Pius XII — Summi Pontificatus

Eugenio Pacelli, 63, has been pope since 2 March 1939, taking the name Pius XII. A career diplomat — Apostolic Nuncio in Munich from 1917 to 1925, then in Berlin from 1925 to 1929, finally Cardinal Secretary of State under Pius XI from 1930 to 1939 — he knows Germany inside out and negotiated the Concordat of 1933 with Hitler. In 1937 it was he who drafted, for Pius XI, the anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge ("With burning concern"), read from the pulpit in every Catholic parish in Germany.

Elected five months before the war, Pius XII had been working since the summer of 1939 on his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, whose text is nearly finished by 1 September. It treats the nature of human society, the unity of the human family, the condemnation of totalitarianism and racism, and the right of nations to exist.

One concrete question remains, which presses on him in October: should he name Nazi Germany explicitly, the invasion of Poland, the fate of the Jews? Or stay with a condemnation of principle, naming no one, to preserve diplomatic channels and to protect the Catholics of occupied Europe? The Curia is divided: Cardinal Maglione, the Secretary of State, argues for explicit denunciation, while Tardini and Montini — the future Paul VI — at the Secretariat of State, argue for prudence, in the name of the physical protection of populations under occupation, in particular the 35 million Polish and German Catholics.