1938年4月，梵蒂冈外交官红衣主教尤金尼奥·帕切利向美国官员发送了一份机密备忘录。在便条中，他表达了对纳粹政权的反感:“纳粹的诚信证据”是“完全缺乏的”。...与该政权达成协议的可能性是“毫无疑问的”一年后，帕切利升任教皇，成为庇护十二世。他再也没有说过那些感受。

正是在大屠杀期间，庇护和梵蒂冈的沉默导致了历史学家宣布教皇为纳粹同情者。在大屠杀中，全欧洲有600多万犹太人被杀害。由于20世纪30年代的那些公报在第二次世界大战期间和此后的许多年里一直无人知晓，皮乌斯被冠以“希特勒的教皇”的称号

75年来解放奥斯威辛集中营在波兰，150多名历史学家和研究人员将首次访问梵蒂冈的庇护十二世档案，这一记录在近一个世纪里基本上被梵蒂冈所保护。关于皮乌斯的学术研究，以及意大利在大屠杀中的共谋，在没有直接接触档案的情况下被移交，产生了关于战时教皇的战争传说。

在3月2日档案开放之前，红衣主教何塞·托伦蒂诺·卡拉·德·门多萨告诉记者，国籍、信仰和意识形态不会阻止研究人员申请使用梵蒂冈使徒图书馆的许可。“教会没有理由害怕历史，”他告诉记者。

梵蒂冈负责与犹太人宗教关系的最高官员诺伯特·霍夫曼神父在接受路透社采访时说:“我认为你不会找到确凿的证据。”

多年来，美国和罗马的教会官员被教皇的负面形象吓住了，部分原因是以下书籍的成功希特勒的教皇作者:约翰·康威尔康斯坦丁之剑作者詹姆斯·卡罗尔。这些书认为，庇护是纳粹罪行的同谋，因为他在德国占领期间保持沉默。

“我们知道，在公开场合，他保持沉默，但在私下里，他可能有所帮助，例如，通过为藏匿犹太人的修道院和修道院提供资金，”艾丽莎·勒夫特说，她将在今年夏天去档案馆研究一本关于大屠杀期间法国天主教会的书，告知新闻周刊。"我认为并希望这些档案能显示出道德权威在危险时期的重要性。"

1950年，梵蒂冈，圣母升天仪式中的庇护十二世。

从1939年到1958年，庇护在一段艰难时期领导了教会。他不同意自己对纳粹行动的怀疑，也不担心对教会的压制。他担任这一职务的时候，民主领袖和政策席卷整个欧洲，类似于今天极右和民粹主义运动的兴起。罗马天主教会曾表示，当1000多名犹太人被从罗马带走并送去送死时，皮乌斯从未进行干预，但他确实将数千名犹太人隔离在全国各地的宗教机构中。

意大利各地8000多名犹太人最终死于纳粹集中营，其中30000人一直躲藏着，直到盟军解放了他们。

美国犹太人委员会宗教间事务国际主任拉比大卫·罗森在致以下人士的声明中写道:“我们相信，对这些档案材料的独立学术审查将使人们更清楚地了解罗马教廷在此期间采取了哪些立场和步骤，并有助于解决这方面持续存在的辩论和争议。”新闻周刊。“这种必要的透明度也是教会的功劳，并将进一步加强天主教会和犹太社区之间在过去55年中建立的相互信任和良好关系。”

皮乌斯对占领的公开立场被仔细审查了几十年。然后在2003年，在研究一部不相关的传记时，一位耶稣会历史学家在一篇文章中发现并描述了20世纪30年代美国总领事的外交文件和报告。

2012年，以色列大屠杀博物馆和纪念馆亚德·瓦舍姆(Yad Vashem)修改了一个关于教皇行为的展览，将文字从说皮乌斯“没有干预”反对从罗马驱逐的犹太人的行动改为说他“没有公开抗议”此次修订是在庇护十一世档案馆开放后进行的，该档案馆有30，000卷，其中有很多关于皮乌斯十二世的已知资料。

几个档案馆将在3月开放，供研究人员和学者使用，其中最大的是梵蒂冈使徒档案馆。对理解那些年的政治历史至关重要的还有梵蒂冈国务秘书处和梵蒂冈信仰学说档案馆。

布朗大学人类学和意大利研究教授大卫·科策在一封电子邮件中写道:“这不仅仅是理解教会历史的问题，而是更好地理解这些多事之秋的欧洲和世界历史，不仅仅是战争年代，还有战后的政治冲突和戏剧。”。

克尔策说，对罗马天主教会的关注和教皇对犹太人大屠杀的沉默是错误的。

“对我来说，更重要的问题是教会(以及新教教会)在导致大屠杀的几十年中妖魔化犹太人的过程中扮演的角色，”他说，“因此，即使不是几十万，也是几万认为自己是好天主教徒或好新教徒的欧洲人可以谋杀犹太婴儿、犹太儿童、犹太妇女和犹太老人。”

2009年，教皇本笃十六世通过认定忧心忡忡的庇护人过着“英雄”的生活，使庇护人更接近于成为圣徒。教皇方济各在2014年说，圣徒的奇迹还没有被发现，尽管他称庇护是“犹太人的伟大捍卫者”，最终留下了批判接受基督教美德的生命的最后几页不成文。

这篇文章已经用美国犹太委员会的声明进行了更新。

 

OPENING OF 'HITLER'S POPE' ARCHIVE MAY SHED MORE LIGHT ON ROLES OF VATICAN AND PIUS XII DURING WORLD WAR II

In April 1938, the Vatican diplomat Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli sent a confidential memorandum to American officials. In the note, he expressed antipathy toward the Nazi regime: "Evidence of good faith" by the Nazis was "completely lacking. ... The possibility of an agreement" with the regime was "out of question." One year later, Pacelli ascended to the papacy, becoming Pope Pius XII. He never spoke of those feelings again.

It was this silence by Pius and the Vatican during the Holocaust—in which more than six million Jews were killed across Europe—that led historians to declare the pope a Nazi sympathizer. As those communiques from the 1930s remained unknown during the Second World War and for many years after, Pius was branded "Hitler's Pope."

Seventy-five years since the liberation the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, more than 150 historians and researchers will access for the first time the Vatican archives of Pius XII, a record largely shielded by the Vatican for nearly a century. Scholarship on Pius, and Italy's complicity in the Holocaust, devolved without direct access to the archives, birthing warring legends about the wartime pontificate.

Ahead of the archives opening on March 2, Cardinal José Tolentino Calaça de Mendonça told reporters that nationality, faith and ideology would not preclude researchers from requesting permission to use the Vatican's Apostolic Library. "The church has no reason to fear history," he told reporters.

In an interview with Reuters, Father Norbert Hofmann, the top Vatican official in charge of religious relations with Jews, said: "I don't think you will find a smoking gun."

For years the case for whether Pius should be beatified—the final step toward sainthood—hung in the balance as church officials in the United States and Rome were deterred by negative images of the pope, stemming in part from the success of books such as Hitler's Pope by John Cornwell and Constantine's Sword by James Carroll. The books argued Pius was complicit in Nazi crimes for his silence throughout the German occupation.

"We know that publicly, he was silent, but privately, he may have helped, for example, by providing funding for convents and monasteries that were hiding Jews," Aliza Luft, who will be at the archives this summer researching a book about the Catholic Church in France during the Holocaust, told Newsweek. "I think and hope the archives will show how important moral authorities are in dangerous times."

Pope Pius XII during the Assumption of Mary ceremony, Vatican 1950.

Pius led the church during a fraught period, from 1939 to 1958. He was at odds with his leeriness of Nazi actions and worry about suppression of the Church. He held the post at a time when democratic leaders and policies swept across Europe, similar to the rise of alt-right and populist movements today. The Roman Catholic Church has said that Pius never intervened when more than 1,000 Jews were taken from Rome and sent to their deaths, but that he did sequester thousands of Jews in religious institutions nationwide.

More than 8,000 Jews throughout Italy eventually died in Nazi camps, with 30,000 having lived in hiding until Allied forces liberated them.

"We trust that the independent scholarly review of these archival materials will provide greater clarity as to what positions and steps were taken during this period by the Holy See, and help resolve the persistent debates and controversy in this regard," Rabbi David Rosen, International Director of Interreligious Affairs for the American Jewish Committee, wrote in a statement to Newsweek. "Such necessary transparency is also to the credit of the Church and will further enhance the mutual trust and excellent relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish community built up over the last 55 years."

Pius' public stance on the occupation was scrutinized for decades. Then in 2003, while researching an unrelated biography, the diplomatic documents and a report by an American consul general from the 1930s were discovered and described in an article written by a Jesuit historian.

In 2012, Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum and memorial, revised an exhibit about the pope's actions, changing the language from saying Pius "did not intervene" in actions against the Jews deported from Rome to noting he "did not publicly protest." The revision followed the opening of the Pius XI archives, 30,000 volumes where much of what is known about Pius XII originates.

Several archives will be accessible to researchers and academics with the opening in March, the largest of which is the Vatican Apostolic Archive. Paramount to understanding the political history of those years are also the Vatican Secretariat of State and the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith archives.

"This is not simply a matter of understanding Church history, but getting a better understanding of European and world history for these eventful years, not only the years of the war, but the political conflicts and dramas of the postwar years," David Kertzer, a professor of anthropology and Italian studies at Brown University whose research focuses primarily on the Italian Fascist regime, wrote in an email.

Kertzer said the focus on the Roman Catholic Church and the pope's silence about the Jewish genocide was misplaced.

"For me the much more important question is the role played by the Church (and the Protestant churches as well) in demonizing the Jews in the decades leading up to the Holocaust," he said, "and so allowing tens if not hundreds of thousands of Europeans thinking themselves good Catholics or good Protestants to murder Jewish babies, Jewish children, Jewish women, Jewish aged."

Pope Benedict XVI edged Pius closer to clearing his name toward sainthood in 2009 by determining the fraught Pius had lived a "heroic" life. Pope Francis said in 2014 that a miracle toward sainthood had not been identified, though he called Pius "a great defender of the Jews," ultimately leaving the final pages of a life of critically received Christian virtue unwritten.

This article has been updated with a statement from the AJC.