A review by marshaskrypuch
The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

5.0

This meticulously researched book by Pulitzer-prize-winning David Kertzer is definitive on Pope Pius XII's controversial relations with Hitler and Mussolini. Making extensive use of newly opened archives, there can now be no doubt about the damning moral choices that the Pope made when it came to appeasing Hitler and closing his eyes to the Holocaust. Apologists might say that he had no choice because communism also posed an existential world threat, plus, it's easy to judge in retrospect. However, one only has to look at his contemporary, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, who was the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. Sheptytsky not only spoke out publicly against both communism and Nazism, he hid Jews in his own library. Pius XII had the choice, but he took the weak way out.