Frank Coppa's insightful biography of Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII (1939–1958), is a welcome contribution to ongoing debates about the controversial pontiff whose policy of appeasement during World War II continues to fuel the so-called “Pius Wars.” The pope's actions are not in dispute but scholars disagree “in their assessment of the motivation for and the consequences” of Pacelli's conduct during the war and the Holocaust (247). In his own analysis, Coppa places considerable emphasis on the Vatican's entrenched diplomatic policy of impartiality that, he argues, largely drove the pope's wartime actions.
The Vatican's relative recent opening of papers of the pontificates of Benedict XV (1914–1922) and Pius XI (1922–1939) has allowed scholars to also gain fresh insights into the young Eugenio Pacelli's life. Using these sources, Coppa makes a strong case that Pacelli learned crucial lessons in diplomacy during World War I that “provided the rationale” for his “public silence during the latter war and the Holocaust” (54). At the time, the future pontiff was part of the Vatican's diplomatic corps, where, under the tutelage of Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri, his career advanced rapidly. The author argues that Gasparri's importance to Pacelli's life and legacy went far beyond his mentorship because the cardinal was also the architect of the Vatican's policy of impartiality during World War I. Impartiality differed from neutrality in that it allowed Pope Benedict XV “to denounce principles and even policies in general, without naming particular parties or embroiling the Church in partisan politics or favoring one side over another in conflicts” (53). It also enabled the Holy See to act as a neutral broker of peace.
Eugenio Pacelli's personality was well suited to Benedict's cautious diplomacy. From early on, Pacelli “pragmatically sought to avoid fights that might prove detrimental to his career and interests” (49). Coppa is an astute biographer who sketched an intriguing portrait of Pacelli that goes beyond his well-known reticence and highlights the future pontiff's strong will, his seeming inability to admit mistakes, and his marked sense of entitlement. For instance, on a papal peace mission to Germany in 1917, Pacelli's extravagant travel arrangements included a whole train compartment “holding some sixty cases of groceries to sooth his sensitive stomach” that resulted in excessive transportation costs at a time when many Germans were starving during the war (63). When the mission failed, Pacelli convinced himself that others were to blame.
After the war, when it became clear that Benedict XV's policy of impartiality had proved a failure overall, Pacelli and most members of the curia still saw no reason to abandon it. The confrontational Pope Pius XI (1922–1939), who did not believe that Hitler could be reasoned with, clashed with this ingrained Vatican culture of appeasement. Upon Pius XI's death in 1939, cardinals elected a diplomatic pope in Pacelli who reverted to the Vatican's established policy of impartiality.
In chapters 6 and 7 the author turns to the consequences of this policy. He asserts that “it is true that more could have been done by the Catholic Church; it is not true to say that nothing was done” (264). Pius XII issued veiled criticisms in Latin that may have eased his conscience but eluded both Nazi censorship and the broad German masses. Coppa argues that Pacelli never meant for his criticisms to reach Germans because they “would have done little to help victims” but the Church “would have paid a heavy price for his pursuit of such a confrontational course” (162).
Coppa makes the familiar argument that “his ‘silence’ did not mean papal inactivity” (165). Rather, the Vatican protested on behalf of Jews, provided shelter for some four thousand Italian Jews, and pressured Latin American countries to issue passports to Jewish refugees. But the scope and success of papal aid to Jews during the Holocaust remains fiercely contested within the scholarship, and recent research has cast new doubts on the effectiveness of the pope's efforts on behalf of Jews. Until more sources become available, the question of the precise nature and impact of Pius XII's aid to Jews during the Holocaust remains to be settled.
The strength of Coppa's monograph lies in the superb context he created for Pius's actions during World War II, and readers will appreciate his chapters on Pacelli's postwar papacy. The pontiff's inability to acknowledge the role of Christian anti-Judaism in the Holocaust, along with his refusal to recognize the legitimacy of Israel, fueled charges that Pius's wartime policy of appeasement was driven by antisemitism. These charges gained further traction when during the Cold War, Pacelli suddenly abandoned all caution and “minced no words in his condemnation of communism,” going so far as to “prescribe excommunication for those who voted for, joined, or collaborated with communists and their allies—a stance he had never assumed against either the nearby Fascists or Nazis” (206, 212). Coppa is sensitive to the issue throughout his analysis, concluding that Pacelli's actions during or after the war were not driven by antisemitism but by myriad other considerations. In the case of communism, Pius could issue his forceful condemnations because, among other factors, the Soviets, unlike the Nazis, “did not surround the Vatican” (207). Coppa does, however, betray a certain ambiguity on the issue when he writes that it appears that “Pacelli judged the prevailing Soviet attack on the Church and clergy more detrimental for the faith than the Nazi onslaught” (201).
Pacelli died in 1958, and in 2009, Pope Benedict proclaimed his “heroic virtues” (262).
In light of Eugenio Pacelli's pending cause for canonization the “Pius Wars” will continue, but Coppa's excellent biography will no doubt contribute to a more nuanced scholarly debate about Pius XII's controversial and difficult papacy during Europe's darkest hour.
