Accusations that wartime Pope Pius XII was an anti-Semite who turned a blind eye to the Holocaust are part of a "black legend" not supported by historical documents, the author of a new biography says.

The book by Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli, his fourth on Pius, is being published weeks after the Vatican put Pius a step closer to sainthood, a move that angered some Jews.

Some Jews have accused Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of being
in

	Advertisement

indifferent to the Holocaust and not speaking out against Hitler. His
supporters consider him a holy man who worked behind the scenes to help Jews throughout Europe.

"This is a black legend that refuses to die. Pius XII has become a lightning rod for all the presumed responsibilities of the Catholic Church in that period," Tornielli said.

Tornielli, a journalist with the newspaper Il Giornale, has called his
650-page biography "Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, A Man on the Throne of St
Peter." Eugenio Pacelli was Pius' name before he became pope.

In the book, Tornielli cites new documents from the Pacelli family archives showing that as a high school student Eugenio had a close friendship with a Jewish classmate, Guido Mendes.

Pacelli, then a cardinal and Vatican secretary of state, helped the Mendes family slip into Switzerland, from where they moved to Israel, the book says.

The Anti-Defamation League has asked Pope Benedict to suspend the sainthood process until the Vatican declassifies its Second World War-era archives.

Tornielli's latest book, published by Mondadori, also includes excerpts from letters the future pope wrote to his family in the early 1930s when he was Vatican ambassador in Germany, expressing concern over the rise of Hitler.