It’s less black and white than either of you guys are implying. You’re taking about Pope Pius XII, who was Pope from 1939 to 1958. He’s credited with saving hundreds of thousands of Jews through various means, including support to the resistance, but also by showing some had been converted/baptized, which in itself was controversial. But he also feared the Nazis were going to win the war and that the church would have to exist in a Nazi world. He never clearly spoke out against the holocaust, and though a lot of the things he said, including his sermons, can be taken as condemnation of Jewish persecution, the language was pretty subtle. Also, Hitler had an envoy secretly meeting with Pius from pretty early on, which many say was bad in itself. Still, he also helped the allies with intelligence, to the point where Hitler accused him of espionage and had plans to kidnap him.
Oh, for sure. It’s not an area that I’m an expert in, but your conversation got me curious because I had heard both things, so I read a few articles. One of the interesting things is that the bit about Hitler’s envoy wasn’t broadly known until 2020 when the Vatican released a whole mess of documents that had been kept hidden previously. So there’s maybe more reason for some people to have one impression based on what they grew up hearing, and others to have a different one based on more recent info, but even with the new info it seems nuanced.
It’s easy to fault anyone who didn’t take a clear stand against Hitler from this vantage point, but it must have been hard to be a world leader facing the possibility that Hitler would be successful and you’d have to deal with his empire. Pius XII supported the allies and it’s obvious he was against Hitler, but he was reluctant to be overtly vocal about it, and he even entertained the envoy, which maybe he saw as hedging his bets (we can’t know exactly what he was thinking). It’s for sure stained his legacy.