Home > Archives > 08 - 2004 > The charity of the Pope and the need for peace
HISTORY
from issue no. 08 - 2004

The charity of the Pope and the need for peace


The speech by Giulio Andreotti at the end of a mass of thanksgiving for the action taken by Pius XII to help the people of the Castelli Romani in 1944



Just a word to underline the importance of devoting a moment of prayer – taking up the suggestion of Marcello Costa and the friends from 30Days – in remembrance of Pius XII, who is often mentioned for what he did for Rome at the time of the Nazi occupation, but whose gesture of fatherly feeling, of courage, of compassion towards the people of the Castelli Romani in opening up the papal Villa of Castel Gandolfo is rarely stressed. In early 1944, in fact, the Villa had opened to evacuees and to all those who needed to find a refuge. It was not the first time that the Pope intervened to avert the war. The photos of the Pope, here in front of the Basilica of San Lorenzo – where Pius IX is buried – destroyed on 19 July 1943 by Allied bombs, are often republished. And it was not the first time that the Pope came out of the Vatican, with all that that involved. Already some years earlier the Pope had done everything to prevent Italy’s entering the war and had gone in person (in December 1939) to the Quirinal, to the King, to express the Italians’ wishes for peace. Unfortunately things went differently – and this is neither the place nor the occasion to say why after some months of non-belligerency Italy entered the war. It is a fact that, after 8 September 1943, in reaction to the occupation of Rome by the Germans, to the persecution of our Jewish brothers, to the persecution of all the young men who did not want to obey the draft demanded by the Social Republic, a large network of charity developed here in Rome. At every convent, at every monastery, the doors were opened and a great many people saved. Furthermore great efforts were made by the Vatican to prevent people dying of hunger. The old litanies – we were kids then – were still in use, prayers were said to avert the plague, hunger and war. Even the threat of plague was possible given the situation, but certainly hunger and war were a tangible reality. It was a new war. New because it was being fought not only at the front, but was experienced in every corner of the country. You people of the Castelli Romani know very well how terrible it was, in particular in the period following the Allied landing at Anzio. At first there was a widespread feeling that the war would be short-lived because from the Castelli Romani one could see how close the Allies were. But things went otherwise and it took months to see Rome liberated. History tells us that the Allies were in a no hurry because they wanted to keep the Germans busy on the Italian front as long as possible, to keep them away from northern Europe where the Normandy landings were about to happen.
Above, evacuees beside a Vatican truck piled with furniture; below, houses close to the church of the Santa Trinità in Genzano, razed to the ground by the bombing of 1944

Above, evacuees beside a Vatican truck piled with furniture; below, houses close to the church of the Santa Trinità in Genzano, razed to the ground by the bombing of 1944

But I mustn’t make a speech. I must only stress what the opening of the Villa and of its adjacent buildings meant not only to the persecuted but also to the simple evacuees. There was terrible bombing in a zone that had been thought safe precisely because of the presence of the papal palaces. But in that period the Abbey of Montecassino, another extremely important Church monument – about which a great many promises had been made that it would be spared from the bombing – was destroyed, provoking terror in people who now understood that, despite the declarations made, no place was in reality safe from the war. The months followed one another and the possibility of providing a minimum of food to people depended precisely on those columns of Holy See trucks that, despite the fighting (they also had their victims), went to get supplies wherever it was possible and returned with food for the people of the Castelli Romani.
There is a touching, little known, side to those months preceding the liberation. Among the families of evacuees lodged in the pontifical villas there were pregnant women. So in the villas in that period – and it is something that seems to me of great resonance – forty children were born. I am touched by one, now sixty years old, here with us tonight. It was no accident that his parents decided to give him and his twin brother the names of Pio Eugenio and Eugenio Pio. And in that connection, I would like to remind you that, moved and touched by the charity of the Pope, the chief Rabbi of Rome was converted to Christianity: he took baptism, choosing the name Eugenio.
As a mark of gratitude for having saved so many Jews, on 26 May 1955 the Israel Philharmonic played Beethoven’s Seventh symphony in the presence of Pius XII

As a mark of gratitude for having saved so many Jews, on 26 May 1955 the Israel Philharmonic played Beethoven’s Seventh symphony in the presence of Pius XII

Why speak of these things today? The Pope certainly doesn’t, in his present life in Heaven, need our testimony... But two aspects need to be underlined. First: let us realize that when the popes speak about the absolute need for peace, often creating misunderstandings and enmities for themselves also on the earthly level, they are doing not only their pastoral duty but become spokesmen for a real feeling among peoples, for an interest in their physical safeguarding. Second: we know that there are also currents in opposition to Pius XII. Currents that have even shown themselves in the theater, in a play that scandalized us, but that certainly won’t remain in the history of literature and of the theater. But if one goes to seek out the reasons for this hostility towards Pius XII one notices that in the early post-war period this hostility did not exist, indeed that everybody felt enormous gratitude to the Pope. And when the first leaders of the new State of Israel came to Italy, among them Golda Meir, they expressed their gratitude to Pius XII openly. Things changed historically when the Pope decreed the excommunication of the Communists. The whole of a certain type of world, that did not coincide with that of the true and proper Communists, but that brought together a certain type of intellectual who had dealings in that area, entered into a feud with the Pope.
I’ve finished. An idea comes to me, and I hope that our friends from 30Days develop it. One of the most unfair things there has been in this campaign against Pius XII is Cornwell’s book with its title Hitler’s Pope. A false book starting with the cover, which shows Eugenio Pacelli, still as apostolic nuncio, in his long archbishop’s cape, coming out of a front door at the sides of which stand two German soldiers. Now, when the Pope was nuncio Hitler was not yet in power in Germany, there was the Weimar Republic, and those two soldiers are not two Nazi soldiers but two sentries of the Weimar Republic. I think that we could illustrate a cover of 30Days with the photo of one of these two twins, who were born in that terrible period in the pontifical Villa. It is something feeling, if you like, that we can offer, along with our prayers, for a Pope who, independently of canonical procedures, we truly consider a saint.


Giulio Andreotti
Roma, Basilica of San Lorenzo Outside the Walls, 10 July 2004


Italiano Español Français Deutsch Português