Madam, - Peter Thompson (November 24th) overstates things by writing that Pius XII "suppressed an encyclical of his predecessor, Pius XI" and that the encyclical "had been ready for publication".
There is no evidence that before he died in February 1939 Pius XI read the draft prepared by three Jesuits, let alone approved it. The verb "suppressed", with all its connotations, doesn't apply. It is applicable, however, to the Nazi reaction to the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorgetwo years previously (see Letters, November 11th). Following its issue, many priests were arrested and Catholic publishing houses and printing presses were expropriated.
The claim of "Pius XII's equivocal attitude in the years before he became Pope" runs contrary to historical evidence. On October 11th, 1930 the Vatican newspaper quoted Pacelli's office as stating that "belonging to the National Socialist Party of Hitler is irreconcilable with Catholic conscience". Page 64 of The Myth of Hitler's Popeby Rabbi David Dalin states that "throughout the 1930s, the Nazi press lampooned Pacelli as Pius XI's 'Jew-loving' cardinal because of the more than 55 protests he sent the Nazi regime while serving as secretary of state. His outspoken opposition to Nazism led Hitler's regime to lobby against him as successor to Pius XI. The day after his election, the Berlin Morgenpostlamented: 'The election of Cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favour in Germany because he was always opposed to Nazism and practically determined the (pro-Jewish) policies of the Vatican under his predecessor'."
Surely those who claim Pacelli was a pro-Nazi, anti-Semite are obliged to produce some solid, historical evidence.
It is worth considering attitudes and actions away from Rome. Between September 1938 and the outbreak of the war a year later, many countries, including the United States and Britain, began to put up barriers to Jewish immigration. In May 1939, the ocean liner St Louis, carrying 906 German Jews was refused entry to the US (see pages 39 and 46 of Never Again, a history of the Holocaust, by Sir Martin Gilbert).
- Yours, etc,