Date/Time
Date(s) - November 5, 2015
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Location
St. Mark's College
Categories No Categories
Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) is an intensely polarizing figure: a saint to some; ‘Hitler’s Pope’ to others. Critics charge that he failed to use the full political power and moral influence of his office to confront Nazism and the Holocaust. Others maintain that Pius XII worked concretely to help facilitate the rescue of thousands of Jews before and during the Second World War. Indeed, some commentators have gone so far as to say that European Jews had “no greater friend” than Pius XII, and that no pope in history had been as widely admired by the Jewish people as Pius XII was in his lifetime.
The truth lays somewhere in between these radically divergent interpretations. Papal biographer Robert Ventresca will discuss Pius XII’s relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people before, during and after the Holocaust. His talk will dissect some of the commonplace assumptions and ‘myths’ that persist in public memory, and explore the challenges in balancing historical and moral judgments of the most controversial Pope in modern history.
Dr. Robert Ventresca Biographical Information
Robert Ventresca is a historian at King’s University College at Western University. He specializes in the history of 20th century Europe, with a particular focus on the relationship between fascism and the Churches before and during the Holocaust. He is the author, most recently, of the award-winning Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013).