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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.

Published: 4 March 2019 15:08 CET
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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HISTORY

Italian archaeologists uncover slave room at Pompeii in ‘rare’ find

Pompeii archaeologists said Saturday they have unearthed the remains of a "slave room" in an exceptionally rare find at a Roman villa destroyed by Mount Vesuvius' eruption nearly 2,000 years ago.

Published: 6 November 2021 14:46 CET
Updated: 8 November 2021 15:51 CET
Archaeologists in Pompeii who discovered a room which likely housed slaves. 
Archaeologists said the newly-discovered room in Pompeii likely housed slaves charged with maintaining chariots.  Photo: Archaeological Park of Pompeii press office.

The little room with three beds, a ceramic pot and a wooden chest was discovered during a dig at the Villa of Civita Giuliana, a suburban villa just a few hundred metres from the rest of the ancient city.

An almost intact ornate Roman chariot was discovered here at the start of this year, and archaeologists said Saturday that the room likely housed slaves charged with maintaining and prepping the chariot.

READ ALSO: 8 things you probably didn’t know about the Romans

“This is a window into the precarious reality of people who rarely appear in historical sources, written almost exclusively by men belonging to the elite,” said Pompeii’s director general Gabriel Zuchtriegel.

Photo: Archaeological Park of Pompeii press office.

The “unique testimony” into how “the weakest in the ancient society lived… is certainly one of the most exciting discoveries in my life as an archaeologist,” he said in a press release.

Pompeii was buried in ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, killing those who hadn’t managed to leave the city in time. They were either crushed by collapsing buildings or killed by thermal shock.

The 16-square metre (170-square feet) room was a cross between a bedroom and a storeroom: as well as three beds – one of which was child sized – there were eight amphorae, stashed in a corner.

Photo: Archaeological Park of Pompeii press office.

The wooden chest held metal and fabric objects that seem to be part of the harnesses of the chariot horses, and a chariot shaft was found resting on one of the beds.

The remains of three horses were found in a stable in a dig earlier this year.

“The room grants us a rare insight into the daily reality of slaves, thanks to the exceptional state of preservation of the room,” the Pompeii archaeological park said.

READ ALSO: Four civilizations in Italy that pre-date the Roman Empire

Image: Archaeological Park of Pompeii press office.

Experts had been able to make plaster casts of the beds and other objects in perishable materials which left their imprint in the cinerite — the rock made of volcanic ash — that covered them, it said.

The beds were made of several roughly worked wooden planks, which could be adjusted according to the height of the person who used them.

The webbed bases of the beds were made of ropes, covered by blankets.

While two were around 1.7 metres long, one measured just 1.4 metres, and may therefore have belonged to a child.

The archaeological park said the three slaves may have been a family.

Archaeologists found several personal objects under the beds, including amphorae for private things, ceramic jugs and what might be a chamber pot.

The room was lit by a small upper window, and there are no traces or wall decorations, just a mark believed to have been left by a lantern hung on a wall.

“This incredible new discovery at Pompeii demonstrates that today the archaeological site has become not only one of the most desirable visitor destinations in the world, but also a place where research is carried out and new and experimental technologies are employed,” said Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini.

“Thanks to this important new discovery, our knowledge of the daily life of ancient Pompeians has been enriched, particularly of that element of society about which little is known even today. Pompeii is a model of study that is unique in the world.”

READ ALSO: Why is Italy called Italy?

The excavation is part of a programme launched in 2017 aimed at fighting illegal activity in the area, including tunnel digging to reach artefacts that can be sold on illicit markets.

The Villa of Civita Giuliana had been the target of systematic looting for years. There was evidence some of the “archaeological heritage” in this so-called Slave Room had also been lost to looters, the park said.

Damage by grave robbers in the villa had been estimated so far at almost two million euros ($2.3 million), it added.

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