Book Description
The explosive untold story of the most dangerous
churchman in modern history--drawn from secret archives by an
award-winning Roman Catholic journalist
Eugenio Pacelli, Pius XII--a man with unprecedented power for
good and evil--was pope from 1939 to 1958. Today, still
shadowed by his failure to condemn Hitler's Final Solution,
he is at the same time nearing canonization. Backed by new
research and exclusive access to a wealth of Vatican and
Jesuit archives, John Cornwell tells for the first time, in
depth, the truth about Pacelli's long career as a Vatican
diplomat and the accord between Pacelli and Hitler that
helped sweep the Nazis to unhindered power.
Hitler's Pope shows how Pacelli's entire life and career led
to this, from a brilliant young Vatican lawyer drafting new
papal power for the twentieth century to his 1933 Concordat
with Hitler that muzzled protest by Germany's Catholic
community, the most powerful in the world. Cornwell's
explosive conclusion is that without Pacelli's contribution,
Hitler might never have come to power or been able to press
forward with the Holocaust.
As searing and provocative as David Wyman's The
Abandonment of the Jews or Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's
Willing Executioners, Hitler's Pope conclusively documents
Pius XII's anti-Semitism, narcissism, and calamitous mix of
political and spiritual ambition--and it shows how many of
Pacelli's policies are reasserting themselves today under the
reign of John Paul II. It will surely spark a worldwide furor
of controversy, both inside and outside the Catholic Church.
"Eugenio Pacelli was not a monster; his case is far more
complex, more tragic than that. The interest of his story
depends on a fatal combination of high spiritual aspirations
in conflict with soaring ambitions for unprecedented power
and control."--from the Preface
"Pius XII and the Jews . . . the whole thing is too sad
and serious for bitterness."--Thomas Merton
