Cornwell’s Hoax
John Cornwell, Brother of British Spy Novelist, John Le Carre, Has Just Written An "Expose" Accusing Pius XII Of Anti-Semitism. But Cornwell’s Book Is A Tissue Of Half-Truths And Tendentious Exaggerations, In Short, A Hoax
Writers often cry "Truth! Truth at all costs!" Some are sincere. Others are hypocrites. They use the truth, distort it, exploit it, for an ulterior purpose.
Let us consider the case of John Cornwell, author of a new book with the tabloid title Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. published by Viking in the US and previewed in a piece by Cornwell himself in the October issue of Vanity Fair (a trendy, glossy 330-page magazine half-filled with fashion ads) and in the Times of London.
In the 1980s, Cornwell persuaded Vatican officials to grant him special access to Vatican sources to study the death of John Paul I. They hoped he would refute the thesis of David Yallop's book In God's Name, that John Paul I had been murdered. The account that emerged, A Thief in the Night, concluded "the smiling Pope" had not been murdered. Rather, it suggested, ineptness and in fighting had left the Pope without anyone to care properly for him, and so he had died, isolated and alone, at the heart of a cynical and uncaring Vatican. This was not the result those who had "hired" Cornwell had expected. Moreover, the book was shot through with snickering depictions of ecclesial foibles, follies and sins. The feeling in Rome was that Cornwell had exploited his carte blanche Vatican pass to mock the Church.
In Cornwell's new effort, the thesis, as the Vanity Fair subtitle expresses it. is that "long-buried Vatican files reveal a new and shocking indictment of World War II's Pope Pius XII: that in pursuit of absolute power he helped Adolf Hitler destroy German Catholic political opposition, betrayed the Jews of Europe, and sealed a deeply cynical pact with a 20th-century devil."
These are astonishing charges: that Pius was a Faustian figure thirsty for power, a cruel betrayer of the Jews. a man who made a "cynical pact" with Hitler. What is the evidence on which they are based'? Did Cornwell really find shocking documents within the bowels of the Vatican proving that Pius XII helped Hitler come to power?
Well. actually... no. Cornwell does not cite a single new document from the archives about Pius's relationship with Hitler, for one simple reason: Cornwell was not granted access to any archival documents after 1922 (the archives after the beginning of the reign of Pius XI are still closed). And, of course, Hitler was not politically significant prior to 1922.
What, then, did Cornwell find in the "long-buried Vatican files"? The supposedly "new" information Cornwell presents comes from two letters of Pius written in 1918 and 1919— before Hitler even began his political career.
But let's begin at the beginning.
As Cornwell's narrative opens, he is already protesting too much. He tells us he decided to study Pius XII's role in World War II "convinced, as I had always been, of his innocence" because he wanted "to write a new defense of his reputation for a younger generation." In short, Cornwell is presenting himself as an objective observer, taking up this project wishing to defend Pius only to be bowled over by powerful, unexpected evidence which overwhelmed his initial resolve....
"I applied for access to archival material in the Vatican," Cornwell tells us, "reassuring those who had charge of crucial documents that I was on the side of my subject." (Ah! — a reader may think — that's how Cornwell got into the Vatican archives, by tricking them into giving him a pass!)
But here, too, Cornwell is misleading. Today any qualified scholar can obtain access to the Vatican's archives to do scholarly research. None has to pass a test or profess beforehand that they will be "favorable" or "unfavorable" to any pontiff or ecclesiastic — only that they will report accurately what they find.
In May of 1997, Cornwell (like other scholars before and since) was admitted into the Vatican Secret Archives. This is how he describes the experience: "For months on end I ransacked Pacelli's files, which dated back to 1912. in a windowless dungeon beneath the Borgia Tower in Vatican City..." (My God! — an unsuspecting reader might think — What an adventure! Working in a dungeon(!),feverishly rifling through top secret files, just a few feet below the room where the Borgias committed unspeakable crimes! What an intrepid hero of truth!) But the fact is, the archive is not a dungeon, just an underground vault where files are stored. And when Cornwell writes that he "ransacked" Pacelli's files (leading us to believe he was all alone pawing through boxes of secret documents), he omits telling us that an archivist was there to bring him the files he requested.
And when he tells us that the Pacelli files he was "ransacking" went "back to 1912," he omits telling us the archives he was "ransacking" ran forward up until only... 1922. That is, he gives his readers the impression that he "ransacked the files" from 1912 to 1958, the year Pius died, including the crucial years of World War II; but the only files he "ransacked" were those from 1912-1922.
Why is this important? Why does Cornwell carefully omit these points? It seems clear that he does so to conceal the fact that the documents he "ransacked" contain nothing whatsoever about the matters which interest him — Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust.
There are other peculiarities in Cornwell's account of his labors. For example, the length of time he spent in the archives. Cornwell tells us it was "months on end." But a memorandum from Archbishop Re, (the "Sostituto" or Deputy Vatican Secretary of State), obtained by Inside the Vatican, reveals that Cornwell was given a pass to the archives for... three weeks. It would appear, then, that "months on end" is Cromwell's way of describing a few days at the end of May and a few more at the beginning of June. A slight exaggeration.
"By the middle of 1997" Cornwell continues, "I was in a state of moral shock. The material I had gathered amounted not to an exoneration but to an indictment..."
What had Cornwell found that shook him so profoundly? His great find is a letter dated April 18, 1919 signed by Pius, then Vatican nuncio in Germany, and sent from Munich to Rome. In this letter. Cornwell charges, Pius reveals his "antipathy toward the Jews" in "a more blatantly anti-Semitic fashion" than in previous correspondence. Inside the Vatican has obtained a copy of the letter Cornwell cites. It is authentic. It is in the archive. Cornwell apparently did see it. But the 6-page, typewritten letter docs not prove what Cornwell says it proves.
Reporting to Rome on the chaotic scene at a former royal palace taken over by Communist revolutionaries, Pius reports that the Bolshevik revolutionaries in the palace that day were Jews. The leader is described this way: "This Levien is a young man, about 30 or 35, also Russian and a Jew. Pale, dirty, with vacant eyes, hoarse voice, vulgar, repulsive, with a face that is both intelligent and sly."
Cornwell then interprets the letter this way: "This association of Jewishness with Bolshevism confirms that Pacelli, from his early 40s, nourished a suspicion and contempt for the Jews for political reasons."
But to say this letter "confirms" anything about Pacelli's views concerning Jews and/or Judaism is, quite simply, silly.
First, we do not know if this letter was written by Pius. There is evidence suggesting that Pius did not write it. By Cromwell's own account, Pius did not go personally to see the revolutionaries: his assistant went. This is sufficient to prove that the letter was either drafted by the assistant and signed by Pius, or was written by Pius on the basis of a report or memo he had received. In short, the key piece of evidence adduced by Cornwell is not first-hand, but second-hand. It is at best inconclusive: at worst, no evidence at all.
Second, leaving aside the question of authorship, the writer of this does not associate "Jewishness with Bolshevism" but a specific Bolshevik revolution with particular Jewish revolutionaries. This is a report on an event, not evidence of anti-Semitism.
Still, Cornwell plunges ahead, writing: "The letter has lain in the Vatican secret archive like a time bomb until now." Yet this, too, is misleading. The letter was already quite well known to real scholars — it was published in a book in Italy in 1992!
Few reading Cromwell's account of his "investigation" would guess that his thesis of Pius XII's anti-Semitism is based on so little and such insubstantial evidence. By saying that he "ransacked" Pacelli's files, Cornwell suggests that he discovered many new, previously unpublished documents to build his "shocking" picture of Pius. He may well have done a good deal of research, but he has made no new contribution whatsoever — except in his partial and tendentious interpretation of evidence discovered by others.
Why has Cornwell built up such a castle of cards? Father Peter Gumpel and others in Rome believe there is something else at stake beyond the historical truth of Pius's "silence." And, indeed, Cornwell makes this point clear in his Vanity Fair article. What is at stake, for Cornwell, is not Pius and his role in the past, but the future role of the papacy in the Church and the future direction of the Church as a whole. "A future titanic struggle between the progressives and the traditionalists is in prospect, with the potential for a cataclysmic schism, especially in North America," Cornwell writes. By denigrating Pius XII, depicted as authoritarian, centralist, traditional and Roman, Cornwell is putting his shoulder to a wheel being pushed by many, in and out of the Church. The goal: to make Roman Catholicism in the 21st century more "progressive," less "Roman," less "Catholic" — indeed, not "Roman Catholic" at all...
That is the veiled remote purpose, it is thought, behind the ceaseless, exaggerated and unpersuasive attacks on Pius XII. It is all a means to an end.
There is a famous scene in the movie Casablanca. The French officer, Louis, has just been told by the German Major Strasser to find a reason to close down Rick's "Cafe Americain." Rick has a roulette wheel in the back. Louis orders the cafe closed. Rick protests and asks why. "I'm shocked. Rick, shocked, to find that gambling is going on in here," Louis blusters indignantly. And then a casino employee hands Louis a fistful of cash — his winnings at the roulette wheel.
Cornwell’s claimed sense of shock about Pope Pius XII seems just as feigned. His book is not a dispassionate search for the truth but a tendentious tract in an ongoing war against the papacy.
© Inside the Vatican, Martin de Porres Lay Dominican Community, 3050 Gap Knob Road, New Hope, KY 40052, 800-789-9494.
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