Pope Pius XII: Diplomat and Minister
Publisher
:
Éditions du Cerf
Parution date
:
2003
EAN
:
9782204071970
Description
From 1933 on, the Church under Pope Pius XII was faced with a formidable and twofold challenge: WWII and the spread of totalitarianism throughout Europe. In this long-overdue and first rigorously comprehensive biography of Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII) or “Hitler’s Pope” Rome-based French historian Philippe Chenaux provides new insights into the question of his silence in face of the mass murder of six million Jews, as well as millions of Soviet prisoners of war. One of the great errors of recent historiography, Chenaux argues, is to have separated the question of the Pope vis-à-vis the Shoah from other problems of Vatican politics during this period. Thanks to the decision of John Paul II last year to unseal secret Vatican archives on Germany for the period 1922-1939, Chenaux furnishes these at last, arguing that the problem cannot be treated apart and independently of other issues at large within the Church at that time. The goal of his inquiry is to place the Pope’s attitude within the context of Vatican politics of the first half of the 20th century, uncovering some surprising facts along the way. Chenaux follows all the phases of Pius XII’s career, from the chancellery to his election as sovereign pontificate in March of 1939, the “greatest diplomat " of the Holy See, and relates the years after 1945 when he was Minister of the Universal Church, delving deeply into questions of theology and the Pope’s vision of the Church’s role in the post-war era and beyond.
Author
Philippe Chenaux : Philippe Chenaux is a professor of Modern and Contemporary Church History at the University of Latran in Rome. He is the author of Entre Maurras et Maritain, une génération intellectuelle catholique (1920-1930), Cerf, 1999.
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