Pius XII / between silence, strategy, and survival

 

Pope Pius XII visiting Piazza San Giovanni after the bombings of Rome on 13 August 1943

Pius XII: between silence, strategy, and survival

Tracing the life, rise, and complex wartime role of Eugenio Pacelli in an era of global upheaval

15 JANUARY 2026, 

BRENDA LEE BOHEN

So, who was Pius XII? Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Pacelli became Pope Pius XII on March 2, 1939. His parents were Virginia Graziosi and Filippo Pacelli. His father was dean of the consistorial lawyers, and his brother, Francesco, was a jurist of the Holy See and member of the Vatican Commission that prepared the editing of the Lateran Pacts, an agreement with the Italian State that legally separated the Vatican from the nation of Italy and compensated the Vatican for the loss of the Papal States conquered by the Kingdom of Italy in 1870. The Vatican City was all that was left of the Church’s holdings and was legally separated into its own sovereign country in an agreement with the Prime Minister, Benito Mussolini, in 1929. The Pacelli family was very familiar with the safe and slow judicial offices of the Roman Curia.

Gary L. Krupp / The other story of Pacelli

 

Monument to Pius XII (Mar 2, 1939-Oct 9, 1958) Eugenio Pacelli by Francesco Messina, 1963

Gary L. Krupp: the other story of Pacelli

What newly examined documents reveal about Pius XII, the Vatican, and Jewish survival under nazi pressure

15 APRIL 2026, 

BRENDA LEE BOHEN

Rome, 1929: Mussolini said that the Jewish people have been in Rome since the time of the Etruscan kings. He suggested that maybe the Roman Jews provided the clothes after the Sabine women were taken. There were thousands of Jews during the time of Augustus, and they were asked to mourn at Caesar’s funeral pyre. They will be left undisturbed.