God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican

by Gerald Posner

  154 Walsh, Bones of St. Peter, 59.

  155 McDowell, Inside the Vatican, 30–31.

  156 Walsh, The Bones of St. Peter, 122–26, 128–31; Hoffman, The Vatican’s Women, Kindle edition, location 822 of 2992; “Vatican displays Saint Peter’s bones for the first time,” The Guardian, November 24, 2013.

  157 Sereny, Into That Darkness, 142.

  158 Polish Ambassador to Secretary of State, December 19, 1942, Vol. 8, ADSS, 755.

  159 Papée met with Pius about ten times while he was in Rome during the war. He also met frequently with Cardinals Maglione and Montini. In one of his last meetings with Pius, in 1944, the Pope greeted him by raising both his arms as if exasperated: “I have listened again and again to your representations about our unhappy children in Poland. Must I be given the same story yet again?” Sereny, Into That Darkness, 330, 332.

  160 Summary from a War Cabinet Meeting, December 12, 1939 (WM-39-112), 65/2/46, 264–65, Cabinet Papers, National Archives, Kew, UK.

  161 Rafael Medoff, “Sidestepping Genocide, Then and Now,” Commentary, December 13, 2007; see the declaration at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/UN/un1942a.html.

  162 A digital copy of Pius’s 1942 Christmas address is at http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius12/P12CH42.HTM; Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 268, n. 1.

  163 Defenders of Pius, such as author Ronald Rychlak, argue that since Pius “used the Latin word stirps, which means race,” he was therefore referring to Jews since it “had been used throughout Europe for centuries as an explicit reference to Jews.” Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope, 177. The problem with that contention is that Pius did not use stirps when talking about Jews in any other instance. Why would the Pope decide that on the most important address of his Papacy about the Holocaust to be indirect about calling a Jew a Jew?

  164 Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 291; see also, Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 216–17.

  165 Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 219.

  166 Palazzo Ciano, Diary 1937–1947, English reprint of 1947 book (New York: Enigma, 2002), 536–38. Pius’s defenders interpret the broad language of the 1942 Christmas message to be a resounding condemnation of Nazi crimes. They emphasize in particular the sentence about those who “because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline.” Other historians contend that that single sentence was unfortunately lost in the forty-four-minute talk. What is undeniable is that it unquestionably had no impact. See generally Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope, 177–78; Justus George Lawler, Popes and Politics: Reform, Resentment, and the Holocaust (New York: Continuum, 2002), 109–17.

  167 M. James Hennesey, “American Jesuit in Wartime Rome: The Diary of Vincent A. McCormick, SJ. (1942–1945),” Mid America: An Historical Review 56, No. 1 (1974): 36.

  168 Phayer, Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War, 58.

  169 Myra Noveck, “Israel’s Holocaust Museum Softens Its Criticism of Pope Pius XII,” The New York Times, July 1, 2012.

  170 The Minister in Switzerland (Harrison) to the Secretary of State, recounting Tittmann meeting with Pius XII, January 5, 1943, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1943, Volume II, Europe (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), 911–12; see Lawler, Popes and Politics, 110–11. Defenders of Pope Pius cite Vatican Radio broadcasts in 1942 about the atrocities in Poland as evidence the church spoke out about the crimes. The few broadcasts addressed the abuses against the church, however, not the Nazi war against the Jews. The American bishops did release a November 1942 statement expressing “a deep sense of revulsion against the cruel indignities heaped upon the Jews in conquered countries.” It was the very type of declaration most diplomats hoped in vain the Vatican might issue. See generally Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope, 175.

  171 Tittmann to Secretary of State, October 6, 1942, Foreign Relations of the United States, Vol. III (Europe), (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), 777.

  172 Lawler, Popes and Politics, 116.

  173 Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 86–87, 89–90. Slachta had also implored Hungarian church leaders to influence their Slovakian counterparts. She feared that the “hellish and Satanic” treatment of Jews she had witnessed in Slovakia might spill over to Hungary. She inquired about possibly excommunicating Monsignor Tiso, or the country’s prime minister, Bella Tuka, a daily communicant. Her pleas went unanswered.

  174 Maria Schmidt, “Margit Slachta’s Activities in Support of Slovakian Jewry, 1942–43.” Included in Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocides, Vol. 1 (New York: Pergamon, 1989), 207–11.

  175 Morley, Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews During the Holocaust, 82.

  176 Rychlak, Hitler, the War, and the Pope, 304–6. See also Livia Rothkirchen, “Vatican Policy and the ‘Jewish Problem’ in ‘Independent’ Slovakia 1939–1945,” Yad Vashem Studies, 6 (1967), 36.

  177 ADSS 9.147, Pressburg (Bratislava), Chargé d’affaires Bratislava, Giuseppe Burzio to Cardinal Maglione, April 10, 1943, ADSS. Reference: Report number 1517 (AES 2754/43), location and date: Presburg (Bratislava). On March 7, 1943, Burzio sent an Italian translation of the letter dated February 17, 1943 (No. 403/I/1943, AES 2754/43).

  178 Phayer, Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War, Kindle edition, location 632 of 4256. According to Phayer, Stepinac presented the report to Pius a year later during his April 1942 visit. The precise visit during which he passed the grim report is not clear because the Vatican has not released details about the document. However, Secretary of State Maglione wrote to Stepinac a month after his 1943 visit, thanking him for the documentation about what was happening to Jews and Serbs inside Croatia. Maglione was likely commenting on the nine-page report. See Alexander, The Triple Myth, 102–3.

  179 George Weigel, “The Vatican Secret Archives Unveiled,” National Review Online, June 27, 2012; Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 73; Cromwell, Hitler’s Pope, 260.

  180 Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 96–97. The document given by Marie-Benoît to Pius was also omitted from the Vatican’s eleven volumes of Acts and Documents of the Holy See related to the Second World War, Actes et Documents du Saint Siège Relatifs á la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, ADSS. See also Susan Zuccotti, Père Marie-Benoit and Jewish Rescue (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 2013.

  181 Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 96.

  182 Confidential Annex, Conclusions, Minute 3, Air Policy—Bombing Policy, 65/39/3, 16, Cabinet Papers, National Archives, Kew, UK; “Roman Catholics would be gravely distressed by an air bombardment of Rome,” concluded the secret memo distributed to the British civilian and military leadership; Report of 1940 Vatican notice to the Allies, see The Minister in Switzerland (Harrison) to the Secretary of State, January 5, 1943, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1943, Europe, 1943, 913–14; see also Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, 106.

  183 Myron Taylor to FDR, January 1, 1943, Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1943, Volume II, Europe (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), 910–11; see also Minister in Switzerland (Harrison) to the Secretary of State, summarizing Tittmann’s audience with Pius XII, January 5, 1943, Foreign Relations of the United States, Europe, 1943, 911–12, 910-53; Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, 201–2; Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust 62, n. 97.

  184 Although Rome was the focus of the Pope’s entreaties, Secretary of State Maglione lobbied that the bombers should also avoid hitting his own ancestral house near Naples. The Allies, meanwhile, had pleaded in vain with the Pope to condemn the massive civilian casualties from the Nazi aerial attacks on Birmingham and Coventry in November 1942. Monsignor Tardini, one of the Pope’s aides, told the British envoy that while Pius was “very distressed” about those bombings, he would not comment publicly. As for FDR’s assurance about the bombing, see President Roosevelt to Pius XII, June 16, 1943, reprinted in Foreign Relations
of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1943, Volume II, Europe (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), 919–20. As for Eden’s threats, see in the same volume “Memorandum by the Acting Chief of the Division of European Affairs (Atherton) to the Under Secretary of State (Welles), March 8, 1943, 915–16.

  Behind the scenes, the British aggressively kept open their options about whether to bomb Rome. Churchill himself pressed the issue at a dinner party with Myron Taylor: The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Secretary of State, London, December 8, 1942, Foreign Relations of the United States, Europe, 794.

  185 Osborne quoted in Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 216.

  186 Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, 208; Memorandum, Report for the month of July 1943 for the Dominions, India, Burma and the Colonies and Mandated Territories, August 27, 1943 (WP-43-381), 66/40/31, 125, Cabinet Papers, National Archives, Kew, UK.

  187 Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, 207-08; Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 63.

  188 Pius XII to President Roosevelt, July 20, 1943, Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1943, Volume II, Europe (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), 931–32; Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 63, n. 103.

  189 Although prime ministers such as Mussolini ruled effectively with full power, Italy remained technically a monarchy. The royal rule was dissolved finally by a popular referendum on June 2, 1946.

  190 Daniel Jonah Goldenhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 159–60.

  191 Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 273.

  192 Mussolini established his new government—the Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale Italiana)—at Salò on Lake Garda, a Nazi stronghold in northern Italy. See generally Katz, The Battle for Rome, 49.

  193 For details about the Nazi plans to possibly kidnap Pius, see Dan Kurzman, A Special Mission: Hitler’s Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius XII (New York: Da Capo, 2008).

  194 Katz, The Battle for Rome, 39.

  195 David Alvarez and Robert Graham, Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage Against the Vatican, 1939–1945 (Studies in Intelligence) (London: Routledge, 1998), 83–85.

  196 It is not clear if Nogara was in Rome when the German occupation began. There are no reports of what, if anything, was done inside the IOR to protect its financial records in case the Nazis entered the city-state.

  197 Saul Friedländer, Pius XII and the Third Reich: A Documentation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 182.

  198 Weisbord and Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holocaust, 118.

  199 Eugenio Zolli, Before the Dawn: Autobiographical Reflections (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 169-70.

  200 Rychlak, Hitler, the War and the Pope, 204-05; Zolli, Before the Dawn, 170; Weisbord and Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holocaust, 120-21.

  201 Letter from Nogara to Cardinal Maglione, Vol. 9, ADSS, 494. See also Weisbord and Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holocaust, 118–22, 135; Rychlak, Hitler, the War and the Pope, 204–05.

  202 Weisbord and Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holocaust, 121.

  203 Robert Katz, Black Sabbath: A Journey Through a Crime Against Humanity (West Sussex, UK: Littlehampton Book Services, 1969), 85–87.

  204 Katz, The Battle for Rome, 103.

  205 Zuccotti, The Italians and the Holocaust, 101, 104.

  206 Eitel Friedrich Molhausen, the German Consul in Rome, inadvertently saw the secret message from SS chief Heinrich Himmler to Obersturmbannführer Kappler, ordering the implementation of the Final Solution against Rome’s Jews. Molhausen warned Weizsäcker who in turn passed along the word to the Vatican. Leonidas G. Hill, “The Vatican Embassy of Ernst Von Weizsäcker,” 1943–1945, The Journal of Modern History, 39, no. 2, June 1967, 144–47; Weisbord and Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holocaust, 65–66; Robert Katz, Death in Rome (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 25.

  207 Weisbord and Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holocaust, 65–66.

  208 Morley, Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews, 151; Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, 301, 304.

  209 Maglione quote in Morley, Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews, 152,181.

  210 Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 100.

  211 Katz, The Battle for Rome, 106.

  212 Hitler was not the only dictator Hudal admired. He called Mussolini the “brilliant Duce.” Archivo della Congregazione per la dottrina della fede, S.O., R.V. 1934, 29; Prot. 3373/34, Vol. 1, 3–4; see also, Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 76–81; 116–24.

  213 Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, 169–70. It was the Pope’s nephew, Count Carlo Pacelli, the General Counsel of the State of the Vatican, who asked Hudal to intervene. The bishop’s German connections were impeccable, so the Vatican considered him the ideal go-between.

  214 Phayer, Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War, 77; Steinacher, Nazis on the Run.

  215 Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, 216–17. As for the Hudal-Pius friendship, see Alfred Persche, unpublished manuscript titled “Die Aktion Hudal: Das letzte Aufgebot des Abendlandes,” 72–73, archives of Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes (Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance), Vienna. See generally Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 31–33.

  216 Telegram from Weizsäcker to Foreign Office, Berlin, October 17, 1943, Inland Il Geheim, quoted in full in Katz, Black Sabbath, 215.

  217 Some historians have suggested that Pius feared that if he protested, the Germans might detain him or take him as prisoner to Germany.

  218 See Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 155; see also Weisbord and Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holocaust, 63; Katz, The Battle for Rome,109.

  219 Susan Zuccotti, “Pius XII and the Holocaust: The Case in Italy,” in The Italian Refugee: Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, eds. I. Herzer, Kathleen Voight, and J. Burgwin (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 133.

  220 Carroll, Constantine’s Sword, 524.

  221 Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 98. Some Catholic writers, such as Britain’s Joanna Bogle, have argued that the nuns and priests who sheltered Jews did so only as part of an authorized directive from Pius XII. But the work, while highlighting the bravery of many individual clerics and nuns when it came to saving Jews, falls short of conclusively establishing that it was official church policy. See Joanna Bogle, Courage and Conviction: Pius XII, the Bridgettine Nuns and the Rescue of the Jews (Herefordshire, UK: Gracewing, 2013).

  222 Weisbord and Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope, and the Holocaust, 65, 69–82; 121; Blet, Pius XII and the Second World War, 165, 200, 218.

  223 L’Osservatore Romano, June 21, 1948; This was the time during which Pius worked on the two most important encyclicals of his Papacy. But neither was focused on the war or the moral duty of Catholics at times of such unprecedented civilian carnage. Mystic Corporis Christi (On the Mystical Body of Christ) was released in June. It was an ecclesiastical insider’s discourse on why the Pope believed the Church was the living mystical body of Christ: http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius12/P12MYSTI.HTM. The second—Divino Afflante Spiritu (On the Promotion of Biblical Studies)—was released a few months later on September 30. Divino strongly condemned the spiritual exegesis of modernists: http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius12/P12DIVIN.HTM.

  224 Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 289.

  225 Ibid., 289.

  226 Osborne’s memo describing the meeting was not declassified by the British government until December 1998; Richard Z. Chesnoff, Pack of Thieves: How Hitler and Europe Plundered the Jews and Committed the Greatest Theft in History (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 249–50.

  227 Hoffman, Anatomy of the Vatican, 281–82.

  228 Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (New York: Holt, Rinehar
t & Winston, 1985), 623. In 1944, the Pope covertly asked the American government to do its best to stop the resettlement of Jews in northern Italy. By that time, however, the German army had fled Rome and Pius might have felt a bit braver, although still subdued in his opposition to the plight of the Jews.

  229 Vol. 9, ADSS, 426, 274, as cited in Marrus, The Nazi Holocaust, Part 8: Bystanders to the Holocaust, Vol. 3, 1264.

  230 Wistrich, “Reassessing Pope Pius XII’s Attitudes Toward the Holocaust.”

  231 Herczl, Christianity and the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry, 206.

  232 Pius had set a poor precedent in Hungary with his 1943 appointment of Josef Grosz as the country’s second-ranking bishop. Grosz was an avid supporter of Hungary’s fascist party, the Arrow Cross. Many Hungarian Catholics, and even other prelates, interpreted Grosz’s appointment as a tacit approval by Pius of the new bishop’s political views.