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All persons of religious conscience and intellectual honesty are troubled when individual piety and inner spirituality do not lead to compassion and kindness. They note with sad puzzlement that religious nations are not inherently more civil, and that religious leaders do not invariably display moral courage or good judgment. An attempt to understand this conundrum forms the focus of John Cornwell's book, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. A Cambridge scholar and journalist, Cornwell takes as his protagonist a complex religious leader and historical figure, Eugenio Pacelli, who in 1939 became Pope Pius XII, and who is currently being reviewed by the Vatican Curia for canonization into sainthood. As one might infer from the book's title, the author draws quite unflattering conclusions about this Pope's character and legacy. Specifically, Cornwell demonstrates that, prior to the Second World War, Pacelli's activity may have inadvertently helped Hitler achieve dictatorial power in Germany, and that the most significant feature of his ecclesiastical career was his failure to speak out against the Nazi genocide program.
This book will be of interest to the psychoanalytic community because in elucidating the development of Pius XII's personality and his decision as leader of the Catholic Church, it also attempts to understand how historical and intrapsychic forces interface in shaping human destiny. I read this book as a psychodynamic clinician interested in religiosity, but also as an Orthodox Jew with ancestors and relatives murdered in the Holocaust. I was already familiar with evidence that the Pius XII was indifferent, at best, to the plight of European Jews during the Second World War. What was enlightening and truly disturbing for me, and indeed this is the book's significant contribution, was the Pius XII is not