Prisoners of War
by Sr. Margherita Marchione, M.P.F.
Pope Pius XII personally supervised the founding and organization of the Vatican Information Bureau, which was instituted in September 1939 (See Architect for Peace, Paulist Press, 2000). He was the only leader in the world who cared for Prisoners of War through this papal communication service. For a close look at this organization, one need only consult the Letters to Pius XII now published in two volumes numbering 1,511 pages, and eight DVDs, entitled Inter Arma Caritas (Vatican Publishing House, 2004).
Among the documents preserved on prisoners and victims of the war are letters, telegrams, and reports of the apostolic delegates that visited prisoner camps spread around the world, and study their relations with embassies. This Office aimed to put in contact families separated by the conflict and to respond to the innumerable requests on refugees and the missing, both military men and civilians, as well as other victims of war, and to ensure their spiritual and material assistance.
Documents reveal it to be a living testimonial to goodness in the face of evil: twenty million messages were transmitted despite the obstacles that abounded (Russia would not respond to the requests for information; in Germany the Foreign Minister forbade priests to mention the Vatican from the pulpit, etc.). The Office personnel began with two; soon, the number increased to 885. The enormous task initiated by Pius XII was organized and implemented by the Secretariat of State in an effort to alleviate, at least in part, the sorrow and the desperation experienced during the war by so many families throughout the world.
Millions of suffering Prisoners of War sought Pope Pius XII's assistance during World War II. Letters came from Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. One letter began: "I'm not a believer, but I'm turning to you, Mr. Pope." Desperate families from every social class, who prayed for a loved one to come back from the war, wrote with little formality and much hope. Even Isaac Herzog, chief rabbi of Jerusalem, asked the Vatican's help in locating a Swedish rabbi arrested in 1942. Nor did atheists hesitate to ask for assistance. To help in this mission, Vatican Radio broadcast 1.2 million short-wave messages asking for news about missing individuals.
For the past fifty years, the work of the Vatican Information Service has been practically ignored. Without interruption, Pius XII continued his work for peace, striving to heal the wounds inflicted by this great tragedy. The papacy rescued Jews by channeling money to those in need, issuing countless baptismal certificates for their protection, negotiating with Latin American countries to grant them visas, and keeping in touch with their relatives through the Vatican Information Service.
During the North African campaign a boatload of Allied wounded arrived in Italy for hospitalization and imprisonment. A Vatican representative boarded the boat and distributed message forms among the soldiers who immediately filled, signed and addressed them. Within weeks after their capture the families of these American soldiers received information sent airmail by the Vatican to the United States. A wounded son of an Episcopalian family in Washington, D.C., was listed by the War Department as missing, because the Nazis had failed to report him to the International Red Cross as captured. The soldier was convalescing in a hospital in Italy, where a Vatican official found him. A Baptist family in Kansas, as an expression of gratitude for news that their son was a war prisoner and not dead, sent the Holy Father their weekly tithe of twenty-two dollars. Communicating with their families, the Vatican described details of injuries, deaths, internment, and photographs of the resting-place or turned over to the office of the American charge d'affaires the belongings of soldiers. This was a sad, yet consoling work of mercy.
When the Nazis occupied Rome in September 1943, the Pope endeavored to save as many Jews as possible. He immediately issued directives to all convents and monasteries to open their doors to protect Jews. Meanwhile, Pope Pius XII invited Jews and other refugees to join the Vatican Palatine Guards. In a few months, their number increased from four hundred to four thousand.
Everywhere in Europe, persecuted people, the Jews especially, appealed to Pius XII. When some five hundred Jews embarked at Bratislava on a steamer for Palestine, their ship tried to enter the seaport of Istanbul, but was refused permission to land. Captured by an Italian patrol boat, the Jews were imprisoned in a camp at Rhodes. One of the prisoners managed to appeal to Pius XII for help. Thanks to the Pope's intervention, unknown to the Axis, the refugees were transferred to an improvised camp (Ferramonti-Tarsia) in Southern Italy, where they were found safe three years later, in December 1943.
Life Magazine (1943) recorded a story about the Holocaust in Campagna, a small mountain village near the Bay of Salerno. Its story honored 150 refugees (two Protestants, 8 Catholics and 140 Jews) who fled from Germany in the winter of 1939-40, with visas permitting them to enter the United States. Among them were lawyers, artists, bank managers, writers, tailors and four surgeons.
While waiting for transportation, war was declared in June 1940. Under guard of the Italian police, the Germans were arrested and taken to an old Catholic monastery where, following directives from the Vatican, Father Francesco Sacco cared for their needs during three years of internment. When the Allies arrived and Italy surrendered, the Germans took possession of the village and searched for the Jews. But the bombardment had cracked the monastery's roof and the refugees were forced to hide in the mountains.
Meanwhile many civilians, wounded by the shells or shot by the Germans, were without medical care. Word reached the refugees hidden in the mountains. The surgeons returned and performed over forty major operations in two days, working with only "two artery forceps, one needle holder, some tubes of catgut and a few improvised instruments." These Jews were aware that the Germans were searching for them, yet they returned to the village to save the lives of their Italian friends. This story with several photographs depicting the surgery that took placed appeared in the November 1, 1943, issue of Life magazine. Recently-discovered letters from the Vatican to the Bishop of Salerno state that Pope Pius XII provided financial assistance to care for these refugees.
A decade later, December 13, 1954, another picture story entitled "Years of a Great Pope," appeared in Life magazine. This issue confirms the fact that Pope Pius XII sought "peace for the world and the spirit." Amid the storms and violence during his papacy, Pius XII was "unbending, working with devotion and all the skills of diplomacy to mitigate the burdens of a beleaguered world. He defended and fortified the Church, condemned Nazi racialism as antireligious, stemmed the Communist tide in Italy by firm intervention in the 1948 Italian elections, created new cardinals from all the globe, and proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary." The article adds that the world looked with pride and admiration at the many-sided career of Pope Pius XII who, in his own agonized generation, was "already recognized as a great pope."
Pius XII's virtuous life speaks for itself and is supported by an abundance of incontestable documentary evidence. The truth regarding his service to the Church and the World, as a diplomat and during his pontificate, prior to and through the World War II period, is also historically established. He has been the victim of an unjust smear campaign for fifty years. Now, however, overwhelming evidence has been amassed that proves beyond doubt that he labored without pause for peace, that he sought to assist in every way possible the victims of war, especially Jews, hundreds of thousands of whom were spared through his efforts, and that he constantly warned the world of the horrors of Nazism and Communism.
Sister Margherita Marchione, Ph.D., the author of 30 books and 100 articles, received the Michael award from the New Jersey Literary Hall of Fame in 1993. She is one of the world's leading scholars on the Holocaust and Pope Pius XII. Her books on this topic are in both English and Italian: Yours Is a Precious Witness: Memoirs of Jews and Catholics in Wartime Italy (1997), and Pius XII: Architect for Peace (2000). Her last article in HPR appeared in November 2002.
© Homiletic & Pastoral Review / Ignatius Press
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