Just as the Vatican is gearing up to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Pope Pius XII, two Jews have spoken out to recall the darker side of his papacy. Their tone is neither shrill nor polemical, unlike many articles and books that have appeared over the years accusing Pius of being “Hitler’s Pope” and not doing enough to save Jews from the Holocaust. They do not seem keen to pick an argument with the Vatican just as it is preparing to hold what may be its most open defence of the controversial pontiff. But they raise difficult questions that remain even after Pope Benedict insisted his predecessor “spared no effort” to save Jews during World War Two.

Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen (photo above), the first Jew to address a Vatican synod, told the Roman Catholic bishops there that Jews “cannot forget the sad and painful fact of how many, including great religious leaders, didn’t raise their voice in the effort to save our brethren but chose to keep silent and helped secretly. We cannot forgive and forget it and we hope that you understand.”

The chief rabbi of Haifa in Israel, 80, was less diplomatic a few hours earlier in an interview with our Vatican correspondent Phil Pullella: “We feel that the late pope (Pius) should have spoken up much more strongly than he did … He may have helped in secrecy many of the victims and many of the refugees but the question is ‘could he have raised his voice and would it have helped or not?’ …

“We, as the victims, feel yes. I am not empowered by the families of the millions of deceased to say ‘we forget, we forgive … I have to make it very clear that we, the rabbis, the leadership of the Jewish people, cannot as long as the survivors still feel painful agree that this leader of the Church in a time of crisis should be honored now. It is not our decision. It pains us. We are sorry it is being done.”

Cohen said only God knows if Pius spoke out enough against the Holocaust: “God is the judge … he knows the truth.”

Yehuda Bauer, professor emeritus of Holocaust studies at Hebrew University, prefaced his remarks in The Tablet by saying he was a non-religious Jew just trying to reflect historical reality as best he could. He lamented the fact that Vatican archives for the wartime period are still not open and said Benedict offered no new documentary evidence to back up his claim that Pius had spared no effort to save Jews. “Until the archives are opened, no objective view can emerge,” he said.

“Could he have ’saved the Jews’? I do not think so. The Vatican was isolated,” Bauer continued. “But it is not a matter of practical politics – the Pope was, in his own eyes, as God’s vicar on earth, responsible not only for Catholics, but for all humans. The Pope’s failure was moral and theological, not practical. A public statement would not have changed the fate of the Jews, who were being totally annihilated everywhere the Nazis could find them. Had he spoken out in public, he would probably not have saved a single Jew, but he might conceivably have saved his soul – according to the belief system he genuinely believed in.”

Pope Benedict will celebrate mass in honour of Pius on Thursday and the Vatican will open a photo exhibition about him on October 21. Since he has suspended the synod for the mass and invited all bishops to attend it, Benedict might make a major announcement, for example that he would soon beatify Pius. I wonder if Benedict or other Vatican officials will produce any new documentary evidence or any new moral arguments to answer the criticisms these two men have made.

On October 9, Pope Benedict will lead the Roman Catholic Church in marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Pope Pius XII. There is a lot of interest in what Benedict will say in his homily about his predecessor, arguably the most controversial pontiff of the 20th century because of what he did or did not do to save Jews during the Holocaust. On October 21, the Vatican will open a photographic exhibition on his papacy and on Nov 6-8, two pontifical universities in Rome, the Lateran and the Gregorian, will jointly sponsor a conference on his papacy.

An indication of what Benedict might say on October 9 can be found in his address on September 18 to the Pave the Way Foundation, a mixed Jewish-Catholic group based in the United States and headed by Gary Krupp, a Jew who is also a Knight Commander of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St Gregory the Great.  Pave the Way held a unique three-day symposium in Rome in the days leading up to their audience with the pope at his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo.

The title of the symposium was “Examining the Papacy of Pope Pius XII”. It was attended by, among others, panalists such as Sister Magherita  Marchione, an American nun who is feisty despite her 86 years and who has written extensively in defence of Pius, Fr. Peter Gumpel, the Jesuit who is the relator of the cause for Pius’ sainthood, Eugene J. Fisher, who was in charge of Catholic-Jewish relations for the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) from 1997 to 2007, and Andrea Tornielli, an Italian journalist who has  has written extensively on Pius XII and whose most recent biography on the pontiff was released last year.

One interesting aspect of the symposium was the 200-page dossier that it produced. It is a very useful, user-friendly compendium in defence of Pius. While much of the material was already known to scholars, seeing it all between two covers could potentially sway some of Pius’s detractors.

For example,  it contains a confidential 1939 State Department memo from a U.S. diplomat who knew Pius when he was Vatican nuncio in Berlin before the war and before he became pope. He said that, in a meeting with the then Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future pontiff described Hitler as “not only as an untrustworthy scoundrel but as a fundamentally wicked person.” The diplomat said Pius had told him he “opposed unalterably every compromise with National Socialism”.

The dossier also includes many other entries from individuals and scholars aimed at debunking the concept made popular first in 1963 with the publication of Rolf Hochhuth’s play The Deputy, which accused Pius of being an anti-Semite and a Hitler collaborator, and later in 1999 following John Cornwell’s highly controversial book calling Pius Hitler’s Pope. The symposium’s dossier also includes copies of of newspaper clippings from The New York Times, Reuters, The Associated Press, Palestine Post (later Jerusalem Post) and other news organisations in the period before, during and after the war reporting on Pius efforts to help the Jews and his speeches on their behalf.

While the dossier, much of which is available on-line, may  not convince the most hardened of Pius’ detractors, it certainly is a very useful addition to the ongoing debate in what may prove to be a pivitol year.

Rome isn’t the only place where Pius is under review. In Germany, Hubert Wolf, a Catholic priest and church history professor at Münster University, has just published Papst und Teufel (Pope and Devil), a study of Vatican relations with Germany in the turbulent period from 1917 to 1939. Based on documents from the Vatican archive, whose files have been opened up until Pius’s election as pope in 1939, Wolf recounts the internal Vatican debates on how to deal with the Nazis, whether to put Hitler’s Mein Kampf on the Index of Prohibited Books (they didn’t) and how to speak out against growing anti-Semitism in Germany (through the 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge).

What do you think about Pius? Has he been maligned? Is the tide of opinion turning in his favour?

This November, the Vatican will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of wartime Pope Pius XII. There will be a photo exhibition and a conference on his teachings. That’s the official agenda. Although not be part of the program, there will also be controversy.

Vatican officials at a news conference presenting the initiatives appeared to be making a pre-emptive strike against what will most likely resurface during in November — the seemingly never-ending debate about about what Pius did or did not do, what he did or did not know about the Holocaust and whether he could have done more.

“Pius XII never failed to make his voice heard in a clear and explicit way in different circumstances, when needs called for it, and when there was precise information on facts and their consequences could be seen,” said Monsignor Rino Fisichella, rector of the Pontifical Lateran University.

“It is our hope that this solemn commemoration of such a great pope will offer impetus for more and deeper research without prejudice on his work,” Monsignor Walter Brandmüller, president of the Pontifical Committee for Historic Sciences, said in his prepared speech.

Later, in a question and answer session, Brandmüller lost his cool just a bit and expressed irritation at questions about calls for more opening of the Vatican archives. He effectively said the archives of Jewish organisations such as the World Jewish Congress should be more open and used more, suggesting that scholars would find material supporting the Vatican’s view that Pius did as much as he could under the circumstances.

Addressing a separate issue, Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said the commemorations were in no way intended to promote efforts to beatify Pius, which would put him on the path to sainthood. “These two things are completely different,” he said.

Jewish groups were surprised by Brandmüller’s comments, saying their archives are and always were wide open. It’s unlikely this is the last we hear — from either side — on this issue.

During World War Two, Pope Pius XII was (1) a saintly man, (2) Hitler’s Pope or (3) neither of the above. This question continues to weigh on Catholic-Jewish relations despite all the progress made since the Second Vatican Council. It would be easy to assume that Catholics answer (1) and Jews (2), but the debate is far more complex than that. There are Catholics who say Pius didn’t do enough to help the Jews and Jews who defend him as doing everything he could under the circumstances.

The issue keeps smouldering because the Catholic Church is considering Pius for possible beatification and sainthood. The U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League has urged the Church to suspend the procedure until the Vatican declassifies all its wartime archives. The Vatican opened its archives up to 1939 — the end of the papacy of Pope Pius XI — in 2005, but it is still processing the files from Pope Pius XII’s papacy (1939-1958). In the meantime, the controversy has produced a steady stream of books on Pius XII and the Holocaust, only some of which are thumbnailed below.

Pope Benedict XVI has now slowed down the procedure by asking for a further review of the Pius XII dossier, which is 3,500 pages long. Andrea Tornielli, Vatican correspondent of the Italian daily Il Giornale, has reported that Benedict has also decided to set up a committee to review the issue and is concerned about the possible reaction if the Vatican beatified Pius XII too soon. Tornielli, whose fourth book about Pius XII was published in May, says the pontiff was not a callous anti-Semite as some critics portray him.

“This is a black legend that refuses to die. Pius XII has become a lightning rod for all the presumed responsibilities of the Catholic Church in that period,” Tornielli told our Vatican correspondent Philip Pullella. “It is impossible to have a calm historical debate about Pius because he has been branded ‘the Nazi Pope’ and this is a clear distortion of history.”

Father Peter Gumbel, the Jesuit who heads the Church probe int Pius’s qualification for sainthood, said that the department responsible for saints believed the late pope met the requirements for beatification, the first step towards sainthood. It has documented this in a 3,500-page dossier for his “cause,” the Vatican term for the procedure to declare someone a saint.

“In an important cause like this, the Supreme Pontiff wants to think and wants to see things. He is a man of study,” Gumpel told Pullella. He said he had no official word that Pope Benedict had set up a special committee to review the dossier once again, but he thought the Vatican was right to be cautious, especially given the fact that Jewish community leaders and historians were themselves split over Pius XII and his role.

“The pope wants excellent relations with Israel and with the Jewish community and wants to see if any legitimate problem could arise. .. It will have to be seen from a diplomatic point of view if any reasonable, legitimate objections are arise. I’m certain this is not the case but it is a precaution so the pope can always say this has been examined from every possible angle and he can say ‘I’m sorry, study the matter and you will see that these objections are not true.”

“I personally remain convinced of the merits of this cause. It’s simply a question of time for this decree to be signed.”

Are you convinced that Pius XII was a saintly man? Or Hitler’s Pope? Or do you think this issue has become so polarised that it is difficult, if not impossible, to come to an agreed version of what he did and did not do?