Any claim that the Pope in any way sympathized with the Nazis is totally beyond the realm of possibility. Before he was even crowned, his predecessor, Pope Pius XI, had written an entire encyclical, Mit Brennen-der Sorge, condemning Nazism as the "pagan worship of the state" in early 1937. Upon coming to the throne, Pius XII adopted the dove of peace into his coat of arms and peace was the subject of his very first radio address. He urged for peace and an end to all war and oppression throughout his reign. His very first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, was a condemnation of all totalitarianism and his 1944 Christmas message urged for peace and democracy to bring an end to the World War.
However, in spite of all this, enemies of the Church still shout that Pius XII did not issue any *specific* condemnation of the atrocities against the Jews. On the face of it, such an accusation may be true, but it totally ignores the reasons why; one being that Pius XII was more concerned with actually saving Jewish lives than with making condemning speeches. Such a condemnation would not have saved a single Jewish life and would have instead incurred the wrath of the Nazi state to even greater degree on Catholics as well. Instead of issuing meaningless protests, Pope Pius XII worked to actually save lives by granting Vatican passports to get Jews out of Nazi territory, by hiding Jews with Catholic families, granting them sanctuary in Catholic Churches, even taking in a large number inside the Vatican itself to protect them from Nazi and Fascist forces. It is sickening and sad that we live in a world that values words even above actions when it comes to helping those in need.
Not only was Pope Pius XII working to save the lives of Jews, he was also giving vital support to the efforts to overthrow Adolf Hitler. He acted as a link between the British government and the anti-Nazi elements in Germany who opposed Hitler and his regime. Again, we see Pius XII relying on action rather than words which would have helped no one and only made conditions worse. Right in the middle of Axis occupied Rome he saved the lives of thousands. He allowed Jews to join the Palatine Guard, saved 500 Jews on a ship that others had refused to allow in their ports. In 1967 an Israeli official estimated that Pope Pius XII had saved the lives of somewhere between 700,000 and 860,000 Jews from Hitler's death camps.
The Nazis themselves recognized Pius XII as their greatest enemy even if modern minds do not. SS-Chief Himmler called him a greater threat than either Churchill or Roosevelt and Propaganda Minister Goebbels said that the destruction of the Church would be the party's first order of business after the war was over. While even the Allies were joining forces with murderous dictators like Stalin, Pope Pius XII was condemning all tyranny and all oppression and was actually taking action to save the lives of real people who needed help. Far from being controversial, Pius XII is undoubtedly one of the greatest popes the Church has ever had, a fact which moved even the chief Rabbi of Rome to convert to Catholicism after the war. He has a cause for canonization under way, which many believe to be a lost cause, but regardless of what happens here on earth, I have no doubt that Pope Pius XII is among the saints in Heaven even now and interceding on behalf of those who call upon him for help, as always.
