The Pope at War Quotes

“What differentiated the good from the bad was their attitude toward the church.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“As the pope saw it, there were bad Fascists and good Fascists, the bad men of the Nazi regime and the good men.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“Pius XII made it his supreme purpose to assure the survival of the Catholic Church in a time of turmoil.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“Eager to protect Vatican City and other church institutions in the world capital of Catholicism, Pius XII was determined to maintain cordial relations with the Nazi authorities.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“plan for a future in which Germany would dominate continental Europe. His first and foremost duty, as he saw it, was to protect the institutional church.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“As Osborne observed, the pope had waited to denounce totalitarian states until the only one left was the Soviet Union.[”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“Erased from memory are the pope’s regular assurances to the Duce that he need only inform him of anti-Fascist priests, and he would have them silenced.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“Ambiguous phrases buried amid thousands of words of baroque oratory have come to be heralded as clear denunciations of the Nazi extermination of Europe’s Jews.[”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“The Vatican statement completely ignores the heavy use the Fascists and Nazis made of the popes’ long history of warnings about the evil influence of Jews and the repressive measures they took against Jews.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“Knowing how vulnerable Rome now was to German occupation, the pope was not eager to be seen celebrating Italy’s betrayal of its Axis ally.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“In his four years as pope, Pius XII had never spoken out against Italy’s anti-Jewish racial laws.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“I got the clear impression that Roosevelt’s message was the first bomb to fall on the Vatican. The Holy See is in fact aware of the embarrassing position in which Roosevelt has tried to put the pope.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“the priest said that the Poles could not understand what they termed the Vatican’s “crime of silence.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“In November 1941 Pius XII would learn in much greater detail about the unfolding mass murder of Europe’s Jews”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“Bowing to government pressure, the Vatican was itself collaborating in the surveillance, having its own gendarmes spy on the movements of diplomats from enemy countries living in Vatican City.[”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“A racism that is limited to the biological sphere is not condemned.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“every time that Italy’s behavior came into question,” the pope was reluctant to say anything.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“Pius XII has been crushed by recent events…. I fear that his personal character is not equal to the dramatic situation found in Europe today.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“the Pope has expressed his favorable impression of Germany’s conduct in the war,” saying that “the German army was acting well, without excesses,”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“From the moment Italy entered the war, Osborne observed, “the moral prestige of the Papacy began to decline….”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“I spoke in terms of morality, rights, honor, justice; and they responded to me in terms of method, practicality, tradition, and statistics.”[”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“Critics accuse him of a weakness for dictatorships and a distaste for Jews,”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“Pope Pius XII was certainly not “Hitler’s pope,” as John Cornwell’s intentionally provocative book title would have it.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“What those courageous actions during the war were he did not say.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“He made not even the briefest mention, indeed no mention at all, of the Nazis’ extermination of Europe’s Jews.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“People credit Pope for saving Rome,” explained Osborne in reporting the event to London, “though he had nothing to do with it.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“How could the Vatican justify taking such a great interest in the Jews, asked Dell’Acqua, when it had not complained about the violence Germany had directed against “Aryan people who have professed the Catholic religion from birth”?”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“fifty kilograms of gold”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“state secret matter.”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

“Because the humiliations and the punishments inflicted on the Germans this time will be even worse than those that followed Versailles;”
― David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler