Why was Pope Pius XII not able to deal with radical evil during World War II and the Holocaust? In this superb monograph, Jacques Kornberg adds a fresh and reasoned perspective to the often fraught debate on Pius XII's wartime papacy. Kornberg rejects past portrayals of the pontiff as a political opportunist who betrayed Catholic teachings for reasons of expedience and diplomacy. He instead makes a strong case that “it was Pius XII's close adherence to the Catholic ecclesiology of his era that drove his calculated acquiescence” during World War II and the Holocaust (8).

At the heart of the “pope's dilemma” was his spiritual role as father to all Catholics. It was this chief concern over his flock, Kornberg argues, that explains why the pope did not speak out against the genocide of Jews even in instances where his leverage over Catholic nations and heads of state was considerable. The pope's authority over Monsignor Josef Tiso, for example, who was the president of the Axis state Slovakia and a Catholic priest, is undeniable. But when, in March 1942, Tiso and a group of sixteen priests who served in the Slovakian parliament authorized the deportation of Slovakian Jews, Pius XII remained silent. Within months, nearly 60,000 Slovak Jews perished in the Holocaust. The Vatican certainly recognized the enormity of the crime that was compounded by the “calamity . . . that the President of Slovakia was a priest,” yet the pope failed even to impose any religious sanctions on his priests who had become accomplices to mass murder (83). Instead, he left any action up to the Slovakian bishops whose feeble protest against the deportations in 1942 was riddled with anti-Semitic stereotypes. Following the lead of national bishoprics became a policy the pontiff adhered to in his dealings with Nazi Germany and the whole of occupied Europe. First and foremost, Kornberg reiterates, Pope Pius XII kept to his spiritual priorities. For the sake of Catholics' salvation, he avoided “condemning [even] Catholics complicit in Axis crimes, so as not to alienate them from the church” or endanger Catholic institutions and infrastructure (235). Kornberg refers to Paul Duclos, SJ, who insisted in 1955 that as the “common father” to all Catholics, the pontiff could not deliver “spectacular protests” that might have humiliated “the guilty among his sons” and thereby imperiled the latter's salvation (263). In making this argument, Kornberg acknowledges the work of Kevin Spicer who, too, pointed to the Catholic Church's narrow pastoral mission as the main source of its moral failings in the Third Reich.

But the pope's failure to call out even his own priests for the egregious sin of murder did not immediately incite the opprobrium of the world at large. The author reminds readers that in the 1940s and the 1950s, Pius XII's wartime record and the Vatican's purported involvement in the rescue of Jews was in fact widely praised and admired. It was only in the 1960s that the pontiff's reputation rapidly began to unravel. Readers no doubt will appreciate Kornberg's engaging discussion of the furor surrounding Rolf Hochhut's 1963 play Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy) that, despite its myriad flaws and ahistorical caricature of Pius XII as a cold and calculating cynic, destroyed the pope's reputation and hastened “a trend deeply critical of the Roman Catholic Church, one already stirring in the world of scholarship” (28).

Pius XII's standing suffered further in comparison with Pope John XXIII (1958–1963) under whose pontificate the Catholic Church abandoned its fortress mentality and embraced the universal humanitarian causes of social justice, human rights, and economic progress. As John XXIII's resolute actions and significant achievements brought his predecessor's reticence and dithering into sharp relief, some scholars began to blame Pius XII's personality for his inability to confront genocide. Even recent biographers continue to insist that it was the pope's reserved and cautious temperament, observable since childhood, that made him so ill-suited for the wartime papacy. In their estimation, Pope Pius XII was an anomaly among popes. In what is a highlight of the monograph, Kornberg refutes this conclusion. Rather, he argues that Pius XII's priorities and foreign policy did not differ from those of his immediate predecessors, including Pius XI (1922–1939) and Benedict XV (1914–1922).

Kornberg disagrees with scholars who have argued that Pius XI, who was known for his impetuous temperament, would have boldly protested German atrocities in the 1940s. Instead, like his successor, Pius XI “always knew just how far he could go without risks to the church, or his authority over Catholics” (227). He, too, carefully picked his battles, as was evident in his cautious 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Concern). Benedict XV, for his part, resolutely remained silent in the face of German atrocities in Belgium in the course of World War I. He justified his silence and neutrality in wartime with his highest obligation to tend to the spiritual needs of all Catholics everywhere and lead them to salvation. But most scholars no longer share these past papal priorities, which are also at odds with the modern Catholic Church's emphasis on the rights of all humanity. It is why Kornberg judges Pius XII's “stance during the Nazi era a moral failure,” although, measured by the yardstick of his day, he was a good pope (4).