Simon Caldwell

This papal visit is a good time to reprieve Pius XII

Simon Caldwell says that the wartime Pope was no Nazi sympathiser: on the contrary, he was a thorn in Hitler’s side and a protector of persecuted Jews

Simon Caldwell says that the wartime Pope was no Nazi sympathiser: on the contrary, he was a thorn in Hitler’s side and a protector of persecuted Jews

The Pope has done an impressive PR job this week, trying once and for all to scotch the suspicion that he and his Church are anti-Semitic. ‘Sadly, anti-Semitism continues to rear its ugly head in many parts of the world,’ he said as he visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. ‘This is totally unacceptable. Every effort must be made to combat anti-Semitism wherever it is found.’ President Peres and Prime Minister Netanyahu watched approvingly as Benedict XVI laid a wreath on a stone covering the ashes of people killed in the Holocaust. Operation ‘White Robe’, as Israeli security named the papal visit, was proving a success.

But if Catholics and Jews are to bury the hatchet for good (and, as the Pope says, religious types should really stick together in these secular times) there’s another ghost that must be laid to rest — that of Pope Pius XII, the wartime Pope, so often and so wrongly accused of being ‘Hitler’s Pope’.

It’s such a widely held conviction that Pius was anti-Semitic that there’s even an exhibit of him at Yad Vashem (one the Pope chose not to visit), suggesting that he was at the very least a coward. ‘When Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz, the Pope did not intervene’, says an inscription.

It’s time the truth was told. And the truth is that Pius was a good man who worked hard to save as many Jewish lives as he could; and that when the Vatican opens its secret archive in 2013, Pius’s reputation will be restored. As the distinguished historian Sir Martin Gilbert says, the Yad Vashem exhibit amounts to a ‘dangerous’ misrepresentation of the actions of a pope who should be considered a righteous gentile.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in