{"id":560,"date":"2009-06-22T12:03:33","date_gmt":"2009-06-22T12:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/was-pius-xii-a-saint-more-jewi.html"},"modified":"2009-06-22T12:03:33","modified_gmt":"2009-06-22T12:03:33","slug":"was-pius-xii-a-saint-more-jewi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/was-pius-xii-a-saint-more-jewi.html","title":{"rendered":"Was Pius XII a saint? More Jewish-Catholic tensions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"Pope<\/span>The canonization process for the wartime pontiff is an ongoing source of drama–and tension. <\/p>\n

The latest dust-up concerns remarks by Fr. Peter Gumpel, the Jesuit promoter for Pius’ cause for sainthood, who blamed Jewish pressure for the delay in the controversial pope’s beatification. As the CNS story<\/strong><\/a> has it:<\/p>\n

\n

Speaking at a Vatican bookstore in Rome June 19, Father Gumpel said Pope Benedict has not signed the decree recognizing the heroic virtues of Pope Pius XII because representatives of several Jewish groups have told him “loud and clear” that “if you do the least thing in favor of the cause of Pius XII, relations between the Catholic Church and the Jews are definitively and permanently compromised.”<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Vatican quickly tried to distance itself from Gumpel’s statements, as Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said that “signing the decrees regarding beatifications are the exclusive competence of the pope, who must be left totally free in his evaluations and decisions.”<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

“If the pope thinks that more study and reflection on the cause of Pius XII is required,” the statement continued, according to CNS, “this position must be respected without unjustified and inopportune interference.”<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But as Father Gumpel said, “Sooner or later, the beatification and then the canonization will go through.” <\/font><\/p>\n

For a more modulated view of Pius XII–and from the Jewish side–read Michael Paulson’s interview in the Globe with Mordechay Lewy<\/strong><\/a>, the Israeli ambassador to the Holy See, who spoke at Boston College last week. Lewy addressed many issues, but I think his comments on Pius get it as right as possible:<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Q:<\/strong> Does Israel have a role to play in the canonization of Pius XII?<\/em><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Canonization is not our concern. We don’t believe in beatification. What concerns us is the historical role of Pius XII. This is a real issue which has been, to my mind, deliberately, but still mistakenly, combined with the matter.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> Do you have a position on Pius XII’s historic role? <\/em><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Historically speaking, I think he was neither a hero nor a villain. It is probably the right thing to think of a more balanced view of him. The problem is that we are looking at him through the filter of a post-conciliar church. He is definitely a protagonist of the pre-conciliar church, and the pre-conciliar church has, as its main assignment, to seek all possible means to salvation for its own flock. He is not a pope for the Jews; he is not a pope for the Mohammedans; he is not a pope for everyone who was not Catholic. ‘My main task is to save the souls of the Catholic Church.’ This is why he did a concordat with the Germans. He didn’t make a concordat because he was Hitler’s pope. This is a mistaken concept. He did it in order to survive, to make it happen that the church can survive a godless regime. This was the term that they used. He tried also to make a concordat with the Soviet Union, but the Russian Orthodox Church didn’t like this idea. It is wrong to look for any affinity between him and the Nazis.<\/p>\n

It is also wrong to say that he didn’t save Jews. Everybody who knows the history of those who were saved among Roman Jewry knows that they hid in the church, they hid in Roman monasteries, in the Vatican itself people were hidden. To look for written evidence, an order of the pope, well…this is odd. This is not how it works.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/strong>So I hear you explaining why he was not a villain. Why was he not a hero?<\/em><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> He was very, very timid. He was a diplomat. This is why the curia is very much advocating for him as a saint. He was brought up politically by Benedict XV, who was the protagonist of neutrality during the First World War, wanting to keep up relations with everyone in order to get involved in mediation, humanitarian aid, good things. This is the concept with which Pius XII, as a pupil of Benedict XV, approached the Second World War. He misread, completely, the situation. He can not be blamed for it. He was who he was, with shortcomings. To be neutral meant for him to be quiet, to rely on quiet diplomacy. The main argument is why he was silent, not why he didn’t help. And by the way, after the war, he was silent as well. If we take the whole tenure, before the war and after the war, he was silent all the time. He never spoke up. He was saying…the church was victim of those regimes. With that mindset, there’s not much space to have a place to have another victim, if you feel yourself a victim. And, by the way, that’s our problem in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The canonization process for the wartime pontiff is an ongoing source of drama–and tension. The latest dust-up concerns remarks by Fr. Peter Gumpel, the Jesuit promoter for Pius’ cause for sainthood, who blamed Jewish pressure for the delay in the controversial pope’s beatification. As the CNS story has it: Speaking at a Vatican bookstore in Rome June…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,7,3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nWas Pius XII a saint? 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}