful truth. For any who promote the separation of government from reli Leggi tutto