Vatican Highlights Pope Pius XII's Peace Efforts

At this time we can not forget to remember the tremendous efforts of His Holiness Pope Pius XII made toward saving the lives of Jewish refugees. He unhesitatingly condemned Nazism.

On May 10, 1937, Pope Pius XI released the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (Germany for "With deep anxiety"). Unlike nearly all encyclicals, which are written in Latin, this encyclical was written in German. It was addressed to the German bishops and was read in all parish churches of Germany. Pope Pius XI said that his Papal Secretary of State, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII, was the individual that should be credited for the encyclical's creation. Furthermore, Jewish Rabbi Pinchas Lapide stated that Pope Pius XI "had good reason to make Pacelli the architect of his anti-Nazi policy. Of the forty-four speeches which the Nuncio Pacelli had made on German soil between 1917 and 1929, at least forty contained attacks on Nazism or condemnations of Hitler’s doctrines. . . . Pacelli, who never met the Führer, called it ‘neo-Paganism.’"

During the Holocaust, most of Rome's 8,000 Jews hid in the Vatican. Pope Pius XII saved thousands of Jewish lives. He used numerous networks in Rome to hide the Jewish people, and he even used the assets of the Vatican to ransom Jews from the Nazis. The Chief Rabbi of Rome converted to Catholicism after the war! According to Pinchas E. Lapide in his book, Three Popes and the Jews, Pope Pius XII saved 860,000 Jews from Nazi death camps (214).