BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

From left: To be canonized, Mary McKillop of Australia and Andre Bessette of Canada; John Paul II and Pius XII, proclaimed Venerable today; and Polish Solidarity chaplain and martyr, Jerzy Popieluszki, to be beatified.


It is very surprising that Andrea Tornielli and Paolo Rodari - the two Vaticanistas generally considered to be most 'wired into' the Curia - both write in their blogs today that they were caught entirely by surprise that Benedict XVI decided to promulgate the heroic virtues of Pius XII, and not just of John Paul II.

I am surprised they did not at all look up the Australian media which all this week had been buzzing with understandable excitement that the country was finally going to get its first saint! On Dec. 15, I posted a story from the Sydney Morning Herald in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread
benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=8593...
which anticipated not just the approval for canonization of Blessed Mary McKillop, but also of Blessed Andre Bessette, and the heroic virtues of both John Paul II and Pius XII.

The Australian newspapers all reported this, citing authoritative sources from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, whereas the Italian media focused only on John Paul II.

That narrow focus is most unusual in Andrea Tornielli, who has written what is probably the most definitive biography of Pius XII so far, and might have been expected to ask his sources in the Vatican, after all the buzz on John Paul II this week, "Well, what about Pius XII, whose decree of 'heroic virtues' was approved by the Congregation in May 2007?"

Here is what Tornielli says in his blog today:

Papa Wojtyla and Pius XII:
Decrees pave the way for beatification
Translated from

Dec. 19, 2009


Benedict XVI, as expected, promulgated today the decree on the heroic virtues of John Paul II.

But the true surprise, unexpected, was his signing the decree on Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli).

The [beatification] process for Papa Wojtyla, as everyone knows, has developed rapidly. But that for Pius XII, which Paul VI initiated at the end of the Second Vatican Council along with the cause for John XXIII [now Blessed], has been languishing.

The cardinals and bishops of the Congregation for saints voted unanimously on Pius XII's heroic virtues in May 2007. But Benedict XVI decided not to promulgate the decree right away, ordering more investigation [into Pius XII's wartime activities].

This supplementary inquiry, based on documents in the Vatican Archives, was concluded a few months back, with absolutely positive results yet again.

Thus, the decree was approved today along with that on John Paul II and many others.


Here is Rodari:

Benedict XVI's strategy
in advancing Pius XII's cause
Translated from

December 19, 2009

Benedict XVI's strategy to make skeptics (among them, many Jews) better 'digest' the unblocking of the beatification process for Pius XII has come to light most unexpectedly - no Vaticanista was able to anticipate today's announcement.

The Pope, in fact, hiding his intentions from everyone (I doubt that even his own private secretary knew it) has promulgated the heroic virtues of Pius XII, along with those of John Paul II.

About Wojtyla, it was known. About Pacelli, no. [No, Mr. Rodari, even people at the Congregation for saints knew, because they leaked it to the Australian media who were primarily interested in the fate of Mary McKillop's cause for canonization],

At this point, the strategy seems clear to me: to make both processes go forward in order to displace attention somewhat from the controversial (to some) Pius XII to the unanimously beloved Wojtyla. Paul VI had initiated the process for Pius XII at the end of the Second Vatican Council.

The decree on Pius XII's heroic virtues was approved by the Congregation for saints in 2007, but awaited Benedict XVI's signature to be promulgated. And significantly, the promulgation comes one month before his scheduled visit to the Synagogue of Rome.

Two Popes, therefore, will move along hand in hand towards beatification - and being together, the criticisms may be diluted.


With all due respect to Rodari, I object that he calls Benedict XVI's action on Pius XII a 'strategy' because it makes the Pope's decision look calculating.

Benedict XVI delayed promulgating the decree on Pius XII out of 'deference', in form but not in intent, to Jewish detractors of Pius XII. In effect, saying: "OK, I will delay the process and order further inquiry" - bending over backwards, really, to show the Jewish critics that he was not ignoring their sensibilities [something Joseph Ratzinger has never done, in any case]. But he obviously was not going to delay the process indefinitely, and this had to come sooner rather than later.

All the more courageous a step for its closeness in time to the coming visit to the Rome synagogue - though I wouldn't rule it out that the Chief Rabbi of Rome calls it off in yet another fit of pique.

The other defect in Rodari's argument is that the Wojtyla and Pacelli processes are hardly analogous. John Paul II already has the first miracle all but officially confirmed, and is widely expected to be beatified by October next year. Investigation of any post-mortem miracle attributed to Pius XII has yet to start.

And no, John Paul II's cause won't detract or distract the attention of Pius XII's most rabid critics - on the contrary, the Jewish detractors will sing the praises of John Paul II for his openings to the Jews as a 'contrast' to what they call Pius XII's indifference to the Holocaust.

Here's a hastily assembled backgrounder from Apcom, but it will do for now:


Benedict XVI decides to promulgate
Pius XII's heroic virtues after
more than a year of heated polemics




ROME, Dec. 19 (Translated from Apcom) - Benedict XVI's decision to sign the decree on the 'heroid virtues' of Pius XII comes after more than a year of harsh polemics over the role of the late Pope with regard to the Holocaust.

During that time, Benedict XVI spoke out on a few significant occasions in praise of his predecessor.

The latest was last October, at a concert attended by Italian president Giorgio Napolitano, when the Pope underscored how Pius XII had raised his voice in 1939 against the war towards which National Socialism was heading, and which "with the tragedy of the Shoah, would harm most of all the Jewish people, who became the object of programmed extermination".

In earlier discoruses during the year, Papa Ratzinger extolled the figure of his predecessor. On November 8, 2008, he paid tribute to Pius XII as a precursor of Vatican-II ("The legacy of his Magisterium was assimilated by Vatican-II to be reproposed to successive Christian generations"). [He also pointed out that next to the Bible, Pius XII was the single most cited reference in the Vatican-II documents.]

Thus, without making any reference to the stalled process of beatification, he focused on the 'precious legacy' of this "priest who was in constant and intimate union with God".

"In recent years," Benedict XVI told a conference on 'The legacy of Pius XII and the Second Vatican Council', "when people speak of Pius XII, attention has been concentrated excessively on one single question, and for the most part, seen unilaterally".

"Quite apart from every other consideration," he continued, without going into detail, "this has prevented an appropriate approach to a figure of such great historical and theological weight as Pius XII."

And yet the "Jewish question' is at the center of a historiographic evaluation of Papa Pacelli. As Pope during the Second World War, his choice not to speak out openly to denounce Nazi persecution of the Jews [the nature and extent of the Nazi 'Final Solution' towards the Jews was known only to a few outside Germany at the time] has been harshly condemned by the Jews starting in the early 1960s [after the anti-Pacelli Soveit propaganda play The Deputy planted the Black Legend of his 'culpability']

In October 2008, the accusations got a fresh start with the condemnation of the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Haifa, Sheer Yasuv Cohen, who used the occasion of his being invited by the Pope to address the Bishops' Synodal Asembly on the Word of God, to condemn Pius XII to the media, and were dragged on by the inflammatory rhetoric of the Israeli Minister Isaac Herzog.

In an audience with the Pope shortly thereafter, Rabbi David Rosen and other Jewish leaders formally asked the Pope to open the Vatican Archives to make all the documents pertaining to Pius XII and the war years accessible to researchers. [The Vatican archivist said it would take 6-7 years before the Archive staff could finish labelling and cataloguing all these documents, so that they can be systematically accessed.]

The controvesy continued to rage in the following months. The postulator for Pius XII's beatification cause, the Jesuit Fr. Peter Gumpel, commented that the delay in the process was due to pressure on Benedict XVI from the Jews, which kept him from signing the decree on Pius XII's heroic virtues that had been unanimously approved by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in May 2007.

"He has been influenced by the many meetings he has had with Jewish representatives," Gumpel said, "who have told him bluntly that if he takes one more step to further the beatification process for Pius XII, relations between Jews and Catholics would be definitely and peremanently compromised".

The issue became even more touchy in the weeks that preceded and up to the Pope's pikgrimage to the Holy Land last May. Benedict XVI visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, but did not visit the Museum gallery where Pius VII is among the figures in a 'Hall of Shame', and a caption to his pictures denounces that he 'kept silent' against the aggressions of Hitler.

[This account does not mention that some militant Jews nitpicked Benedict XVI's remarks in Yad Vashem as deficient because 1) Benedict did not apologize for the Germans; 2) he did not say 'six million Jews' died in the Shoah; and 3) that he said they were 'killed' not 'murdered'.]

The Holy See maintains that Pius XII's public silence was a choice of prophetic prudence, not cowardice, and that he carried out an underground campaign of assistance and rescue for Italian Jews. It is well documented that in the war years, Catholic churches, monasteries and convents all over Italy sheltered Jews and other persecuted persons.

Also, the Church points out that beatification and canonization are purely internal to the Church. [And that candidates for sainthood are not expected or required to be 'perfect'.]

Likewise, the Vatican points out that the Jewish condemnation of Papa Pacelli started after the staging and publication of the play The Deputy which set out to defame Pius XII, hypothesizing without historical basis about his World War II decisions.

But Benedict XVI waited more than one and half years to sign the decree that would re-start the beatification process. The positio submitted in support of Pius XII's heroic virtues was contained in six volumes with a total of 3,000 pages.

In June 2009, Vatican press director Fr. Fderico Lombardi replied to the statements of Fr. Gumpel, saying: "With regard to the statements reported in the news media about the cause for Pius XII's beatification, the decision on when to sign the decree of heroic virtue rests exclusively with the Holy Father, who must be allowed to make his evaluation and decision freely. If he thinks that the matter requires further study and reflection, his position must be respected without the need for unjustified and inopportune interventions".

In fact, the Pope did ask for further studies beyond that submitted by Fr. Gumpel and his associate Fr. Molinari. It was never officially announced, but the Pope entrusted the review of archival documents on Pius XII to the Dominican Ambrosius Eszer, a German scholar.

Eszer completed his review last summer. Among documents he uncovered were letters of thanks to the Vatican from Jewish communities in Germany, Austria and Bohemia for assistance given to them in the face of Nazi persecution.

The next step in the beatification process is to identify and verify a miracle attributed to Pius XII's intercession after his death. Meanwhile, the question of Pius XII will continue to be a bone of contention between the Jewish world and the Catholic Church.

A rare exception to the Jewish opposition is the American 'Pave the Way' Foundation, which has sponsored seminars and publications upholding the spiritual and material support that the late Pope gave to persecuted Jews in World War II.