David Kertzer – The Pope at War

good evening everyone is this on good evening everyone good evening and welcome to the american academy in rome i'm elizabeth rodini the academy's director and together with my colleagues i am very happy to welcome you to the villa aurelia and to this evening's event which promises to be both very important and immensely interesting it's an honor to host it and a privilege to have all of you here with us tonight we focus on the most recent work of the eminent historian of modern italy david kurtzer namely his soon-to-be released book the pope at war the secret history of pius xii mussolini and hitler based on material that had until just a few years ago been sealed away in the vatican archives this work promises to redefine no less than how we understand the second world war professor kurtzer is here tonight and will speak about his work alongside an expert set of panelists but before introducing them i want to pass the microphone to my colleague sebastian hill the the academy's drew hines librarian who will tell you more about our library and the library supporters who have made tonight's event possible sebastian good evening so i'm sebastian hill the drew heinz librarian and it's a great pleasure for me uh to welcome you to our annual patricia h labalm friends of the library lecture featuring the paul dp university professor of social science and professor of anthropology and italian studies at brown university and puted surprise winning scholar david kurzer before elizabeth introduces david and our speakers it is my privilege to introduce and thank our friends of the library for their support the friends of the library was founded in 1961 by professor lily ross taylor josephine kimball and mari t williams for over 60 years the friends of the library have provided the essential financial support to make our arthur and janet c ross library one of the premier scholarly libraries in rome through the annual dues and the direct support of library acquisitions and through championing the library's mission the friends of the library continue to strengthen our connections and services and thus to strengthen the academy as a whole you have heard me say this many times but it bears repeating a great academy requires a great library and the arthur and janet c ross library with its 170 000 physical volumes distributed over four miles of mostly open stacks is home to nine thousand readers every year many of them have been coming to our library for decades and who depend upon us for access to the latest international scholarship with numerous local libraries in rome and beyond having dramatically reduced the acquisitions of foreign publications the library by providing free access to our resources and services is making a very significant contribution to the roman scholarly landscape in addition to our friends of the library i take this opportunity to thank our trustees and in particular trustees serving on the library committee as well as our many long-term supporters who have made the academy in our library the centers of creativity that they are today my sincere thanks go to janet and the late arthur ross for the essential support to the late barbara goldsmith and michael graves who have made it possible for us to provide a proper home to our rare and fragile materials in our barbara goldsmith rare book room to the late patricia h labaum noted venetian scholar of the venetian renaissance scholar and a trusted and a trustee of the academy from 1979 to 1999 and whom we are celebrating tonight to winston vincent bornando and michael putnam to the saml h grass foundation which has so generously funded our preservation and digitization projects at the photographic archive and to our journalists and dedicated friends of the library who are too many to name here that i would like to recognize tonight eli naj kaffi kathy gefken liz bartman bill mckern diane favro and fika diego and so many more i conclude by asking all of you who work and care about the library to consider joining the friends of the library thank you very much [Applause] thank you sebastian and thank you again to the friends of the library i also want to give a special thanks to our andrew w melon professor in the humanities marla stone for envisioning and organizing tonight's panel marla is also a panelist so i'll say more about her in a moment but but i begin of course with professor kurtzer again a very abbreviated introduction david kurzer is widely recognized as one of the world's leading scholars of modern italian history and of the recent history of the vatican a resident of the american academy in rome in 2000 he is currently the paul dupey jr university professor of social science and professor of anthropology and italian studies at brown university where he served as provost from 2006 to 2011. he is the author of now 13 books including in 2014 the pope and mussolini winner of the 2015 pulitzer prize for biography david i could say much more but i will stop here please accept my sincere thanks to you for your presence at the academy and your contributions to it and especially for this very important work ruth bengyat is rhea s hederman critic in residence at the american academy for 2022 a historian and cultural critic she is an expert on fascism and authoritarian leaders and a frequent commentator on msnbc and cnn ben gyat is professor of history and italian studies at new york university her latest book strong men from mussolini to the present examines how illiberal leaders use corruption violence propaganda and machismo to stay in power marla stone currently melon humanities professor here at the academy specializes in questions of dictatorship and genocide in the modern era professor of history at occidental college she has published on topics including italian fascist cultural politics anti-communism the contemporary far right in europe and italian holocaust memory culture her current book in progress is entitled the enemy the politics and propaganda of anti-communism in italy lutz clinkhammer is deputy director and head of contemporary history at the german historical institute in rome he has taught contemporary european history at the universities of viterbo and bologna as well as in germany his main research interests include national socialism and the second world war including relationships between the modern state and the catholic church and his many publications include stragi naziste in italian who is associate professor of modern history at kafoskari and the university of siena levy sulam's areas of work are include the 19th and 20th century italian history especially the history of politics and culture jewish history and the history of anti-semitism and of the holocaust among his many publications i highlight only one from 2018 the italian executioners the genocide of the jews of italy my sincere thanks to all of you and let's begin professor kurzer [Applause] thank you elizabeth and thank you to the american academy for organizing this event and marla stone and others uh tina kanchami who put this all together um it's a special treat because and maybe this is a bit strange that we're having this event around my book but the book actually hasn't been published yet it's coming out in italy uh with karzanti on may 26 and then in the us on june 7th with random house so i hope to pique your interest uh but it's uh you'll be rushing to the bookstores i'm sure in two or three weeks the pope at war is a book about the controversial wartime pope pius xii how he dealt with the war and how he dealt with the the holocaust the shoah but not just how he dealt with it but why he did what he did which i think is part of the mysteries that now we can begin to unravel there are various spurs to the writing of this book some go uh far back but the controversies over the pious 12th have been raging probably uh one can dated to the 1963 there was a play some of you may remember uh vicaria el vicario in italian the deputy in english it was actually banned in italy but a uh a major topic of uh conversation in the rest of western europe and the us where it played and the whole controversy public controversy around the silence of the pope during the holocaust maybe did it to that then a number of years later there was a book by john cornwell called uh the hitler's pope so rather provocative title so uh this has been a very bitter historical uh controversy that has been raging i think there are very few that really uh could be compared to it for the uh the divisions that this has caused there are the great defenders of the pope who see him as a heroic figure a courageous figure who fought against fascism and against nazism and was a great savior of jews but then there's the other side the people who uh criticized the pope for his silence for seeing him actually as a coward rather than a courageous uh there had been great pressure on the vatican to open its archives for the warriors because of this controversy and they find finally uh pope francis in 2019 announced that a year hence they would finally be opening those archives and they did open in march of 2020. as i've uh writtenly recently written a book about paisa 12's predecessor and his relationship with the fascist regime a book elizabeth mentioned the pope in mussolini was its title in english it was kind of logical for me to look at the next chapter of this history of the relationship of the vatican with the fascist regime and with national socialism uh so i kind of made a bet it was a bet that the vatican was going to open these archives that francis it's part of his attempt for greater transparency in the vatican and given all the pressure that's been going on for decades to open the archives that uh pretty soon francis would open them so i began working after i finished the other book uh on the this history because there were a lot of archives that were open basically all the state archives both in italy uh but also in france in germany in britain and the united states so i spent some years putting together tens of thousands of documents from those archives that were already opened when fortunately uh francis made his announcement that authorizing the opening of the vatican archives so there was great excitement when march 2nd 2020 those archives were opened i was outside the front door with some other colleagues and uh had you know rented a place for several months and was planning to be working there when of course with covet after the first week they closed down and then there was a lockdown in italy i went back to the u.s fortunately my colleague and collaborator roberto benedetti being roman was able to stay and they reopened those archives after just three months of closure and so we've been able to result as several thousand pages of archival documents that offer new light on this controversial history that we now have available we now have have copied but i would say that although uh rightly there's been a lot of concentration a lot of emphasis on the value of those newly opened vatican archives a lot of the most important documents to be able to bring this history back to life i understand it come from other archives both the fascist archives the various italian archives but also german british french american archives as well and you have to remember that each of these countries had envoys who were sending almost daily reports back from vatican city about their daily meetings with the people around the pope and occasionally with the pope himself so that what i tried to do was triangulate the documents from all these different sources around the same events to provide a kind of kaleidoscope of vision that helps reconstruct it um i won't lengthen my these kind of introductory comments uh beyond this and get into some of the findings of the book uh wait to hear what my colleagues here to whom i uh have a great debt for their willingness to participate in this uh what they would like to to bring up and then i'll have a chance to respond um all i i will say is that i did learn that there were people who said there wasn't much new to be learned for one thing in response to the all the criticism about the silence of the pope paul vi uh authorized a group of uh jesuit scholars to put together 12 thick volumes of documents from world war ii that were published between 1965 and 1981. so there's some people who said there's we're really not going to find anything new we already pretty much know what happened what we found is that's not true at all there's a lot new that's to be learned uh and not only by the way from the new vatican archives but even from those other archives uh practically every year their new material including the american archives of british archives and so on italian archives that's added uh that hadn't been uh processed before hadn't been catalogued before so there's a much new and even some uh really quite uh kind of climate climate also findings that can now come out for the first time uh and we just end these introductory comments by saying that the misrepresentation the many myths that surround the vatican pius 12th and world war ii i the way i see it as uh someone interested in italian history is part of a broader pattern it's not just the vatican it bears also on the difficulty italy has uh in coming to terms with its role in world war ii uh and so perhaps we'll get a chance to talk about that as well so with those uh comments and thanking again the american academy uh major to hear what my colleagues have to say thank you [Applause] thank you i'm really pleased to be here to talk about this such an important book and to return to rome after it's been too long so start with a quote the pope may pray for putin but he's clinging to neutrality on ukraine this is the title of a politico eu article by hannah roberts published on april 27th two months into russia's brutal horror annihilation on ukraine quote for francis the dilemma is whether to use his moral standing to explicitly denounce russia or hold back in the hope of creating space for mediation now pope francis a deeply human and humane presence in the world in my opinion has condemned the war's brutality in general but he's and he's been active behind the scenes in diplomatic efforts yet he speaks in vague terms he never mentions putin by name and his few public pronouncements on the war have sometimes played into propaganda by the kremlin and their ally the russian orthodox church last week pope francis told the core de la sera in ukraine the conflict has been created by others others than putin presumably and said that nato by barking quote abaya at russia's door perhaps facilitated the invasion placing responsibility for the war on nato is an official kremlin talking point recently trotted out in putin's may 9th victory day speech quote church backers say a dogged commitment to neutrality is pragmatic writes roberts and we know that francis disapproves of the politicization of prelates it's why he warned patriarch kirill head of the russian orthodox church to make sure he didn't turn into quote putin's altar boy and yet when foreign minister lavrov addressed the u.n human rights council a few weeks ago a few weeks after the invasion started the holy see delegate was among the few who remained when 140 other diplomats walked out and the vatican abstained on a march organization of security and cooperation vote to investigate the possible war crimes committed by russians in ukraine now i'm starting with this uncomfortable parallel not to say that putin is another hitler but because it offers an example of the continuities in institutional behavior by the vatican regardless of who's in charge pope francis and pope pius xii are very different people and pope francis is charting new territory for the church in so many ways and yet this quote i'm about to read you from professor kurtzer's book where pope pius xii says quote i have done my precise duty taking care not to offend anyone avoiding any particular references indeed studiously taking care to say the least possible has some resonance with pope francis behavior as another dictator today wages an imperialist war that has an open aim of annihilation professor kurtzer's magisterial book argues convincingly that protecting the institut interests of the church and not antagonizing either mussolini or hitler dictated the vatican's actions or rather non-actions during world war ii best to say nothing is the title of chapter 23 and it's a recurring sentiment of pius xii in response to years of fascist and nazi dictatorship german plunder of poland the expansion of axis europe with war crimes committed in every new occupied territory and the roundups and mass executions of jews that we know as the holocaust professor kurtz's study is comprehensive and nuanced because he uses these newly available vatican documents in conjunction with archives in italy germany france britain and the u.s and if you've used archives a lot i know many of you in the room have it's not uncommon if you do a really deep dive into a subject and you consult multiple archives sometimes you'll find the same document in different document collections especially if you're doing diplomatic or international history and what professor kurzer's book adds is the voice of the vatican and due to pope francis decision to open these pius 12 archives in 2020 the vatican archives are a real treasure trove i have for my own project i have used the uh the pontifical work of assistance that was getting refugees and others home and they add they add something that other archives just don't have they're quite amazing so for many people who read this book the crux of the matter will be the pope's access to a continuous float of information from lay and clerical sources about the extermination of european jews including those from quote under his windows in rome and i'll leave it to my colleagues here to delve into that but it's not surprising as kirtzer notes that the vatican focused on helping baptize jews and jews married to christians leaving the rest to their fate yet professor kurtzer's book is broader than this it's actually a wart it's a it's a history of wartime vatican diplomacy it's a history of an institution and a sovereign entity located inside a dictatorship italian history is one reason i wanted to study fascism it's just it has these conditions that you don't find anywhere else it's very very interesting and professor kurtzer's eye for telling detail brings him to report that when the duchess was removed from power by his own grand council on july 25 1943 romans were celebrating he paints the picture of this celebration in the streets very well the pope kept his windows closed he didn't go to any balcony or window professor kurtzer's book also illuminates the pope's concern for catholic clergy in poland and other not occupied nazi territories and he narrates a very revealing encounter with the foreign minister riben trump who told the pope that hitler wanted to quote maintain the existing truce and with with reference to the reich and the vatican and truce is a very interesting word for ribbon trump to use because it implies a pause and a state of war which tells you how the nazis were conceiving of this relationship and of course this was a nazi-style truce in which the german dictatorship closed church schools persecuted clergy and then denied it i don't know anything about that said riben trump lying to cardinal malione the vatican secretary of state and of course what he did know all too well was that keeping the vatican fearful of reprisals was the way to maintain the cooperation i did not want this war it has been forced upon me against my will hitler told sumner wells the u.s under secretary of state in 1940 as kurzer relates we didn't want this war we were forced to defend ourselves against nato ukrainian nazis and other historic enemies says putin today with equal mendocity 80 years ago pope pius xii stayed silent to protect the institution he governed as professor kurtzer concludes if that's the measure then quote there is a good case to be made that his papacy was a success yet francis today seems to me aiming higher in terms of his moral aspirations and and reversing or softening many uh reactionary vatican policies and as putin pursues this genocide in ukraine and policies that resemble the darkest days of communism like deporting ukrainians to gulags and remote areas of russia staying the vatican course of cautionary silence may not prove tenable in any case professor kurtzer's amazing book shows the high-priced humanity paid and even the prestige of the church for making such accommodations thank you [Applause] i'm gonna go to the podium i'm a podium fan uh i wanna thank my colleagues for coming today and participating in this wonderful panel and professor curser for writing this wonderful book and all of you for coming today and joining us so with the pope at war david kurtzer has written a powerful and important book which confronts a number of pressing and controversial questions questions that have plagued the public and historians alike since the events themselves with access to previously unseen vatican correspondents professor kercer gives us a clear and multi-perspectival portrait of how pius xii and his primary advisors collaborated with the italian fascist government during the war worked hard to maintain a conciliatory position vis-a-vis the nazi regime and most powerfully failed to speak out against the aggression the mass atrocities and the genocide committed by the nazis from 1939 on from the invasion of poland to the bombing of london to the systematic deportation and murder of the jews of europe the pulpit war reveals the thinking and mechanics around pius xii decision to prioritize purported the purported neutrality of the vatican and the silence that followed now while historians have long debated and speculated on the causes of pius xii's apparent indifference and in action the pope at war offers a multi-valence analysis based on new evidence on the new evidence of the private correspondence of the pope himself the vatican cardinal secretary of state luigi malione the deputy secretary of state giovanni montini and future pope and the vast documentation left by axis and allied ambassadors to the holy see as well as the numerous papal nuncios so with this material in mind the pulpit war takes a position between the previous polls of historical interpretation as professor curser referred to previously the choices were either pius xii was hitler's pope deeply sympathetic to the nazis eager for a nazi fascist victory obsessed with the defeat of the soviets at all costs and a dedicated anti-semite the other historiographic position held at pius xii did everything within his power to help those set suffering under nazi and fascist oppression and that he was merely constrained by circumstances in this book pius xii ideology and personality emerges the driving forces behind his behavior and his decisions here what is front and center is that above all pius xii saw the churches embattled and under threat and that his mission was to protect it by any means necessary he saw himself up against the forces the barbaric forces of de-christianization the soviet union and its european communist parties and movements and he would enlist any allies in that crusade whom he would imagined would help the church survive he did this through a strategy of purported as i said neutrality and quiet accommodation while simultaneously presenting the vatican and himself as the representatives of peace on earth pius xii reactions during the war or lack thereof were products as i said of his personality and ideology in combination so what was pius xii ideology as i said a single-minded commitment to save a perceived embattled church and at the center of this was pius's overarching fear and hatred of communism for pius xii communism was the de-christianizing force that he believed he had been called by god to defeat for pious and the church the communists the soviet union were the senza dio the godless the existential threat that had to be destroyed in order to save humanity so with upon italy's declaration of war against the soviet union uh in 1941 the catholic press the neutral catholic press wrote the cross will once again appear atop the kremlin's cupola and this article continued italian troops were called to do battle with the murderers of catholic spain the godless the irreducible enemies of christian civilization no such clear statements were ever made against the nazis flowing from his obsessive anti-communism came the vatican's reticence in the face of fascism and nazism as the force is fighting and hopefully obliterating communism that said pius xii did have differing positions and policies versus fascist italy and nazi germany uh in with mussolini and the fascist regime he found willing partners who with whom he signed the latter impacts of 1929 making catholicism the state religion once again and bringing religious education back to italian schools after decades of anti-clerical post-restoration mental governments pius's accommodation with italian fascism and mussolini was a constant lasting up until fascism's final days when pius refused uh has as has been mentioned refused to celebrate the fall of mussolini in july 1943 while italy was fighting on the side of the axis pius xii called on italian clergy to support italian military intervention to preach obedience and to rally the faithful from their pulpits to defend fascism in his relations with the nazi regime pius xii and the courier sought a working relationship that would protect the church in germany even at the cost of never criticizing hitler and even as polish clerics begged pius to speak out about the destruction of the polish church and the murder of polish clergy pius continued to remain silent both out of a desire for a new concord dot in 1939 and 40 and because he imagined again that the axis could offer a christian crusade against communism his desire not to anger hitler led to a muzzling of the catholic church in germany and a censoring of the vatican press to fully understand the ideology and worldview of pius xii and the vatican courier during the war and the holocaust we do have to understand that pius xii and those around him were very much products of the world that produced them anti-semitism and the idea that the jews were destined for punishment was a long-standing element of church belief in practice let us not forget as we sit here in rome that the catholic church invented the ghetto in 1555 and invented the idea that the jews needed to be separated from the non-jewish population the church invented the practice of having forcing jews to wear identifying signs on their clothing none of this past church history was lost on the nazis so the continued depth of this anti-semitism uh is obvious in the fact that pius xii never spoke out against the racial laws of 1938 and painfully neither said nor did anything in the wake of the deportation of the jews of rome on august 16 1943 a roundup that also has been referred to and which took place practically within the site of the windows of the apostolic palace what pius did do in 1943 however confirms his indifference to the plight of the jews the pope and his secretary of state intervened determinedly and repeatedly to save baptized jews and the children of mixed marriages so why while terrified of rumors of possible nazi aggression against the pope and the vatican uh in that heated summer of 1943 uh pius did leave the vatican twice to come to to comfort victims of allied bombings in san lorenzo and the san giovanni neighborhoods of rome but yet he was unable to cross the tiber to witness or comment on the deportations uh to auschwitz or to even make a statement when fascism fell and the bedolia government began to revise or to discuss revising the racial laws pius xii only weighed in to the extent to ask for a revision that would exempt jews married to catholics professor kurtzer rightly stresses the role of pius xii personality in his decision-making we get a vision of a deeply frightened and cautious man the ambassadors to the holy see who went in and out of his office during the war years consistently described him as extremely prudent silent and reserved one of them wrote that he quote crafted his speeches in a way that ensured that they would offend no one pius xii was conflict diverse afraid at all times of threats to the church and by 1942 and 43 afraid of his own safety historians tend to shy away from putting personality front and center but i think here isn't a case where it was determinative particularly when one thinks of his predecessor pius xi and the statement critical of nazism that he was poised to make in 1939 pius xii timid conflict diverse personality fueled the fantasy of vatican neutrality a neutrality that he believed would preserve the church but in fact was not a real neutrality again we cannot separate personality from ideology and pius xii ideology was fixed and clear he wanted to do everything to protect the church everything else was secondary but he was also tactical and strategic and as it became clear that the axis would lose pius xii pivoted reached out to the americans and wanted to reconfigure the vatican as a peacemaking geopolitical actor so strategic thinking is also essential to understanding the history of the vatican during world war ii in the end pius xii and the vatican courier around him chose caution self-preservation and indifference overtaking a moral stand we are left once again with that powerful admonition about the dangers of indifference in times of great moral crisis thank you [Applause] so good afternoon to all of you it's a great pleasure for me to be here and talk about uh the new book of professor kurtz of the public war the secret history of pius 12 mussolini and hitler and the book is brilliantly written and it is excellently researched and you see this of the apparatus of the notes which are more than 20 of the pages it consists i would say of two books that can be read almost in parallel the main narrative on the one hand and the second narrative in the footnote apparatus and the footnotes accurately document the sources used and are a seismograph of the innovative elements of the main narrative but at the same time they are sometimes so interesting and deity that there can be red like little digressions on important questions i will give you some example in a while and it has already been said a lot about the contents so i'm dealing with with the exterior aspects as well this book is based on a stupendous knowledge of the research literature in english italian and german quote only the main languages used the research behind it is clearly addressed in the acknowledgments and and [Music] the the book owes and also to the collaboration of roberto benedetti a modern historian um who has done important archive research here on the ground in rome and this includes the archives of the uh akiva central state or the ministry of foreign affairs and the vatican archives and research in german and british archives has been done as well and it's um a certain division of labour is helpful even in normal times but quite indispensable in times of pandemic but in in order to speak about the contents of the books of pius xii is clearly the main character but many other people act around him statesmen and diplomats first and foremost but also the curial apparatus and the service up up to the service personnel um connected to the pachellis german housekeeper sister vascalina and the book is divided into 40 smaller chapters which are structured like miniatures around certain events and constellations of characters so the narrative style predominates often the central event is at the center of each chapter which because occurs cursor approaches from the perspective of the respective dramatis personae and this often takes the form of a direct dialogue which he reads from the reporting especially of the diplomats and the embeds in a reconstructed conversation which is condensed to the core statements of the participants so that and the transitional parts consist of reconstructions of the large historical context such as the the course of the second world war for for italy and the excess forces and this narrative technique results in a lively variety account that leads to increased attention to the people involved who seem more important than the institutions to which they belong and then the the negotiators are cast in a particularly strong light so the diplomatic representatives of great britain and the usa and the ambassador of the polish polish government in exile the german ambassadors from bergen and von weitzecker let her the letter perceived by the vatican as the good nazi in quotation marks and he was as the pope's nonsense berlin ocean ego put it among those men of government quote who are not fanatics for national socialism so this is part of a post-war german myth of the which facilitated the return to western democracies as well a prominent role is played by the son-in-law of the italian king and there's a very interesting aspect and in the book um the german prince of hesse grandson of the emperor frederick and the grandson of queen with victoria a prominent role is played by this um prince especially and facilitating uh the the famous visit of ribbentrop and the the uh meeting with the pope uh in 1940 in march 1940. above all however the focus is on pius 12 12's italian environment the fascist dictatorship within which his young state the vatican city-state founded in 1929 had to operate mussolini and the son-in-law mussolini's mistress and other fascist bigwigs they populate the book in many chapters but above all the curious environment is photoresearched and and um and toad maliona tardini mantini taki venturi bogan gini duca and figures like monsignor del croix which are quite new as well throughout pious 12 appears as a pope who wanted to hurt neither germany nor italy you try to come to terms with a dictatorship regime so that not give up hope of bringing the dictatorships into a certain model with andy with the courier and the catholic religion and whether he was hoping for victory against the soviet union communism is so maybe opened the discussion to which extent but clearly is coming out that the national socialist policy of extermination in the second world war permanently endangered this um this project especially in 1942 the allies and the representatives of the occupied countries called on the pope to speak out and denounce the extermination of the european jews to the world as an injustice and the sources presented to the vatican overwhelming which are presented in a in a dense chapter of the book so [Music] all examples like um the cardinal london wanted to the polish kanye wanted to to speak out against the treatment of the jews in poland and he was silenced and so not it's um emblematic that they're presented central points and central sources like the christmas speech of 1942 in which pious uttered a sentence on the unjust persecution of people because of the race but the allied observers considered this far too little especially the poles the utterance had been wrapped up in a tediously long speech the printed text of the speech run over 20 pages so then that comes out this um cautiousness and in 50 more than 50 times in the book you find the word the word silence in order to describe this particular behavior and more than 100 times we can read the word fear as the main the main mood or emotion which was present not only in the vatican but uh so there are a lot of important examples who describe um the the genesis of this silence and there are there's um there's the memo by by the british envoy um osborne who reported talent and um that the pope is um wants to preserve an appearance of neutrality that will one day enable him to play a part in restoring peace uh i quote uh he does not see see that by his silence he is hopelessly prejudicing his prospects of being listened to and the the the journal of monsignor angelo roncalli which is which is um used um word an audience with a pope on october 41. he asked me quote wrote the future pope john the 23rd then visiting rome from his post as people invited turkey quote if his silence regarding the nazi's actions is not a mistake so there is um the question of the uh the mood and the the emotions um of the pope in in dealing with the the german um the german politics and the german occupation of rome is a very uh strong example for that um they're not speaking out a critique on the the german behavior and as a bishop of rome under his very windows the the roundup of the roman jews was taken in action and so the any action that and then another interesting source which is is quoted in the book is that the pope's decision not to take any action that might stop the deportation of rome's jews or even that might publicly publicly show his displeasure was no doubt do do in part with his eagerness not to upset the harmonious relations he had established with the occupying uh german german military and this is uh um in in italy uh was writing this it is um revealing that the dramatic roundup of rome's jews did not distract one of the national leaders of the university branch of catholic action from taking time and a quote from the book that they in rome to write to monsignor montini to one of a different threat he thought required the vatican's attention the appearance of catholic communists and his equitation by giulio andriati so we have a very thorough discussion on historiography especially in in the footnotes on the bombing for example the discussion of the bombing but under dramatic moments in for them for example the march 40 in in rome where the presence of rippenthal for the presence of the american uh secretary of state in some ways which was informed by mussolini that germany would attack france so there are very very important aspects and the surrounding surrounding which is extremely important to understand the the behavior and the and the actions of the pope and of the vatican courier so thank you very much for your attention [Applause] i i would also like to thank the american academy in rome for uh this wonderful occasion and i'm honored and pleased to be here in celebration of david kurzer's new book and i think especially professor marla stone for organizing this event i one of the aspects which have struck me of this book and clinthammer was commenting about it was is the literary quality of it the formal aspects and how it is readable and the the literary side of it and a model has come to mind if we are to search among biographical models and stratigraphical models which is plutarch's parallel lives a classic of uh greek or roman historiography as you know dating from the second century of the current era and analyzing in parallel the life of greek and of of roman personalities for example alexander the great and caesar and exploring their ethical or unethical life in our case uh in the case of david kurz's books it is we are dealing with a decisive segment of the parallel lives of eugenio pacelli pope pius xii and benito mussolini they are seen through a tragic plot which tells us also of the atmosphere of the book which could be that of a greek tragedy with a a chorus of foreign diplomats and members of the vatican secretariat of state or the italian ministers especially galia zocchano the foreign minister for foreign affairs dialoguing with the protagonists and commenting upon their action the plot is tragic because mussolini entering world war ii is on the verge of downfall and will be he will be executed at the end of the story while pius xii is also participating in the tragedy of the war and appears as a tragic character especially for his inability to act and in part this is also true for mussolini at the end of his 20 years in power so we may say that partly these characters are being humanized by david kurzer's writing but they actually are finally historicized as human personalities and human actors of course at the fore of political decision and epoch epoch making events cursor is also deeply fascinated by the setting of such parallel lives rome the vatican their ancient palaces and we are skillfully guided through by the author using rich descriptions of the apostolic palace of mussolini's office in palazzo venezia of the corinale and eight other major historical landmark sites in rome and cursor also shows the keen eye of the anthropologists interested in the symbols of power and its pump and display analyzed in public and diplomatic ceremonies in masses and occasions of prayers in the analysis of how the main characters dress and perform their public role and persona at the same time this is also a history of italy during the war as a historian and an anthropologist david kurzer is interesting in analyzing in the background of this book the role of the church in italian modern politics and identity this team has been central obviously to classic analysis from machiavelli to gramsci and the function of catholicism actually featured prominently also though in conjunction with a different side of the political spectrum and in a much more recent period of history in kurtzer's first book perhaps lesser known in his later production but quite important comrades and christians religion and political struggle in communist italy which appeared with cambridge in 1980. as it is well known uh david kurtz has looked especially at the role of the vatican and of catholicism in his work of the last 25 years or so since the kidnapping of edgardo mortara which appeared in 1997. but in its new book kurtzer devotes himself to what we may not call hitler hitler's pope kurzer openly rejects the provocative title of john carwell's book on pius xii but perhaps perhaps mussolini's pope given the influence mussolini exerted on pacelli as we see now from the book and especially uh as we also find out in new ways from this volume uh pius xii attention to care for and support of mussolini pachelli had come to know quite closely at least since he became the vatican's secretary of state in 1930. together with his 2014 book the pope and mussolini the pope of war the new book raises the question of clerical fascism or clerical fascismo a phrase that indicates the convergence of the catholic word with fascism the question raised are would have fashioned fascism consolidated and stabilized without the support of the church how epoch making and central was the state church conciliation and the latter lateran agreements of 1929 what was the contribution of catholicism to fascist ideology and rituals if nothing else as a central structure of italian society and culture for example in terms of submission to the authority certainly also during the war although mussolini remained in his heart and anti-clerical ilduce would make no move that would displease the vatican and the same was true for pius xii who declared himself an admirer of and faithful to mussolini clearly more than to hitler but the question at stake was not merely diplomatic as we find out from this book it was a political cultural and anthropological question as that of the influence of catholicism and the church on italian society and history also in the 20th century if we come to the question of pious the 12 silences one could think that the question of the pope's silences in the face of the holocaust cannot be really documented through the archives as you cannot document directly silences or inaction now david kurtzer's richly documented work shows on the contrary how many requests the poet to speak up against the axis and to denounce the extermination of the jews can be actually documented coming from high diplomats organizations and individuals during the war it also shows very clearly how the decision not to speak was the result not only of paschelli's will or inability to action but also of the advice and interventions coming from distinguished and influential members of the vatican secretariat the secretary of state from malione to tardini to andrew delaqua an especially influential and pernicious figure which the spring this books brings to the fore uh as one of the experts on jewish affairs within the vatican often consulted by the pope and by his uh circle the role of montine the future poll the six perhaps remains still partly undefined kurzer also shows that the vatican did intervene to save lives at the personal level for example after the nazi roundup of the jews and roman in october 1943 but it was always for jews who had been baptized and thus had converted to catholicism for the majority of the persecuted jews there was inaction and a kind of fatalism partly influenced by religious prejudice when the pope did intervene publicly it was mostly in defense of the vatican itself and of the city of rome after air bombings we also know including from previous work by david kurzer that the vatican actually approved at least in part the facility the face the fascist racial and anti-semitic law enforced since 1938 as can be documented from written statements for example by the jesuit father taki venturi which were not included in the documents officially public published in historical series of documents edited by vatican delegate delegates in the 70s and 80s pious the 12th courts her documents always remember his german years as quote the happiest of his life he declared himself an admirer of the quotes new order that is the new european order created and uh sort of nourished by the axis and which was in a sense the aim of the second world war and though not pro-nazi the pope certainly feared more as we heard stalin's communism and at least in the beginning praised the axis crusade against the soviet union the path to the formal rejection of anti-semitism by the church will go well beyond the end of the war and will begin only as is well known with the second vatican council and the declaration nostra itate in 1965. perhaps david cursor will in the future give us another major contribution as a historian and anthropologist of italy and the church to the understanding also of the stony phase and epoch making period if there are further directions of research we may indicate for the period that we cursor has explored i would indicate too as a conclusion but shelley's particularly close relationship a privileged relationship with germany since he was the vatican envoy to germany in the post-world war one period and and as the secretary of state he overlooked the conciliation between germany and the vatican which happened as you know at the beginning of the third reich another element which sort of still remains partly unexplored also by previous stereography on pacelli is his training his education his intellectual biography we are still in a sense missing a full intellectual biography of eugenio parcelli what he read what was in his library what influenced his view on fascism nazism anti-semitism and the jews but clearly any future researcher on pacelli on piles of 12 will now have to start from david carter's new book thank you [Applause] okay thank you all david's gonna respond oh i didn't realize yeah i'm gonna sit down and let professor kurtzer respond thank you uh david kurtzer's gonna respond and then we'll turn to questions thank you first of all thanks to our four panelists for their uh stimulating and incisive comments and and thanks for some of their kind words as well um the way it's there's such a scatter shot of different prompts here uh that i'm i'm afraid my own response will seem scatter shot as well and i also want to be sure we have plenty of time for for questions but let me at least try to respond to some of the points that were raised the i think in order to understand pius the 12th and his reaction to world war ii first of all is a question of when which i think often isn't asked often enough uh because in the first years of the war people thought the axis was going to win the war and they had good reason to think that if you think of uh of course 1939 how quickly poland was conquered but then 1940 within practically a month the german forces moving west drove through and occupied the netherlands luxembourg belgium and france drove the british out of the continent uh so it and meanwhile then in in north africa and elsewhere they were uh marching from victory to victory uh there was good reason for pisa 12 to fear or think that the axis was going to win the war if the axis won the war his worry was how to protect the church and here he never trusted hitler so when we say hitler he was wasn't hitler's pope it was interesting uh simone's i think comment that perhaps it was mussolini's cup but we certainly saw mussolini one reason he wanted to stay on mussolini's good assad was he saw mussolini as his most influential intercessor with hitler uh he was worried about the um what he saw as the anti-christian pagan perhaps um persecution of the church by the nazi regime and he contrasted this with his situation with fascist italy where the church was given a position of great moral authority and great power and um and you know this whole idea of clerical fascism that was mentioned the uh the strong support of the catholic clergy for the fascist regime that was so important to mussolini that so in these first years the war if we think of 39 40 41 and even certainly the first half of 42 this is kind of the mindset that the pope had uh i've got to protect the church in a future that's going to likely come under access control then as we get to a later period when it begins with stalingrad and so on in late 42 and into early 43 to look perhaps more likely that the axis was going to lose the war one might have thought this could have changed the pope's perhaps craven approach as far as dealing with the axis uh but it didn't and it didn't uh for various reasons one as i think lutz are referred to and he's the great expert on this uh for nine months of those the german military was occupying rome and we now know from the well not only from the german archives are important on this as well but certainly the recently opened vatican archives that the pope and those around him were working overtime to stay on the good terms with the german military during the occupation of rome they were urging romans not to resist with the famous uh viera zelda incident which led to the mass murder of 335 italians including 75 roman jews 77 i think roman jews are in retaliation for a partisan bombing that killed 33 german soldiers that day the vatican newspaper came out the day that the 335 were being murdered in these caves outside rome they came out not criticizing that but criticizing the partisans for having killed the germans so when we look at why the pope october 16 1943 was not going to speak out against the roundup of over a thousand jews to be sent to their death at auschwitz um this is an important part of the this story as well uh the other thing that's happening in the later years of the war is all of a sudden the red army instead of being routed is turning the tables on the germans and marching westward and the fear that now a an axis defeat and allied victory the allies included soviet union and so the uh there was a real fear that the pope had about a a defeat of of the third reich that it would bring about a an occupation by the communists not just military but also uh spurred by various privations and the spread of communist ideology among the working classes of europe so all this this is you know part of this historical larger historical context that needs to be understood i think one point that came up i'm not sure this term was used i use it once or twice perhaps in my book there is a double game that the pope was playing the pope was also the not technically the primate of the italian clergy but unlike poland we had mentioned of uh cardinal hollande which was who was the primate of the polish clergy there was no primate in italy because there was a bishop of rome there was the pope and so the pope was responsible for the ecclesiastical hierarchy in italy and that hierarchy strongly supported the axis war this is something people don't seem to want to talk about in italy these days uh but it's very very true and all you have to do is read the um not just the catholic press of the time avenida d'italia and so on but the fascist press of the time that uh or just read what uh azione cattolica the heads of all the different organizations of catholic action were sending out directives to their membership that it was important to do their patriotic duty and this was an important war once in spring of 1941 the war turns the axis war turns against the soviet union as was mentioned it becomes an actual crusade and if you read what the bishops and cardinals in italy are encouraging italians to fight uh alongside hitler for the axis cause they were talking about in these kinds of crusade terms let me just say a couple of other things about maybe about the style of the book that came up uh simone talked a bit about the narrative style and lots about the copious footnotes um and i was glad he actually talked about that because i always have the fear uh the book has i don't know 80 or 100 pages of fairly small type footnotes or endnotes and my fear as a from a scholarly point of view is that very few people will read them but there's a lot of juicy material in there as i think lewis pointed and this you know just talking about in writing a book like this and a number of my well all my recent books from the time i wrote the kidnapping regarding mortara which came out now 25 years ago i've tried to bring 19th and 20th century italian history to a broader public at least outside of italy and to do this through doing original historical work and based in in archives uh but written in a way that would interest a broader public and what i think is fascinating history here i'm not just talking about world war ii but even the researchmento and all sorts of aspects of 19th and 20s century time history and so this is always you know a challenge and um you know be interested whether people think in this new book i've been successful in doing this but part of it does mean kind of demoting a lot of material to the to the notes to try to keep the reading you know page turning and lively but there's always this tension from the point of view of writing a book that one hopes is seen as a major scholarly contribution but also a book that is will be readable and accessible to an interesting to a to a broader public uh well let me i just uh conclude and open up the um our discussion to your questions uh by taking one other point that was raised the question of the bullying of the pope and the character of the pope um i think this is we're pointing to something very important here that both mussolini and hitler were experts at intimidation and they knew how to intimidate the pope uh and how to threaten him so this too is an important uh part of the story of how mussolini and and hitler were able to manipulate the pope again it wasn't that the pope was pro-hitler he certainly wasn't much less pro-nazi on the other hand as was pointed out here he did have the notion that there were good nazis and bad nazis and there were good fascists and bad fascists but what differentiated the good from the bad was their attitude toward the roman catholic church they supported its prerogatives we're not threatening it we're not seen as anti-clerical they were good whether fascists or nazis but if they were opposed or whittling away at the prerogatives of the church they were bad and so in either case the pope was reaching out searching for the good whether as let's mention the german ambassador or actually two ambassadors to the holy see uh who are regarded as good representatives of the nazi regime uh or in the case of italy people like the who was mentioned the son-in-law of mussolini was the foreign minister galiatso channo who in his meetings with the uh representatives of the church the people nuncio's italy and so on constantly was talking about how often he went to his sanctuary on his private property outside of lizorno and prayed to the madonna and so on uh so this was kind of a two-way solicitation really so i hope some of this put a little bit in giving a little idea of the perspective i used in the pulpit war uh italian title is it's interestingly someone can explain to me that is not ill-pop but so just a slightly different uh title uh but thank you and i look forward to your question thank you so much professor kurtzer that was just fascinating the whole panel i i think the light that was shown on the book that we're all i'm sure very eager to read now uh is i'm grateful to all of you for for doing that um and i think i'm completely persuaded that your storytelling is going to lead not only to to take this fascinating information and weave it into a a really terrific narrative so i look forward to reading the book um we're going to take some questions now i'm sure there are many many this is how it will work you can line up at the microphone and ask a question you can also if you're virtually connected you can type a question and we will get to as many of them as we can i do have one request and that is to really keep them to questions and please be mindful our speakers have all been very concise and careful with our time so please please do the same if you if you would um and please go ahead thank you for a very enlightening talk um i had one question for dr i found your uh analogy between uh you know the current situation in ukraine and the second world war very interesting however i'm not sure i totally agree with the conclusion in that i'm not sure it actually proves a sort of pattern uh in that there were several popes i would say between um pius and francis that did display some sort of courage you know the the best example would be john paul ii in poland how do you think those examples uh play into your analysis um i'm not an expert on papal history so i'm not going to answer that part of it but what what these two situations have in common is their wartimes and their situations of grave threats to humanity where genocide is being created where there's a slaughter of life where there's just heartbreaking brutality and those are moments where it might be it's interesting to see what the church does especially somebody of the humanity of francis so the reason i did showed this um these similar they're very different situations and i'm not that's why i'm not trying to say one is the other that would be silly but um it's very interesting to show how there are certain institutional behaviors that these are stewards of the church and they need to keep all options opens their diplomats also putin is a bully just like i wrote a book on strong men they have similar personalities um these people it's how they get the power they have and um so that's i'll leave it there but thank you i i just finished your previous book on the pope and mussolini which i a previous pope pius xi who was mostly all in for italian fascism except with a little bit maybe toward the end and he was a stronger personality than pius 12 and i'm wondering if and he made a lot of criticisms but it really didn't make much difference except getting more stuff for the church but otherwise if myself had spoken out you think anything would have changed well yes this is a question i think it's very good question um and often uh defenders we call them out of pius xii uh used the argument that um it wouldn't have accomplished or even worse that it would have made things worse if he had spoken out for example against the campaign of extermination of the of the jews in europe uh i i find that argument hard to imagine that somehow hitler was going to have a more negative view of jews if you know pope criticized what he was doing to them and they would be better off but i also think there's a difference between the pope's influence in germany and italy so i think there is a reasonable argument that if in terms of germany if the pope has taken a strong stand that would have made a huge difference i think italy is a different question how did he get into the war did italians want to enter the war uh in june of of 1940. they didn't enter the war initially of course the war is generally dated to the invasion of poland september 1st 1939 so many months go by and how how did italy come to enter the war what could have prevented it from entering the war on hitler's side and that that i think is where the failure of the pope to speak out in fact the opposite as i mentioned is what happens namely the roman catholic clergy strongly back the entry of italy into the war and the pope remains silent so this is part of what i refer to as the double game of the pope is the pope was also eager at the same time to not offend the especially the american catholics who among other things were where he was getting most of his financial support for vatican the vatican um and so he was able to say you know i'm i'm neutral and so on but the clergy under me here in italy is uh actively promoting participation in the war at the side of hitler uh so that's i think where i would put the emphasis on where he could have had a real impact thanks for this great panel um professor kurtz i'm curious when hitler came to rome for his visit it was sort of filmed and so on did the pope have any role in that visit did they use him as a prophet are there any transcripts or anything about what did they meet did they talk well so hitler comes in the in the spring of 1938 to rome so it's under the predecessor replies the twelve uh so the pious man who becomes pisces the twelfth is then the number two the secretary of state eugenio pachelli but it's pious the eleventh is pope and in fact pisces 11th uh was not happy about hitler's visit especially not happy that he was being lionized and celebrated uh and in fact said something about really got mussolini angry hitler's host namely that there was no place for the glorification of a twisted cross that was not the cross of christ in the holy city the eternal city of rome um and in fact the pope ordered the vatican museum's close pius the 11th uh the vatican not illuminated at night during the hitler's visit hitler never did get to visit the vatican's uh city or or the pope thank you i think we'll take um a question or two on zoom and then we'll be sure to get to you thanks for holding on i think i'm going to be reading now from zoom we've had um one question for david what was the most revealing aspect about the pope that you discovered in the archives and did it change your previous perception or expectations oh okay um it's most revealing the uh well there was a lot new that was going on that we can now know and that i report in the book but in terms of about his character um i guess one thing this maybe allows me to comment on is sometimes it's claimed that uh his inaction or silence during the holocaust was primarily due to his anti-semitism and i think my reading now although it's clear from the among other things the recently opened vatican archives that there is a great deal of anti-semitism surrounding the pope and the pope was very much in that environment i don't uh i don't think that's the aspect of his personality or background character if you want to call that that explains uh his silence during the the holocaust these other kinds of issues i mentioned of not wanting to antagonize the nazis when he thought they were going to win the war and then later fear of communism so i guess maybe that's perhaps a negative finding that although he shared in many of these negative views of jews that really i don't think explains very much of his behavior in this area and one more off soon please one more um from tim parks who often writes about living in italy david do you believe that with the release of new archive new archive material that we now really have all the papers and all the facts about the pope's relations with mussolini and hitler or is it possible that other material is still being held back since this has happened before oh well okay the two they're two parts of that question i guess um and i'd recommend tim park's recent book on his garibaldi expedition to everybody um the the um you know are any papers being held back well in talking with the directors of vatican archives the only papers held back officially are what they refer to as private personnel records and so if you're wondering why for example in all the um writings about the sex abuse scandals involving the the church you haven't seen anything that's come out of the vatican archives it's because they're not available they would fall in that category for example but the uh really in theory uh all the kind of political papers are are available um the so and i think a lot of credit should be given to the church to the vatican and to the archivists are really many excellent archivists very serious archivists who are here to facilitate research and are interested in in the uh the real history here rather than some of the myth-making um but the the other part of the question about i i think the publicist from my book um at one point or someone suggested referring to it this is the definitive account of uh world war ii in the vatican and i said no we couldn't use that term i mean there's no real such thing for a historian i think is a definitive account just because there are other other documents other things that were going to come to light that'll shed further light i don't think they'll change the contours my narrative i'll be surprised um but certainly there will remain many new things to learn and that means the two months i've been the last two months i've been going to that can archives most days and you know finding new things all the time i haven't changed anything written in the book i don't think but add new new elements that will be interesting to pursue thank you we'll take a few more questions please i have two questions out of ignorance um the first it strikes me that this book could have been written during the cold war in that all of your archival materials are from the west so if you had can you say something about how would it i mean obviously if you it's a hard question to ask basically what i want to know is for perhaps future graduate students wanting to write a phd what eastern materials because it's extraordinary that no one noticed that all of your stuff is just from you know english british french italian german but this must be tons of material in eastern europe that's the first question the second question is were was there a russian embassy here in there must have been a russian embassy can you say something about the was there no russian embassy no i mean this is you know fascist italy there so when did the russian there were no diplomatic relations at that point when was the last time that there were that there were diplomatic relations between russia and italy before the war um i think it was probably before the um so before 1917 you know though i don't know i think through the early 30s there was were there yeah officially okay i mean there's um but your point certainly a very good one about eastern europe there's the rest of the world too that could be brought in here but the if if one looks at it from the point of view the material available the uh vatican um correspondence with the representatives of for example the ukrainian uh catholic church um and uh polish ten the correspondence tends to be in it's not in italians in latin because from the vatican side they weren't reading of course weren't reading these these languages um there is the one in the courier there were 24 members cardinals of the curia 23 were italian one and the only non-italian interestingly uh cardinal kissaron who's french was in charge of the oriental churches the congregation of the vatican dealing with the oriental churches um and so it's interesting from that point of view that the the italians and one thing other thing i discovered is in the vatican it was clear the various negative views of of slavs so it wasn't just some negative views of jews but also slavs so i think there's a lot of interesting work that can and should be done dealing especially with the eastern europe question even getting beyond other parts of the world it was during the war that japan decided to appoint a an ambassador to the holy see and this was a big this is kind of interesting there's huge documentation about this not just the vatican but if you read in the american and british uh diplomatic archives because they are furious with the pope for accepting a uh japanese envoy in the middle of the war uh so yes i mean you're right there are many other important and interesting topics that uh there's plenty of room for other good books on this yeah i i could just clarify that a little bit there were soviet fascist relations through through the war in spain so through late 35 early 1936 commercial relations also cultural relations delegations that came and there might have been soviet spies here during the war reporting back thank you we'll take two more questions okay thank you hi um i'm wondering was there any document that you either went into this research looking for um and when you found it you were like oh my god this is it or did you find something like was there one document that said ah it was the aha moment um and then conversely was there something that you were looking for that you didn't find or that did not pan out the way you thought it would based on your previous research and other archives like when you were looking at the vatican end of things did it not confirm what you thought it was going to oh that's both somewhat difficult question also exactly the kind of question that my publisher doesn't want me to answer right now so it would of course come from a journalist trying to get me in trouble there's a problem doing this event before the book is out i you know i did find some documents that i regard as kind of smoking guns and therefore were shocking uh and uh i won't go into detail for that reason but you know one involves the uh entrance of the pope into negotiations with hitler in the war um that have been kept secret all these years in terms of documents that but but more what what emerges is this kind of pattern for example one of the topics i haven't commented on that was mentioned by a couple of panelists is that when the vatican and the pope uh were speaking out behind the scenes for on behalf of jews it was actually almost always baptized jews and therefore from the point of view of the church catholics not jews even though today when you have various books and other pieces uh kind of a papal apologetics coming out about how the pope saved thousands of jews and um was working behind the scenes a lot of this had to do with with baptized jews and that was certainly the case october 16th 1943 when the jews were rounded up here over a thousand you know 1260 more or less were were seized on october 16th but they were held for two days right near the vatican the collegial military and they were being processed they were being processed to see who were in fact not to be regarded as jews who were baptized and who were married to catholics and the the fact is that the germans didn't want to offend the pope and so even though it's become a truism of world war ii history and holocaust history that the germans made no distinction based on religion it was all race it's just not true in italy and that's i think that's pretty striking finding from from this work so um i just point to that in terms of documents i wish i found that i didn't i don't know you know i in general i'd say i was quite satisfied with with that now we really have i think a very good picture of what was going on so i don't feel there was there's any big hall i'm sure there's certain uh specifics one could mention but in terms of larger uh issues i think to me it all seems reasonably clear well i i think your publicist should be proud of that teaser pleased with that teaser i think we got a good one please last question thank you good evening thank you to the panelists it's super cool to meet you um i've been using your books in my classroom for many years and i have noticed that in different types of classrooms i get really different reactions to your work so when i assign the pope who would be king or prisoner of the vatican in a classroom of catholic students they're often really scandalized disturbed and they have a huge emotional reaction right but when i assign it in a secular classroom or rather a school without religious roots or identity the students are really fascinated and they get very hungry for more information and they want to go deeper so i wanted to know if you could comment or characterize on different types of reactions you get from different communities or audiences that fall into different groups i'm very curious about that thank you yeah thank you thanks for using my books in your classrooms um yes i do get very different reactions i sometimes get um almost confessional reactions people come up to me after uh a talk on some of these topics not obviously on this book which isn't out yet but um i've done work for example on the role of the vatican in the rise of modern anti-semitism and people will say you know i grew up in a catholic uh devout catholic family i went to catholic schools you know i didn't learn about this stuff and but i really appreciate it hearing now even though it's painful um i think the the main negative i think people just don't come to hear you know in terms of my reaction i get certain amount of hate mail but in terms of where i speak it's a bit of a self-selection so i don't tend to get a lot of hostile reactions but on the other hand i'm conscious that i haven't gotten a lot of invitations over the years from church organizations i've spoken a lot of catholic universities but if i think of all the jewish organizations and synagogues and so on that have invited me over the years and i essentially could say i think there's zero church organizations that have ever invited me to speak um so you know that's kind of disappointing because it's not just francis who's called for the church confronting its history good and the bad uh but even john paul ii was very different kind of pope but around the celebration of the second millennium specifically called for the church to come to terms with its path with his past and where it uh acted in ways that today um it regrets to express those regrets and um this hasn't happened in the case of the vatican and uh and world war ii or vatican and fascism and it has happened to considerable extent most recently with the episcopating the catholic episcopate in germany apologizing for the support given by the catholic church in germany for the holocaust for the the nazi war uh it's happened in france with the catholic clergy coming to terms but not not in italy and not the vatican uh the official statement of the vatican on this still is the 1998 new recordiamo we remember which denies that there's any relationship between the anti-semitism that could have led to the holocaust and the entire what they call anti-judaism that had characterized sons and daughters of the church for for many years but they must know that the um you know how did the italy get italians how the fascist government get italians to support the racial laws um these came as a you know a surprise to many people in 1938 they did it in no small measure by citing the past pope's use of similar measures again to keep jews from interacting with christians and keeping them from positions of influence in in catholic italy so maybe this is a roundabout way to answer that question but these are all kinds of reactions that that i see thank you i want to thank you all for the attention the excellent questions i want to thank our panelists and marla again for the organization and especially professor david kurtzer for his excellent work and we have the chance now overlooking rome and we have so much more to think about about this city and what has happened here to talk more over a reception so i hope you'll join us thank you thank you it was really good thank you i'm sorry if i cut you sure great questions what's next

Channel: American Academy in Rome

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Id: KooxWnzqsBo

Length: 96min 30sec (5790 seconds)

Published: Thu May 12 2022