The Defamation Continues


(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)


Commentary is a politically and culturally conservative monthly published by the American Jewish Committee. After this column was written, The New Republic, a politically and culturally liberal weekly, appeared with a cover story excoriating Pope Pius, while its intensely pro-Israel publisher Martin Peretz was quoted as calling him an evil man. Get in line, gentlemen. Madigan first.

Madigan launched his attack on Pius XII in Commentary last October with a conventional smorgasbord of complaints that the Pope hadn’t done enough to help Jews during World War II.

Predictably, this drew a raft of letters from defenders of Pius XII, published in January. They argued that he had acted bravely and vigorously on behalf of Jews, consistent with a prudent resolve not to provoke still worse Nazi retaliation against them and against Catholics as well. That assessment if his conduct seems about right to me.

The letters were accompanied by a lengthy response from Madigan lambasting the pope. He said in part:

“When Allied raids did indeed damage the Basilica San Lorenzo, Pius finally appeared in public to complain of the danger to the city’s ‘priceless treasures’; neither the Catholic nor the far more imperiled Jewish residents of Rome were among the treasures he had in mind.”

That isn’t true.

On the morning of July 19, 1943, the Allies bombed Rome. More than 500 American bombers dropped 1,200 tons of explosives on and around train yards and military depots. The sixth-century Basilica of St. Laurence Outside-the-Walls was partially demolished, as was the Campo Verano Cemetery, where the remains of the pope’s parents were blown from their graves. Contemporary estimates put the number of dead at well over 1,000.

Refusing to go to a shelter, the pope watched the two-and-a-half hour raid from his study window. When the all-clear sounded, he took the cash reserves out of the Vatican Bank and drove into the city of Rome, where he prayed, comforted the injured, and distributed about 2 million lire in assistance. Returning to the Vatican, he composed a letter to President Roosevelt appealing for peace. He also wrote the Italian government demanding to know whether it had kept its pledge to remove military targets from the city. When the San Giovanni district was bombed the following month, he was again among the first on the scene.

In 1948, recalling the San Lorenzo bombing, Pius XII wrote: “Seldom perhaps have the shepherd and the faithful of the bishopric of Rome been as closely united as in the common mourning of July 19…. This day, however, gave us an opportunity to come in close contact with the suffering and frightened population of our beloved native town. Up to the last day of our life we will still remember this sorrowful meeting.”

There is much to argue about where the Holocaust is concerned. Did Pope Pius and the Catholic Church do enough? Other Christian churches? The Allied powers? International Jewish organizations and the Jews of the United States? But the decency and compassion of Pius XII should not be in dispute. The defaming of his memory must stop.

Avatar photo

By

Russell Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, DC. He is the author of more than twenty books and previously served as secretary for public affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference.

Subscribe to CE
(It's free)

Go to Catholic Exchange homepage

MENU