“Delusional” and “arrogant”: when Cardinal Pacelli, the future Pius XII, intensified his criticism of Hitler. A text unknown until today.

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An unpublished document is fueling the historical debate surrounding Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII.

The text, dating back to 1937, shows the then Cardinal Secretary of State firmly intervening against Nazi propaganda and in defense of the American cardinal George Mundelein, guilty of having publicly attacked Adolf Hitler.

The controversy arose after a private speech delivered by Mundelein in Chicago, in which the prelate mocked the Führer by calling him an “Austrian paperhanger” and a “little upstart,” while openly criticizing Goebbels, Göring, and the German regime.

Berlin reacted immediately, furiously protesting to the Holy See.

 

Pacelli on Hitler: “Arrogant and Delusional”

It was then that Pacelli, destined two years later to become Pope under the name of Pius XII, took a stand in a diplomatic text now brought back to public attention during the conference “Eugenio Pacelli – Pius XII Between the City of God and the City of Man” by Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of Vatican media.

In the document, Pacelli refused to condemn the American cardinal’s speech.

Doing so, he said, “would be an act of weakness that would only make the leaders of National Socialism and Hitler himself even more arrogant, since in his self-delusion he believes that the entire world must immediately bow before him.”

At the time, not many Secretaries of State were capable of confronting Hitler in such a way, even publicly calling him arrogant and delusional while further reinforcing the delegitimization already advanced by the American cardinal.

The future Pius XII also “saved” the Archbishop of Chicago from the humiliation of a retraction, leading the then Pope Pius XI to express his support by describing Pacelli as “our Cardinal Secretary of State, for whom no praise is sufficient.”

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The Historical Evidence on Pius XII

A significant stance, especially in light of the accusations that for decades portrayed Pius XII as excessively cautious toward Nazism.

The conference in Rome was organized as part of the celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of the Roman pontiff’s birth, bringing together historians and scholars committed to reassessing Pacelli’s figure in light of newly uncovered archival documents.

In recent years, in fact, the opening of the Vatican archives relating to the pontificate of Pius XII has revived studies on his diplomatic activity both before and after his election in 1939.

At a 2023 conference, for example, a previously unpublished message sent by Pius XII to the Bishop of Würzburg, Matthias Ehrenfried, was revealed. In it, he wrote the emblematic words: “Where the Pope would like to cry out loudly, his office compels him to restrain himself and remain silent.”

A prudence now considered justified by several twentieth-century historians, such as David Bidussa and Angelo Varni, who acknowledge that public condemnations would have been “counterproductive for the persecuted themselves” and that, for this reason, the Vatican preferred “instead to act concretely through a hidden rescue effort” carried out diplomatically in favor of the Jews.

The experience of the furious Nazi reaction to the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, written “against” Hitler, taught an important lesson: the Germans unleashed a harsh repression against the German Church, helping convince Pius XII of the need to maintain diplomatic caution during the conflict.

 

The Rabbis in Favor of Pius XII

Several rabbis and Jewish scholars, beginning with David Gil Dalin (author of “The Myth of Hitler’s Pope”, Piemme 2007), have documented Pope Pacelli’s concern over possible reprisals against the Jews in the event of a direct confrontation with Hitler.

And yet, at the same time, there was also the work of saving thousands of Jews, so much so that Dalin himself suggested honoring Pius XII as a “Righteous Among the Nations,” as was also requested by several prominent Jewish contemporaries of the Pope (Isaac Herzog, Golda Meir, Chaim Weizmann, Pinchas Lapide, etc.).

Another of the many recent discoveries came in 2022, when historian Antonello Carvigiani discovered a new document proving Pius XII’s direct request to save and hide Jews in Roman convents.

From the recent discoveries concerning the years preceding his pontificate to the new materials emerging from the Vatican archives, the historical profile of Pius XII no longer deserves to be reduced to ideological simplifications, but must instead be reconsidered in light of the evidence that restores the truth about his actions during the war.