Book Notes

Nun tells the story of Pope Pius XII and POWs

By: Joan Ruddiman
I first met Sister Margherita Marchione several years ago when she spoke at a local church on the topic of Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust. She generously shared the books she has written with me and was pleased with my review of her work. I value a friendship with the woman I called "the feisty nun." I also admire her work in ferreting out sources — photos, documents, interviews with survivors on all sides — to share what she sees as the truth about Pope Pius XII.
   Margherita Marchione, a sister with the Religious Teachers Filippini, breaks every mold her heritage, calling and age might suggest. Her Italian immigrant parents were dismayed when their cherished youngest daughter at age 13 announced she was leaving home for the convent. As a sister in a conservative order, she attended Columbia University for both a masters and Ph.D. Her first course was a study of Machiavelli, a critic of Catholicism. It was her dissertation on the Italian poet Clemente Rebora that launched her career as a noted scholar. Her work on Philip Mazzei, the Italian revolutionary and correspondent to Thomas Jefferson, and the role he played in the formation of our young country’s democracy earned her the great respect of historians. She has received numerous national and international awards for her scholarly work.
   At age 85, she travels the world, promoting the story, backed by credible research, of the role Pope Pius XII played in promoting social justice in an age of terrible darkness.
   In what Sister Marchione sees as revisionist history, Pope Pius has been "defamed" by those who harbor ill will to the Catholic Church or who have not studied the historical record that supports the wartime pontiff’s extraordinary efforts on behalf of Jews.
   She has several titles in print on the subject of Pope Pius, including a biography "Pope Pius XII, Architect for Peace." Two books tackle head-on the history of the Holocaust in Roman Catholic Italy and the pope’s role. "Consensus and Controversy: Defending Pope Pius XII" and "Yours is a Precious Witness: Memoirs of Jews and Catholics in Wartime Italy" make a strong case for the pro-active role the Vatican and Italians took to save the Jews. Even in her autobiography, "The Fighting Nun: My Story," she devotes more than two chapters to setting the record straight.
   She holds an unabashed reverence and respect for Pope Pius XII. In her long career as an academic and religious, Sister Marchione has made many trips to Rome — and met several popes. But Pius is the pope of her youth, and the spiritual leader to whom she feels the closest affinity. She knows his sister, and has close associations with his family.
   She is open about her bias. However, when Pope Pius’s relationship with Hitler and the Nazis was questioned, Sister Marchione marshaled her formidable skills as a researcher and writer to provide evidence to counter what she sees as slander. She is more balanced in her response than those who revile him.
   The British historian John Cornwell in his book, "Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII," claims that the pope’s silence during the Holocaust condemned thousands of Jews to death by the Nazis. He further argues that Pope Pius cut deals with Hitler in order to save German Catholics from persecution by the Nazis. Ultimately, Cornwell condemns Pope Pius as an anti-Semite who was a willing agent to Hitler’s master plan.
   In person and in her writing, she builds a dramatic counter-argument based on extensive research, most of it primary documents, diaries, and interviews of first hand accounts from Italian lay people, religious and Jews. She has faced off with Cornwell on several occasions on radio and television programs, and has successfully faced him down.
   As an historian, Sister Marchione explores the historical context in order to understand the historic record. Was Pope Pius silent? No, actually he spoke out officially on several occasions against Hitler and the actions of Nazi Germany. Sister Marchione provides photos of those official documents and newspaper accounts of the Vatican’s official actions. Moreover, she connects the historical dots by providing the chronology of those official statements and the violent repercussions in Germany and in Poland to Catholics, including nuns and priests. In Dachau in Poland alone, 2,800 priests were imprisoned. More than half died there.
   What Pope Pius determined was that the Church, and Rome, could do more good by acting subversively rather than speaking officially against Hitler. To that end, convents, monasteries, even the Vatican itself, on the pope’s orders, were opened as havens for Jews. One amazing photograph in Sister Marchione’s collection shows a dozen young Jewish mothers holding their infants in what is captioned "the Nursery." She points out that the tapestry visible in the background has the pope’s seal. The pope gave up his private quarters to house these women and their babies.
   As a Filippini, Sister Marchione has access to the sisters of her order in Italy who participated in the sheltering of Jews. They share stories of setting up their cots throughout the convents, including the basements, so Jewish families could have the small bedrooms. The priests and nuns had other special resources besides having spacious buildings with a lot of rooms. Of critical importance, they maintained quantities of food for their own large populations and therefore did not raise suspicions when shopping for large orders. Moreover, she notes, "these people could take risks because they had no dependents." However, the religious were not immune to suspicion and arrest. She writes, "Those sent to prison were treated with brutality and contempt. Many were killed in reprisal for helping antifascists and Jews."
   Rather than being "Hitler’s Pope," Sister Marchione proclaims that the record shows the pontiff was cleverly subversive in sheltering Jews as he protected the Church against Nazi forces.
   Now in her latest book, Sister Marchione tells the story of the Vatican Information Office, which brought relief to war victims. Ever the researcher, she examines the Vatican’s Secret Archives where sharing over 20 million letters addressed to His Holiness from families and friends beg his assistance in finding missing soldiers and prisoners of war. After reading many, she shares over 100 translated letters in "Crusade of Charity: Pope Pius XII and POWs (1939-1945)" published by the Paulist Press this year.
   Fordham University historian Oscar Halecki wrote in 1951, "One of the pope’s most remarkable achievements during the war was the successful establishment of the Vatican Information Office, a feat which ranks favorably with any similar military or diplomatic undertaking."
   The evidence is overwhelming. Sister Marchione maintains a steady drumbeat of facts and support from esteemed diplomats and historians to squelch any suggestion that the Vatican, as directed by Pope Pius XII, was not actively working daily to "mitigate the effects of wars he could not prevent."
   Sister Marchione captures the chaos and confusion of a war-torn world and the abject despair of mothers, wives, soldiers and children of all races and religions who reached out to the Vatican for help. In one passage, she explains how Vatican Radio was used to contact prisoners of war:
   "Names were spelled out letter by letter to avoid misunderstandings. The letter of each name was given the initial of famous Italian cities, since it was neither possible to repeat nor to clarify a conversation. This is how names, regardless of race or religion, were announced in response to the sighs and prayers of countless grieving mothers and wives. Indeed, Vatican Radio’s service for tracing missing person, both civil and military, helped compensate for the lack of normal communication."
   In the body of the book, the translated letters are organized in part chronologically starting with the beginning of the conflict, the political and religious persecutions. Then letters are presented in chapters titled "Civilians," "Endangered Foreigners," "Combatants," "Greek-Albanian and Balkan Front," "Russian Campaign," and more. The words speak volumes about the extent of the Vatican’s efforts to meet so many in need and great emotional pain.
   Not only Sister Marchione but also other reputable historians including Martin Gilbert in "Never Again: The History of the Holocaust," are seriously questioning the caliber of historical research done by Cornwell and others who suggest Pope Pius worked in collusion with Hitler. Sheer quantitative numbers alone dispute the critics; Italy stands with Denmark in saving the greatest number of Jews from the Holocaust.
   In 1940, to Time magazine, Albert Einstein said the same: "Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth."
   History buffs will appreciate "Crusade of Charity: Pope Pius XII and POWs (1939-1945)" with its many first-person accounts and the vast store of shared primary sources, most of which appears in print for the first time. The book includes notes and a complete index as well as an appendix with additional Vatican documents and a bibliography.
   For those who wonder about the role the Catholic Church played during the war and if the innuendo about "Hitler’s Pope" could have some basis in fact, once again Sister Marchione provides ample evidence that good works were being done by the pope and all his minions — within the ranks of the religious as well as faithful Catholics throughout Italy. Thousands of Jewish lives were saved and now the record shows hundreds of thousands more of all races and religions were aided by the efforts of the Vatican Information Office as established by Pope Pius XII.
   He was, Sister Marchione says, "a man of extraordinary charity."
   Joan Ruddiman, Ed. D., is a teacher and friend of the Allentown Public Library.