Perhaps no other twentieth-century pope has inspired so many competing, contradictory, and compelling depictions as the figure of Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII. In a carefully researched and beautifully written work, Robert Ventresca seeks to examine the early life of this controversial pope, his experiences during both world wars, and his post–World War II leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. Ventresca's account contributes greatly to our understanding of who the future Pius XII would turn out to be; ultimately, a figure bearing many flaws, but a figure who is revealed to be more flesh and bones and more fully human than most scholarly accounts have allowed for in the past.

Ventresca's work opens on the history of the Pacelli family and their connections to the papacy as part of the “black nobility,” i.e., those who emerged in the tumultuous years of the nineteenth century as papal defenders against the forces of anticlericalism that were running rampant at the time. The young Eugenio, who lived and breathed the air of the Eternal City, watched the loss of Rome as papal territory to the newly created Italian state. The Pacelli family, despite their open loyalty to the Vatican, sent their son to one of the best public schools in Rome, the Visconti, where the young boy was able to express his unpopular opinions on religion and history and where he made excellent academic progress. Most interestingly, Ventresca shows the thirteen-year-old Eugenio writing an essay, “A Good Book Is Your Best Friend,” where the young teenager argued that it would be better to spend one's time with a morally uplifting book than with a friend who might corrupt one's innocence (25). Here readers also learn that Eugenio could quote passages from Dante's Divine Comedy and from Thomas à Kempis's The Imitation of Christ, whereby the young boy learned to have a degree of disdain for earthly things. By 1894, Pacelli told his devout family that he had decided to study for the priesthood.

Pacelli, as the young seminarian, attended the Collegio Capranica and simultaneously began studying philosophy at the Gregorian Pontifical University. Unfortunately for the young man, such intense devotion to his studies, coupled with the demands of seminary life, led Eugenio to become ill, such that a special dispensation was given for the young man to attend classes at the seminary while living at home with his parents. Ordained a priest in a private family ceremony in 1899, Pacelli began his career in his home parish of Chiesa Nuova. However, his extreme intelligence earmarked him for advanced studies in canon and civil law, and by 1904 he had earned his doctorate in canon law making him eligible to serve as a papal diplomat. Throughout these years of study, Pacelli was already making a name for himself in the Vatican's Secretariat of State—which, on the eve of the First World War, was a small world composed of only slightly more than two dozen individuals, including Pacelli.

With the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914, Pacelli received a promotion within the Secretariat, becoming the secretary for the Congregation for Extraordinary Affairs. One of his close associates, Giacomo Della Chiesa, also became the newly elected Pope Benedict XV. Benedict entrusted the young Pacelli with several peace initiatives, including a failed attempt to convince Kaiser Wilhelm II to accede to the pope's peace proposal of 1917. For Pacelli, 1917 brought a decisive turning point in his career with his appointment as apostolic nuncio to Bavaria.

Once settled in to his post in Bavaria, Pacelli began to establish relationships which would last through his pontificate, including a deep and abiding friendship with Michael Cardinal Faulhaber, Monsignor Kaas, and Sister Pascalina Lehnert who would run Pacelli's household even at the Vatican. Living in postwar Munich, Pacelli experienced the tumult of revolution and counterrevolution in the streets. He came to see German stability as a necessary ingredient for combating the spread of Bolshevism as well as fighting against the spread of Western secularism (56). This basic understanding of Germany's place in the European world would remain with Pacelli for the rest of his life and would influence his thinking throughout his career. After serving from 1925 to 1929 in Berlin, Pacelli was shocked to learn that he was to leave his beloved Germany, become a cardinal, and be named new secretary of state at the Vatican.

At the outset of Pacelli's new appointment, many foreign representatives noted that the slight, pale, often sickly Pacelli contrasted deeply with the robust and energetic Pope Pius XI. However, Pacelli's personality seemed to complement the pope's, and he earned the respect he received through his devotion to hard work and practical experience from his years spent in Germany. With the rise of the National Socialists to power in 1933, all eyes in the Vatican turned to the secretary of state for his wisdom and understanding of German political life. Fighting to preserve German Catholicism under the Nazi regime, Pacelli placed enormous emphasis on negotiating a concordat with Hitler, guaranteeing that the church's institutions would be left free under the Third Reich.

Despite disturbing reports about Nazi intimidation of German Catholics, Pacelli remained firmly committed to the concordat with Hitler. Whether he truly believed the document could contain the Nazis or whether he simply could not relinquish control over something he had labored on for years is still debatable. The back and forth between the Vatican and Hitler's regime over German violations of the terms of the treaty continued with increasing frequency over the next few years. The Vatican, through Pacelli, would warn that Pius XI was about to offer a strong, public condemnation of these violations and then German diplomats would warn Pacelli not to allow the pope to take such actions. Pacelli's detailed and carefully worded protests sent to the Nazis revealed “the futility of a diplomatic protest without teeth” (93). Throughout the mid-1930s, it seems that Pacelli kept the hope alive that some sort of a truce could be worked out between the Vatican and the Nazi regime, yet the persecutions of German Catholics and violations of the concordat continued. Pius XI wished at times to sever relations with Germany, recalling the nuncio, but the moderate-tempered Pacelli convinced him otherwise, saying, “It is best that things remain as they are. If the government breaks off relations, fine—but it would not be wise for us to do so” (116).

Despite Pacelli's moderating influence over the pope, 1937 saw the publication of Mit brennender Sorge (With burning sorrow). This encyclical hit Germany like an explosive, taking the Nazi regime by surprise as it was read from all German Catholic pulpits on the same Sunday. The publication of the document strained diplomatic relations, yet the Vatican leadership continued to balance on the tightrope of condemning Nazi persecutions of Catholics while simultaneously attempting to work with the Nazi regime. A true test of the position of the Vatican occurred not in 1937, but rather in November 1938 when the Nazis unleashed the violent anti-Jewish pogrom called Kristallnacht. Many voices were raised in protest of such a violent and horrendous event, yet Pacelli argued that Pope Pius XI was ill and very busy and therefore could not issue a statement condemning the episode (127). Pacelli, it seems, was still searching for an adequate way to respond to what he viewed as a political situation.

Another dramatic turn occurred with the death of Pius XI on February 10, 1939. Pacelli acted as camerlengo, which meant he would plan the funeral and organize the conclave of cardinals who would elect the next pope. This position gave Pacelli a great deal of power and influence during this interim period when the church was without a pope. It was during this time as camerlengo that Pacelli took the still controversial position of refusing to allow the publication of the dying pope's last speech. The text of this speech was aggressive in tone, condemning the racism and anti-Semitism of National Socialism. Pacelli not only blocked the publication of this speech, he never, ever, spoke of it in public again. The text of the speech would not be published until 1959, several months after Pacelli's own death. Ventresca ventures the guess that a forceful, direct denunciation of Nazism was not in keeping with Pacelli's diplomatically trained temperament (132).

Most of the international press, not knowing about the dead pope's now hidden speech, focused instead on who would be selected to be the next pope. After three rounds of voting, Pacelli garnered the necessary two-thirds of the vote to be named pope. He was sixty-three years old, and throughout the process was noted to have prayed repeatedly, “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me.” He clearly did not wish to be the next pope; however, when the three cardinals came to him, he accepted meekly and chose the name Pius XII. At 6:30 p.m. on March 2, 1939, the new pope appeared on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica. Many remarked that Pacelli, now Pius XII, looked shaken and as though the weight of the world was upon his shoulders.

With the election done, Pius XII now had to focus the bulk of his energy on dealing with problems with the Third Reich. Meeting with the German cardinals, Pius told them, “The German problem is for me most important. I will deal with it myself” (145). Pius had decided that it was imperative that German Catholicism be preserved and that meant, to him, keeping some type of open communication with Hitler's government. Despite repeated attempts from many different quarters, the new pope refused to issue a strongly worded, public condemnation of Nazi policies. To him, the problem, particularly that of the persecution of Jews in Germany, was a political, not a spiritual one. He stubbornly clung to his belief that a clear stance of papal neutrality would allow him the best position to deal with both Mussolini's aggressive fascism as well as Hitler's growing quest for Lebensraum.

As war loomed ever closer on the horizon, Pius made one last public radio appeal for peace. However, his detractors noted that the pope's speech did not single out one side over another. Speaking in generalities about universal brotherhood and the desire for peace, while not explicitly condemning the Nazi invasion of Poland, was not the type of response antifascist forces hoped for, although Pius XII did issue his first encyclical in October 1939, Summi Pontificatus, wherein he defended Christian civilization against the onslaught of overly secular governments, calling on the “soldiers of Christ” to defend it against the enemy. (155) To the pope, clinging to strict papal neutrality was the only way to secure a role in bringing the world back to peace. For many others, the papal stance was incomprehensible and terribly disappointing.

Throughout the duration of the war, Pius XII refused to issue more forceful denunciations of Nazism. He was absolutely convinced that neutrality was the only way to protect German Catholics from further oppression; but what of the Poles or the Jews? Pius refused to outright condemn Nazi actions as they were occurring in occupied Poland; however, he did allow Vatican Radio to broadcast what the Germans were doing there (172). For the Jews, Pius appears to be a man of his time, believing that matters pertaining to Jews were not within the purview of the Catholic Church. Here, Ventresca presents a tearful Pius, upset about the slaughter of Europe's Jews, but seemingly unable and unwilling to do more than offer tears and prayers. “His insistence on maintaining the public face of impartiality undermined the political credibility of the papacy and, worse yet, left the institution vulnerable to the charge that it had failed the test of moral leadership at one of humanity's darkest hours” (178).

As the Holocaust raged, the Vatican received many detailed reports of the atrocities being perpetrated against Europe's Jews. However, Pius had determined that a strongly worded protest from him might bring about even more brutal reprisals for those in harm's way. Ventresca presents this position as a truly serious error of judgment. How much worse could it get for the Jews? The pope's failure to denounce Nazi crimes against the Jews was beginning to be seen as an increasingly large moral failure, yet Pius XII was capable of speaking directly and forcefully if he put his mind to it. In particular, when Pius's beloved Rome was targeted for aerial bombardment, he did not have the same qualms about remaining silent. When the Nazis targeted the ancient Jewish community of Rome for deportation, Pius once again reverted to his silent stance, ordering that convents and monasteries provide safe refuges for Jews quietly, while threatening German diplomats with a public condemnation. In the end, Ventresca leaves it open to interpretation whether Pius XII's threat worked to save the Jews of Rome (206).

Ventresca also examines the cases of Jews in Slovakia and Hungary. Here one finds that the Vatican was trying to control the president of Slovakia, a priest, Father Tiso, yet even here one can see the ineffectiveness of papal neutrality. While some 20,000 Slovakian Jews were saved owing to the efforts of the Vatican, the vast majority of Jews in the country were deported to their deaths. Repeatedly, Pius XII found himself being pressured by the Allied powers to openly condemn Nazi atrocities, yet the pope clung to his initial stance of restraint. Ventresca acknowledges that the stance of papal neutrality did preserve the church's institutional structures, which in turn allowed charitable and humanitarian aid to reach victims. However, Ventresca asks the ultimate question, “Were such prudence and caution appropriate for the Vicar of Christ? Was it the behavior of a prophet, a martyr, or a saint? With millions of innocent civilians already dead, and thousands more facing a similar fate, what greater evil could there be?” (218).

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Pope Pius XII still refused to offer words of comfort to what was left of the European Jewish community. In fact, Pius believed there were new problems to address rather than what had been the past fate of the Jews in occupied Europe. He preferred to think about the threat of international Communism, the propping up of the newly defeated Germany as a stabilizer in Central Europe, and an era of European unification undergirded by principles of Christian civilization. He seemed unwilling or unable to acknowledge any degree of Christian responsibility for the attempts to annihilate the Jews of Europe. In meeting with both Arabs and Jews, Pius XII again adopted his stance of impartiality, making it clear that he was there “for all people” (230). All people, that is, except for Communists. Here one finds a clear, resolute and defiant Pius XII. In denouncing Communism in the post–World War II world, Pius XII was no longer the neutral, hand-wringing diplomat shedding impotent tears. Instead Pius XII lost all of the circumspection that he had utilized during the war. Now Pius XII emerged as the “soldier of Christ” rallying his troops to battle against the forces of materialistic, atheistic Communism, no matter what the cost might be. By 1949 Pius XII was even threatening excommunication for Catholics who had affiliations with Communist parties (244).

To Pius XII, the time had come to forge a strong alliance with Western powers to combat what he perceived as the growing threat of Soviet expansion across the face of Europe. In local Roman politics, Pius XII encouraged moderate political parties to align with even neofascist parties in order to defeat the Communists. As time progressed, however, the more temperate Pius XII emerged, offering in the early 1950s open letters to the people of the Soviet Union and of China, sending signals behind the scenes of his willingness to work with the Communist regimes if it meant obtaining protections for Catholic minorities there. Simultaneously, however, individuals such as Bishop Alois Hudal, who had connections with the Vatican, were working assiduously to obtain safe passage out of war-torn Europe for Catholics who had anti-Communist credentials, even if they were known supporters of Nazism. Ventresca explores the possibility that Pius XII had some hand in what was called the “Vatican ratlines”; however, he concludes that there is “no direct, credible evidence to prove that Pius XII knew of such schemes or that he personally approved and helped to finance them” (268). At the same time, though, Ventresca does argue that Pius XII cannot be held completely unaccountable for the misuse of Vatican funds for such ventures and acknowledges that at the very least, these “ratlines” leave a bitter trace of poor judgment on the part of Vatican officials.

In his final chapter, Ventresca examines Pius XII's attitudes toward research and debate within Catholic scholarly circles. Writing over forty encyclicals, Pius XII was engaged with the contemporary church, endorsing new means of interpretation of sacred writings using textual criticism, exploring science and medical ethics, and reaching out to non-Europeans to embrace the teachings of the church. To Pius XII, modern society had produced a type of rudderless world, and the only way to combat the degradation found would be to embrace the full dignity of the human being based on a Christian social order. In this post–World War II world, Pius was not silent about his opinions.

Pope Pius XII became ill and died October 9, 1958. Perhaps he did not guess that his papacy would be one which inspires, still to this day, heated debates and contested interpretations of his choices. Ventresca's book brings Pius XII to life, reexamines those debates, and reveals the pope to be a man, tragic, flawed, and with human failings, something that is often forgotten in the heat of the debates. The only suggestion for the author would be to add a bibliography to help readers locate various works whose interpretations might challenge what Ventresca has argued.