Hitler's Pope

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The reputation of the mid-century Pope Pius XII is curiously suspended: Was he an Angelic Shepherd or the Black Sheep of the Roman Catholic Church? Since the 1960s the Church has been fighting an indictment for official silence during the holocaust in Nazi Germany. Last year the charge was compounded by John Cornwell’s accusation that the wartime Pope Pius XII had given Hitler a critical hand-up in his rise to power in Germany in 1933. None of which has stopped a movement in the Vatican to make a saint of the ascetic Eugenio Pacelli.

At stake in the dispute are competing visions of history and of the present day Church. John Cornwell is on the side of those who want a Church of Collegial Bishops and empowered believers; he argues that the Vatican compromised itself with Hitler because it was determined to centralise its own power against dissidence and change in the modern world. Arguing Pius XII this hour on The Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

John Cornwell, Author of Hitler’s Pope.