Dimitri Cavalli has an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post – "Was Pius XII really Hitler’s Pope?"

Pope Benedict’s recent visit to Auschwitz helped rekindle the controversy over the actions of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust. Although some Jewish leaders and Catholic writers often condemn Pius XII today, the wartime Jewish press had a favorable opinion of the pope.

In March 1939, many Jewish newspapers in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Jerusalem welcomed Pope Pius’s election and described him as a friend of democracy. In an editorial (March 6, 1939), The Palestine Post, the predecessor of The Jerusalem Post, observed, "Pius XII has clearly shown that he intends to carry on [Pius XI’s] work for freedom and peace…we remember that he must have had a large part to play in the recent opposition to pernicious race theories and certain aspects of totalitarianism…"

On October 27, 1939, the pope’s first encyclical, "Summi Pontificatus," was made public. The American Israelite in Cincinnati (November 9, 1939) asserted that the encyclical "contains a ringing denunciation of all forces which put the state above the will of the people, a condemnation of dictators and disseminators of racism who have plunged the world into chaos."

On January 26, 1940, the Jewish Advocate in Boston reported, "The Vatican radio this week broadcast an outspoken denunciation of German atrocities and persecution in Nazi [occupied] Poland, declaring they affronted the moral conscience of mankind."

This broadcast graphically described atrocities against Jews and Catholics and gave independent confirmation to reports about Nazi atrocities, which the Reich previously dismissed as Allied propaganda.