In an encyclical Mit brennender sorge, condemning anti-Semitism, Pius XI said, “None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are ‘as a drop of a bucket’ (Isaiah XI. 15). The encyclical prepared under the direction of Cardinal Pacelli, then Secretary of State, was written in German for wider dissemination in that country. It was smuggled out of Italy, copied and distributed to parish priests to be read from all of the pulpits on Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937… An internal German memo dated March 23, 1937, stated that the encyclical was ‘almost a call to do battle against the Reich government.’ The encyclical, Mit brenneder sorge, was confiscated, its printers were arrested and presses seized…

“Cardinal Pacelli returned to France in 1937, as Cardinal-Legate, to consecrate and dedicate the new basilica in Lisieux during a Eucharistic Congress and made another anti-Nazi statement. He again presided (May 25-30, 1938) at a Eucharistic Congress in Budapest.”

“The Cardinals elected Eugenio Pacelli the 262nd Pope on his sixty-third birthday, March 2, 1939. He received sixty-one out of the sixty-two votes because he did not vote for himself, and was elected Pontiff. After serving the Church under four Popes (Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV and Pius XI) for almost twenty years, Eugenio Pacelli took the name of Pius XII…

“Immediately after his election, Pius XII issued a call for a peace conference of European leaders. Documents show that in a last minute bid to avert bloodshed, the Pope called for a conference involving Italy, France, England, Germany and Poland. Pius XII’s peace plan was based on five points: the defense of small nations, the right to life, disarmament, some new kind of League of Nations, and a plea for the moral principles of justice and love… Pius XII then met with the German Cardinals who had been present in the recent conclave… These meetings provided him direct proof and information that motivated the content of his first encyclical, Summi pontificatus. Dated October 20, 1939, this encyclical was a strong attack on totalitarianism. In it, Pius XII singled out governments, who by their deification of the state, imperiled the spirit of humanity. He spoke about restoring the foundation of human society to its origin in natural law, to its source in Christ, the only true ruler of all men and women of all nations and races.

“Pius XII reprimanded, “What age has been, for all its technical and purely civic progress, more tormented than ours by spiritual emptiness and deep-felt interior poverty?” The world had abandoned Christ’s cross for another [the Swastika] which brings only death…

“On August 24, 1939, he gave each papal representative the text of a speech asking them to convey it to their respective governments. That evening he read the speech to the world [on radio]: ‘The danger is imminent, but there is still time. Nothing is lost with peace; all can be lost with war. Let men return to mutual understanding! Let them begin negotiations anew, conferring with good will and with respect for reciprocal rights.’”

Mostly confined to Vatican City throughout World War II by the occupying Germans, “Pope Pius XII was almost universally regarded as a saintly man, a scholar, a man of peace, and a tower of strength.” After the war, he became the first pontiff to appear on television. When he died on October 9, 1958, the future Israeli prime minister Golda Meir said, “When fearful martyrdom came to our people, the voice of the Pope was raised for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace.”

The Vatican newspaper L’osservatore Romano described his funeral as the greatest in the long history of Rome, surpassing even that of Julius Caesar. Because the body had not been properly embalmed, it began to decompose while it lay in state in St. Peter’s. As the flesh discolored, the corpse emitted such strong odors that one of the Swiss Guards fainted.

The smells and discoloration and the fact that Pius XII had been a regular exerciser and was in good health resulted in the belief by conspiracy theorists that he had been poisoned. A week before his death, he complained of gastric pain and hiccups. He struggled back into his stringent schedule, but one day as his doctor was examining him he suddenly cried in alarm, “Dio mio, non ci vedo!” (My God, I cannot see!) It was a stroke. With his vision rapidly restored, he summoned his secretary of state, Angelo Dell’Acqua, and demanded, “Why have the [papal] audiences been canceled?” He received Holy Communion and Extreme Unction from his German Jesuit secretary, Father Robert Leiber, but he looked at the thermometer when his temperature was being taken, and said, “Non é grave” (It’s not bad) when he saw it read 99°. That night he drank a glass of red wine and called for a recording of Beethoven’s First Symphony. At 7:30 the next morning, a second stroke left him unconscious. It took him 20 hours to die. By Vatican custom, there was no autopsy.

Later, as assertions were made that Pius XII had collaborated with the Nazis, and had done little to aid Jews, demands were raised that the Vatican open its sealed archives on Pius XII’s wartime years. These requests intensified after John Paul II commenced the process to add Pius XII to the catalog of saints.

Perhaps contained in the Vatican archives are documents to shed some light on the relationship between the Holy See and the bosses of organized crime. Because La Cosa Nostra originated in Sicily and spread its tentacles to the United States and around the globe, alleged dealings between minions of the criminal underworld and the Catholic Church have been the subject of movies, such as The Godfather and its sequels and imitators, and almost countless books. Mystery novelist Donna Leon, best known for her subtle and enduring fictional Commissario Guido Brunetti detective series, set in Venice, once asked, “What did Italy do to deserve to have both the Vatican and the Mafia?”

In the nonfiction The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder and the Mafia, Paul L. Williams traced the origin of alleged links between Vatican and Mafia to the deal in 1929 between the Holy See and Mussolini. Through the Lateran Treaty, the Church in Rome received money, tax-free property rights, status as a sovereign state, and the protection of Mussolini’s Fascist government. This resulted in the Vatican being largely insulated against interference from the Nazis during the German occupation of Italy during World War II, described by authors Mark Aarons and John Loftus in Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, the Nazis, and Swiss Banks.

A dramatic example of the Vatican-Mafia alliance [in 1934] involved the venerated cathedral of Naples. Its patron saint, San Gennaro (St. Januarius), Bishop of Beneventum was martyred about 305 A. D. In the Cathedral’s treasure chapel were an altar of solid silver, “a silver bust believed to contain San Gennaro’s head, and a reliquary with two vials of what was supposed to be his blood. [During] the feast of San Gennaro, into the Cathedral thronged clergy, civil officials, and throngs of pious Neapolitans. Bearing aloft the reliquary, a priest brought it before the silver case containing the head” and turned it upside down to exhibit a vial containing an opaque, solid mass. “After an hour of prayers the people beheld the dark mass grow soft, turn red, increase in volume, and bubble into a liquid. “Il miracolo e fatto!” (The miracle is made) cried the officiant. The choir sang a “Te Deum.” The worshippers then scrambled up to the altar rail to kiss the reliquary.