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WORLD WAR TWO

Vatican to open archives of Pius XII, the WW2 pope accused of silence on the Holocaust

Pope Francis announced on Monday that the Vatican will open the secret archives of the wartime pontiff Pius XII in March next year, which could shed light on why the Catholic Church failed to intervene more against the Holocaust.

Vatican to open archives of Pius XII, the WW2 pope accused of silence on the Holocaust
A display critical of Pope Pius XII at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem. Photo: Gali Tibbon/AFP

Researchers have long sought to examine the archives to discover why Pius XII, who was pontiff from 1939 to 1958, did not intervene more against the Holocaust perpetrated by the German Nazis, an attitude denounced as a form of passive complicity.

“I have decided that the opening of the Vatican Archives for the Pontificate of Pius XII will take place on March 2nd 2020,” the pope said. The date is the 81st anniversary of the election of Eugenio Pacelli to the papacy.

“The Church is not afraid of history,” added Francis, recalling that Pius XII found himself as head of the Roman Catholic Church “at one of the saddest and darkest moments of the 20th century”.

READ ALSO: Film claims Italian pope saved 800,000 Jews


Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Pacelli, in 1955. Photo: AFP

Francis said he made the decision understanding that serious historical research will evaluate “in a fair light, with appropriate criticism the moments of exaltation of this pope and, no doubt also moments of serious difficulties, tormenting decisions, and Christian and humane care”.

For many historians, Pius XII could have condemned more forcefully the massacre of Jews by the Nazis, but he didn't do it out of diplomatic caution and in order not to put Catholics in danger in occupied Europe.

The Vatican was officially neutral during the war. Other historians point out that Pius XII saved tens of thousands of Italian Jews by ordering convents to open their doors to take them in.

Yad Vashem — The World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem — said it “commends” the decision, “which will enable objective and open research as well as comprehensive discourse on issues related to the conduct of the Vatican in particular, and the Catholic Church in general, during the Holocaust”.

It said it “expects that researchers will be granted full access to all documents stored in the archives”.

In 2012, the centre changed the caption on Pius XII in its museum, saying his reaction during the Holocaust continues to be a “matter of controversy among scholars”.

READ ALSO: 

According to Vatican Archives head Bishop Sergio Pagano, preparations to make the documents public began under Francis's predecessor Benedict XVI in 2006. The Holy See hoped everything would be ready by 2015, but the amount of documents and a lack of staff pushed that deadline back, he told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. 

Pagano said the painstaking work of archiving “a crucial period for the Church and for the world” will allow historians to discover a “superhuman work of Christian humanism”.
 
Francis said in studying the archives the wartime pope's decisions may appear to some as “reticence” and were instead attempts “to maintain, in times of the deepest darkness and cruelty, the small flame of humanitarian initiatives, of hidden but active diplomacy”.
 
In a 2014 interview the Argentine pontiff turned the spotlight away from the Vatican, saying that the Allies “had photographs of the railway routes that the trains took to the concentration camps… Tell me, why didn't they bomb” them?
 
And in a separate interview he described how Pius XII hid Jews in the Castel Gandolfo summer papal palace near Rome. “There, in the pope's room, on his very bed, 42 babies were born, Jewish children and of other persecuted people who were sheltered there,” he said. 

The perception of wartime passivity was in part fostered by a play, The Vicar by German playwright Rolf Hochhuth in 1963, which was later adapted by Greek director Costa-Gavras in the 2002 film Amen, which did much to damage Pius XII's image on the issue.

While popes John XXIII (1958-1963), Paul VI (1963-1978) and John Paul II (1978-2005) have been made saints, the beatification of Pius XII — a necessary step on the path to Catholic sainthood — is at a standstill due to the controversies surrounding his wartime papacy. 

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TODAY IN FRANCE

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

France has paved the way towards paying reparations to more relatives of Algerians who sided with France in their country's independence war but were then interned in French camps.

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

READ ALSO Who are the Harkis and why are they still a sore subject in France?

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

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