The Church & the Holocaust

IN APRIL 1938, VATICAN DIPLOMAT Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli sent a confidential memorandum to American officials. In the note, he expressed antipathy toward the Nazi regime: “Evidence of good faith” by the Nazis was “completely lacking…. The possibility of an agreement” with the regime was “out of question.” One year later, Pacelli ascended to the papacy, becoming Pope Pius XII. He never spoke of those feelings again.

It was this silence by Pius and the Vatican during the Holocaust—in which more than six million Jews were killed across Europe—that led historians to declare the