Pope Pius XI

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Pope Pius XI : biography

31 May 1857 – 10 February 1939

Mit brennender Sorge

Pius XI responded to ever increasing Nazi hostility to Christianity by issuing in 1937 the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge condemning the Nazi ideology of racism and totalitarianism and Nazi violations of the concordat. Copies had to be smuggled into Germany so they could be read from the pulpitManners 2002, p. 374. The encyclical, the only one ever written in German, was addressed to German bishops and was read in all parishes of Germany. The actual writing of the text is credited to Munich Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber and to the Cardinal Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII.August Franzen, Remigius Bäumer Papstgeschichte Herder Freiburg, 1988, p. 394. There was no advance announcement of the encyclical, and its distribution was kept secret in an attempt to ensure the unhindered public reading of its contents in all the Catholic Churches of Germany.

This encyclical condemned particularly the paganism of National Socialist ideology, the myth of race and blood, and fallacies in the Nazi conception of God.

Involvement with American efforts

Mother Katharine Drexel, who founded the American order of Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, corresponded with Pius XI, as she had with his papal predecessors. (In 1887, Pope Leo XIII had encouraged Katharine Drexel—then a young Philadelphia socialite— to do missionary work with America’s disadvantaged people of color). In the early 1930s, Mother Drexel wrote Pius XI asking him to bless a publicity campaign to acquaint white Catholics with the needs of these disadvantaged races among them. An emissary had shown him photos of Xavier University, New Orleans, LA, which Mother Drexel had established to educate African-Americans at the highest level in the USA. Pius XI replied promptly, sending his blessing and encouragement. Upon his return, the emissary told Mother Katharine that the Pope said he had read the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a boy, and it had ignited his lifelong concern for the American Negro.The Golden Door: The Life of Katharine Drexel, by Katherine Burton (P. J. Kenedy & Sons, New York, 1957, p. 261)

Conspiracy of Silence

While numerous German Catholics, who participated in the secret printing and distribution of the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, went to jail and concentration camps, the Western democracies remained silent, which Pope Pius XI labeled bitterly as "a conspiracy of silence".Franzen, 395. As the extreme nature of Nazi racial anti-Semitism became obvious, and as Mussolini in the late 1930s began imitating Hitler’s anti-Jewish race laws in Italy, Pius XI continued to make his position clear, both in Mit brennender Sorge and after fascist Italy’s Manifesto of Race was published, in a public address in the Vatican to Belgian pilgrims in 1938: "Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and forefather. Anti-Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do. No, no, I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti-Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we [Christians] are all Semites"Marchione 1997, p. 53. These comments were neither reported by Osservatore Romano or Vatican Radio.John Connelly, , Commonweal, February 24, 2012 They were reported in Belgium in the 14 September 1938 issue of La Libre BelgiqueGiovanni Miccoli, « Les Dilemmes et les silences de Pie XII: Vatican, Seconde Guerre mondiale et Shoah », Éditions Complexe, 2005, ISBN 9782870279373, p. 401 and in the 17 September 1938 issue of French Roman Catholic daily La Croix., Gallica, accessed 12 November 2012 They were subsequently published worldwide but had little resonance at the time in the secular media. The "Conspiracy of Silence" included not only the silence of secular powers against the horrors of National Socialism but also their silence on the persecution of the Church in the Terrible Triangle. Despite these public comments, Pius was reported privately as suggesting that the Church’s problems in the Soviet Union, Mexico and the Spanish Republic were, "reinforced by the anti-Christian spirit of Judaism".