During the drafting of the letter, the Second World War commenced with the German/Soviet invasion of Catholic Poland—the "dread tempest of war is already raging despite all Our efforts to avert it". Unable to stop the spread of war, Pius—the first pope to use radio extensively—made a series of Christmas broadcasts in which he returned to a number of themes raised by Benedict XV during World War I.
In 1935, Pacelli was named Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church.
[296] Books such as Joseph Lichten's A Question of Judgment (1963), written in response to The Deputy, defended Pius XII's actions during the war. [67] A total of 16 concordats and treaties with European states had been concluded in the ten-year period 1922–1932. He appointed Ercole Consalvi as his Secretary of State. [102], With few exceptions, Italian prelates accepted the changes positively; there was no protest movement or open opposition to the internationalization efforts.[103].
[209] In 1939, the Pope employed a Jewish cartographer, Roberto Almagia, to work on old maps in the Vatican library. [citation needed], Galeazzi-Lisi reported that heat in the halls, where the body of the late Pope lay in state, caused chemical reactions which required it to be treated twice after the original preparation. [239] Soon afterward, when deportations from Italy were imminent, 477 Jews were hidden in the Vatican itself and another 4,238 were protected in Roman monasteries and convents. [272] On the other hand, Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center said, "...there would be a great distortion of history" if Pius XII were canonized. [68], The Reichskonkordat, signed on 20 July 1933, between Germany and the Holy See, while thus a part of an overall Vatican policy, was controversial from its beginning. "Monsignore mio, you thank me, for not letting me do what I wanted to do". Secretly distributed by an army of motorcyclists and read from every German Catholic Church pulpit on Palm Sunday, it condemned the paganism of the National Socialism ideology. [323], The 47 questions by the six scholars were grouped into three parts: (a) 27 specific questions on existing documents,[324] mostly asking for background and additional information such as drafts of the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, which was largely written by Eugenio Pacelli.
[236], In January 1943, Pius XII declined to denounce publicly the Nazi discrimination against the Jews, following requests to do so from Władysław Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish government-in-exile, and Bishop Konrad von Preysing of Berlin. When he was 18 he began his theology studies at Rome's oldest seminary, Tridentine Collegio Capranica Seminary. The Lateran treaties with Italy (1929) were concluded before Pacelli became Secretary of State. [300] Pacepa indicated that he was involved in contacting eastern bloc agents close the Vatican in order to fabricate the story to be used for the attack against the wartime pope. [51] This traditional adversarial relationship with Judaism would be reversed in Nostra aetate issued during the Second Vatican Council. [280] In that same documentary, the cause's vice-postulator Marc Lindeijer stated that several miracles attributed to the late pope are reported to the postulation every year but the individuals' related to the healings do not come forward to enact diocesan proceedings of investigation. Pope Leo XIII Pope Pius X, or Giuseppe Sarto, served as the pope of the Catholic Church from August 1903 to 1914. "Eugenio Pacelli als Nuntius in Deutschland" in Herbert Schambeck.