Pope Pius XII (2 mars 1939 – 9 oct. 1958)

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In 1951, Pius XII restated the principle, saying: “Every human being, even the child in the mother’s womb, receives its right to life directly from God, not from its parents.”

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In the spring of 1939, when the storm clouds of the second world war were gathering, Pius XII organized “a crusade of public prayers for peace.” The following August, just before the war broke out, he launched an appeal to national leaders and their people to desist from “the accusations, the threats, the causes for mutual distrust” so as to avoid the worst.

But all those prayers and appeals did not halt the war machine of Catholic and Protestant Germany; nor did they indicate the way to peace for Catholic Italy or for Shintoist Japan. And no excommunication was threatened against members of any religion for killing others of the same religion. So the slaughter of brother by brother went on for six years, backed by the clergy of every nation.

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Pope Pius XII announced: “We define it to be a dogma revealed by God that the Immaculate Mother of God, Mary ever Virgin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven.”​—Munificentissimus Deus.

Belief in Mary’s bodily journey to heaven was no longer optional among Catholics​—it was now Church dogma. Pope Pius XII declared that “if anyone . . . dare to deny or voluntarily cast doubt on what We have defined, he should know that he has fallen short of the Divine and Catholic Faith.”

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In 1951 Pope Pius XII made a speech to a group of midwives. Reaffirming the belief that “the state of grace at the moment of death is absolutely necessary for salvation,” he encouraged the midwives to perform the baptism rite themselves if it appeared likely that a newborn child was going to die. “Do not, then, fail in performing this charitable service,” he urged.

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On December 8, 1939, just three months after the outbreak of World War II, Pope Pius XII issued the pastoral letter Asperis Commoti Anxietatibus. The letter was addressed to chaplains in armies of the warring nations, and it urged those on both sides to have confidence in their respective military bishops. The letter admonished the chaplains “as fighters under the flags of their country to fight also for the Church.”

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The Vatican went further in tacitly consenting to Hitler’s atrocities. During the long decade of Nazi terror, the Roman pontiff kept quiet while hundreds of thousands of Catholic soldiers were fighting and dying for the glory of the Nazi regime and while millions of other unfortunates were being liquidated in Hitler’s gas chambers.

THE POPE’S SILENCE

In his book Franz von Papen​—His Life and Times, published in 1939, H. W. Blood-Ryan describes in detail the intrigues whereby that papal knight brought Hitler to power and negotiated the Vatican’s concordat with the Nazis. With regard to the terrible pogroms, which included the Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others, the author states: “Why did Pacelli [Pope Pius XII] keep silent? Because in von Papen’s plan for a Holy Roman Empire of Western Germans he saw in the future a stronger Catholic Church, with the Vatican back again in the seat of temporal power . . . That same Pacelli is now wielding the power of spiritual dictatorship over millions of souls, yet scarcely a whisper was raised at Hitlerian aggression and persecution. . . . As I write these lines, three days of slaughter have passed and not a prayer has come from the Vatican for the souls of the contestants, quite half of whom are Catholic. Terrible will be the reckoning when these men, stripped of all their earthly influences, stand before their God, Who will ask for an accounting. What can be their excuse? Nothing!”

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