David Kertzer – The Pope at War

A Patricia H. Labalme Friends of the Library Lecture on the topic of a new book, “The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler” by the historian David Kertzer (2000 Resident), took place at the American Academy in Rome with the author. Additional speakers were Ruth Ben-Ghiat (2022 Resident), Lutz Klinkhammer (German Historical Institute in Rome), Simon Levis Sullam (University of Venice, Ca’ Foscari), and Marla Stone, Andrew W. Mellon Humanities Professor (1996 Fellow).

Based on newly opened Vatican archives, “The Pope at War” is a riveting book about Pope Pius XII and his actions during World War II, including how he responded to the Holocaust. Kertzer is the Paul Dupee Jr. University Professor of Social Science and a professor of anthropology and Italian studies at Brown University, where he served as provost from 2006 to 2011. He is the author of twelve books, including “The Pope and Mussolini” (2014), winner of a Pulitzer Prize.

[skippy]

What Ruth says is EXACTLY what I have been thinking about as I read this book right now….

[juliocesarpimentaguedes]

I read here in Brazil "The Pope and Mussolini", about the tenebrous relationship between the Pope Pius XI and the Italian dictator!

[skippy]

This book is phenomenal. Absolutely heartbreaking.

[Imperiused]

Really good talk. I need to get this book!

[LKemp-lrky]

READ "Hitler's Pope" and Revelation 17 also 18. Then solve the riddle.

[ThethSeahorse]

I suppose the bottom line is……is there sufficient….interesting material for a movie to be made?

[DD-bxrb]

Truly, Pius XII was a righteous gentile, which is why the Nazis were calling him a “Jew loving” cardinal before he became pope.

At the end of the Second World War, Pope Pius XII was universally acclaimed for his courageous leadership. The Jewish historian Pinchas Lapide acknowledged that the Church saved the lives of 850, 000 Jews in Slovakia, Croatia, Romania, and Hungary. Rome’s chief rabbi, Israel Zolli, converted to Catholicism. To thank and honor Pope Pius XII, he took the name Eugenio, after Eugenio Pacelli, the pope's birth name.

When Pius XII died, Israel’s Foreign Minister Golda Meir wrote, “When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the pope was raised for the victims.” Leonard Bernstein asked the audience at a performance of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for a minute of silence “for the passing of a very great man, Pope Pius XII.”

Within five years after the pope’s death, however, efforts began to calumniate Pius. Soviet disinformation sought to discredit him. But it was especially the 1963 play, The Deputy, by Rolf Hochhuth, an unknown clerk at a German publishing house and a radical leftist, that painted Pius XII as a pro-Nazi anti-Semite who was silent while 6 million Jews were murdered.

The actual record did not stop the slander. Robert Graham S.J., a scholar of the period, was asked to explain why. With all the gruesome information coming out about the Nazi death camps in the 1960s and 1970s, someone “needed to be blamed for the Holocaust.” And a pope fits the bill.

[budgibson]

The catholic cult still running strong

[diplomaticexorcist]

Too bad there isn't a Holy Father which God is at work, and the tyrants who for whatever reason act the way they do,
are rather put in their place. That if such a Holy Father not by the eyes and desire of man, but of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Soirit would remind these tyrants what comes after death: the fires of Hell.

A stalwart strong Holy Father that does not fall into the gambit of self attachment and selfishness of tyrants. Who by God's grace, in any diplomatic entity, put these men (or could be women too) in their place. For women, by word. For men, by act of bravery, courage, temperance, fortitude, patience, and perseverance.

If Pope Pius met Hitler, and showed what the Church is like to tyrants, and turned the whole Nazi party over on its' face in as much as Saint Louis De Montfort had to no problem taking men out of a bar and to Mass.

That's the spirit we need just as then, today!

Didn't Our Lady say in the end Her Immaculate Heart would triumph? I think there is something to this.

[zacktong]

Like pealing back the layers of fruit or vegetables this fascinating account is clearly facilitated by Frances and the curiate who want the information to be brought out and facilitate the process wherever possible. But the terrific constraints of the time certainly must not be too easily dismissed. Even in this day with Ukraine constraints are ever present. But the American out right turning of a blind eye clearly has played a role as well and may even be present today with the Bishops Conference implacable resistance. And it continues in far too many countries.

[nickmedley]

Shoddy historian with anti-Catholic bias.

[Jimboken]

David Kertzer hater of catholics gets another podium for yet another catholic bashing session.