Quotes from David I. Kertzer

For all their obvious differences, the pope and Mussolini were alike in many ways. Both could have no real friends, for friendship implied equality.

When a form of government is legitimately constituted," Rosa now wrote, "even though it may initially have been defective or even questionable in various ways Ã¢â'¬Â¦ it is one's duty to support it, for public order or the common good requires it. Nor is it permitted to either individuals or to parties to plot to defeat it or supplant it or change it with unjust means."22

The pope, aware that he had already angered Mussolini with his three telegrams, would do no more.

As a result, Italians who today bear illustrious noble names are not necessarily the progeny of nobility but may be instead the descendants of poor Jews who sought a new life by passing through the doors of the Catechumens. Of

How could the Vatican justify taking such a great interest in the Jews, asked Dell'Acqua, when it had not complained about the violence Germany had directed against "Aryan people who have professed the Catholic religion from birth"?

public opinion is undergoing a major evolution, due to the impressive German victories.

And, in fact, from his face, from the austere and sublime acts of the Vicar of Christ, torrents of light and goodness flow.

If the Fascists wanted to have them ring, they would be able to do so only by force. In the end, no one made such an attempt. This was not a time to antagonize the pope.

He made not even the briefest mention, indeed no mention at all, of the Nazis' extermination of Europe's Jews.

There is no past, memory paints it,' Ã¢â'¬Â the pope recited. " Ã¢â'¬ËœThere is no future, for hope shapes it. There is only the present, but it is always escaping us.

I never want to see umbrellas around me," he [Mussolini] once said. "The umbrella is a bourgeois relic, it is the arm used by the pope's soldiers. A people who carry umbrellas cannot found an empire.

What those courageous actions during the war were he did not say.

The sharp-tongued Monsignor Tardini dubbed Hitler the "Motorized Attila.

the Vatican's cooperation.

Papal timidity becomes ever more blatantly despicable.

Pope Pius XII was certainly not "Hitler's pope," as John Cornwell's intentionally provocative book title would have it.

the pope, speaking in English

talking about what people ought to do, instead of giving some kind of lead in condemning what they are actually doing.

the moral leadership of the Papacy is conditioned by considerations of opportunism and expedience.

Pius XII "is good, fine, sensitive, it is even said oversensitive. But in my opinion, he lacks personality, or more exactly he lacks strong character.

No such criticism of the racial laws would ever escape the pope's lips or pen, not in 1939, nor over the following years in which they were in force.

The two men spoke in German, although von Hessen, who had spent years living in Italy, could also speak Italian

the National Socialists were divided into pro-church and anti-church factions that were "bitterly opposed to each other.

observed the pope. "Some remain secret, others are exploited. Whenever we are told of such cases, we intervene immediately. And severely.