Coordinates	1°15′″N116°50′″N
{{infobox christian leader | type	Pope
english name	Pius IX
coat of arms	C o a Pio IX.svg
birth name	Giovanni MariaMastai-Ferretti
term start	16 June 1846
term end	7 February 1878 ()
predecessor	Gregory XVI
successor	Leo XIII
ordination	10 April 1819
consecration	3 June 1827
consecrated by	Pope Pius VIII
cardinal	14 December 1840
birth date	May 13, 1792
birth place	Senigallia, Papal States
dead	dead
death date	February 07, 1878
death place	Apostolic Palace, Rome, Italy
other	Pius
feast day	7 February
beatified date	3 September 2000
shrine	}}

Blessed Pope Pius IX (13 May 1792, Senigallia – 7 February 1878), born Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, was the longest-reigning elected Pope in the history of the Catholic Church, serving from 16 June 1846 until his death, a period of nearly 32 years. During his pontificate, he convened the First Vatican Council in 1869, which decreed papal infallibility. The Pope defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, meaning that Mary was conceived without original sin. Pius IX also granted the Marian title of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, a famous Byzantine icon from Crete entrusted to the Redemptorist priests. In addition to this, Pius IX was also the last Pope to rule as the Sovereign of the Papal States, which fell completely to Italian nationalist armies by 1870 and were incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy. He was beatified in 2000.

Overview

Europe in general and the Italian peninsula were in the midst of considerable political foment when the bishop of Spoleto Giovanni Maria Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti was elected pope, taking the name Pius, after his generous patron and the ill-fated nemesis of Napoleon Bonaparte. He had been elected by the faction of cardinals sympathetic to the political liberalization coursing across Europe, and his initial governance of the Papal States gives evidence of his own liberal sympathies: Under his direction various sorts of political prisoners in the Papal States were released and the city of Rome was granted a constitutional framework under guidance of his friend, philosopher-prince Antonio Rosmini-Serbati. A series of terrorist acts sponsored by Italian liberals and nationalists, which included the assassination of his Minister of the Interior, Pellegrino Rossi among others and which forced him briefly to flee Rome in 1848 led to his growing skepticism towards the liberal, nationalist agenda. Through the 1850s and 1860s, Italian nationalists made military gains against the Papal States, which culminated in the seizure of the city of Rome in 1870. Pius IX refused to accept the Law of Guarantees from the nationalists, which would have made the Vatican dependent on Italian financiers for years to come. His Church policies towards other countries, such as Russia, Germany and France, were not always successful, due in part, to changing secular institutions and internal developments within these countries. However, concordats were concluded with numerous states such as Austria-Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Canada, Tuscany, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador and Haiti.

Many contemporary Church historians and journalists question his approaches. His appeal for public worldwide support of the Holy See – ''Peter's Pence'' – after he became "The prisoner of the Vatican" is now the main source of income for the Holy See. The money, still collected each year, is today used by the Pope for support of the Roman Curia, the Vatican City State and philanthropic purposes. In his Syllabus of Errors, still highly controversial, Pius IX condemned the heresies of secular society, especially modernism.

He was a Marian Pope, who in his encyclical ''Ubi Primum'' described Mary as a Mediatrix of salvation. In 1854, he promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, articulating a long-held Catholic belief that Mary, the Mother of God, was conceived without original sin. In 1862, he convened 300 bishops to the Vatican for the canonization of Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan. His most important legacy is the First Vatican Council, which convened in 1869. This Council discussed many issues, especially the dogma of papal infallibility, which Pius was eager to have officially defined by the council; but the council was interrupted as Italian nationalist troops threatened Rome. The council is considered to have contributed to a centralization of the Roman Catholic Church in the Vatican.

Pius IX, who suffered from epilepsy, was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 3 September 2000. His Feast Day is 7 February.

Early life and ministry

Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti was born in Senigallia into the noble family of Girolamo dei conti Ferretti, and was educated at the Piarist College in Volterra and in Rome. As a theology student in his hometown Sinigaglia, he met in 1814 Pope Pius VII, who returned from French captivity. In 1815, he entered the Papal Noble Guard but was soon dismissed after an epileptic seizure. He threw himself at the feet of Pius VII who elevated him and supported his continued theological studies. The Pope originally insisted that another priest should assist Mastai during Holy Mass, a stipulation that was later rescinded, after the attacks became less frequent. He was ordained in April 1819. He worked initially as the rector of the Tata Giovanni Institute in Rome. Shortly before his death, Pius VII sent him as Auditor to Chile and Peru in 1823 and 1825 to assist the Apostolic Nuncio, Monsignore Giovanni Muzi and Monsignore Bradley Kane, in the first mission to post-revolutionary South America. The mission had the objective to map out the role of the Catholic Church in the newly independent South American republics. He was thus the first pope ever to have been in America. When he returned to Rome, the successor of Pius VII, Pope Leo XII appointed him head of the hospital of San Michele in Rome (1825–1827) and canon of Santa Maria in Via Lata.

Pope Leo XII appointed Father Mastai-Ferretti Archbishop of Spoleto, his own hometown, in 1827 at the age of 35. In 1831, the abortive revolution that had begun in Parma and Modena spread to Spoleto; the Archbishop obtained a general pardon after it was suppressed, gaining him a reputation for being liberal. During an earthquake, he made a reputation as an efficient organizer of relief and great charity. The following year he was moved to the more prestigious diocese of Imola, was made a cardinal ''in pectore'' in 1839, and in 1840 was publicly announced as Cardinal-Priest of ''Santi Marcellino e Pietro.'' As in Spoleto, his episcopal priorities were the formation of priests through improved education and charities. He became known for visiting prisoners in jail, and for programs for street children. According to historians, Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti was considered a liberal during his episcopate in Spoleto and Imola because he supported administrative changes in the Papal States and sympathized with the nationalist movement in Italy.

Papal election

The conclave of 1846, following the death of Pope Gregory XVI (1831–46), took place in an unsettled political climate within Italy. Because of this, many foreign Cardinals decided not to attend the conclave. At its start, only 46 out of 62 cardinals were present.

Moreover, the conclave of 1846 was steeped in a factional division between conservatives and liberals. The conservatives supported Luigi Lambruschini, Gregory XVI's Cardinal Secretary of State. Liberals supported two candidates: Pasquale Tommaso Gizzi and the then 54-year-old Mastai-Ferretti. During the first ballot, Mastai-Ferretti received 15 votes, the rest going to Cardinal Lambruschini and Cardinal Gizzi.

Faced with deadlock, liberals and moderates decided to cast their votes for Mastai-Ferretti—a move that contradicted the general mood throughout Europe. By the second day of the conclave, on 16 June 1846, during an evening ballot, Mastai-Ferretti was elected Pope. "He was a glamorous candidate, ardent, emotional with a gift for friendship and a track-record of generosity even towards anti-Clericals and Carbonari. He was a patriot, known to be critical of Gregory XVI " Because it was night, no formal announcement was given, just the signal of white smoke. Many Catholics had assumed that Gizzi had been elected successor of St. Peter. In fact, celebrations began to take place in his hometown, and his personal staff, following a long-standing tradition, burned his cardinalatial vestments.

On the following morning, the senior Cardinal-Deacon, Tommaso Riario Sforza, announced the election of Mastai-Ferretti before a crowd of faithful Catholics. When Mastai-Ferretti appeared on the balcony, the mood became joyous. Mastai-Ferretti chose the name Pius IX in honor of Pope Pius VII (1800–23), who had encouraged his vocation to the priesthood despite his childhood epilepsy.

However, Mastai-Ferretti, now Pope Pius IX, had little diplomatic and no curial experience, which did cause some controversy. The government of the Empire of Austria as represented by Prince Metternich in its foreign affairs objected to even the possible election of Mastai-Ferretti. Thus, Cardinal Gaisruck, Archbishop of Milan, was sent to present the Austrian official veto against Mastai-Ferretti. However, Gaisruck arrived too late; the new Pope was already elected. Pius IX was crowned on 21 June 1846.

Papacy

dipstyle	His Holiness
offstyle	Your Holiness
relstyle	Holy Father
deathstyle	Blessed }}

The election of the liberal Pius IX created much enthusiasm in Europe and elsewhere. Celebrations and ovations were offered in several countries. Although he was not unknown and had done nothing on an administrative level before his election, and although there were no utterances from him, he was soon the most notorious and popular person in the world. :For the next twenty months after the election, Pius IX was the most popular man on half-island Apenini, where the exclamation "Long life to Pius IX!" was often heard. English Protestants celebrated him as a friend of light and a reformer of Europe towards freedom and progress. He was elected without political influences from outside and in the best years of his life. He was pious, progressive, intellectual, decent, friendly, and open to everybody.

Governing the Church

Centralization

The end of the Papal States was an important but not the only important event in the long pontificate of Pius. His leadership of the Church contributed to an ever-increasing centralization and consolidation of power in Rome and the papacy. While his political views and policies were hotly debated, his personal life style was above any criticism; he was considered a model of simplicity and poverty in his every day affairs. More than his predecessors, Pius used the papal pulpit to address the bishops of the world. The first Vatican Council, which he convened to consolidate papal authority further, was considered a milestones not only in his pontificate but also for Church history.

Church rights

The Church policies of Pius IX were dominated with a defence of the rights of the Church and the free exercise of religion for Catholics, but no one else, in countries like Russia and the Ottoman Empire, and an attack against what he perceived to be anti-Catholic philosophies in countries like Italy, Germany and France.

Jubilees

He celebrated several jubilees such as the 300th anniversary of the Council of Trent, and his own Golden Jubilee in 1868. Pius celebrated the 1,800th anniversary of the martyrdom of the Apostle Peter and Apostle Paul on 29 June 1867 with 512 bishops, 20,000 priests and 140,000 lay persons in Rome. A large gathering was organized in 1871 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his papacy. The Italian government in 1870 outlawed many popular pilgrimages. The faithful of Bologna organized a nationwide "spiritual pilgrimage" to the Holy Father and the tombs of the apostles in 1873. In 1875, Pius declared a Holy Year that was celebrated throughout the Catholic world. On the 50th anniversary of his episcopal consecration, people from all parts of the world came to see the old pontiff from 30 April 1877 to 15 June 1877. He was a bit shy, but he valued initiative within the Church and created several new titles, rewards and orders to elevate those who in his view deserved merit.

Consistories

Pius IX created 122 new Cardinals – the limit of the College of Cardinals was 70 – of which 64 were alive at his death. Noteworthy elevations included Vincenzo Pecci, his eventual successor Leo XIII, Nicholas Wiseman of Westminster, Henry Edward Manning and John McCloskey, the first American ever to be elevated into the College of Cardinals.

Sovereign of the Papal States

Pius IX was not only pope, but, until 1870, also the Sovereign Ruler of the Papal States. His rule was considered secular and, as such, he was occasionally accorded the title "king." However, whether this was ever a title accepted by the Holy See is unclear. One of the most fervent contemporary critics of his infallibility dogma, Ignaz von Döllinger, considered the political regime of the pope in the Papal States "as wise, well-intentioned, mild-natured, frugal and open for innovations." Yet there was controversy. In the period before the 1848 revolution, Pius was a most ardent reformer advised by such innovative thinkers as Rosmini who were able to reconcile the new "free" thinking concerning human rights with the classical natural law tradition of the Church's teaching in political affairs and economic order (social justice teachings). After the revolution however, his political reforms and constitutional improvements were considered minimalist, remaining largely within the framework of the 1850 laws mentioned above.

Reforms in the Papal States

150px|thumb|right|St.Peter's Plaza before Pius IX added statues of Peter and Paul ‎As liberal Europe applauded his election, he introduced political reforms on a broad scale. He initiated the construction of railways, and the installation of street lighting throughout Rome. He improved agricultural technology and productivity via farmer education in newly created scientific agricultural institutes. He abolished the requirements for Jews to attend Christian services and sermons and opened the papal charities to the needy of them. He gave much to charities, living like a pauper. The new pope freed all political prisoners by giving amnesty to revolutionaries, which horrified the conservative monarchies in Austria-Hungary and elsewhere Within one year of his election, he appointed an assembly of lay people to assist in the governing of the Papal States. His actions were applauded by Protestant statesmen. "He was celebrated in New York, London and Berlin as a model ruler."

Governmental structure

The governmental structure of the Papal States reflected the dual spiritual-secular character of the papacy. The secular or laypersons were strongly in the majority with 6,850 persons versus 300 members of the clergy. Nevertheless, the clergy made key decisions and every job applicant had to present a character evaluation from his parish priest to be considered.

Finance

Financial administration in the Papal States under Pius IX was increasingly put in the hands of laypersons. The budget and financial administration in the Papal States had long been subject to criticism even before Pius IX, and did not end with his papacy. In 1850, he created a governmental finance congregation consisting of four laypersons with finance background for the 20 provinces.

Commerce and trade

Pius IX is credited with systematic efforts to improve manufacturing and trade by giving advantages and papal prizes to domestic producers of wool, silk and other materials destined for export. He improved the transportation system by building roads, viaducts, bridges and seaports. A series of new railway links connected the Papal States to northern Italy. It became soon visible, that the Northern Italians were more adept to exploit economically the modern means of communication than the inhabitants in central and Southern Italy.

Justice

The justice system of the Papal States was subject to numerous accusations, not unlike the justice systems in the rest of Italy. There was a general lack of legal books and standards and accusations of partiality of the judges. Throughout Italy but also in the Papal States, mafia-type criminal bands threatened commerce and travellers in several regions, engaging in robbery and murder at will.

Military

A unique position was granted to the papal army, consisting almost exclusively of foreigners, since the Roman Black Nobility was not willing to serve, and the population resisted military service as well, despite a decent salary structure and the potential for promotion. A main, but not the only element, of the papal army was the Swiss Guard. The number of papal soldiers amounted to 15,000 in 1859.

Education

Pius was criticized for his educational policies, which largely were a continuation of traditional Catholic education priorities with an accompanying neglect of the natural sciences on the primary and secondary level. Education was not mandatory in the Papal States, a fact which some attributed to the low educational standards in comparison to other countries. Secondary education was largely in private hands or in the control of Catholic institutes and Religious orders.

Universities

The two papal universities in Rome and Bologna suffered much from revolutionary activities in 1848 but their standards in the areas of science, mathematics, philosophy and theology were considered adequate. Pius recognized that much had to be done and instituted a reform commission in.

Social life

There was one newspaper, ''Giornale di Roma,'' and one periodical, ''Civilta Cattolica,'' run by Jesuits. When Marcantonio Pacelli, the grandfather of Eugenio Pacelli, approached Pius about an official newspaper, ''L’Osservatore Romano,'' which printed what the Pope said and did the previous day, Pius turned him down. Pacelli published anyway, and Leo XIII bought it from him a few years later.

Arts

Pius IX was a patron of the arts like most of his predecessors. The two theatres in Rome were popular in part because he exempted them from papal censorship. He supported art, architecture, painting, sculpture, music, goldsmiths, coppersmiths and more, and handed out numerous rewards to its representatives. Much of his efforts were oriented to Churches in Rome, but also in the Papal States, many of which were renovated and improved.

Restorations and discoveries

Great efforts were undertaken to restore historic walls, fountains, streets and bridges. He ordered the excavation of Roman sites, which led to several major discoveries. He ordered the strengthening of the Colosseum, which was threatened with collapse. Huge sums were spent in the discovery of Christian catacombs, for which Pius created a new archaeological commission in 1853.

Protestants and Jews

The Papal States were a theocracy in which the Catholic Church and Catholics had more rights than members of other religions. Pius IX's policies changed over time: At the beginning of his pontificate, together with other liberal measures, Pius opened the Jewish ghetto in Rome. After returning from exile in 1850, during which the Roman Republic issued sharp anti-Church measures, the Pope issued a series of anti-liberal measures, including re-instituting the Ghetto.

In 1858, in a highly publicized case, the police of the Papal States took a 6-year-old Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, from his parents. A Christian servant girl of the family, fearing he would die, had reportedly baptized him while he was ill. The law did not permit Christians to be raised by Jews, even their own parents. Pius raised the boy in the papal household and the boy later was ordained a priest.

Policies toward other nations

Pius IX was the last pope who was also a secular ruler as monarch of the Papal States. As sovereign-ruler of the Papal States, he ruled over 3 million people and conducted diplomatic relations with other states, the most important of which was Italy, which in 1870 ended the independent Papal States and reduced the papacy to a miniature state.

Italy

As a liberal and aware of the political pressures within the Papal States, his first act of a general amnesty for political prisoners did not consider its potential implications and consequences: The freed revolutionaries merely resumed their previous activities and his concessions only provoked greater demands as patriotic Italian groups sought not only a constitutional government, which he was sympathetic to, but also the Unification of Italy under his leadership and a war of liberation against Catholic Austria, which claimed the northern Italian provinces as its own.

By early 1848, all of Western Europe began to be convulsed in various revolutionary movements. The Pope, claiming to be above national interests, refused to go to war with Austria, which totally reversed the up to now popular view of him in his native Italy. In a calculated, well-prepared move, Rossi was assassinated on 15 November 1848, and in the days following, the Swiss Guards were disarmed, making the Pope a prisoner in his palace.

A Roman Republic was declared in February 1849. Pius responded from his exile by excommunicating all participants

He visited the hospitals to comfort the wounded and sick but he seemed to have lost both some of his liberal tastes and his confidence in the Romans, who had turned against him in 1848. Pius decided to move his residence from the Quirinal Palace inside Rome to the Vatican, where popes have lived ever since. He reformed the governmental structure of the Papal States on 10 September 1850 and its finances on 28 October in the same year.

; End of the Papal States After defeating the papal army on 18 September 1860 at the Battle of Castelfidardo, and on 30 September at Ancona, Victor Emmanuel took all the Papal territories except Latium with Rome. In 1866 he granted Pius IX the Law of Guarantees (13 May 1871) which gave the Pope the use of the Vatican but denied him sovereignty over this territory, nevertheless granting him the right to send and receive ambassadors and a budget of 3.25 million liras annually. Pius IX officially rejected this offer (encyclical ''Ubi nos,'' 15 May 1871), retaining his claim to all the conquered territory.

Mexico

With Napoleon III's establishment of the Second Mexican Empire and Maximilian I of Mexico as its ruler in 1864, the Church was looking for some relief from a friendly government after the anti-clerical actions of Benito Juárez. Juárez had recently suspended payment on foreign debt and seized Church property.

Pius had blessed Maximilian and his wife Charlotte of Belgium before they set off for Mexico to begin their reign. But the friction between the Vatican and Mexico would continue with the new Emperor when Maximilian insisted on freedom of religion, which Pius opposed. Relations with the Vatican would only be resumed when Maximilian sent a recently converted American Catholic priest Father Fischer to Rome as his envoy.

Contrary to Fischer's reports back to Maximilian, the negotiations did not go well and the Vatican would not budge. Maximilian sent his wife Charlotte to Europe to plead against the withdrawal of French troops. After an unsuccessful attempt at negotiating with Napoleon III, Charlotte then traveled to Rome to plead with Pius in 1866. As the days passed Charlotte's mental state became overtly paranoid.

She sought refuge with the pope, and she would eat and drink only what was prepared for him, fearful that everything else might be poisoned. The pope, though alarmed, was accommodating to her and even agreed to let her stay in the Vatican one night after she voiced anxiety about her safety. She and her assistant were the first women to stay the night inside the Vatican.

United Kingdom

England for centuries was considered missionary territory for the Catholic Church. Pius IX changed that with the Bull ''Universalis Ecclesiae'' (29 September 1850). He re-established the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales, under the newly appointed Archbishop and Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman with 12 additional episcopal seats: Southwark, Hexham, Beverly, Liverpool, Salford, Shrewsbury, Newport, Clifton, Plymouth, Nottingham, Birmingham and Northampton. Some violent street protests against the "papal aggression" resulted in a law passed by Parliament on 2 August 1851, which on penalty of imprisonment and fines forbade any Roman Catholic diocese in England or Ireland from taking the name of an Anglican diocese.

Netherlands

The Dutch government instituted religious freedom for Catholics in 1848. In 1853, Pius erected the Archdiocese of Utrecht and four dioceses in Haarlem, Den Bosch, Breda and Roermond under it. As in England, this resulted in a popular outburst of anti-Catholic sentiment, which as in England, soon subsided.

Spain

Traditionally Catholic Spain offered a challenge to Pius IX as anti-clerical governments were in power from 1832, resulting in the expulsion of religious orders, the closing of convents, the closing of Catholic schools and libraries, the seizure and sale of churches and religious properties and the inability of the Church to fill vacant dioceses. In 1851, Pius IX concluded a concordat with Queen Isabella II, which stipulated that unsold Church properties were to be returned, while the Church renounced properties that already had passed owners. This flexibility of Pius resulted in Spain guaranteeing the freedom of the Church in religious educations.

United States

Pius IX elevated John McCloskey as the first American to the College of Cardinals on 15 March 1875. A letter he wrote to Jefferson Davis addressing him as the "Honorable President of the Confederate States of America" was seen by some as the highest international recognition the Confederate States of America ever got.

Canada

Pius increased the number of Canadian dioceses from four to 21 dioceses with 1,340 churches and 1,620 priests in 1874.

Concordats

Pius signed concordats with Spain, Austria, Tuscany, Portugal, Haiti, Honduras, Ecuador, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Russia.

Austria

The 1848 revolution had mixed results for the Catholic Church in Austria-Hungary. It freed the Church from the heavy hand of the state in its internal affairs, which was applauded by Pius IX. Similar to other countries, Austria-Hungary had significant anti-Catholic political movements, mainly liberals, which forced the emperor Franz-Joseph I in 1870, to renounce the 1855 concordat with the Vatican. Austria had already in 1866 nullified several of its sections concerning the freedom of Catholic schools and prohibition of civil marriages. After diplomatic approaches failed, Pius responded with an encyclical on 7 March 1874, demanding religious freedom and freedom of education. Despite these developments, there was no equivalent to the German Kulturkampf in Austria, and Pius created new dioceses throughout Austria-Hungary.

Russia

The Pontificate of Pius IX began in 1847 with an "Accomodamento," a generous agreement, which allowed Pius to fill vacant Episcopal Sees of the Latin rites both in Russia (Baltic countries) and the Polish provinces of Russia. The short-lived freedoms were undermined by the Orthodox Church, Polish political aspirations in the occupied lands and the tendency of imperial Russia to act against any dissent. Pius first tried to position himself in the middle, strongly opposing revolutionary and violent opposition against the Russian authorities, and, appealing to them for more Church freedom. After the failure of the Polish uprising in 1863, Pius sided with the persecuted Poles, protesting their persecutions, infuriating the Tsarist government to the point that all Catholic dioceses were eliminated by 1870. Pius criticized the Tsar—without naming him—for expatriating whole communities to Siberia, exiling priests, condemning them to labour camps and abolishing Catholic dioceses. He pointed to Siberian villages Tounka and Irkout, where in 1868, 150 Catholic priests were awaiting death.

Poland

Plans to leave Rome

Several times during his pontificate, Pius IX considered leaving Rome. One occurrence was in 1862, when Giuseppe Garibaldi was in Sicily gathering volunteers for a campaign to take Rome under the slogan ''Roma o Morte'' (Rome or Death). On 26 July 1862, before Garibaldi and his volunteers were stopped at Aspromonte:

Two other instances occurred after the Capture of Rome and the suspension of the First Vatican Council. Otto von Bismarck confided these to Moritz Busch:

Theology

Pius was adamant about his role as the highest teaching authority in the Church. He promoted the foundations of Catholic Universities in Belgium and France and supported Catholic associations with the intellectual aim to explain the faith to non-believers and non-Catholics. The ''Ambrosian Circle'' in Italy, the ''Union of Catholic Workers'' in France and the ''Pius Verein'' and the ''Deutsche Katholische Gesellschaft'' in Germany all tried to bring the Catholic faith in its fullness to people outside of the Church.

Mariology

Pius shared a strong devotion to the Virgin Mary with many of his contemporaries, who contributed to Roman Catholic Mariology. Marian doctrines featured prominently in 19th century theology, especially the issue of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. During his pontificate, petitions increased requesting the dogmatization of the Immaculate Conception. In 1848 Pius appointed a theological commission to analyze the possibility for a Marian dogma.

Thirty-eight Encyclicals

Pius issued a record 38 encyclicals. They include: Qui Pluribus (1846) dealt with faith and religion; Praedecessores Nostros (1847) with aid for Ireland; Ubi Primum 1848 with The Immaculate Conception; Nostis Et Nobiscum 1849 with the Church in the Papal States; Neminem Vestrum 1854 with the bloody the Persecution of Armenian; Cum Nuper 1858 with the care for Clerics; Amantissimus 1862 with the Care of the Churches; Meridionali Americae 1865 with the Seminary for the Native Clergy; Omnem Sollicitudinem 1874 |about the Greek-Ruthenian Rite; Quod Nunquam 1875 the Church in Prussia. On 7 February 1862 he issued the papal constitution ''Ad Universalis Ecclesiae,'' dealing with the conditions for admission to religious orders of men in which solemn vows are prescribed. Unlike popes in the 20th century, Pius IX did not use encyclicals to explain the faith, but to condemn what he considered errors. Pius IX was the first pope to popularize encyclicals on a large scale to foster his views.

First Vatican Council

Pius decisively acted on the century-old disagreement between Dominicans and Franciscans regarding the Immaculate Conception of Mary, deciding in favor of the Franciscan view. However, this decision, which he formulated as an infallible dogma, raised a question: Can a Pope make such decisions without the bishops? This foreshadowed one topic of the Vatican Council, which he later convened for 1869. The Pope did consult the bishops beforehand with his encyclical Ubi Primum (see below), but insisted on having this issue clarified nevertheless. The Council was to deal with Papal Infallibility, enhancing the role of the papacy and decreasing the role of the bishops. The role of the bishops was to be dealt with at the Council, but it was disbanded because of the imminent attack by Italy against the Papal States. Thus, the major achievements of Pius IX are his Mariology and Vatican I.

Influence

Pius IX approved 74 new religious congregations for women alone. In France, Pius created over 200 new dioceses and created new hierarchies in several countries.

Last years and death

Pius IX lived long enough to witness the death of his old adversary, Victor Emmanuel II of Italy in January 1878. As soon as he learned about the seriousness of the situation of the king, he absolved him of all excommunications and other ecclesiastical punishments. Pius IX died one month later on 7 February 1878 at 5:40 pm, of epilepsy, which led to a seizure and a sudden heart attack, while saying the rosary with his staff.

Since 1868, the Pope was plagued first by facial erysipelas and then by open sores on his legs. Nevertheless, he insisted on celebrating daily Mass. The extraordinary heat of the summer of 1877 worsened the sores to the effect that he had to be carried. He underwent several painful medical procedures, which he undertook with remarkable patience. He spent most of his last few weeks in his library, where he received cardinals and held audiences. On 8 December, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, his situation improved markedly to the point that he could walk again. By February, he could say Mass again on his own in standing position, enjoying the popular celebration of the 75th anniversary of his first communion. Bronchitis, a fall to the floor, and rising temperature worsened his situation after 4 February 1878. He continued joking about himself, when the Cardinal Vicar of Rome ordered bell-ringing and non-stop prayers for his recuperation. "Why do you want to stop me from going to heaven?" he asked with a smile. He told his doctor that his time had come. Pope Pius IX died on 7 February 1878, aged 85, concluding the longest pontificate in papal history, after that of St Peter whom tradition holds had reigned for 37 years. His last words were "Guard the church I loved so well and sacredly," as recorded by the Cardinals kneeling beside his bedside. His body was originally buried in St. Peter's grotto, but was moved in a night procession on 13 July 1881 to the Basilica of Saint Lawrence outside the Walls. When the cortege approached the Tiber River, a gang of anticlerical Romans threatened to throw the coffin into the river. Only the arrival of a contingent of militia saved Pio Nono's body from final insult.

Beatification

The process for his beatification, which in the early parts was strongly opposed by the Italian government, was begun on 11 February 1907, and recommenced three times. The Italian government had since 1878 strongly opposed beatification of Pius IX. Without Italian opposition, Pope John Paul II declared him venerable on 6 July 1985, and beatified him on 3 September 2000 (his commemoration is 7 February). This latter ceremony also included the beatification of Pope John XXIII (1958–63).

The beatification of Pius was controversial, and was criticized by Jews and Christians because of what was perceived as his authoritarian, reactionary politics; the accusation of abuse of episcopal powers; and antisemitism (specifically the case of Edgardo Mortara). Critics contend that his beatification placed "an unbearable burden on relations between Jews and Catholics," especially given Pope John Paul II's conciliatory gestures toward Judaism. The process coincided with the canonization of Edith Stein, likewise controversial. Hans Küng saw the beatification of Pius IX as evidence of the degeneration of canonizations to "gestures of church politics."

Legacy

Pius IX celebrated his silver jubilee in 1871, going on to have the longest reign in the history of the post-apostolic papacy, 31 years, 7 months and 23 days. As he lost temporal sovereignty, the Roman Catholic Church rallied around him, the papacy became more centralized, to which his personal life-style of simplicity and poverty is considered to have contributed. From this point on, the papacy became and continues to become increasingly a spiritual, and less a temporal, authority. Pius IX's pontificate marks the beginning of the modern papacy.

After starting out as a liberal, Pius IX turned conservative after being thrown out of Rome. Thereafter, he was considered politically conservative, but a restless and radical reformer and innovator of Church life and structures. Church life, religious vocations, new foundations and religious enthusiasm all flourished at the end of his pontificate. Politically, his pontificate ended with the isolation of the papacy from most major powers of the world: "The prisoner of the Vatican" had poor relations with Russia, Germany, and the United States, poor relations with France and open hostility with Italy. Yet he was most popular with the faithful in all these countries, in many of which Pope Pius associations were formed in his support. He made lasting Church history with his 1854 infallible decision of the Immaculate Conception, which was the basis for the later dogma on the Assumption. His other lasting contribution is the invocation of the ecumenical council Vatican One, which promulgated the definition of Papal infallibility. With his advices helped to saint John Bosco to found Salesian Society; so call him „don Bosco's Pope” too.

The Prophecy of the Popes, attributed to Saint Malachy, is a list of 112 short phrases in Latin. They purport to describe each of the Roman Catholic popes. It describes Pius IX as ''Crux de Cruce,'' Cross of the cross.

Photos of Pope Pius IX

The art of photography developed during Pius IX's pontificate, and he was the first pope to be photographed, mainly in his later years.

Some contemporaries of Pius IX like Cardinal Giuseppe Pecci considered photography inferior to painting and refused to be photographed. Pius was open to the new form of art.

Memorabilia

In two nights after his 1846 pardon freeing all political prisoners, thousands of Romans with torches roamed to the Quirinal Palace, where Pius IX lived, celebrating the pope with ''Evviva'''s, speeches and music through both nights. The Pope went several times to the balcony to give his blessing. On the third day, when his horse-drawn carriage left the Palace to move to the Vatican, Romans disconnected the horses and pulled the papal carriage on their own On 16 November 1848, an excited mob of revolutionaries moved to the Quirinal and the Parliament to present to the Pope their demands, especially war against Austria. The Pope reportedly replied, his dignity as head of state and of the Church does not permit him to fulfil conditions of rebels. Following this, the Quirinal was covered by cannon fire, which caused several deaths. After that, to save lives, the Pope agreed to a list of proposed ministers, although stating that he would abstain from any cooperation with them. After the French troops, who protected the Papal States, left Rome, an Italian army with 60,000 men approached the city, which was defended by only 10,000 papal soldiers. The Pope instructed his soldiers to give only token resistance and to enter an armistice after the first defeat because the Deputy of Christ does not shed blood. When the old Porta Pia was bombarded, opening a huge hole for the invaders, the Pope asked the white flag to be shown. It was his last act as King of the Papal States. The last papal shot at the Porta Pia was fired by an Austrian alumnus of the Stella Matutina.

Pius IX was lampooned by reference to the Italian version of his name (''Pio Nono''), as ''Pio No No''.

His occasional mood changes and emotional outbursts have been interpreted as symptoms of his epilepsy.

One enduring popular touch lies in Pius IX's artistic legacy as author of the Italian-language lyrics of Italy's best-known indigenous Christmas carol, ''Tu scendi dalle stelle'' ("From starry skies descended"), originally a Neapolitan language song written by Saint Alphonsus Liguori.

During his stay at the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, on 8 September 1849, Pope Pius IX had the experience of a train trip from Portici to Pagani, so he became enthusiastic about this modern invention. When he went back to his seat in Rome, he promoted the growth of a railroad network, starting in 1856 with the Rome and Frascati Rail Road. By 1870, the length of railway lines built in the Papal States was . He also introduced gas lighting and the telegraph to the Papal States.

To commemorate his term as pope, there is a street in Montreal called Pie-IX (Pie-Neuf), French for Pius IX. There is also a stop on the Montreal Metro system called Pie-IX serving the street, located at the foot of the Olympic Stadium. In addition, there are streets in Santiago, Chile, and Macon, Georgia, called Pío Nono, Spanish for Pius IX and a secondary school with the same name (Pio IX) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Pope Pius IX died aged 85 on 7 February 1878 after a pontificate of 32 years. It was his last wish to be buried not in the Vatican but in the Basilica di San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, his casket to be ornated with a simple cross that was not to cost more than 400 Scudi. At the request of Italian authorities, the funeral took place three years later in the middle of the night on 12/13 July 1881. It was accompanied by the clergy and Roman society. The houses along the streets were illuminated with torches, and people threw flowers from the window on the horse-drawn carriage. A gang of anti-Catholic nationalists screaming, "Long live Italy! Death to the Pope! Death to the Priests!" tried to steal the body of the pope and throw it into the Tiber River. The simple grave of Pius IX was changed by his successor, John Paul II, after his beatification.

References

Acta et decreta Pii IX, Pontificis Maximi, VolI-VII, Romae 1854 ff

Acta et decreta Leonis XIII, P.M. Vol I-XXII, Romae, 1881, ff

Actae Sanctae Sedis, (ASS), Romae, Vaticano 1865

L. Boudou, Le S. Siege et la Russie, Paris, 1890

Chiron, Yves, Pope Pius IX: The Man and The Myth, Angelus Press, Kansas City-MI, 2005 ISBN 1892331314

Duffy, Eamon, ''Saints and Sinners, a History of the Popes'' Yale University Press, 1997

Franzen, August, ''Papstgeschichte'', Herder, Freiburg, 1988 (cit.''Franzen'')

Franzen, August, ''Kleine Kirchengeschichte'' Herder, Freiburg, 1991 (cit.''Franzen, Kirchengeschichte'')

Martina, S.J. Pio IX (1846–1850) Roma: Editrice Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, Vol I-III, 1974–1991

Pougeois, Histoire de Pie IX, son pontificat et son siecle, Vol I-VI, Paris, 1877

Schmidlin, Josef, Papstgeschichte, Vol I-IV, Köstel-Pusztet München, 1922–1939

John Gilmary Shea, The Life of Pope Pius IX, New York, 1877

Sylvain, Histoire de Pie IX le Grand et de son pontificat, Vol I,II, Paris, 1878

Franz Spirago, Példatár (Examples from life; from 6. German edition translated Bezerédj László), Szent István-Társulat Budapest, 1927

Footnotes

External links

The Life of Pope Pius IX, also about Vatican I of the Catholic Church and Syllabus of Errors

Vatican news: Pius IX

Pope Pius IX

Biography with pictures

Pope Pius IX: text with concordances and frequency list

Catholic-Hierarchy entry

''The Last Days of Papal Rome'' by Raffaele De Cesare (1909) London, Archibald Constable & Co.

"Pius IX (1792–1878)" by Derek Michaud in The Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology

Category:1792 births Category:1878 deaths Category:People from Senigallia Category:Popes Category:Italian popes Category:Bishops of Imola Category:Archbishops of Spoleto Category:Beatified people Category:Italian people of the Risorgimento Category:People with epilepsy Category:Deaths from epilepsy Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:19th-century Italian people

ar:البابا بيوس التاسع az:IX Piy be:Пій IX, Папа Рымскі br:Pi IX bg:Пий IX ca:Pius IX cs:Pius IX. cy:Pab Pïws IX da:Pave Pius 9. de:Pius IX. et:Pius IX el:Πάπας Πίος Θ΄ es:Pío IX eo:Pio la 9-a eu:Pio IX.a fa:پیوس نهم fr:Pie IX ga:Pápa Pius IX gl:Pío IX, papa ko:교황 비오 9세 hr:Pio IX. io:Pius 9ma id:Paus Pius IX it:Papa Pio IX he:פיוס התשיעי jv:Paus Pius IX pam:Papa Piu IX ka:პიუს IX sw:Papa Pius IX la:Pius IX lt:Pijus IX lmo:Piu IX hu:IX. Piusz pápa mk:Папа Пиј IX ml:ഒൻപതാം പീയൂസ് മാർപ്പാപ്പ mr:पोप पायस नववा nl:Paus Pius IX ja:ピウス9世 (ローマ教皇) no:Pius IX oc:Piu IX pl:Pius IX pt:Papa Pio IX ro:Papa Pius al IX-lea ru:Пий IX simple:Pope Pius IX sk:Pius IX. sl:Papež Pij IX. sr:Папа Пије IX fi:Pius IX sv:Pius IX tl:Pío IX th:สมเด็จพระสันตะปาปาปิอุสที่ 9 uk:Пій IX vec:Papa Pio IX vi:Giáo hoàng Piô IX war:Papa Pío IX yo:Pope Pius IX zh:庇護九世

Coordinates	1°15′″N116°50′″N
name	The Immaculate Collection
type	Greatest hits
artist	Madonna
cover	Madonna - The Immaculate Collection.png
released	November 9, 1990
recorded	May 1982–October 1990
genre	Pop, Dance
length	73:34
label	Sire, Warner Bros.
producer	Stephen Bray, Patrick Leonard, John "Jellybean" Benitez, Reggie Lucas, Nile Rodgers, Shep Pettibone, Lenny Kravitz, Madonna
last album	''I'm Breathless''(1990)
this album	''The Immaculate Collection''(1990)
next album	''Erotica''(1992)
misc	}}

''The Immaculate Collection'' is the first greatest hits album by American singer-songwriter Madonna, released on November 9, 1990 by Sire Records. It contains fifteen of her hit singles from 1982 to 1990, as well as two new tracks "Justify My Love" and "Rescue Me". The title of the album is a loose pun of the Immaculate Conception, the conception of the Virgin Mary without any stain of the original sin. This name follows Madonna's religious-themed songs and videos, as well as the second section of her Blond Ambition World Tour, which also employed religious motifs. An extended play titled ''The Holiday Collection'' was issued in Europe to accompany the compilation and the re-release of the single "Holiday". It contained tracks omitted from this album: "True Blue", "Who's That Girl" and "Causing a Commotion".

The album was ranked at number one on the ''Blender'' magazine's list of "100 Greatest American Albums of All Time". In 2003, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine named the album the 278th greatest album of all time. It became Madonna's second album to be certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipment of over ten million copies across the United States. It also remains the best-selling album by a female artist in British music history and spent the second highest number of consecutive weeks at number one for a female solo artist in the U.K., being at number one for a 9 week stint. The album has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling compilation album by a solo artist and one of the best selling albums of all time. "Justify My Love", the album's first single, became Madonna's ninth number-one hit on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 and was one of her most controversial singles due to its sexually explicit music video. "Rescue Me" was released as the second single and became the highest debuting-single on Hot 100 by a female artist at that time, entering the chart at number fifteen and peaking at number nine.

Background

Originally titled ''Ultra Madonna'', the name was changed as Warner Bros. felt that it was too similar to the name of dance artist Ultra Naté. Madonna dedicated the album to "The Pope, my divine inspiration". This led to many believing it was dedicated to Pope John Paul II, but it was actually dedicated to her brother, Christopher Ciccone, who had spent the year on tour with Madonna ("The Pope" is one of his nicknames). The production of this album is notable for its use of QSound; all songs were mixed in using it, except "Justify My Love" and "Rescue Me". A QSound mix of "Justify My Love" was later released on the US maxi-single to the song.

All of the songs on ''The Immaculate Collection'' (with the exception of the two new songs) were remixed by Shep Pettibone alongside either Goh Hotoda or Michael Hutchinson and some were also edited down from their original lengths in order to decrease the overall running time. While all the vocals remain the same as in the original recordings, "Like a Prayer" and "Express Yourself" feature different music backing Madonna's vocals than their original album release. It was decided that a mixture of ballads and pop-dance hits would be included, although there wasn't space for every single that Madonna had released. "Justify My Love" became the first single to promote the album, and created a furor over the sexual video and the controversy in regards to who wrote it. (Poet Ingrid Chavez claimed she wrote part of the lyrics, alongside credited lyricist Lenny Kravitz.) The single shot to number one in the U.S. and number two in the UK. A second release, "Rescue Me", was released in early 1991, which also went top ten.

Warner Bros. released an EP in the UK and Europe titled ''The Holiday Collection'' which had the same design as ''The Immaculate Collection''. The full-length version of "Holiday" was included alongside "True Blue", "Who's That Girl", and the Silver Screen Single mix of "Causing a Commotion". The re-released "Holiday" eventually went to No. 5 in the UK charts, while a re-release of the ballad "Crazy for You" (using the new remixed version) peaked at No. 2. ''Blender'' magazine ranked the album at number one on their list of "100 Greatest American Albums of All Time". In 2003, the album was ranked number 278 on ''Rolling Stone'' magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In November 2006, the album was confirmed by the British Phonographic Industry to be the biggest selling album by a solo female artist in British history, and the tenth biggest selling album of all time in the UK by any artist. On January 1, 1991, a box set entitled ''The Royal Box'' was released which included either a Cassette/VHS (US-only) or Satin CD Digipak/VHS (US, Germany/UK) with additional postcards and poster. The VHS version also included the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards performance of "Vogue".

Commercial response

''The Immaculate Collection'' was included in the list of BMG Music Club's top selling albums in the United States at number #10. The album stayed atop the UK Albums chart for 9 weeks, breaking the record for the longest ''consecutive'' weeks at #1 by a solo female artist, a record that would not be matched until 2011 by Adele's album ''21''. On March 12, 2006, the album re-entered the UK charts more than 15 years after its release at #38 (it reached #1 on its original release in 1990). Madonna's ''Confessions on a Dance Floor'' was also in the top 20 at #13. In 2006, the album returned to Ireland's Top 100 Albums chart, entering at #21, charting higher than ''Confessions on a Dance Floor'', which was at #95. On the week of April 28, 2008, the album rose 50 places from #122 to #72 on the official UK Albums Chart, the same week that Madonna's eleventh studio album ''Hard Candy'' was released internationally.

In the United States, ''The Immaculate Collection'' was certified Diamond (10x Platinum) by RIAA, becoming one of the best-selling albums in the country. In the United Kingdom, ''The Immaculate Collection'' was certified 12x Platinum by BPI for shipment of 3.6 million copies, becoming the best-selling album by a female artist in British music history.

''The Immaculate Collection'' was certified 11× Platinum by Australian Recording Industry Association, becoming one of the best-selling albums in Australia. In France, the album was certified Diamond for shipment of one million copies of the album. ''The Immaculate Collection'' has sold 30 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling compilation album by a solo artist of all time.

Singles

From this album, Madonna released four singles:

# !! Title !! Date
1.	"Justify My Love"	November 6, 1990
2.	Rescue Me (Madonna song)>Rescue Me"
3.	Crazy for You (song)>Crazy for You (Remix)" (UK)
4.	Holiday (Madonna song)>Holiday (re-release)" (UK)

Track listing

This is the original 1990 track listing for the audio releases, for the VHS/VCD/Laserdisc/DVD version go to: ''The Immaculate Collection (video)'' {{tracklist | extra_column = Producer(s) | writing_credits = yes | title1 = Holiday | writer1 = Curtis Hudson, Lisa Stevens | extra1 = John "Jellybean" Benitez | length1 = 4:04 | title2 = Lucky Star | writer2 = Madonna | extra2 = Reggie Lucas | length2 = 3:39 | title3 = Borderline | writer3 = Reggie Lucas | extra3 = Reggie Lucas | length3 = 4:00 | title4 = Like a Virgin | writer4 = Tom Kelly, Billy Steinberg | extra4 = Nile Rodgers | length4 = 3:11 | title5 = Material Girl | writer5 = Peter Brown, Robert Rans | extra5 = Nile Rodgers | length5 = 3:53 | title6 = Crazy for You | writer6 = John Bettis, Jon Lind | extra6 = Nile Rodgers | length6 = 3:45 | title7 = Into the Groove | writer7 = Madonna, Stephen Bray | extra7 = Madonna, Stephen Bray | length7 = 4:10 | title8 = Live to Tell | writer8 = Madonna, Patrick Leonard | extra8 = Madonna, Patrick Leonard | length8 = 5:19 | title9 = Papa Don't Preach | writer9 = Brian Elliot, additional lyrics by Madonna | extra9 = Madonna, Stephen Bray | length9 = 4:11 | title10 = Open Your Heart | writer10 = Madonna, Gardner Cole, Peter Rafelson | extra10 = Madonna, Patrick Leonard | length10 = 3:51 | title11 = La Isla Bonita | writer11 = Madonna, P. Leonard, Bruce Gaitsch | extra11 = Madonna, Patrick Leonard | length11 = 3:48 | title12 = Like a Prayer | writer12 = Madonna, P. Leonard | extra12 = Madonna, Patrick Leonard | length12 = 5:51 | title13 = Express Yourself | writer13 = Madonna, S. Bray | extra13 = Madonna, Stephen Bray | length13 = 4:04 | title14 = Cherish | writer14 = Madonna, P. Leonard | extra14 = Madonna, Patrick Leonard | length14 = 3:52 | title15 = Vogue | writer15 = Madonna, Shep Pettibone | extra15 = Madonna, Shep Pettibone | length15 = 5:19 | title16 = Justify My Love | writer16 = Lenny Kravitz, Ingrid Chavez, additional lyrics by Madonna | extra16 = Lenny Kravitz | length16 = 5:00 | title17 = Rescue Me | writer17 = Madonna, S. Pettibone | extra17 = Madonna, Shep Pettibone | length17 = 5:31 }}

Additional notes

All tracks: "1990 QSound Mix" except "Justify My Love" and "Rescue Me"

The iTunes version, released digitally in 2005, contains different versions of: "Lucky Star" (U.S. Remix) – 7:15 and "Borderline" (Remix) – 5:18

"Like a Prayer" and "Express Yourself": Additional production by Shep Pettibone

"Justify My Love": Associate Producer: André Betts

"Vogue": Executive Producer: Craig Kostich

Formats

CD — containing the 17-track compilation album.

CD Limited Edition Box Set — ''The Royal Box'' containing a Satin Digi-Pak CD with VHS containing "Vogue" (from the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards), a 24" x 36" color poster and postcard assortment, housed in a lingerie-inspired LP sized box. CD Limited Edition Gold Edition — Rare 1995 Taiwanese exclusive limited 'Gold' Edition in a unique gold bordered slipcase.

Cassette — containing the 17-track compilation album.

Cassette Limited Edition Box Set — ''The Royal Box'' containing the Cassette version with VHS containing "Vogue" (from the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards), a 24" x 36" color poster and postcard assortment, housed in a lingerie-inspired LP sized box.

LP — double disc, containing 17 tracks.

LP Limited Edition Picture Disc — UK double picture disc, containing 17 tracks. Mini Disc — 17-track compilation, released 25 October 1999.

VHS — 13-track video compilation, contains "Oh Father", not included on the audio releases, and "Vogue" (from the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards).

Laserdisc — 13-track double disc video compilation, contains "Oh Father", not included on the audio releases and "Vogue" (from the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards).

VCD — Asia only, 13-track video compilation, contains "Oh Father", not included on the audio releases and "Vogue" (from the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards).

DVD — 13-track video compilation released in November 1999, contains "Oh Father", not included on the audio releases and "Vogue" (from the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards).

iTunes version — released digitally in 2005, contains different version of: "Lucky Star" - (U.S. Remix) 7:15, "Borderline" - (Remix) 5:18 and "Like a Prayer" - (Extended 12" Version) 7:24, all other tracks are the same as the original release.

Charts, certifications and procession

Charts

!Chart	!PeakPosition
UK Albums Chart

Certifications

!Country	List of music recording certifications>Certification
style="text-align:left;"	5× Platinum
style="text-align:left;"	11× Platinum
style="text-align:left;"	Platinum
style="text-align:left;"	2× Platinum
style="text-align:left;"	7× Platinum
style="text-align:left;"	Platinum
style="text-align:left;"	2× Platinum
style="text-align:left;"	Diamond
style="text-align:left;"	3× Gold
style="text-align:left;"	3× Platinum
style="text-align:left;"	7× Platinum
style="text-align:left;"	3× Platinum
style="text-align:left;"	3× Platinum
style="text-align:left;"	Gold
style="text-align:left;"	Platinum
style="text-align:left;"	12× Platinum
style="text-align:left;"	Diamond

Chart procession and succession

See also

List of best-selling albums worldwide

List of best-selling albums in the United States

List of best-selling albums in the United Kingdom

List of best-selling albums in Australia

List of best-selling albums in France

References

External links

Category:1989 greatest hits albums Category:Albums produced by Lenny Kravitz Category:Albums produced by Patrick Leonard Category:Albums produced by Nile Rodgers Category:Recording Industry Association of America Diamond Award albums Category:Madonna (entertainer) compilation albums Category:Sire Records compilation albums

de:The Immaculate Collection et:The Immaculate Collection es:The Immaculate Collection fr:The Immaculate Collection hr:The Immaculate Collection id:The Immaculate Collection it:The Immaculate Collection lv:The Immaculate Collection hu:The Immaculate Collection nl:The Immaculate Collection ja:ウルトラ・マドンナ〜グレイテスト・ヒッツ pl:The Immaculate Collection pt:The Immaculate Collection ro:The Immaculate Collection ru:The Immaculate Collection sr:The Immaculate Collection fi:The Immaculate Collection sv:The Immaculate Collection uk:The Immaculate Collection vi:The Immaculate Collection

Coordinates	1°15′″N116°50′″N
{{infobox christian leader | type	Pope
english name	Leo XIII
coat of arms	C o a Leone XIII.svg
birth name	Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci
term start	20 February 1878
term end	20 July 1903 ()
predecessor	Pius IX
successor	Pius X
ordination	31 December 1837
ordinated by	Carlo Odescalchi
consecration	19 February 1843
consecrated by	Luigi Emmanuele Nicolo Lambruschini
cardinal	19 December 1853
birth date	2 March 1810
birth place	Carpineto Romano, département of Rome, French Empire
death date	20 July 1903 (aged 93)
death place	Apostolic Palace, Rome, Italy }}

Pope Leo XIII (2 March 1810 – 20 July 1903), born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci to an Italian comital family, was the 256th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, reigning from 1878 to 1903. He was the oldest pope (reigning until the age of 93), and had the third longest pontificate, behind his immediate predecessor Pius IX and successor John Paul II.

He is known for intellectualism, the development of social teachings with his encyclical Rerum Novarum and his attempts to define the position of the Church with regard to modern thinking. He impacted Roman Catholic Mariology and promoted both the rosary and the scapular. He issued a record eleven encyclicals on the rosary, approved two new Marian scapulars and was the first Pope to fully embrace the concept of Mary as mediatrix.

Early life

Born in Carpineto Romano, near Rome, he was the sixth of the seven sons of Count Ludovico Pecci and his wife Anna Prosperi Buzzi. From 1810 to 1818 he was at home with his family, "in which religion counted as the highest grace on earth, as through her, salvation can be earned for all eternity". Together with his brother he studied in the Jesuit College in Viterbo, where he stayed until 1824. He enjoyed the Latin language and was known to write his own Latin poems at the age of eleven.

In 1824 he and his older brother Giuseppe Pecci were called to Rome where their mother was dying. Count Pecci wanted his children near him after the loss of his wife, and so they stayed with him in Rome, attending the Jesuit Collegium Romanum. In 1828, Giuseppe entered the Jesuit order, while Vincenzo decided in favour of secular clergy.

He studied at the ''Academia dei Nobili'', mainly diplomacy and law. In 1834 he gave a student presentation, attended by several cardinals, on ''papal judgements''. For his presentation he received awards for academic excellence, and gained the attention of Vatican officials. Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Lambruschini introduced him to Vatican congregations and to Pope Gregory XVI, who appointed Pecci on 14 February 1837, as personal prelate even before he was ordained priest on 31 December 1837, by the Vicar of Rome. He celebrated his first mass together with his priest brother Giuseppe. He received his doctorate in theology in 1836 and doctorates of civil and Canon Law in Rome also.

Provincial administrator

Shortly thereafter, Gregory XVI appointed Pecci as legate (provincial administrator) to Benevento. The smallest of papal provinces, Benevento included about 20,000 people.

The main problems facing Pecci were a decaying local economy, insecurity because of widespread bandits, and pervasive Mafia structures, who often were allied with aristocratic families. Pecci arrested the most powerful aristocrat in Benevento, and his troops captured others, who were either killed or imprisoned by him. With the public order restored, he turned to the economy and a reform of the tax system to stimulate trade with neighboring provinces.

Upon completion of the tax reforms, Gregory XVI appointed Pecci to be administrator of Spoleto, a province with 100,000, and then Perugia with 200,000 inhabitants.

His immediate concern was to prepare the province for a papal visitation in the same year. Pope Gregory visited hospitals and educational institutions for several days, asking for advice and listing questions. The fight against corruption continued in Perugia, where Pecci himself investigated several incidents. When it was claimed that a bakery was selling bread below the prescribed pound weight, he personally went there, had all bread weighed, and confiscated it if below legal weight. The confiscated bread was distributed to the poor.

Nuncio to Belgium

In 1843, Pecci, only thirty-four years old, was appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Belgium, a position which guaranteed the Cardinal's hat after completion of the tour.

On 27 April 1843, Pope Gregory XVI appointed Pecci Archbishop of Damiette and asked his Cardinal Secretary of State Lambruschini to consecrate him. Pecci developed excellent relations with the royal family and used the location to visit neighbouring Germany, where he was particularly interested in the resumed construction of the Cologne Cathedral.

Upon his initiative, a Belgian College in Rome was opened in 1844, where 100 years later, in 1946, Pope John Paul II would begin his Roman studies. He spent several weeks in England with Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, carefully reviewing the condition of the Catholic Church in that country.

In Belgium, the school question was then sharply debated between the Catholic majority and the Liberal minority. Pecci encouraged the struggle for Catholic schools, yet he was able to win the good will of the Court, not only of the pious Queen Louise, but also of King Leopold I, strongly Liberal in his views. The new nuncio succeeded in uniting the Catholics.

Archbishop of Perugia

Papal assistant

Pecci was named papal assistant in 1843. He first achieved note as the popular and successful Bishop of Perugia from 1846 to 1877. In 1847, Pope Pius IX issued unlimited freedom for the press, which, after many years of restrictions, was highly welcomed and popular. In the following year, in 1848, revolutionary movements developed throughout Western Europe including France, Germany and Italy.

Pecci, who was highly popular in the first years of his episcopate, became now the object of attacks, both in the media and in his residence. The papal minister Rossi was assassinated and Pope Pius IX had to flee to Gaeta. In the following months, Austrian, French and Spanish troops reversed the revolutionary gains, but at a price for Pecci and the Catholic Church, who could not regain their former popularity.

Provincial council

Pecci called a provincial council, in order to reform the religious life in his dioceses. He invested in the enlargement of the seminary for future priests and in new and prominent professors, preferably Thomists. He called on his brother Giuseppe Pecci, a noted Thomist scholar, to resign his professorship in Rome and teach instead in Perugia. His own residence was next to the seminary, which aided daily contacts of the students with the de-facto head of the seminary, Archbishop Pecci.

Charitable activities

Pecci developed several activities in support of Catholic charities: He founded homes for homeless boys and girls, and for elderly women. Throughout his dioceses he opened branches of a ''Bank, Monte de Pieta,'' which focused on low-income people and provided low interest loans. He created soup-kitchens, which were run by the Capuchins. In the consistory of 19 December 1853, he was elevated to the College of Cardinals, as Cardinal-Priest of ''S. Crisogono.'' In light of continuing earthquakes and floods, he donated all resources for festivities to the victims. Much of the public attention turned on the conflict between the Papal States and Italian nationalism, aiming at these states' annihilation so as to achieve the Unification of Italy.

Defence of the papacy

Pecci defended the papacy and its claims. When Italian authorities expropriated convents and monasteries of Catholic orders, turning them into administration or military buildings, Cardinal Pecci protested but acted moderately. When the Italian state took over Catholic schools, Pecci, fearing for his theological seminary, simply added all secular topics from other schools and opened the seminary to non-theologians. The new government in addition to the expropriations levied taxes on the Church and issued legislation, according to which all Episcopal or papal utterances are to be approved by the government before their publication.

Organizing the First Vatican Council

Pope Pius IX announced an ecumenical council, which became known as the First Vatican Council, to take place in the Vatican on 8 December 1869, Pecci was likely to be well informed, since his brother Giuseppe had been named by the Pope to be one of the persons to prepare this event.

In his last years in Perugia, Pecci several times addressed the role of the Church in modern society. Pecci defined the Church as ''the mother of material civilization'', because the Church upholds human dignity of working people, opposes the excesses of industrialization and developed large scale charities for the needy.

Camerlengo

In August 1877, on the death of Cardinal Filippo de Angelis, Pope Pius IX appointed him Camerlengo, so that he was obliged to reside in Rome. Pope Pius died on 7 February 1878, and during his closing years the Liberal press had often insinuated that the Italian Government should take a hand in the conclave and occupy the Vatican. However the Russo-Turkish War and the sudden death of Victor Emmanuel II (9 January 1878) distracted the attention of the government. The conclave proceeded as usual, and on the third ballot Cardinal Pecci was elected by forty-four votes out of sixty-one.

Papacy

As soon as he was elected to the papacy, Leo XIII worked to encourage understanding between the Church and the modern world. When he firmly re-asserted the scholastic doctrine that science and religion co-exist, he required the study of Thomas Aquinas and opened the Vatican Secret Archives to qualified researchers, among whom was the noted historian of the Papacy Ludwig von Pastor.

Leo XIII was the first Pope of whom a sound recording was made. The recording can be found on a compact disc of Alessandro Moreschi's singing; a recording of his performance of the Ave Maria is available on the web. He was also the first Pope to be filmed on the motion picture camera. He was filmed by its inventor, W. K. Dickson, and blessed the camera afterward.

Leo XIII brought normality back to the Church after the tumultuous years of Pius IX. Leo's intellectual and diplomatic skills helped regain much of the prestige lost with the fall of the Papal States. He tried to reconcile the Church with the working class, particularly by dealing with the social changes that were sweeping Europe. The new economic order had resulted in the growth of an impoverished working class, with increasing anti-clerical and socialist sympathies. Leo helped reverse this trend.

While Leo was no radical in either theology or politics, his papacy did move the Church back to the mainstream of European life. Considered a great diplomat, he managed to improve relations with Russia, Prussia, Germany, France, England and other countries.

Pope Leo XIII was able to reach several agreements in 1896, which resulted in better conditions for the faithful and additional appointments of bishops. During the Fifth cholera pandemic in 1891 he ordered the construction of a hospice inside the Vatican. That building would be torn down in 1996 to make way for construction of the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

His favorite poets were Virgil and Dante.

Foreign relations

Russia

Pope Leo XIII began his pontificate with a friendly letter to Tzar Alexander II, in which he reminded the Russian monarch of the millions of Catholics living in his empire, who would like to be good Russian subjects, provided their dignity is respected.

After the assassination of Alexander II, the Pope sent a high ranking representative to the coronation of his successor. Alexander III was grateful and asked for all religious forces to unify. He asked the Pope to ensure that his bishops abstain from political agitation. Relations improved further, when Pope Leo XIII, due to Italian considerations, distanced the Vatican from the Rome-Vienna-Berlin alliance and helped to facilitate a rapprochement between Paris and St. Petersburg.

Germany

Under Otto von Bismarck, the anti-Catholic ''Kulturkampf'' in Prussia led to massive reprisals against the Church. Under Leo, compromises were informally reached the anti-Catholic attacks subsided.

The Centre Party in Germany represented Catholic interests and was a positive force for social change. It was encouraged by Leo's support for social welfare legislation and the rights of working people. Leo's forward-looking approach encouraged Catholic Action in other European countries where the social teachings of the Church were incorporated into the agenda of Catholic parties, particularly the Christian democratic parties, which became an acceptable alternative to socialist parties. Leo's social teachings were reiterated throughout the 20th century by his successors.

France

Leo XIII was the first Pope to come out strongly in favour of the French Republic, upsetting many French monarchists. In his relations with the Italian state, Leo XIII continued the Papacy's self-imposed incarceration in the Vatican stance, and continued to insist that Italian Catholics should not vote in Italian elections or hold elected office. In his first consistory in 1879 he elevated his older brother Giuseppe to the cardinalate.

Italy

However, in light of a hostile anti-Catholic climate in Italy, he continued the policies of Pius IX towards Italy, without major modifications. He had to defend the freedom of the Church against what Catholics considered Italian persecutions and attacks in the area of education, expropriation and violation of Catholic Churches, legal measures against the Church and brutal attacks, culminating in anticlerical groups attempting to throw the body of the deceased Pope Pius IX into the Tiber river on 13 July 1881. The Pope even considered moving his residence to Trieste or Salzburg, two cities in Austria, an idea which the Austrian monarch Franz Josef I gently rejected.

United Kingdom

Among the activities of Leo XIII that were important for the English-speaking world, the encyclical ''Apostolicæ Curæ'' of 1896 on the invalidity of the Anglican orders stand out as highly significant. Furthermore, Leo restored the Scottish hierarchy in 1878. In British India, he established a Catholic hierarchy in 1886, and regulated some long-standing conflicts with the Portuguese authorities.

United States

The United States at many moments in time attracted the attention and admiration of Pope Leo. He confirmed the decrees of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884), and raised James Gibbons, archbishop of that city, to the cardinalate in 1886.

American newspapers criticized Pope Leo because they claimed that he was attempting to gain control of American public schools. One cartoonist drew Leo as a fox unable to reach grapes that were labeled for American schools; the caption read "Sour grapes!"

Chile

His role in South America will also be remembered, especially the pontifical benediction extended over Chilean troops on the eve of the Battle of Chorrillos during the War of the Pacific in January 1881. The Chilean soldiers thus blessed then looted the cities of Chorrillos and Barranco, including the churches, and their Chaplains headed the robbery at the Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, where the soldiers ransacked various items along with much capital, and Chilean Priests coveted rare and ancient editions of the Bible that were stored there.

Despite this, one year later Chilean President Domingo Santa Marìa issued the ''Laicist Laws'', which separated the Church from the State, this being considered a slap in the face for the Papacy.

Brazil

Pope Leo is also remembered for the ''First Plenary Council of Latin America'' held at Rome in 1899, and his encyclical of 1888 to the bishops of Brazil on the abolition of slavery.

Evangelization

Pope Leo sanctioned the missions to eastern African. In 1879 Catholic missionaries associated with the White Father Congregation (Society of the Missionaries of Africa) came to Uganda and other went to Tanganyika (present day Tanzania) and Rwanda.

Theology

The pontificate of Leo XIII was theologically influenced by the First Vatican Council (1869–1870), which had ended only eight years earlier. Leo issued some 46 apostolic letters and encyclicals dealing with central issues in the areas of marriage and family and state and society.

Thomism

As Pope, he used all his authority for a revival of Thomism, the theology of Thomas Aquinas. On 4 August 1879, Leo promulgated the encyclical Aeterni Patris (“Eternal Father”) which, more than any other single document, provided a charter for the revival of Thomism—the medieval theological system based on the thought of Aquinas—as the official philosophical and theological system of the Roman Catholic Church. It was to be normative not only in the training of priests at church seminaries but also in the education of the laity at universities.

Consecrations

Leo XIII performed a number of consecrations, at times entering new theological territory. His consecration of the entire world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus presented theological challenges in consecrating non-Christians. Since about 1850, various congregations and States had consecrated themselves to the Sacred Heart, and, in 1875, this consecration was made throughout the Catholic world.

Scriptures

In his 1893 encyclical ''Providentissimus Deus,'' he described the importance of scriptures for theological study. It was an important encyclical for Catholic theology and its relation to the Bible, as Pope Pius XII pointed out fifty years later in his encyclical ''Divino Afflante Spiritu''.

Ecumenical efforts

Pope Leo XIII fostered ecumenical relations leading to the reintegration of the Armenian Church into the Catholic Church in 1879. He opposed efforts to Latinize the Eastern Rite Churches, stating that they constitute a most valuable ancient tradition and symbol of the divine unity of the Catholic Church.

Theological research

Leo XIII is credited with great efforts in the areas of scientific and historical analysis. He opened the Vatican Archives and personally fostered a twenty-volume comprehensive scientific study of the Papacy by Ludwig von Pastor, an Austrian historian.

Mariology

His predecessor, Pope Pius IX, became known as the Pope of the Immaculate Conception because of the dogmatization in 1854. Leo XIII, in light of his unprecedented promulgation of the rosary in eleven encyclicals, was called the Rosary Pope. In eleven encyclicals on the rosary he promulgates Marian devotion. In his encyclical on the fiftieth anniversary of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, he stresses her role in the redemption of humanity, mentioning Mary as Mediatrix and Co-Redemptrix.

Social teachings

Church and state

Leo XIII worked to encourage understanding between the Church and the modern world, though he preferred a cautious view on freedom of thought, stating that "is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing or worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man". Leo's social teachings are based on the Catholic premise, that God is the Creator of the world and its Ruler. Eternal law commands the natural order to be maintained, and forbids that it be disturbed; men's destiny is far above human things and beyond the earth.

''Rerum Novarum''

His encyclicals changed the Church's relations with temporal authorities, and, in the 1891 encyclical ''Rerum Novarum'' addressed for the first time social inequality and social justice issues with Papal authority, focusing on the rights and duties of capital and labour. He was greatly influenced by Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, a German bishop who openly propagated siding with the suffering working classes in his book ''Die Arbeiterfrage und das Chistentum''. Since Leo XIII, Papal teachings expand on the right and obligation of workers and the limitations of private property: Pope Pius XI Quadragesimo Anno, the Social teachings of Pope Pius XII on a huge range of social issues, John XXIII Mater et Magistra in 1961, Pope Paul VI, the encyclical Populorum Progressio on World development issues, and Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, commemorating the 100th anniversary of Rerum Novarum. Leo XIII had argued that both capitalism and communism are flawed. ''Rerum Novarum'' introduced the idea of subsidiarity into Catholic social thought. A full list of all of Leo's encyclicals can be found in the List of Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII.

Canonizations and beatifications

He canonized the following saints:

1881: Clare of Montefalco (d. 1308), John Baptist de Rossi (1696–1764), and Lawrence of Brindisi (d. 1619)

1883: Benedict Joseph Labre (1748–1783)

1888: Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order, Peter Claver (1561–1654), John Berchmans (1599–1621), and Alphonsus Rodriguez (1531–1617)

1890: Blessed Giovenale Ancina (1545–1604)

1897: Anthony Zaccaria (1502–1539) and Peter Fourier (1565–1640)

1900: John Baptist de la Salle (1651–1719) and Rita of Cascia (1381–1457)

In addition, he beatified Gerard Majella in 1893 and Edmund Campion in 1886. He also approved the cult of Cosmas of Aphrodisia.

Audiences

One of the first audiences Leo XIII granted was to the professors and students of the Collegio Capranica, where in the first row knelt in front of him a young seminarian, Giacomo Della Chiesa, his eventual successor Pope Benedict XV.

While on a pilgrimage with her father and sister in 1887, the future Saint Thérèse of Lisieux attended a general audience with Pope Leo XIII and asked him to allow her to enter the Carmelite order. Even though she was strictly forbidden to speak to him because she was told it would prolong the audience too much, in her autobiography, ''Story of a Soul'', she wrote that after she kissed his slipper and he presented his hand, instead of kissing it, she took it in her own hand and said through tears, "Most Holy Father, I have a great favor to ask you. In honor of your Jubilee, permit me to enter Carmel at the age of 15!" Pope Leo XIII answered, "Well, my child, do what the superiors decide." Thérèse replied, "Oh! Holy Father, if you say yes, everybody will agree!" Finally, the Pope said, "Go... go... ''You will enter if God wills it''" [italics hers] after which time two guards lifted Thérèse (still on her knees in front of the Pope) by her arms and carried her to the door where a third gave her a medal of the Pope. Shortly thereafter, the Bishop of Bayeux authorized the prioress to receive Thérèse, and in April 1888, she entered Carmel at the age of 15.

While known for his cheerful personality, Leo also had a gentle sense of humor as well. During one of his audiences, a man claimed to have had the opportunity to see Pius IX at one of his last audiences before his death in 1878. Upon hearing the remarkable story, Leo smiled and replied, "If I had known that you were so dangerous to popes, I would have postponed this audience further".

Death

Leo XIII was the first Pope to be born in the 19th century. He was also the first to die in the 20th century: he lived to the age of 93, the longest living pope. At the time of his death, Leo XIII was the second-longest reigning pope, exceeded only by his immediate predecessor, Pius IX. Leo was not entombed in St. Peter's Basilica, as all popes after him were, but instead at the very ancient basilica of St. John Lateran, his cathedral church as Bishop of Rome, and a church in which he took a particular interest.

See also

Distributism

Prayer to Saint Michael

Taxil hoax

Notes

References

Remigius Bäumer et al. ''Marienlexikon,'' Eos, St. Ottilien, 1992

Eamon Duffy, ''Saints and Sinners, A History of the Popes,'' Yale University Press, 1997

August Franzen, Remigius Bäumer, ''Papstgeschichte,'' Herder Freiburg, 1988

O'Reilly, Bernard. ''Life of Leo XIII — From An Authentic Memoir — Furnished By His Order''. 1887. New York: Charles L. Webster & Company.

Thérèse, of Lisieux, Saint. ''Story of a Soul — The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux'' Third Edition 1996. Washington, DC: ICS Publications. Translated from the original manuscripts by John Clarke, O.C.D.

Benno Kühne, Papst Leo XIII, C&N; Benzinger, Einsideln, New York and St. Louis, 1880

Josef Schmidlin, ''Papstgeschichte der neueren Zeit,'' München, 1934

Quardt, Robert. ''Der Meisterdiplomat''. 1964 Kevelaer, Germany: Verlag Butzon & Bercker. Translated by Ilya Wolston. ''The Master Diplomat — From the Life of Leo XIII''. New York: Alba House.

The Catholic Encyclopedia (edition of 1913, see also under External links)

External links

The Life of Pope Leo XIII, His Supernatural Visions, St Michael Prayer, Rerum Novarum Summary and Encyclicals

Pope Leo XIII texts and biography from the Vatican

Pope Leo XIII, overview of pontificate

Etexts of his encyclicals and other documents

Pope Leo XIII: text with concordances and frequency list

Life and Acts of Pope Leo XII (1883)

{{s-ttl|title=Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church | years = 1877 – 1878}} {{s-ttl|title=Pope | years = 1878 – 1903}}

Category:1810 births Category:1903 deaths Category:19th-century Italian people Category:Camerlengos of the Holy Roman Church Category:Popes Category:Italian popes Category:People from the Province of Rome Category:Roman Catholic titular archbishops

ar:البابا ليو الثالث عشر ay:Liyun XIII az:XIII Lev be:Леў XIII, Папа Рымскі br:Leon XIII bg:Лъв XIII ca:Lleó XIII cs:Lev XIII. cy:Pab Leo XIII da:Pave Leo 13. de:Leo XIII. et:Leo XIII es:León XIII eo:Leono la 13-a eu:Leon XIII.a fa:لئون سیزدهم fr:Léon XIII ga:Pápa Leo XIII gl:León XIII, papa ko:교황 레오 13세 hr:Lav XIII. io:Leo 13ma id:Paus Leo XIII it:Papa Leone XIII jv:Paus Leo XIII pam:Papa Leo XIII ka:ლეო XIII sw:Papa Leo XIII la:Leo XIII lt:Leonas XIII hu:XIII. Leó pápa mk:Папа Лав XIII mr:पोप लिओ तेरावा ms:Paus Leo XIII nl:Paus Leo XIII ja:レオ13世 (ローマ教皇) no:Leo XIII oc:Leon XIII pl:Leon XIII pt:Papa Leão XIII ro:Papa Leon al XIII-lea qu:Liyun XIII ru:Лев XIII sco:Pope Leo XIII simple:Pope Leo XIII sk:Lev XIII. sl:Papež Leon XIII. sr:Папа Лав XIII fi:Leo XIII sv:Leo XIII tl:León XIII th:สมเด็จพระสันตะปาปาลีโอที่ 13 uk:Лев XIII vi:Giáo hoàng Lêô XIII war:Papa León XIII yo:Pope Leo XIII zh:良十三世

Coordinates	1°15′″N116°50′″N
{{infobox christian leader | type	Pope
english name	Pius XII
coat of arms	Pius 12 coa.svg
birth name	Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli
term start	2 March 1939
term end	9 October 1958 ()
predecessor	Pius XI
successor	John XXIII
ordination	2 April 1899
consecration	13 May 1917
consecrated by	Pope Benedict XV
cardinal	16 December 1929
birth date	March 02, 1876
birth place	Rome, Italy
dead	dead
death date	October 09, 1958
death place	Castel Gandolfo, Italy
signature	Signature_of_Pope_Pius_XII.svg
other	Pius }}

The Venerable Pope Pius XII (; ), born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (2 March 1876 – 9 October 1958), reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958.

Before election to the papacy, Pacelli served as secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, papal nuncio and Cardinal Secretary of State, in which capacity he worked to conclude treaties with European and Latin American nations, most notably the ''Reichskonkordat'' with Nazi Germany. His leadership of the Catholic Church during World War II remains the subject of continued historical controversy. He has been praised by Rabbi David Dalin as a 'righteous gentile' and a Jewish Study found that he had been responsible for saving at least 700,000 Jews and possibly up to 860,000.

After the war, Pius XII contributed to the rebuilding of Europe, and advocated peace and reconciliation, including lenient policies toward vanquished nations and the unification of Europe. The Church, flourishing in the West, experienced severe persecution and mass deportations of Catholic clergy in the East. In light of his protests, and his involvement in the Italian elections of 1948, he became known as a staunch opponent of communism.

Pius XII explicitly invoked ''ex cathedra'' papal infallibility with the dogma of the Assumption of Mary in his 1950 Apostolic constitution ''Munificentissimus Deus''. His magisterium includes almost 1,000 addresses and radio broadcasts. His forty-one encyclicals include Mystici Corporis, the Church as the Body of Christ; Mediator Dei on liturgy reform; Humani Generis on the Church's position on theology and evolution. He eliminated the Italian majority in the College of Cardinals in 1946.

Early life

Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli was born on 2 March 1876 in Rome into a deeply religious, aristocratic family with a history of ties to the papacy (the "Black Nobility"). His grandfather, Marcantonio Pacelli, was Under-Secretary in the Papal Ministry of Finances and then Secretary of the Interior under Pope Pius IX from 1851 to 1870 and founded the Vatican's newspaper, ''L'Osservatore Romano'' in 1861; his cousin, Ernesto Pacelli, was a key financial advisor to Pope Leo XIII; his father, Filippo Pacelli, a Franciscan Tertiary, was the dean of the Sacra Rota Romana; and his brother, Francesco Pacelli, became a lay canon lawyer and the legal advisor to Pius XI, in which role he negotiated the Lateran Treaty in 1929, bringing an end to the Roman Question.

Together with his brother Francesco and his two sisters, Giuseppina and Elisabetta, he grew up in the centre of Rome. At the age of 12, Eugenio announced his intentions to enter the priesthood instead of becoming a lawyer. After completing state primary schools, Pacelli received his secondary, classical education at the Visconti Institute, which was dominated by an anti-Catholic atmosphere popular at that time In 1894, at the age of 18, he entered the Collegio Capranica Seminary to begin study for the priesthood and enrolled at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Apollinare Institute of Lateran University. From 1895 to 1896, he studied philosophy at University of Rome La Sapienza. In 1899, he received degrees in theology and ''in utroque iure'' (civil and canon law). At the seminary, he received a special dispensation to live at home for health reasons.

Church career

Priest and Monsignor

He was ordained a priest on Easter Sunday, 2 April 1899 by Bishop Francesco di Paola Cassetta – the vice-regent of Rome and a family friend – and received his first assignment as a curate at Chiesa Nuova, where he had served as an altar boy. In 1901, he entered the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, a sub-office of the Vatican Secretariat of State, where he became a ''minutante'', at the recommendation of Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli, another family friend.

In 1904, Pacelli became a papal chamberlain and in 1905 a domestic prelate. From 1904 until 1916, he assisted Cardinal Pietro Gasparri in his codification of canon law with the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. He was also chosen in January 1901 by Pope Leo XIII to deliver condolences on behalf of the Vatican to Edward VII of the United Kingdom after the death of Queen Victoria. In 1908, he served as a Vatican representative on the International Eucharistic Congress in London, where he met Winston Churchill. In 1911, he represented the Holy See at the coronation of King George V.

In 1908 and 1911, Pacelli turned down professorships in canon law at a Roman university and The Catholic University of America, respectively. Pacelli became the under-secretary in 1911, adjunct-secretary in 1912 (a position he received under Pope Pius X and retained under Pope Benedict XV) and secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs in 1914—succeeding Gasparri, who was promoted to Cardinal Secretary of State. As secretary, Pacelli concluded a concordat with Serbia four days before Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo. During World War I, Pacelli maintained the Vatican's registry of prisoners of war. In 1915, he travelled to Vienna to assist Monsignor Raffaele Scapinelli – nuncio to Vienna – in his negotiations with Franz Joseph I of Austria regarding Italy.

Archbishop and Papal Nuncio

Pope Benedict XV appointed Pacelli as nuncio to Bavaria on 23 April 1917, consecrating him as titular Bishop of Sardis and immediately elevating him to archbishop in the Sistine Chapel on 13 May 1917. After his consecration, Eugenio Pacelli left for Bavaria. As there was no nuncio to Prussia or Germany at the time, Pacelli was, for all practical purposes, the nuncio to all of the German Empire.

Once in Munich, he conveyed the papal initiative to end the war to German authorities. He met with King Ludwig III on 29 May and later with Kaiser Wilhelm II and Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, who replied positively to the Papal initiative. However, Bethmann-Hollweg was forced to resign and the German High Command, hoping for a military victory, delayed the German reply until 20 September. For the remainder of the war, he concentrated on Benedict's humanitarian efforts. Pacelli was appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Germany on 23 June 1920, and—after the completion of a Bavarian concordat—his nunciature was moved to Berlin in 1925. Many of Pacelli's Munich staff stayed with him for the rest of his life, including his advisor Robert Leiber and Pascalina Lehnert – housekeeper, friend, and adviser to Pacelli for 41 years. In Berlin, Pacelli was Dean of the Diplomatic Corps and active in diplomatic and many social activities. He worked with the German priest Ludwig Kaas, who was known for his expertise in Church-state relations and was politically active in the Catholic Centre Party. While in Germany, he traveled to all regions as a pastor, attended Katholikentag (national gatherings of the faithful), and delivered some 50 sermons and speeches to the German people.

In post-war Germany, in the absence of a nuncio in Moscow, Pacelli worked also on diplomatic arrangements between the Vatican and the Soviet Union. He negotiated food shipments for Russia, where the Church was persecuted. He met with Soviet representatives including Foreign Minister Georgi Chicherin, who rejected any kind of religious education, the ordination of priests and bishops, but offered agreements without the points vital to the Vatican. Despite Vatican pessimism and a lack of visible progress, Pacelli continued the secret negotiations, until Pope Pius XI ordered them to be discontinued in 1927.

Pacelli supported the Weimar Coalition of Social Democrats and liberal parties. Although he had cordial relations with representatives of the Centre Party, he did not involve the Centre in his dealings with the German government. Pacelli supported German diplomatic activity aimed at rejection of punitive measures from victorious former enemies. He blocked French attempts for an ecclesiastical separation of the Saar region, supported the appointment of a papal administrator for Danzig and aided the reintegration of priests expelled from Poland.

Cardinal Secretary of State and Camerlengo

Pacelli was made a Cardinal-Priest of ''Santi Giovanni e Paolo'' on 16 December 1929 by Pope Pius XI, and within a few months, on 7 February 1930, Pius XI appointed him Cardinal Secretary of State. In 1935, Pacelli was named Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church.

As Cardinal Secretary of State, Pacelli signed concordats with a number of countries and states, including Baden (1932), Austria (1933), Germany (1933), Yugoslavia (1935) and Portugal (1940). The Lateran treaties with Italy (1929) were concluded before Pacelli became secretary of state. Such concordats allowed the Catholic Church to organize youth groups, make ecclesiastical appointments, run schools, hospitals, and charities, or even conduct religious services. They also ensured that canon law would be recognized within some spheres (e.g., church decrees of nullity in the area of marriage).

He made many diplomatic visits throughout Europe and the Americas, including an extensive visit to the United States in 1936 where he met Franklin D. Roosevelt, who appointed a personal envoy – who did not require Senate confirmation – to the Holy See in December 1939, re-establishing a diplomatic tradition that had been broken since 1870 when the pope lost temporal power.

Pacelli presided as Papal Legate over the International Eucharistic Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 10–14 October 1934, and in Budapest on 25–30 May 1938. At this time, antisemitic laws were in the process of being formulated in Hungary. Pacelli made reference to the Jews "whose lips curse [Christ] and whose hearts reject him even today". This traditional adversarial relationship with Judaism would be reversed in Nostra Aetate issued during the Second Vatican Council. According to Joseph Bottum, Pacelli in 1937 "warned A. W. Klieforth, the American consul to Berlin, that Hitler was "an untrustworthy scoundrel and fundamentally wicked person"; Klieforth wrote that Pacelli "did not believe Hitler capable of moderation, and... fully supported the German bishops in their anti-Nazi stand". A report written by Pacelli the following year for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and filed with Ambassador Joseph Kennedy declared that the Church regarded compromise with the Third Reich as "out of the question".

Some historians have argued that Pacelli, as Cardinal Secretary of State, dissuaded Pope Pius XI – who was nearing death at the time – from condemning the ''Kristallnacht'' in November 1938, when he was informed of it by the papal nuncio in Berlin. Likewise the draft encyclical ''Humani Generis Unitas'' ("On the Unity of the Human Race"), which was ready in September 1938 but, according to those responsible for an edition of the document and other sources, it was not forwarded to the Holy See by the Jesuit General Wlodimir Ledochowski. The draft encyclical contained an open and clear condemnation of colonialism, racism and antisemitism. Some historians have argued that Pacelli learned about its existence only after the death of Pius XI and did not promulgate it as Pope. He did however use parts of it in his inaugural encyclical Summi Pontificatus, which he titled "On the Unity of Human Society."

His various positions on Church and policy issues during his tenure as Cardinal Secretary of State were made public by the Holy See in 1939. Most noteworthy among the 50 speeches is his review of Church-State issues in Budapest in 1938.

''Reichskonkordat'' and ''Mit brennender Sorge''

The ''Reichskonkordat'' was an integral part of four concordats Pacelli concluded on behalf of the Vatican with German States. The state concordats were necessary because the German federalist Weimar constitution gave the German states authority in the area of education and culture and thus diminished the authority of the churches in these areas; this diminution of church authority was a primary concern of the Vatican. As Bavarian Nuncio, Pacelli negotiated successfully with the Bavarian authorities in 1925. He expected the concordat with Catholic Bavaria to be the model for the rest of Germany. Prussia showed interest in negotiations only after the Bavarian concordat. However, Pacelli obtained less favorable conditions for the Church in the Prussian concordat of 1929, which excluded educational issues. A concordat with the German state of Baden was completed by Pacelli in 1932, after he had moved to Rome. There he also negotiated a concordat with Austria in 1933. A total of 16 concordats and treaties with European states had been concluded in the ten year period 1922–1932.

The ''Reichskonkordat'', signed on 20 July 1933, between Germany and the Holy See, while thus a part of an overall Vatican policy, was controversial from its beginning. It remains the most important of Pacelli's concordats. It is debated, not because of its content, which is still valid today, but because of its timing. A national concordat with Germany was one of Pacelli's main objectives as secretary of state, because he had hoped to strengthen the legal position of the Church. Pacelli, who knew German conditions well, emphasized in particular protection for Catholic associations (§31), freedom for education and Catholic schools, and freedom for publications.

As nuncio during the 1920s, he had made unsuccessful attempts to obtain German agreement for such a treaty, and between 1930 and 1933 he attempted to initiate negotiations with representatives of successive German governments, but the opposition of Protestant and Socialist parties, the instability of national governments and the care of the individual states to guard their autonomy thwarted this aim. In particular, the questions of denominational schools and pastoral work in the armed forces prevented any agreement on the national level, despite talks in the winter of 1932.

Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor on 30 January 1933 and sought to gain international respectability and to remove internal opposition by representatives of the Church and the Catholic Centre Party. He sent his vice chancellor Franz von Papen, a Catholic nobleman and member of the Centre Party, to Rome to offer negotiations about a Reichskonkordat. On behalf of Pacelli, Prelate Ludwig Kaas, the outgoing chairman of the Centre Party, negotiated first drafts of the terms with Papen. The concordat was finally signed, by Pacelli for the Vatican and von Papen for Germany, on 20 July and ratified on 10 September 1933. Father Franziscus Stratman, senior Catholic chaplain at Berlin University wrote 'The souls of well-disposed people are in a turmoil as a result of the tyranny of the National Socialists, and I am merely stating a fact when I say that the authority of the bishops among innumerable Catholics and non-Catholics has been shaken by the quasi-approval of the National Socialist movement'.

Between 1933 and 1939, Pacelli issued 55 protests of violations of the ''Reichskonkordat''. Most notably, early in 1937, Pacelli asked several German cardinals, including Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber to help him write a protest of Nazi violations of the ''Reichskonkordat''; this was to become Pius XI's 1937 encyclical ''Mit brennender Sorge''. The encyclical was written in German and not the usual Latin of official Roman Catholic Church documents. Secretly distributed by an army of motorcyclists and read from every German Catholic Church pulpit on Palm Sunday, it condemned the paganism of the National Socialism ideology. Pope Pius XI credited its creation and writing to Pacelli. It was the first official denunciation of Nazism made by any major organization and resulted in persecution of the Church by the infuriated Nazis who closed all the participating presses and "took numerous vindictive measures against the Church, including staging a long series of immorality trials of the Catholic clergy."

On 10 June 1941 he commented on the problems of the ''Reichskonkordat'' in a letter to the Bishop of Passau, in Bavaria: "The history of the Reichskonkordat shows, that the other side lacked the most basic prerequisites to accept minimal freedoms and rights of the Church, without which the Church simply cannot live and operate, formal agreements notwithstanding".

Papacy

Election and coronation

dipstyle	His Holiness
offstyle	Your Holiness
relstyle	Holy Father
deathstyle	Venerable }}

Pius XI died on 10 February 1939. Several historians have interpreted the conclave to choose his successor as facing a choice between a diplomatic or a spiritual candidate, and they view Pacelli's diplomatic experience, especially with Germany, as one of the deciding factors in his election on 2 March 1939, his 63rd birthday, after only one day of deliberation and three ballots. He was the first cardinal secretary of state to be elected Pope since Clement IX in 1667. He was also one of only two men known to have served as Camerlengo immediately prior to being elected as pope (the other being Pope Leo XIII). His coronation took place on 12 March 1939. Upon being elected pope he was also formally the Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, prefect of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Churches and prefect of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation. There was however a Cardinal-Secretary to run these bodies on a day-to-day basis.

Pacelli took the same papal name as his predecessor, a title used exclusively by Italian Popes. He was quoted as saying, "I call myself Pius; my whole life was under Popes with this name, but especially as a sign of gratitude towards Pius XI." On 15 December 1937, during his last consistory, Pius XI strongly hinted to the cardinals that he expected Pacelli to be his successor, saying "He is in your midst." He had previously been quoted as saying: "When today the Pope dies, you’ll get another one tomorrow, because the Church continues. It would be a much bigger tragedy, if Cardinal Pacelli dies, because there is only one. I pray every day, God may send another one into one of our seminaries, but as of today, there is only one in this world."

Appointments

After his election, he made Luigi Maglione his successor as Cardinal Secretary of State. Cardinal Maglione, a seasoned Vatican diplomat, had reestablished diplomatic relations with Switzerland and was for many years nuncio in Paris. Yet, Maglione did not exercise the influence of his predecessor Pacelli, who as Pope continued his close relation with Monsignors Montini (later Pope Paul VI) and Domenico Tardini. After the death of Maglione in 1944, Pius left the position open and named Tardini head of its foreign section and Montini head of the internal section. Tardini and Montini continued serving there until 1953, when Pius XII decided to appoint them cardinals, an honor which both turned down. They were then later appointed to be Pro-Secretary with the privilege to wear Episcopal Insignia. Tardini continued to be a close co-worker of the Pope until the death of Pius XII, while Montini became archbishop of Milan, after the death of Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster.

Pius XII slowly eroded the Italian monopoly on the Roman Curia; he employed German and Dutch Jesuit advisors, Robert Leiber, Augustin Bea, and Sebastian Tromp. He also supported the elevation of Americans such as Cardinal Francis Spellman from a minor to a major role in the Church. After World War II, Pius XII appointed more non-Italians than any Pope before him. American appointees included Joseph P. Hurley as regent of the nunciature in Belgrade, Gerald P. O'Hara Nuncio to Romania and Monsignor Aloisius Joseph Muench as nuncio to Germany. For the first time, numerous young Europeans, Asians and "Americans were trained in various congregations and secretariats within the Vatican for eventual service throughout the world."

Consistories

Only twice in his pontificate did Pius XII hold a consistory to create new cardinals, in contrast to Pius XI, who had done so 17 times in as many years. Pius XII chose not to name new cardinals during World War II, and the number of cardinals shrank to 38, with Dennis Joseph Dougherty of Philadelphia being the only living U.S. cardinal. The first occasion on 18 February 1946 – which has become known as the "Grand Consistory" – yielded the elevation of a record 32 new cardinals, almost 50 percent of the College of Cardinals and reaching the canonical limit of 70 cardinals. In the 1946 consistory, Pius XII, while maintaining the maximum size of the College of Cardinals at 70, named cardinals from China, India, the Middle East and increased the number of Cardinals from the Americas, proportionally lessening the Italian influence.

In his second consistory on 12 January 1953, it was expected that his closest co-workers, Msgrs. Domenico Tardini and Giovanni Montini would be elevated and Pius XII informed the assembled cardinals that both of them were originally on the top of his list, but they had turned down the offer, and were rewarded instead with other promotions. The two consistories of 1946 and 1953 brought an end to over five hundred years of Italians constituting a majority of the College of Cardinals. With few exceptions, Italian prelates accepted the changes positively; there was no protest movement or open opposition to the internationalization efforts.

Earlier, in 1945, Pius XII had dispensed with the complicated papal conclave procedures which attempted to ensure secrecy while preventing Cardinals from voting for themselves, compensating for this change by raising the requisite majority from two-thirds to two thirds plus one.

Church reforms

Liturgy reforms

In his encyclical Mediator Dei, Pius XII links liturgy with the last will of Jesus Christ.

The Church has, therefore, according to Pius XII, a common aim with Christ himself, teaching all men the truth, and, offering to God a pleasing and acceptable sacrifice. This way, the Church re-establishes the unity between the Creator and His creatures. The sacrifice of the altar, being Christ's own actions, convey and dispense divine grace from Christ to the members of the Mystical Body.

The numerous Liturgy reforms of Pius XII show two characteristics. Renewal and the rediscovery of old liturgical traditions, such as the reintroduction of the Easter Vigil, and, a more structured atmosphere within the Church buildings. The use of vernacular language, favoured by Pius XII, was hotly debated at his time. He increased non-Latin services, especially in countries with expanding Catholic mission activities. The church tabernacle holding the Blessed Sacrament should be immovably fixed to the altar and, unless another position was thought to be more appropriate, should normally be at the main altar. The Church should display religious objects, but not be overloaded with secondary objects. Modern sacred art should be reverential and reflect the spirit of our time. Priests are permitted to officiate marriages without Holy Mass. They may also officiate confirmations in certain instances.

The most radical of his liturgical changes concerned Palm Sunday and the Paschal Triduum. In the latter, he changed the hour of the celebrations, so that the Mass of the Lord's Supper was held in the evening, not the morning of Maundy Thursday, the Good Friday liturgical service was held in the afternoon, and the Vigil Mass of the resurrection of Jesus was no longer celebrated on the morning of Holy Saturday, but instead during the night that led to Easter Sunday. He inserted the washing of feet into the Mass of the Lord's Supper and made the distribution of Communion to the faithful a normal part of the celebration: previously the Roman Missal spoke of the consecration only of two large hosts (one reserved for Good Friday) and of small ones for the sick, "if necessary". The faithful were to be given Communion also on Good Friday, when previously only the priest received Communion. In the Easter Vigil service the Pope made many changes. He replaced a prayer said over incense (that apparently arose as a result of understanding "incensum cereum", meaning "the lit candle", as referring to "incensum", meaning "incense") was replaced with one over the Easter candle. He added a completely new ceremony in which the priest inscribed this candle with the Arabic numerals of the date of the year and inserted into it five pieces of incense. He abolished the triple candlestick with the three candles that were lit at different points of the ceremony. He removed the obligation for the priest to read silently by himself the Scripture readings that were being proclaimed to the people, and he introduced a newly composed ceremony of renewal of baptismal promises, in which the vernacular language could be used.

Canon Law Reforms

Decentralised authority and increased independence of the Uniate Churches were aimed at in the Canon Law/Corpis Iuris Canonici (CIC) reform. In its new constitutions, Eastern Patriarchs were made almost independent from Rome (CIC Orientalis, 1957) Eastern marriage law (CIC Orientalis, 1949), civil law (CIC Orientalis, 1950), laws governing religious associations (CIC Orientalis, 1952) property law (CIC Orientalis, 1952) and other laws. These reforms and writings of Pius XII were intended to establish Eastern Orientals as equal parts of the mystical body of Christ, as explained in the encyclical Mystici Corporis.

Priests and Religious

With the Apostolic constitution ''Sedis Sapientiae'', Pius XII added social sciences, sociology, psychology and social psychology, to the pastoral training of future priests. Pius XII emphasised the need to systematically analyze the psychological condition of candidates to the priesthood to ensure that they are capable of a life of celibacy and service. Pius XII added one year to the theological formation of future priests. He also included a "pastoral year", an introduction into the practice of Parish work.

The call to constant interior reform and Christian heroism is a central part of the message of Pius XII to all Religious. This means to be above average, to be a living example of Christian virtue. As the secular world has fallen back into Hedonism, the Catholic alternative is the sanctification especially of Priests and Religious. The strict norms governing their lives are meant to make them models of Christian perfection for lay people, he writes in Menti Nostrae. Bishops are encouraged to look at model saints like Boniface, and Pope Pius X. Priests were encouraged to be living examples of the love of Christ and his sacrifice.

Theology

Pius XII explained the Catholic faith in 41 encyclicals and almost 1000 messages and speeches during his long pontificate. Mediator Dei clarified membership and participation in the Church. The encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu opened the doors for biblical research. His magisterium was far larger and is difficult to summarize. In numerous speeches Catholic teaching is related to various aspects of life, education, medicine, politics, war and peace, the life of saints, Mary, the mother of God, things eternal and contemporary. Theologically, Pius XII specified the nature of the teaching authority of the Church. He also gave a new freedom to engage in theological investigations.

Theological orientation

;Biblical Research The encyclical, ''Divino Afflante Spiritu'', published in 1943 emphasized the role of the Bible. Pius XII freed biblical research from previous limitations. He encouraged Christian theologians to revisit original versions of the Bible in Greek and Hebrew. Noting improvements in archaeology, the encyclical reversed Pope Leo XIII's encyclical, which had only advocated going back to the original texts to resolve ambiguity in the Latin Vulgate. The encyclical demands a much better understanding of ancient Jewish history and traditions. It requires bishops throughout the Church to initiate biblical studies for lay people. The Pontiff also requests a reorientation of Catholic teaching and education, relying much more on sacred scriptures in sermons and religious instruction.

;The role of theology This theological investigative freedom does not, however, extend to all aspects of theology. According to Pius, theologians, employed by the Church, are assistants, to teach the official teachings of the Church and not their own private thoughts. They are free to engage in empirical research, which the Church generously supports, but in matters of morality and religion, they are subjected to the teaching office and authority of the Church, the Magisterium. "The most noble office of theology is to show how a doctrine defined by the Church is contained in the sources of revelation, … in that sense in which it has been defined by the Church." The deposit of faith is authentically interpretated not to each of the faithful, not even to theologians, but only to the teaching authority of the Church.

Mariology and the Dogma of the Assumption

As a young boy and in later life, Pacelli was an ardent follower of the Virgin Mary. He was consecrated as a bishop on 13 May 1917, the very first day of the appearances of Our Lady of Fátima. He consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942, in accordance with the second "secret" of Our Lady of Fátima. His remains were to be buried in the crypt of Saint Peter's Basilica on the feast day of Our Lady of Fátima, 13 October 1958.

On 1 November 1950, Pope Pius XII defined the dogma of the Assumption:

The dogma of the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary is the crowning of the theology of Pius XII. It resolved a theological difficulty that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception had left open: if the soul of Mary had been created without the taint of sin, yet the Bible states that the wages of sin is death, should it be concluded that Mary, who by definition never sinned, therefore never died? The dogma of her assumption settles the problem by stating that she did not experience the ordinary human death, but was taken to Heaven as a divine gift.

The dogma was preceded by the 1946 encyclical Deiparae Virginis Mariae, which requested all Catholic bishops to express their opinion on a possible dogmatization. On 8 September 1953, the encyclical Fulgens corona announced a Marian year for 1954, the centennial of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. In the encyclical Ad caeli reginam he promulgated the feast, Queenship of Mary. Mystici Corporis summarizes his mariology.

Social teachings

;Medical theology Pius XII delivered numerous speeches to medical professionals and researchers. He addressed doctors, nurses, midwives, to detail all aspects of rights and dignity of patients, medical responsibilities, moral implications of psychological illnesses and the uses of psycho pharmaca. He also took on issues like the uses of medicine in terminally ill persons, medical lies in face of grave illness, and the rights of family members to make decisions against expert medical advice. Pope Pius XII often reconsidered previously accepted truth, thus he was first to determine that the use of pain medicine in terminally ill patients is justified, even if this may shorten the life of the patient, as long as life shortening is not the objective itself.

;Family and sexuality Pope Pius XII developed an extensive theology of the family, taking issue with family roles, sharing of household duties, education of children, conflict resolution, financial dilemmas, psychological problems, illness, taking care of older generations, unemployment, marital holiness and virtue, common prayer, religious discussions and more. Within the overall divine purpose of family life, he fully accepted the rhythm method as a moral form of family planning, although only limited circumstances, within the context of family.

;Theology and science To Pius XII, science and religion were heavenly sisters, different manifestations of divine exactness, who could not possibly contradict each other over the long term Regarding their relation, his advisor Professor Robert Leiber wrote: "Pius XII was very careful not to close any doors prematurely. He was energetic on this point and regretted that in the case of Galileo."

;Evolution In 1950, Pius XII promulgated ''Humani Generis'' which acknowledged that evolution might accurately describe the biological origins of human life, but at the same time criticized those who "imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution... explains the origin of all things". Catholics must believe that the human soul was created immediately by God. Since the soul is a spiritual substance it is not brought into being through transformation of matter, but directly by God, whence the special uniqueness of each person.." Fifty years later, Pope John Paul II, stating that scientific evidence now seemed to favour the evolutionary theory, upheld the distinction of Pius XII regarding the human soul. "Even if the human body originates from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is spontaneously created by God."

Encyclicals, writings and speeches

Pius XII issued 41 encyclicals during his pontificate – more than all his successors in the past 50 years taken together – along with many other writings and speeches. The pontificate of Pius XII was the first in Vatican history, which published papal speeches and addresses in vernacular language on a systematic basis. Until then, papal documents were issued mainly in Latin in Acta Apostolicae Sedis since 1909. Because of the novelty of it all, and a feared occupation of the Vatican by the German Wehrmacht, not all documents exist today. In 1944, a number of papal documents were burned or "walled in", to avoid detection by the advancing German army. Insisting that all publications must be reviewed by him on a prior basis to avoid any misunderstanding, several speeches by Pius XII, who did not find sufficient time, were never published or appeared only once issued in the Vatican daily, ''Osservatore Romano''.

Several encyclicals addressed the Oriental Churches. ''Orientalis Ecclesiae'' was issued in 1944 on the 15th centenary of the death of Cyril of Alexandria, a saint common to Orthodox and Latin Churches. Pius XII asks for prayer for better understanding and unification of the Churches. ''Orientales Omnes'', issued in 1945 on the 350th anniversary of the reunion, is a call to continued unity of the Ruthenian Church, threatened in its very existence by the authorities of the Soviet Union. ''Sempiternus Rex'' was issued in 1951 on the 1500th anniversary of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon. It included a call to oriental communities adhering to monophysitism to return to the Catholic Church.

''Orientales Ecclesias'' was issued in 1952 and addressed to the Eastern Churches, protesting the continued Stalinist persecution of the Church. Several Apostolic Letters were sent to the bishops in the East. On 13 May 1956, Pope Pius addressed all bishops of the Eastern Rite. Mary, the mother of God was the subject of encyclical letters to the people of Russia in Fulgens Corona and a papal letter to the people of Russia.

Feasts and devotions

In 1958, Pope Pius XII declared the Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus as Shrove Tuesday (the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday) for all Roman Catholics. The first medal of the Holy Face, produced by Sister Maria Pierina De Micheli based on the image on the Shroud of Turin had been offered to Pius XII who approved of the medal and the devotion based on it. The general devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus had been approved by Pope Leo XIII in 1885 before the image on the Turin Shroud had been photographed.

Canonisations and beatifications

Pope Pius XII canonized numerous saints, including Pope Pius X and Maria Goretti. He beatified Pope Innocent XI. The first canonizations were two women, the founder of a female order, Mary Euphrasia Pelletier, and a young housekeeper said to have stigmata, Gemma Galgani. Pelletier had a reputation for opening new ways for Catholic charities, helping people in difficulties with the law, who had been neglected by the system and the Church. Galgani was a woman in her twenties whose virtue became model by her canonization.

World War II

As Cardinal Secretary of State, Pacelli signed a Concordat between Germany and the Vatican at a ceremony in Rome on 20 July 1933. His pontificate began on the eve of World War II. In the 1937 encyclical ''Mit brennender Sorge'', drafted by Pope Pius XII when he was still a cardinal, Pope Pius XI denounced Nazism and breaches of the Reichskonkordat. Read from the pulpits of all German Catholic churches, it has been described as the first official denunciation of Nazism made by any major organization. Nazi persecution of the Church in Germany then began by "outright repression" and "staged prosecutions of monks for homosexuality, with the maximum of publicity." When Dutch bishops protested against the deportation of Jews, the Nazis responded by deporting Jewish converts, including Edith Stein.

In Poland, the Nazis murdered over 2,500 monks and priests while even more were sent to concentration camps. The Priester-Block (priests barracks) in the Dachau concentration camp lists 2,600 Roman Catholic priests. Pius XII's refusal to censure the German invasion and annexation of Poland was regarded as a "betrayal" by many Polish Catholics and clergy, who saw his appointment of Hilarius Breitinger as apostolic administrator for the Wartheland in May 1942 as "implicit recognition" of the breakup of Poland; the opinions of the ''Volksdeutsche'', mostly Catholic German minorities living in Poland, were more mixed. Although Pius XII received frequent reports about atrocities committed by and/or against Catholics, his knowledge was not complete; for example, he wept after the war upon learning that Cardinal Hlond had banned German liturgical services in Poland. Phayer argues that Pius XII – both before and during his papacy – consistently "deferred to Germany at the expense of Poland", and saw Germany – not Poland – as critical to "rebuilding a large Catholic presence in Central Europe".

During the war, the Pope followed a policy of public neutrality mirroring that of Pope Benedict XV during World War I. In 1939, Pius XII turned the Vatican into a centre of aid which he organized from various parts of the world At the request of the Pope, an information office for prisoners of war and refugees operated in the Vatican under Giovanni Battista Montini, which in the years of its existence from 1939 until 1947 received almost 10 million (9,891,497) information requests and produced over 11 million (11,293,511) answers about missing persons.

In April 1939, after the submission of Charles Maurras and the intervention of the Carmel of Lisieux, Pius XII ended his predecessor's ban on Action Française, an organization described by some authors as virulently antisemitic and anti-Communist.

In 1939, the Pope employed Jewish cartographer Roberto Almagia to work on old maps in the Vatican library. Almagia had been at the University of Rome since 1915 but was dismissed after Benito Mussolini's anti-semitic legislation of 1938. The Pope's appointment of two Jews to the Vatican Academy of Science as well as the hiring of Almagia were reported by ''The New York Times'' in the editions of 11 November 1939, and 10 January 1940.

During the Soviet Union's acts of aggression against Finland, the Winter War, Pius XII condemned the Soviet attack on 26 December 1939 in a speech at the Vatican. Later he donated a signed and sealed prayer on behalf of Finland.

On 18 January 1940, after over 15,000 Polish civilians had been killed, Pius XII said in a radio broadcast, "The horror and inexcusable excesses committed on a helpless and a homeless people have been established by the unimpeachable testimony of eye-witnesses."

In his first encyclical ''Summi Pontificatus'' (20 October 1939), Pius XII publicly condemned the invasion, occupation and partition of Poland under the Nazi-Soviet Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

''Time'' magazine reports that France and Britain were favourably surprised by the encyclical.

On 11 March 1940, The Pope had a personal meeting with German Minister of Foreign Affairs Joachim Ribbentrop, who was visiting Rome. During that meeting, The German Foreign Minister suggested to the Pope an overall settlement between the Vatican and the Reich government in exchange for the Pope instructing the German Bishops to refrain from political criticism of the German government, but no agreement was reached. The Vatican diplomatic record of the meeting describes what transpired as follows:

He (Ribbentrop) answered that at the bottom it is a question of a revolution and that compared with other revolutions the National Socialist Revolution has not caused grave harm to the churches. To which the Pope replied that in reality there had been many injuries – and he continued to point out examples. Ribbentrop underlined that the State spends a great deal for the clergy and the Church. The Pope replied that a great deal has been taken away from the Church, houses, institutions of education – kicking out the legitimate owners malo modo in a few hours. The Holy Father insisted particularly on the schools.

After Germany invaded the Low Countries during 1940, Pius XII sent expressions of sympathy to the Queen of the Netherlands, the King of Belgium, and the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. When Mussolini learned of the warnings and the telegrams of sympathy, he took them as a personal affront and had his ambassador to the Vatican file an official protest, charging that Pius XII had taken sides against Italy's ally Germany. Mussolini's foreign minister claimed that Pius XII was "ready to let himself be deported to a concentration camp, rather than do anything against his conscience."

In the spring of 1940, a group of German generals seeking to overthrow Hitler and make peace with the British approached Pope Pius XII, who acted as a negotiator between the British and the abortive plot.

On 13 June 1940, while the battle of France was still raging, the Pope issued encyclical ''Saeculo Exeunte Octavo'', which, though relating to Portugal, made an ambiguous statement about the general situation in the following words: "now, when more than a few European nations have been lost to the Church because of the changes in these calamitous times", which could have referred either to the German occupation or to Communism in Russia.

In April 1941, Pius XII granted a private audience to Ante Pavelić, the leader of the newly proclaimed Croatian state (rather than the diplomatic audience Pavelić had wanted). Pius was criticised for his reception of Pavelić: an unattributed British Foreign Office memo on the subject described Pius as "the greatest moral coward of our age." The Vatican did not officially recognise Pavelić's regime. Pius XII did not publicly condemn the expulsions and forced conversions to Catholicism perpetrated on Serbs by Pavelić; however, the Holy See did expressly repudiate the forced conversions in a memorandum dated 25 January 1942, from the Vatican Secretiat of State to the Yugoslavian Legation. Pius XII was well-informed of the involvement of Croatian Catholic clergy with the Ustaša regime, even possessing a list of clergymembers who had "joined in the slaughter", but decided against condemning the regime or taking action against the involved clergy, fearing that it would lead to schism in the Croatian church or undermine the formation of a future Croatian state. Pius XII elevated Aloysius Stepinac—a Croatian archbishop convicted of collaborating with the Ustaša—to the cardinalate. Although Phayer agrees in part with criticisms of Stepinac conviction as a "show trial", he states "the charge that he supported the Ustaša regime was, of course, true, as everyone knew", and that "if Stepinac had responded to the charges against him, his defense would have inevitably unraveled, exposing the Vatican's support of the genocidal Pavelić".

In 1941, Pius XII interpreted ''Divini Redemptoris'', an encyclical of Pope Pius XI, which forbade Catholics to help communists, as not applying to military assistance to the Soviet Union. This interpretation assuaged American Catholics who had previously opposed Lend-Lease arrangements with the Soviet Union.

In March 1942, Pius XII established diplomatic relations with the Japanese Empire and received ambassador Ken Harada, who remained in that position until the end of the war. In May 1942, Kazimierz Papée, Polish ambassador to the Vatican, complained that Pius had failed to condemn the recent wave of atrocities in Poland; when Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione replied that the Vatican could not document individual atrocities, Papée declared, "when something becomes notorious, proof is not required."

In June 1942, diplomatic relations were established with the Nationalist government of China. This step was envisaged earlier, but delayed due to Japanese pressure to establish relations with the pro-Japanese Wang Jingwei government. The first Chinese Minister to the Vatican, Hsieh Shou-kang, was only able to arrive at the Vatican in January 1943, due to difficulties of travel resulting from the war. He remained in that position until late 1946.

Pius XII's 1942 Christmas address on the Vatican Radio remains a "lightning rod" in debates about Pius XII. The majority of the speech spoke generally about human rights and civil society; at the very end of the speech, Pius XII mentioned "the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline". Reactions of contemporaries and scholars are divided, but the speech did denounce genocide (a term not coined until 1944), although "it is still not clear ''whose'' genocide or ''which'' genocide he was referring to".

Several authors have alleged a plot to kidnap Pius XII by the Nazis during their occupation of Rome in 1943 (Vatican City itself was not occupied); British historian Owen Chadwick and Jesuit ADSS editor Robert A. Graham concluded that such claims were the invention of British wartime propagandists. However, subsequent to those accounts, Dan Kurzman in 2007 published a work which he maintains establishes the plot as fact.

As the war was approaching its end in 1945, Pius advocated a lenient policy by the Allied leaders in an effort to prevent what he perceived to be the mistakes made at the end of World War I. In August 1944, he met British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was visiting Rome. At their meeting, the Pope expressed the hope that the planned war crimes trials shall not include Italian defendants, since he considered the Italians as victims of the Third Reich.

The Holocaust

In 1939, the newly elected Pope Pius XII appointed several prominent Jewish scholars to posts at the Vatican after they had been dismissed from Italian universities under Fascist leader Benito Mussolini's racial laws. Pius later engineered an agreement—formally approved on 23 June 1939—with Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas to issue 3,000 visas to "non-Aryan Catholics". However, over the next 18 months Brazil's Conselho de Imigração e Colonização (CIC) continued to tighten the restrictions on their issuance, including requiring a baptismal certificate dated before 1933, a substantial monetary transfer to the Banco do Brasil, and approval by the Brazilian Propaganda Office in Berlin. The program was cancelled 14 months later, after fewer than 1,000 visas had been issued, amid suspicions of "improper conduct" (i.e., continuing to practice Judaism) among those who had received visas.

Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione received a request from Chief Rabbi of Palestine Isaac Herzog in the Spring of 1940 to intercede on behalf of Lithuanian Jews about to be deported to Germany. Pius called Ribbentrop on 11 March, repeatedly protesting against the treatment of Jews. In his 1939 encyclical ''Summi Pontificatus'', Pius rejected anti-semitism, stating that in the Catholic Church there is "neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision." In 1940, Pius asked members of the clergy, on Vatican letterhead, to do whatever they could on behalf of interned Jews.

In 1941, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna informed Pius of Jewish deportations in Vienna. Later that year, when asked by French Marshal Philippe Pétain if the Vatican objected to antisemitic laws, Pius responded that the church condemned antisemitism, but would not comment on specific rules. Similarly, when Philippe Pétain's regime adopted the "Jewish statutes", the Vichy ambassador to the Vatican, Léon Bérard (a French politician), was told that the legislation did not conflict with Catholic teachings. Valerio Valeri, the nuncio to France was "embarrassed" when he learned of this publicly from Pétain and personally checked the information with Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione who confirmed the Vatican's position. Yet in June 1942, Pius personally protested against the mass deportations of Jews from France, ordering the papal nuncio to protest to Pétain against "the inhuman arrests and deportations of Jews". In September 1941, Pius objected to a Slovakian Jewish Code, which, unlike the earlier Vichy codes, prohibited intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews. In October 1941, Harold Tittman, a U.S. delegate to the Vatican, asked the pope to condemn the atrocities against Jews; Pius replied that the Vatican wished to remain "neutral," reiterating the neutrality policy which Pius invoked as early as September 1940.

In 1942, the Slovakian chargé d'affaires told Pius that Slovakian Jews were being sent to concentration camps. On 11 March 1942, several days before the first transport was due to leave, the chargé d'affaires in Bratislava reported to the Vatican: "I have been assured that this atrocious plan is the handwork of ... Prime Minister (Tuka), who confirmed the plan ... he dared to tell me—he who makes such a show of his Catholicism—that he saw nothing inhuman or un-Christian in it ... the deportation of 80,000 persons to Poland, is equivalent to condemning a great number of them to certain death." The Vatican protested to the Slovak government that it "deplore(s) these... measures which gravely hurt the natural human rights of persons, merely because of their race."

On 18 September 1942, Pius received a letter from Monsignor Montini (future Pope Paul VI), saying, "the massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms." Later that month, Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the Vatican, warned Pius that the Vatican's "moral prestige" was being injured by silence on European atrocities, a warning which was echoed simultaneously by representatives from the United Kingdom, Brazil, Uruguay, Belgium, and Poland. The Cardinal Secretary of State replied that the rumors about genocide could not be verified. In December 1942, when Tittman asked Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione if Pius would issue a proclamation similar to the Allied declaration "German Policy of Extermination of the Jewish Race", Maglione replied that the Vatican was "unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities." Pius XII directly explained to Tittman that he could not name the Nazis without at the same time mentioning the Bolsheviks. Pius XII also never publicly condemned the Nazi massacre of 1,800,000–1,900,000 mainly Catholic Polish gentiles (including 2,935 members of the Catholic Clergy), nor did he ever publicly condemn the Soviet Union for the deaths of 1,000,000 mainly Catholic Polish gentile citizens including an untold number of clergy. In late 1942, Pius XII advised German and Hungarian bishops that speaking out against the massacres in the Eastern Front would be politically advantageous. In his 1942 Christmas Eve message, he expressed strong concern for "those hundreds of thousands, who ... sometimes only by reason of their nationality or race, are marked down for death or progressive extinction. On 7 April 1943, Msgr. Tardini, one of Pius’ closest advisors, told Pius that it would be politically advantageous after the war to take steps to help Slovakian Jews.

In January 1943, Pius declined to publicly denounce the Nazi discrimination against Jews, following requests to do so from Władysław Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish government-in-exile, and Bishop Konrad von Preysing of Berlin. On 26 September 1943, following the German occupation of northern Italy, Nazi officials gave Jewish leaders in Rome 36 hours to produce 50 kilograms of gold (or the equivalent) threatening to take 300 hostages. Then Chief Rabbi of Rome Israel Zolli recounts in his memoir that he was selected to go to the Vatican and seek help. The Vatican offered to loan 15 kilos, but the offer proved unnecessary when the Jews received an extension. Soon afterward, when deportations from Italy were imminent, 477 Jews were hidden in the Vatican itself and another 4,238 were protected in Roman monasteries and convents. Eighty percent of Roman Jews were saved from deportation. Phayer argues that the German diplomats in Rome were the "initiators of the effort to save the city's Jews", but holds that Pius XII "cooperated in this attempt at rescue", while agreeing with Zuccotti that the pope "did not give orders" for any Roman Catholic institution to hide Jews.

On 30 April 1943, Pius wrote to Bishop Graf von Preysing of Berlin to say: "We give to the pastors who are working on the local level the duty of determining if and to what degree the danger of reprisals and of various forms of oppression occasioned by episcopal declarations... ''ad maiora mala vitanda'' (to avoid worse)... seem to advise caution. Here lies one of the reasons, why We impose self-restraint on Ourselves in our speeches; the experience, that we made in 1942 with papal addresses, which We authorized to be forwarded to the Believers, justifies our opinion, as far as We see.... The Holy See has done whatever was in its power, with charitable, financial and moral assistance. To say nothing of the substantial sums which we spent in American money for the fares of immigrants."

On 28 October 1943, Ernst von Weizsäcker, the German Ambassador to the Vatican, telegrammed Berlin that "...the Pope has not yet let himself be persuaded to make an official condemnation of the deportation of the Roman Jews.... Since it is currently thought that the Germans will take no further steps against the Jews in Rome, the question of our relations with the Vatican may be considered closed."

In March 1944, through the papal nuncio in Budapest, Angelo Rotta, the pope urged the Hungarian government to moderate its treatment of the Jews. The pope also ordered Rotta and other papal legates to hide and shelter Jews. These protests, along with others from the King of Sweden, the International Red Cross, the United States, and Britain led to the cessation of deportations on 8 July 1944. Also in 1944, Pius appealed to 13 Latin American governments to accept "emergency passports", although it also took the intervention of the U.S. State Department for those countries to honor the documents.

The Kaltenbrunner Report to Adolf Hitler dated 29 November 1944 on the background of the 20 July 1944 Plot to assassinate Hitler, states that the Pope was somehow a conspirator, specifically naming Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, as being a party in the attempt.

Post–World War II

After World War II Pope Pius XII focused on material aid to war-torn Europe, an internal internationalization of the Roman Catholic Church, and the development of its worldwide diplomatic relations. His encyclicals, ''Evangelii Praecones'' and ''Fidei Donum'', issued on 2 June 1951 and 21 April 1957, respectively, increased the local decision-making of Catholic missions, many of which became independent dioceses. Pius XII demanded recognition of local cultures as fully equal to European culture. Continuing the line of his predecessors, Pius XII supported the establishment of local administration in Church affairs: in 1950, the hierarchy of Western Africa became independent; in 1951, Southern Africa; and in 1953, British Eastern Africa. Finland, Burma and French Africa became independent dioceses in 1955.

;Persecutions in Eastern Europe and China

While the Church thrived in the West and most of the developing world, it faced most serious persecutions in the East. The Communist regimes in Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania practically eradicated the Roman Catholic Church in their countries.

;Church policies toward Poland

;Pope Pius and Russia

The difficult relations of the Vatican with the Soviet Union originated in the revolution in 1917 and continued through the pontificate of Pius XII, affecting the Orthodox Church and other non-Catholics as well. The Oriental Catholic churches were eliminated in most parts of the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era.

;The Vatican and the Church in China

The relations of the Holy See with China from 1939 to 1958 began hopefully with the long withheld recognition of Chinese rites by the Vatican in 1939, the elevation of the first Chinese cardinal in 1946, and the establishment of a local Chinese hierarchy. It ended with the persecution and virtual elimination of the Catholic Church in the early 1950s, and the establishment of a Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association in 1957

;Jewish orphans controversy In 2005, ''Corriere della Sera'' published a document dated 20 November 1946 on the subject of Jewish children baptized in war-time France. The document ordered that baptized children, if orphaned, should be kept in Catholic custody and stated that the decision "has been approved by the Holy Father". Nuncio Angelo Roncalli (who became Pope John XXIII, and was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations) ignored this directive. Abe Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who had himself been baptized as a child and had undergone a custody battle afterwards, called for an immediate freeze on Pius's beatification process until the relevant Vatican Secret Archives and baptismal records were opened. Two Italian scholars, Matteo Luigi Napolitano and Andrea Tornielli, confirmed that the memorandum was genuine although the reporting by the ''Corriere della Sera'' was misleading, as the document had originated in the French Catholic Church archives rather than the Vatican archives and strictly concerned itself with children without living blood relatives that were supposed to be handed over to Jewish organizations.

Later life, illness and death

Late years of Pope Pius XII

The last years of the pontificate of Pius XII began in late 1954 with a long illness, during which he considered abdication. Afterwards, changes in his work habit became noticeable. The Pope avoided long ceremonies, canonizations and consistories and displayed hesitancy in personnel matters. During the last years of the pontificate, Pius XII procrastinated personnel decisions within his Vatican, and found it increasingly difficult to chastise subordinates and appointees such as Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, who, after numerous indiscretions was excluded from Papal service for the last years, but, keeping his title, was able to enter the papal apartments to make photos of the dying Pope, which he sold to French magazines.

Pius XII often elevated young priests as bishops, such as Julius Döpfner (35 years) and Karol Wojtyla (38 years), one of his last appointees in 1958. He took a firm stand against pastoral experiments, such as "worker-priests", who worked full time in factories and joined political parties and unions. He continued to defend the theological tradition of Thomism as worthy of continued reform, and as superior to modern trends such as phenomenology or existentialism.

Illness and death

thumb|right|180px |''The Pope of Mary'': A Madonna and Child, added by [[Pope John XXIII|John XXIII, hangs over the tomb of Pius XII.]]

Since his 1954 illness, Pope Pius addressed lay people and groups about an unprecedented range of topics. Frequently, he spoke to members of scientific congresses, explaining Christian teachings in light of most recent scientific results. Sometimes he answered specific moral questions, which were addressed to him. To professional associations he explained specific occupational ethics in light of Church teachings. Pius granted the Honor of Being the "Catholic University of The Philippines" to the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, the oldest existing in Asia.

Before 1955, Pius worked for many years with Giovanni Battista Montini. The Pope did not have a full time assistant. Robert Leiber helped him occasionally with his speeches and publications. Augustin Bea was his personal confessor. Madre Pascalina Lehnert was for forty years his housekeeper and assistant. Domenico Tardini was probably closest to him.

Pius XII died on 9 October 1958 of acute heart failure brought on by a sudden myocardial infarction in Castel Gandolfo, the Papal summer residence. His doctor Gaspanini said afterwards: "The Holy Father did not die because of any specific illness. He was completely exhausted. He was overworked beyond limit. His heart was healthy, his lungs were good. He could have lived another 20 years, had he spared himself."

Botched embalming

Pius XII's doctor, Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, reported that the Pontiff's body was embalmed in the room where he died using a novel process invented by Dr. Oreste Nuzzi.

Pope Pius XII did not want the vital organs removed from his body, demanding instead, that it be kept in the same condition, "in which God created it". According to Galeazzi-Lisi, this was the reason why he and Professor Oreste Nuzzi, an embalmer from Naples, used a novel embalming approach invented by Nuzzi. Galeazzi-Lisi asserted that the new process would "preserve the body indefinitely in its natural state" However, whatever chance the new embalming process of efficaciously preserving the body was obliterated by intense heat in Castel Gandolfo during the embalming process. As a result, the body decomposed rapidly and the viewing of the faithful had to be terminated abruptly.

Galeazzi-Lisi reported that heat in the halls, where the body of the late Pope lay in state, caused chemical reactions which required it to be treated twice after the original preparation. Angelo Cardinal Roncalli (Pope John XXIII) wrote in his diary on 11 October that probably no Roman emperor had enjoyed such a triumph, which he viewed as a reflection of the spiritual majesty and religious dignity of Pius XII.

Cause for canonization

The Testament of Pope Pius XII was published immediately after his death. Pope Pius XII's cause of canonization was opened on 18 November 1965 by Pope Paul VI. In March 2007, the congregation recommended that Pius XII should be declared Venerable. Pope Benedict XVI did so on 19 December 2009, simultaneously making the same declaration in regard to Pope John Paul II.

Views, interpretations, and scholarship

Contemporary

During the war, the pope was widely praised. For example, ''Time'' magazine credited Pius XII and the Catholic Church for "fighting totalitarianism more knowingly, devoutly, and authoritatively, and for a longer time, than any other organized power". During the war he was also praised editorially by the ''New York Times'' for opposing Nazi anti-Semitism and aggression. Some early works echoed these favorable sentiments, including Polish historian Oskar Halecki's ''Pius XII: Eugenio Pacelli: Pope of peace'' (1954) and Nazareno Padellaro's ''Portrait of Pius XII'' (1949).

Many Jews publicly thanked the Pope for his help. For example, Pinchas Lapide, a Jewish theologian and Israeli diplomat to Milan in the 1960s, estimated controversially in ''Three Popes and the Jews'' that Pius "was instrumental in saving at least 700,000 but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands." Some historians have questioned this oft-cited number, which Lapide reached by "deducting all reasonable claims of rescue" by non-Catholics from the total number of European Jews surviving the Holocaust. Catholic scholar Kevin Madigan interprets this and other praise from prominent Jewish leaders, including Golda Meir, as less than sincere, an attempt to secure Vatican recognition of the State of Israel.

When Pius XII died in October, 1958 many Jewish organizations and newspapers around the world paid tribute to his legacy. At the United Nations, Golda Meir, Israel's Foreign Minister, said, "When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict." The Jewish Chronicle in London stated on 10 October "Adherents of all creeds and parties will recall how Pius XII faced the responsibilities of his exalted office with courage and devotion. Before, during, and after the Second World War, he constantly preached the message of peace. Confronted by the monstrous cruelties of Nazism, Fascism, and Communism, he repeatedly proclaimed the virtues of humanity and compassion". In the Canadian Jewish Chronicle (17 October), Rabbi J. Stern stated that Pius XII "made it possible for thousands of Jewish victims of Nazism and Fascism to be hidden away..." In the 6 November edition of the Jewish Post in Winnipeg, William Zukerman, the former American Hebrew columnist, wrote that no other leader "did more to help the Jews in their hour of greatest tragedy, during the Nazi occupation of Europe, than the late Pope". Other prominent Jewish figures, such as Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett and Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog expressed their public gratitude to Pius XII.

Pius was also criticized during his lifetime. For example, Leon Poliakov wrote five years after World War II that Pius had been a tacit supporter of Vichy France's anti-Semitic laws, calling him "less forthright" than Pope Pius XI either out of "Germanophilia" or the hope that Hitler would defeat communist Russia. Bishop Carlos Duarte Costa, a long-time critic of Pius XII's policies during the war and an opponent of clerical celibacy and the use of Latin as language of the liturgy, was excommunicated by Pius XII on 2 July 1945.

On 21 September 1945, the general secretary of the World Jewish Council, Dr. Leon Kubowitzky, presented an amount of money to the pope, "in recognition of the work of the Holy See in rescuing Jews from Fascist and Nazi persecutions."

After the war, in the autumn of 1945, Harry Greenstein from Baltimore, a close friend of Chief Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem, told Pius how grateful Jews were for all he had done for them. "My only regret", the pope replied, "is not to have been able to save a greater number of Jews."

''The Deputy''

In 1963, Rolf Hochhuth's controversial drama ''Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel'' (''The Deputy, a Christian tragedy'', released in English in 1964) portrayed Pope Pius XII as a hypocrite who remained silent about the Holocaust. Books such as Dr. Joseph Lichten's ''A Question of Judgment'' (1963), written in response to ''The Deputy'', defended Pius XII's actions during the war. Lichten labelled any criticism of the pope's actions during World War II as "a stupefying paradox" and said, "no one who reads the record of Pius XII's actions on behalf of Jews can subscribe to Hochhuth's accusation." Critical scholarly works like Guenter Lewy's ''The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany'' (1964) also followed the publication of ''The Deputy''. Lewy's conclusion was that "the Pope and his advisers – influenced by the long tradition of moderate anti-Semitism so widely accepted in Vatican circles – did not view the plight of the Jews with a real sense of urgency and moral outrage. For this assertion no documentation is possible, but it is a conclusion difficult to avoid". In 2002 the play was adapted into the film ''Amen.''

An article on La Civilità Cattolica in March 2009 indicated that the accusations that Hochhuth's play made widely known originated not among Jews but in the Communist bloc. It was Moscow Radio, on 2 June 1945, that first direct against Pius XII the accusation of refusing to speak out against the exterminations in Nazi concentration camps. It was also the first to call him "Hitler's Pope".

A former high-ranking KGB officer, Securitate General Ion Mihai Pacepa stated in 2007 that Hochhuth's play and numerous publications attacking Pius XII as a Nazi sympathizer were fabrications that were part of a KGB and Eastern bloc Marxist secret services disinformation campaign, named Seat 12, to discredit the moral authority of the Church and Christianity in the west. Pacepa also indicated that he was involved in contacting east bloc agents close the Vatican in order to fabricate the story to be used for the attack against the wartime pope.

''Actes''

In the aftermath of the controversy surrounding ''The Deputy'', in 1964 Pope Paul VI authorized Jesuit scholars to access the Vatican State Department Archives, which are normally not opened for seventy-five years. Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, was published in 11 volumes between 1965 and 1981.The volumes were published by Angelo Martini, Burkhart Schneider, Robert A. Graham and Pierre Blet, the latter published a summary of the 11 volumes. All four, most frequently Robert A. Graham published articles and books on the subject matter.

''Hitler's Pope'' and ''The Myth of Hitler's Pope''

thumb|upright|The cover of ''Hitler's Pope'', showing Nuncio Pacelli leaving the residence of [[President of Germany|President Hindenburg in 1927.]] In 1999, John Cornwell's ''Hitler's Pope'' criticized Pius for not doing enough, or speaking out enough, against the Holocaust. Cornwell argued that Pius' entire career as the nuncio to Germany, cardinal secretary of state, and pope was characterized by a desire to increase and centralize the power of the Papacy, and that he subordinated opposition to the Nazis to that goal. He further argued that Pius was anti-Semitic and that this stance prevented him from caring about the European Jews.

Cornwell's work was the first to have access to testimonies from Pius' beatification process as well as to many documents from Pacelli's nunciature which had just been opened under the 75-year rule by the Vatican State Secretary archives. Cornwell's work has received much praise and criticism. Much praise of Cornwell centered around his disputed claim that he was a practising Catholic who had attempted to absolve Pius with his work. While works such as Susan Zuccotti's ''Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy'' (2000) and Michael Phayer's ''The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965'' (2000) are critical of both Cornwell and Pius XII, Ronald J. Rychlak's ''Hitler, the War and the Pope'' is critical as well but defends Pius XII in light of his access to most recent documents. Cornwell's scholarship has been criticized. For example, Kenneth L. Woodward stated in his review in ''Newsweek'' that "errors of fact and ignorance of context appear on almost every page." Five years after the publication of ''Hitler's Pope'', Cornwell stated: "I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following ''Hitler's Pope'', that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany".

In his 2003 book ''A Moral Reckoning'', Daniel Jonah Goldhagen asserts that Pius "chose again and again not to mention the Jews publicly.... [In] public statements by Pius XII . . . any mention of the Jews is conspicuously absent." In a review of Goldhagen's book, Mark Riebling counters that Pius used the word "Jew" in his first encyclical, ''Summi Pontificatus'', published on October 20, 1939. "There Pius insisted that all human beings be treated charitably – for, as Paul had written to the Colossians, in God's eyes "there is neither Gentile nor Jew." In saying this, the Pope affirmed that Jews were full members of the human community – which is Goldhagen's own criterion for establishing 'dissent from the anti-Semitic creed.'"

Most recently, Rabbi David Dalin's ''The Myth of Hitler's Pope'' argues that critics of Pius are liberal Catholics and ex-Catholics who "exploit the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the Catholic Church today" and that Pius XII was actually responsible for saving the lives of many thousands of Jews.

International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission

In 1999, in an attempt to address some of this controversy, the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission (Historical Commission), a group of three Catholic and three Jewish scholars was appointed, respectively, by the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews (Holy See's Commission) and the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), to whom a preliminary report was issued in October 2000.

The Commission did not discover any documents, but had the agreed-upon task to review the existing Vatican volumes, that make up the ''Actes et Documents du Saint Siege (ADSS)'' The Commission was internally divided over the question of access to additional documents from the Holy See, access to the news media by individual commission members, and, questions to be raised in the preliminary report. It was agreed to include all 47 individual questions by the six members, and use them as Preliminary Report. In addition to the 47 questions, the commission issued no findings of its own. It stated that it was not their task to sit in judgment of the Pope and his advisors but to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the papacy during the Holocaust.

The 47 questions by the six scholars were grouped into three parts: (a) 27 specific questions on existing documents, mostly asking for background and additional information such as drafts of the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, which was largely written by Eugenio Pacelli. (b) Fourteen questions dealt with themes of individual volumes, such as the question how Pius viewed the role of the Church during the war. (c) Six general questions, such as the absence of any anti-communist sentiments in the documents. The disagreement between members over additional documents locked up up under the Holy See's 70 year rule resulted in a discontinuation of the Commission in 2001 on friendly terms.

Recent developments

Phayer's ''Pius XII, The Holocaust, and the Cold War'' (2008) makes use of many documents that have recently come to light due to Bill Clinton's 1997 executive order declassifying wartime and postwar documents, many of which are currently at the US National Archives and Holocaust Memorial Museum. These documents include diplomatic correspondence, American espionage, and even decryptions of German communications. Relevant documents have also been released by the Argentine government and the British Foreign Office and other information sources have become available, including the diary of Bishop Joseph Patrick Hurley. These documents reveal new information about Pius XII's actions regarding the Ustaše regime, the genocides in Poland, the finances of the wartime church, the deportation of the Roman Jews, and the postwar "ratlines" for Nazis and fascists fleeing Europe. According to Phayer, "the face of Pope Pius that we see in these documents is not the same face we see in the eleven volumes the Vatican published of World War II documents, a collection which, though valuable, is nonetheless critically flawed because of its many omissions".

A special conference of scholars on Pius XII on the 50th anniversary of his death was held in Rome on 15–17 September 2008, by Pave the Way Foundation, a nonsectarian organization founded by Gary Krupp, a Jewish American that promotes interfaith cooperation. Pope Benedict XVI held on 19 September 2008 a reception for the conference participants, where he praised Pius XII as a pope who made every effort to save Jews during the war. A second conference was held on 6–8 November 2008 by the Pontifical Academy of Life.

On 9 October 2008, the 50th anniversary of Pius XII's death, Benedict XVI celebrated pontifical mass in his memory. Shortly prior to, and after the mass, dialectics continued between the Jewish hierarchy and the Vatican as Rabbi Shear Yeshuv Cohen of Haifa addressed the Synod of Bishops and expressed his disappointment towards Pius XII's "silence" during the war.

On 16 June 2009, the Pave the Way Foundation announced that it would release of 2,300 pages of documents in Avellino, Italy, dating from 1940 to 1945, which the organization claims show that Pius XII "worked diligently to save Jews from Nazi tyranny"; the organization's founder, Gary Krupp, a Jew, accused historians of harboring "private agendas" and having "let down" the public. The foundation's research led to the publication of the book ''Pope Pius XII and World War II: the documented truth'', authored by Krupp; the book reproduces 225 pages of the new documents produced by the foundation's research. On 17 September 2009, Pave the Way Foundation nominated Pius XII to be listed as Righteous Among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. The foundation's efforts produced some 3,000 original documents and photos on the life of Pius XII and his work to save Jews during World War II.

See also

List of people from Rome

List of popes

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

''Acta Apostolicae Sedis'' (AAS). 1939–1958. Vatican City.

Angelini, Fiorenzo. 1959. ''Pio XII, Discorsi Ai Medici''. Rome.

Claudia, M. 1955. ''Guide to the Documents of Pope Pius XII''. Westminster, Maryland.

''Pio XII, Discorsi e Radio Messaggi di Sua Santita Pio XII''. 1939–1958. Vatican City. 20 vol.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.; Myron C. Taylor, ed. ''Wartime Correspondence Between President Roosevelt and Pope Pius XII''. Prefaces by Pius XII and Harry Truman. Kessinger Publishing (1947, reprinted, 2005). ISBN 1-4191-6654-9

Utz, A. F., and Gröner, J. F. (eds.). ''Soziale Summe Pius XII'' 3 vol.

Zolli, Israel. 1997. ''Before the Dawn''. Roman Catholic Books (Reprint edition). ISBN 0-912141-46-8.

Olivier Rota. ''Les ‘silences’ du pape Pie XII : genèse et critique d'un procès biaisé'', in Revue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique, Louvain, vol. 99 (3–4), huly-dec. 2004, pp. 758–766.

Thomas Bokenkotter. 2004. ''A Concise History of the Catholic Church''. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-50584-1

Owen Chadwick. 1995. ''A History of Christianity''. Barnes & Noble. ISBN 0-7607-7332-7

Frank J. Coppa, ''The Policies and Politics of Pope Pius XII: Between Diplomacy and Morality'' (New York etc., Peter Lang, 2011).

Cornwell, John. 1999. ''Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII''. Viking. ISBN 0-670-87620-8.

Cushing, Richard. 1959. ''Pope Pius XII''. Paulist Press.

Dalin, David G. 2005. ''The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis''. Regnery. ISBN 0-89526-034-4.

Falconi, Carlo. 1970 (translated from the 1965 Italian edition). ''The Silence of Pius XII''. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. ISBN 0-571-09147-4

Feldkamp, Michael F. ''Pius XII und Deutschland''. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ISBN 3-525-34026-5.

Friedländer, Saul. 1966. ''Pius XII and the Third Reich: A Documentation''. New York: Alfred A Knopf. ISBN 0-374-92930-0

Gallo, Patrick J., ed. 2006. ''Pius XII, The Holocaust and the Revisionists''. London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. ISBN 0-7864-2374-9

Goldhagen, Daniel. 2002. ''A Moral Reckoning – The role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair''. Little, Brown ISBN 0-316-72446-7

Gutman, Israel (ed.). 1990. ''Encyclopedia of the Holocaust'', vol. 3. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. ISBN 0-02-864529-4

Halecki, Oskar. 1954. ''Pius XII: Eugenio Pacelli: Pope of peace''. Farrar, Straus and Young.

Hatch, Alden, and Walshe, Seamus. 1958. ''Crown of Glory, The Life of Pope Pius XII''. New York: Hawthorne Books.

ICJHC. 2000. ''The Vatican and the Holocaust: A Preliminary Report''.

Kühlwein, Klaus. 2008. ''Warum der Papst schwieg. Pius XII und der Holocaust''. Düsseldorf: Patoms-Verlag. ISBN 978-3491725270

Kurzman, Dan. 2007. ''A Special Mission: Hitler's Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius XII''. Da Capo Press.

Leiber, Robert. ''Pius XII'' ''Stimmen der Zeit'', Freiburg i Br. Vol 163, 1958–1959, pp. 81 ff

Lehnert, Pascalina. 1983. ''Ich durfte Ihm dienen, Erinneringen an Papst Pius XII'', Würzburg, Verlag Johann Wolhelm Naumann

Kent, Peter. 2002. ''The Lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII: The Roman Catholic Church and the Division of Europe, 1943–1950.'' Ithaca: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 0-7735-2326-X

Pham, John Peter. 2006. ''Heirs of the Fisherman: Behind the Scenes of Papal Death and Succession. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-517834-3

Lapide, Pinchas. 1967. ''Three Popes and the Jews''. London and Southampton: Souvenir Press.

Levillain, Philippe (ed.). 2002. ''The Papacy: An Encyclopedia''. Routledge (UK). ISBN 0-415-92228-3.

Lewy, Guenter. 1964. ''The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany''. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-306-80931-1.

Marchione, Sr. Margherita. 2000. ''Pope Pius XII: Architect for Peace''. Paulist Press. ISBN 0-8091-3912-X.

Marchione, Sr. Margherita. 2002. ''Consensus and Controversy: Defending Pope Pius XII''. Paulist Press. ISBN 0-8091-4083-7.

Marchione, Sr. Margherita. 2002. ''Shepherd of Souls: A Pictorial Life of Pope Pius XII''. Paulist Press. ISBN 0-8091-4181-7.

Marchione, Sr. Margherita. 2004. '' Man of Peace: An Abridged Life of Pope Pius XII''. Paulist Press. ISBN 0-8091-4245-7.

Martin, Malachi B. 1972. ''Three Popes and the Cardinal: The Church of Pius, John and Paul in its Encounter with Human History''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-27675-7.

McDermott, Thomas. 1946. ''Keeper of the Keys'' -''A Life of Pope Pius XII''. Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company.

McInerney, Ralph. 2001. ''The Defamation of Pius XII''. St Augustine's Press. ISBN 1-890318-66-3.

Morsey, Rudolf. 1986. "Eugenio Pacelli als Nuntius in Deutschland" in Herbert Schambeck, ''Pius XII''. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

Murphy, Paul I. and Arlington, R. Rene. 1983. ''La Popessa: The Controversial Biography of Sister Pasqualina, the Most Powerful Woman in Vatican History''. New York: Warner Books Inc. ISBN 0-446-51258-3.

Padellaro, Nazareno. 1949. ''Portrait of Pius XII''. Dutton; 1st American ed edition (1957).

O'Brien, Felicity. 2000, ''Pius XII'', London and Bristol, Burleigh Press,

Paul, Leon. 1957. ''The Vatican Picture Book'' – ''A Picture Pilgrimage''. New York: Greystone Press.

Phayer, Michael. 2000. ''The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965''. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-33725-9.

Phayer, Michael. 2008. ''Pius XII, The Holocaust, and the Cold War''. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-34930-9.

Pollard, John F. 2005. ''Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: Financing the Vatican, 1850–1950''. Cambridge University Press.

Pfister, Pierre. 1955. ''PIUS XII'' – ''The Life and Work of a Great Pope''. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.

Ritner, Carol and Roth, John K. (eds.). 2002. ''Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust''. New York: Leicester University Press. ISBN 0-7185-0275-2.

Rychlak, Ronald J. 2000. ''Hitler, the War, and the Pope''. Our Sunday Visitor. ISBN 0-87973-217-2.

Sánchez, José M. 2002. ''Pius XII and the Holocaust: Understanding the Controversy''. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. ISBN 0-8132-1081-X.

Scholder, Klaus. 1987. ''The Churches and the Third Reich''. London.

Tardini, Domenico. 1960. ''Pio XII''. Roma: Poliglotta Vaticana.

John Vidmar. 2005. ''The Catholic Church Through the Ages''. Paulist Press. ISBN 0-8091-4234-1.

Volk, Ludwig. 1972. ''Das Reichskonkordat vom 20. Juli 1933''. Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag. ISBN 3-7867-0383-3.

Zuccotti, Susan. 2000. ''Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy''. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08487-0.

External links

Official Vatican page on Pius XII

*Official Vatican page hosting the ''Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale''

Category:1876 births Category:1958 deaths Category:19th-century Italian people Category:20th-century Italian people Category:Alumni of the Pontifical Gregorian University Category:Alumni of the Almo Collegio Capranica Category:Burials at St. Peter's Basilica Category:Cardinal Secretaries of State Category:Camerlengos of the Holy Roman Church Category:Cold War leaders Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in Italy Category:Deaths from heart failure Category:Grand Masters of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre Category:Italian anti-communists Pius 12 Category:Knights of the Order of the Most Holy Annunciation Category:People from Rome (city) Category:Sovereigns of Vatican City Category:Venerated Catholics Category:World War II political leaders

an:Pío XII az:XII Piy be:Пій XII, Папа Рымскі br:Pi XII bg:Пий XII ca:Pius XII cs:Pius XII. cy:Pab Pïws XII da:Pave Pius 12. de:Pius XII. et:Pius XII el:Πάπας Πίος ΙΒ΄ es:Pío XII eo:Pio la 12-a eu:Pio XII.a fa:پیوس دوازدهم fr:Pie XII ga:Pápa Pius XII gd:Pàpa Pius XII gl:Pío XII, papa ko:교황 비오 12세 hr:Pio XII. io:Pius 12ma bpy:পিও ক্সিই id:Paus Pius XII it:Papa Pio XII he:פיוס השנים עשר jv:Paus Pius XII pam:Papa Pius XII ka:პიუს XII sw:Papa Pius XII la:Pius XII lv:Pijs XII lt:Pijus XII lmo:Piu XII hu:XII. Piusz pápa mk:Папа Пиј XII mr:पोप पायस बारावा nl:Paus Pius XII ja:ピウス12世 (ローマ教皇) no:Pius XII nn:Pave Pius XII oc:Piu XII pms:Pio XII nds:Pius XII. pl:Pius XII pt:Papa Pio XII ro:Papa Pius al XII-lea qu:Piyu XII ru:Пий XII sq:Papa Pio XII simple:Pope Pius XII sk:Pius XII. sl:Papež Pij XII. sr:Папа Пије XII fi:Pius XII sv:Pius XII tl:Pío XII th:สมเด็จพระสันตะปาปาปิอุสที่ 12 tr:Papa XII. Pius uk:Пій XII vec:Papa Pio XII vi:Giáo hoàng Piô XII war:Papa Pío XII yo:Pope Pius XII zh:庇護十二世