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623 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2022
“In His exalted mission the Holy Father must maintain strictest neutrality. However, I believe that in His heart he cannot wish for the victory of the Jews, the Bolsheviks, and the Lutherans.”Questions about whether Pope Pius XII’s silence on the persecution of Jews during the Second World War was principled opposition in trying times or active collaboration with German Nazis and Italian Fascists have lingered ever since they were first asked in 1939. It is only with the 2020 opening of the Vatican archives to the public that definitive answers could be reached, answers that cut through an intentional fog created by church authorities over decades beginning with the fall of Mussolini in 1943. This narrative takes the controversy and now, as author James Carroll noted, “the dispute [is] resolved, case closed.” Literally, with not a spark of sunlight in the case file.
- King Victor Emmanuel about Pius XII
“The Vatican will be the only State which has not condemned the persecution of the Jews.”
- Francis D’Arcy Osbourne, British Envoy to the Vatican
“His horizon is bounded by the Alps and the Sicilian straits. The robbed and starving in Greece, in France, in Belgium, Holland, Austria, in concentration camps—religious, priests, seminarians, the enslaved workers—does their liberation mean nothing to Vat[ican]? Sad, sad.”
- Rev. Vincent McCormick, former head of Georgetown University