St. LOUIS — The perception that Pope Pius XII was a man who aided and abetted Hitler's Holocaust through inaction and indifference might be changing, thanks in part to the accidental discovery of high-level diplomatic correspondence that portrays the Pope as vehemently anti-Hitler.

“The idea of Pope Pius XII as ‘Hitler's Pope’ has become lodged in the public mind-set, but I'm not sure it's an accurate legacy,” said Charles Gallagher, a Jesuit scholastic and historian at St. Louis University.

Gallagher, 38, grabbed international headlines in August for digging up two unpublished documents that call into question the portrayal of Pius XII as a leader who stood idly by as Hitler exterminated millions of Jews and thousands of Catholics during World War II. In fact, Gallagher's research shows that Pius XII distrusted Hitler and believed he was a wicked scoundrel.

“Ultimately, as more documentation is uncovered over time, the record may show that the condemnation of Hitler by Pope Pius XII was more intense than is indicated even in the official documentation that has been released by the Vatican pertaining to this debate,” Gallagher told the Register.

While researching another topic, Gallagher, who is studying for the priesthood, found a confidential memorandum written in April 1938 by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli — the Vatican's secretary of state at the time who would become pope the following year. Gallagher found the memo among the diplomatic papers of Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, father of President John F. Kennedy, at the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.

Cardinal Pacelli's memorandum was written to the senior Kennedy, who at the time was serving as ambassador to Great Britain. In it, Cardinal Pacelli said a compromise with Hitler should be “out of the question,” and he further condemns the Nazis by explaining that the regime was lacking any “evidence of good faith.” The memo said the Church “at times felt powerless and isolated in its daily struggle against all sorts of political excesses from the Bolsheviks to the new pagans arising among the young Aryan generation.”

Cardinal Pacelli's memorandum goes on to explain that his concerns about Hitler reflect his personal views, which he invited Ambassador Kennedy to share with his “friend at home” — likely,

Gallagher explained, a reference to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Additional Evidence

At Harvard University, Gallagher recently turned up additional evidence that Pius XII had disdain for Hitler. In a memorandum filed in 1939, shortly after Cardinal Pacelli was made Pope, Alfred Klieforth, U.S. consul general at the time, described a conversation he had with Cardinal Pacelli two years earlier.

“His views, while they are well known, surprised me by their extremeness,” Klieforth wrote. “He said that he opposed unalterably every compromise with National Socialism. He regarded Hitler not only as an untrustworthy scoundrel but also as a fundamentally wicked person. He did not believe Hitler capable of moderation.”

Historians have commented that Gallagher's discoveries support other arguments and evidence that Pius XII was far from being the Nazi sympathizer authors such as John Cornwell, who wrote Hitler's Pope, have portrayed him to be.

J. Michael Phayer, professor emeritus of history at Marquette University, told the Los Angeles Times it has long been argued that Pius XII disliked Hitler and considered him evil.

“But we have never had that in words before. We now know he's already formed his opinions clear back in 1937 while he was still secretary of state,” Phayer said, explaining the magnitude of Gallagher's findings.

Still Not Moved

It would take quite a bit more than what Gallagher found, however, to convince the most outspoken critics of Pius XII that he bears little or no responsibility for aiding Hitler. Cornwell, for example, told The Independent newspaper in London that Gallagher's findings change nothing.

Cornwell asserted that Gallagher's discovery might be part of a “Vatican campaign,” adding: “This sort of thing is fairly typical of people who are trying to reinstate Pius XII in the affections of the Catholic Church, which is not an easy task.”

Other critics say Pius XII's personal views about Hitler ring hollow when held up against the Pope's foreign policy toward Hitler's regime.

Aaron Breitbart, a senior researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center — an international Jewish human-rights organization in Los Angeles — acknowledges that Hitler implored Italian Catholics to defend Jews. However, Breitbart believes the Pope was willing to take such a stand only when it was clear that Hitler was losing the war.

Breitbart insists he has never viewed Pius XII as pro-Hitler or anti-Semitic in any way. However, he said Hitler's rise to power was bolstered when Cardinal Pacelli, as secretary of state, signed the Concordat in 1933 — an agreement that granted freedom of practice to the Catholic Church in Germany. In return for that freedom, as was done in concordats with various other governments, the Church agreed to separate religion from politics.

“Pope Pius XII, while serving as the Vatican's secretary of state, was the primary compromiser who allowed Hitler to operate without opposition from the Church in Germany,” Breitbart argued. “That agreement made him the primary and the first major compromiser with Hitler whether he understood that at the time or not.”

Breitbart also argues that Pius XII showed weak leadership skills by failing to excommunicate Hitler and SS leader Heinrich Himmler, who were Catholic. That would have sent a strong message to the Germans, he said, adding that the Nazis were “subject to public opinion and they feared public opposition.”

“There were many, many great Catholics who gave their lives and did wonderful things for the Jewish people during the Holocaust, “ Breitbart said. “I simply don't consider Pope Pius XII as one of them.”

Gallagher said he holds tremendous respect for Breitbart's research and scholarship. But critics of Pius XII's foreign policy don't always take into account the potentially lethal ramifications that could have resulted from aggravating Hitler at the height of World War II, he said. One wrong move, Gallagher explained, and Hitler might have killed even more Christians and Jews.

Though press reports have suggested Gallagher's findings could ease concerns about canonizing Pius XII, Gallagher thinks that's a stretch.

“I think these documents bear no weight on the issue of canonization,” he said of his findings. “But they do go some way in dispelling the impression that this Pope was a pawn of Hitler.”

Wayne Laugesen writes from Boulder, Colorado.