The Church and the Shoah

Catholic anti-Judaism: a legacy to acknowledge, without confusing it with Nazism

The French historian Jules Isaac — whose wife Laure and daughter Juliette, deported by convoy no. 61 on October 28, 1943, perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, while his son-in-law Robert Boudeville died at Bergen-Belsen on June 4, 1944^[3] — coined the concept of the teaching of contempt — developed in Jesus and Israel (1948) and Genesis of Antisemitism (1956), which would give its title to his book The Teaching of Contempt (1962): centuries of Christian preaching had built, in the collective European memory, a humiliated and theologically accursed image of the Jew — a "deicidal" people, abandoned by God, condemned to wander as a sign of reprobation.^[4] This phenomenon is documented, and the contemporary Magisterium has acknowledged it without evasion: the 1998 document We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah (§IV) asks whether anti-Jewish sentiments present among Christians made them less sensitive, or even indifferent, to the persecution unleashed against the Jews by National Socialism when it came to power — an interrogative formulation of the text, not a categorical assertion.^[5]

The Commission acknowledges that those who helped save Jewish lives, sometimes at the risk of their own lives, must not be forgotten — while calling on Christians to make this heavy burden of conscience a call to repentance.^[6]

The doctrinal distinction remains essential, however. Christian anti-Judaism is religious: it targets a faith that can be renounced through conversion. Nazi racial antisemitism is of another nature: it targets "blood" from which no baptism frees anyone. That is why Edith Stein, a Catholic Carmelite nun, was arrested and gassed as a Jew, even though the Church had regarded her for twenty years as a fully Christian daughter.^[7] The medieval Christian who wanted to convert the Jews cannot be confused with Hitler, who wanted to exterminate them.

Modern Catholic antisemitism (1880-1939): compromised Christians, but condemned by Rome

At the end of the 19th century, modern antisemitism took new political forms, sometimes nourished by Catholic circles. In France, Édouard Drumont published La France juive (1886), which became a bestseller with a religious component. The radical Catholic press (notably La Libre Parole) echoed these themes during the Dreyfus Affair.^[8] The Action française of Charles Maurras (founded in 1899) prolonged this nationalist antisemitism.

Rome did not endorse these deviations. On December 20, 1926, Pius XI ordered Catholics to break with the Action française and had published the decree of the Congregation of the Index of January 29, 1914 condemning seven works of Maurras^[9]; by decree of the Holy Office dated December 29, 1926, he confirmed this condemnation and extended it to the daily newspaper L'Action française — formally placed on the Index on January 9, 1927, the first newspaper to be struck in this way, with the adherents of the movement subsequently deprived of the sacraments. Among the severest sanctions of the 20th century, it explicitly struck a reactionary Christian movement using the name of the Church to spread an ideology of exclusion. The condemnation would only be lifted by Pius XII in 1939, after the declared submission of the movement's leadership.^[10]

On March 25, 1928, the Holy Office promulgated a decree which, while dissolving the association of the Amici Israel whose methods and language had departed from the mind of the Church, unambiguously condemned hatred against the people formerly chosen by God — what is commonly called antisemitism (Ignispedia working translation from the Latin; original text in the note).^[11]

This decree, rarely cited, set the Roman doctrinal framework more than a decade before the Shoah: antisemitism is named, identified as hatred of a people, and condemned as incompatible with the faith.

Pius XI confronting Nazism and racial idolatry (1933-1939)

The pontificate of Pius XI (1922-1939) is marked by three major doctrinal condemnations of totalitarianisms: Non abbiamo bisogno (June 29, 1931) against Italian Fascism, Mit Brennender Sorge (March 14, 1937) against German Nazism, and Divini Redemptoris (March 19, 1937) against atheistic communism. The first anti-Nazi encyclical is unique in the history of the Magisterium: written directly in German by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pius XII), distributed clandestinely by motorcyclists across the Reich, it was read on Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937 in almost every Catholic parish in Germany.^[12]

Mit Brennender Sorge explicitly condemns the deification of race, blood and the State:

"Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community [...] above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God." — Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, §8, March 14, 1937^[13]

The Nazis seized printing presses, arrested priests and launched a media campaign of retaliation.^[14] On September 6, 1938, Pius XI received a group of Belgian pilgrims in audience and uttered a phrase that has remained famous:

"Take good note: Abraham is called our patriarch, our ancestor. Antisemitism is incompatible with the sublime thought expressed by this text. [...] Spiritually, we are Semites." — Pius XI, address to the pilgrims of Belgian Catholic Radio, September 6, 1938^[15]

This phrase — "we are spiritually Semites" — comes from a gloss on the Supra quae of the Roman Canon. Its attestations established to date are La Documentation Catholique, 39 (1938), col. 1459-1460, and La Croix of September 17, 1938^[16]; beyond these two publications, no other dissemination has been established to date. It stands, more than a year before the outbreak of war, as the clearest denunciation of racial antisemitism ever uttered by a pope.

Humani Generis Unitas: the anti-racist encyclical interrupted by the death of Pius XI

In June 1938, Pius XI commissioned three Jesuits — the American John LaFarge, the German Gustav Gundlach and the Frenchman Gustave Desbuquois — to draft an encyclical text on the unity of the human race and the condemnation of racism. The document, entitled Humani Generis Unitas, was written during the summer and autumn of 1938. The draft would have expressly condemned Nazi antisemitism, biological racism and the ongoing persecution of the Jews, on the basis of the doctrine of the creation of every man in the image of God.^[17]

The text was delivered to Pius XI in Rome a few weeks before his death on February 10, 1939. The encyclical would never be promulgated. Pius XII, elected on March 2, 1939, inherited the draft but chose not to publish it as it stood — the precise reasons for this non-promulgation remain debated among historians and cannot be settled here.^[18]

The text would be published for the first time in 1995 by Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky, under the title The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI.^[19] Its rediscovery revived criticism of Pius XII — he should have published it — but also confirmed an essential point: as early as 1938, the Holy See was preparing a frontal doctrinal condemnation of racism and antisemitism.

Silence and speech: what Pius XII said and where to find it

The complete file on Pius XII — his encyclicals (Summi Pontificatus, October 20, 1939), his Christmas message of 1942, the Dutch argument, the archives of the pontificate opened on March 2, 2020, contemporary Jewish testimonies and the Hochhuth-Cornwell controversies — is treated in the article Christian Anti-Judaism and the Silence of Pius XII.

It suffices here to recall that:

1. Pius XII spoke doctrinally, but in indirect language — his Christmas 1942 message denounced "the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline"^[20]; the Gestapo and the New York Times understood it as a condemnation of the Nazis.
2. Pius XII chose diplomatic language because the public protest of the Dutch episcopate (pastoral letter of July 26, 1942) had been followed by the immediate roundup of Catholic Jews, including Edith Stein, by the SS two days later.^[21]
3. The Roman Church under Pius XII organized massive rescues: enclosed convents reopened to hide Jews, the loan of the gold missing from the September 1943 ransom, the welcome of hundreds of refugees of all categories at Castel Gandolfo.^[22]

This article focuses on what is not Pius XII: the episcopate, religious men and women, laypeople and networks.

The national episcopates: who spoke, who remained silent

The attitude of national episcopal conferences toward the Shoah varies from one country to another, depending on the degree of occupation, pressure from the State, ecclesial traditions and the personal choices of bishops. The table below summarizes the principal public positions taken between 1941 and 1944.

Alongside the courageous, the silences must also be noted. The Slovak episcopal conference long supported Bishop Tiso, the priest-president of the collaborationist regime in Bratislava — a silence broken in 1942 when Nuncio Archbishop Burzio, acting on instructions from the Holy See, intervened personally to have the deportations of Slovak Jews suspended.^[35] The Vichy episcopate did not, as a body, publish any collective condemnation of the anti-Jewish laws — it was the individual initiative of Archbishop Saliège that drew out the other French voices.

Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège: the voice of Toulouse (August 23, 1942)

On August 23, 1942, as the deportations of foreign Jews interned in the camps of the Toulouse region (Noé, Récébédou) had just begun in the unoccupied zone — the first convoys of mid-August 1942 — Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège of Toulouse had a pastoral letter read in every parish of his diocese that would leave its mark on the French conscience:

"The Jews are men, the Jewesses are women. Not everything is permitted against them, against these men, against these women, against these fathers and mothers of families. They are part of the human race. They are our brothers like so many others. A Christian cannot forget it." — Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège, pastoral letter Et clamor Ierusalem ascendit, August 23, 1942^[36]

Saliège, paralyzed since 1932, had dictated the text from his room. Vichy forbade its distribution; the priests read it nonetheless, and copies passed from parish to parish. Radio London broadcast it on August 28. The clandestine press reproduced it. This letter, the best known of the European Catholic episcopate during the Shoah, triggered a cascade: Bishop Théas in Montauban (August 30), Cardinal Gerlier in Lyon (September 6), Bishop Delay in Marseille (September 6), Bishop Edmond Vansteenberghe in Bayonne (September 20). Within a few weeks, six French dioceses published protests.^[37]

On July 8, 1969, Yad Vashem honored Archbishop Saliège as Righteous Among the Nations.^[38] He had been created cardinal by Pius XII in 1946.

Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas: Montauban, August 30, 1942

Seven days after Saliège, Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas of Montauban had read in his diocese a pastoral letter of rare moral force:

"I give free rein to the indignation of my conscience, and I proclaim that all men, Aryan or non-Aryan, are brothers, because created by the same God; that all men, whatever their race or religion, have the right to the respect of individuals and of States. The current antisemitic measures are a contempt for human dignity, a violation of the most sacred rights of the person and of the family." — Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas, pastoral letter, August 30, 1942^[39]

Théas played a direct role in the rescue of hundreds of Jewish children hidden in the Catholic institutions of Tarn-et-Garonne, in connection with the Jewish Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) and the network of the Notre-Dame de Sion nuns. Yad Vashem awarded him the title of Righteous in 1969.^[40]

Bernhard Lichtenberg: public prayer for the Jews in Berlin

In the heart of Nazi Berlin, Bernhard Lichtenberg, priest and provost of St. Hedwig Cathedral, took up, in the aftermath of Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938), the habit of publicly pronouncing, each evening, a prayer for the persecuted Jews:

"Outside burns the synagogue. It too is a house of God. We now pray for the persecuted Jews and for the poor prisoners in the concentration camps; we pray above all for our fellow believers of Jewish origin." — Bernhard Lichtenberg, public prayer at St. Hedwig Cathedral, in the aftermath of Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938)^[41]

For nearly three years, Lichtenberg repeated this prayer. On October 23, 1941, the Gestapo arrested him. He was sentenced to two years in prison for "breach of the public peace" and then, upon release, immediately rearrested for transfer to Dachau. Exhausted by his detention, he died of pneumonia at Hof hospital (Bavaria) on November 5, 1943, during that transfer. He was beatified by Saint John Paul II on June 23, 1996.^[42] Yad Vashem awarded him the title of Righteous Among the Nations in 2004.^[43]

Bishop Clemens August von Galen: the "Lion of Münster"

Bishop Clemens August von Galen of Münster in Westphalia entered the history of Catholic resistance to Nazism through three public sermons, delivered on July 13, July 20 and August 3, 1941 — those of July 13 and August 3 in St. Lambert church, that of July 20 in the Church of Our Lady Beyond the Water (Liebfrauen-Überwasserkirche), and not in Münster cathedral. The August 3 sermon denounced with extraordinary force the Aktion T4 program — the secret extermination of mentally ill and disabled Germans by the Nazis:

"If the principle is admitted that one may kill 'unproductive' human beings, then woe betide us when we become old, weak or sick. It will suffice for the authorities to declare that some category of citizens is no longer useful for it to be legally murdered. [...] Who can still trust his doctor? He might denounce the sick as 'unproductive' and receive the order to kill them." — Bishop Clemens August von Galen, sermon in St. Lambert church in Münster, August 3, 1941^[44]

The sermons were reproduced in tens of thousands of copies and dropped over Germany by Allied planes in 1942.^[45] Under pressure, Hitler officially suspended Aktion T4 on August 24, 1941 — even though the extermination of the disabled continued in some hospitals. Galen would not be directly deported (Hitler is said to have declared "we shall deal with him after the victory") but the clergy of his diocese paid the price: Goebbels noted in his diary on August 14, 1941 that his priests must be made to pay.^[46]

Galen did not directly address the Jewish question in his public sermons — a real historical limitation. But his denunciation of the principle that social usefulness determines the right to life doctrinally undermined the entire racist-eugenicist matrix that made the Shoah possible. He was created cardinal in February 1946 and died a month later. Beatified by Benedict XVI on October 9, 2005.^[47]

Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac: Zagreb in the Ustaša turmoil

The Archbishop of Zagreb, Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac (1898-1960), is one of the most controversial figures of the European episcopate during the Shoah, because he attempted to maintain a critical Catholic voice under the Ustaša regime of Ante Pavelić (1941-1945) — a regime that exterminated Jews, Roma and Orthodox Serbs in the camp of Jasenovac.

Stepinac publicly protested several times against the racial persecutions of the regime — notably in his sermon of October 31, 1943: "All nations are equal before God. [...] Every race and every nation belongs to Christ"^[48]. He also saved hundreds of Jews by hiding them in seminaries and issuing fictitious baptismal certificates. Conversely, some of his priests took part in Ustaša atrocities. The trial brought against Stepinac by Tito's regime in 1946 is today regarded as a communist political trial, described as a "show trial" by Western historians.^[49]

John Paul II beatified him on October 3, 1998 at Marija Bistrica, in the presence of hundreds of thousands of Croats: his established status is therefore that of blessed.^[50] Since the historical assessment of his wartime record remains debated, Pope Francis instituted a mixed Catholic-Orthodox commission of historians, which worked from July 2016 to July 2017 and concluded that divergences persisted, the decision on canonization belonging to the sole competence of the pope^[51]: Stepinac thus remains a blessed who has not been canonized as of October 4, 2026.

Archbishop Angelo Roncalli: the apostolic delegate who helped save Jews

Apostolic delegate in Bulgaria (1925-1934), then in Turkey and Greece (1934-1944), Archbishop Angelo Roncalli — the future Saint John XXIII — organized one of the largest Jewish rescue operations in Eastern and Balkan Europe. In connection with the Holy See and the Jewish Agency for Palestine, between 1942 and 1944 he issued:

• fictitious baptismal certificates to Hungarian, Bulgarian, Romanian and Slovak Jews to enable them to flee;
• transit certificates for Hungarian and Romanian Jews passing through Turkey toward Palestine;
• interventions with King Boris III of Bulgaria in 1943, which contributed to the non-surrender of Bulgarian Jews to the Nazis.^[52]

According to Pinchas Lapide (1967, pp. 162-167), the operations directed or facilitated by Roncalli are said to have helped save some 24,000 Jews — a disputed estimate, not taken up by recent historiography, which judges Lapide's figures to be greatly overestimated.^[53] He refused all personal recognition, attributing his actions to "the voice of the Holy Father speaking through me".^[54] Having become John XXIII in 1958, he would initiate the Second Vatican Council and thus, indirectly, the document Nostra Aetate. Canonized by Pope Francis on April 27, 2014.

Father Marie-Benoît: 4,000 Jews saved from a Capuchin friary

Father Marie-Benoît (in religion Marie-Benoît Péteul, OFM Cap., 1895-1990), a French Capuchin settled in Marseille and then in Rome, is one of the greatest Catholic rescuers of Jews during the Shoah. From the Capuchin friary in Marseille (rue Croix-de-Régnier), starting in 1940 he organized the passage of Jews to the free zone, then to Spain and Switzerland, via a network that included nuns and several Jewish militants (notably Joseph Bass and Stefan Schwamm).

In 1943, he left Marseille for Rome, where he founded — under the cover of the Collegio Internazionale Cappuccino — one of the principal clandestine Jewish rescue centers in Italy, in connection with DELASEM (Delegazione Assistenza Emigranti Ebrei); a direct link with Pius XII — who is said to have personally signed some of the letters of protection issued by the Capuchins — remains to be established documentarily.^[55] By the liberation of Rome in June 1944, his network had helped save, according to converging historical estimates, more than 4,000 Jews.^[56]

Yad Vashem awarded him the title of Righteous Among the Nations in 1966. At his death in 1990, the Jewish community of Rome paid him an exceptional tribute, calling him "the father of the Jews" — Padre degli Ebrei.^[57]

Archbishop Mindszenty and the Hungarian episcopate: 1944

In March 1944, Germany occupied Hungary. Within weeks, 437,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz — the swiftest and most massive operation of the entire Shoah. According to his Memoirs, Archbishop József Mindszenty, then Bishop of Veszprém (and future cardinal-primate of Hungary, who died in exile after communist persecution), designates a memorandum addressed to Ferenc Szálasi, who had come to power with the Arrow Cross, and dated October 31, 1944 — and not a memorandum to Regent Miklós Horthy, removed from power on October 16; the full contents of this document remain to be checked, and addressee, date and subject must not be reconstructed by merging different documents.^[58] The apostolic nuncio Archbishop Angelo Rotta also intervened with Horthy on June 15, 1944 and had the deportations temporarily suspended in July — an intervention coordinated with Pius XII, who publicly telegraphed Horthy on June 25, 1944: "We ask You to spare so many innocent people".^[59] This international intervention (joined by the King of Sweden, the president of the Red Cross and the BBC) saved some 170,000 Hungarian Jews of Budapest who had not yet been deported.^[60]

Roman convents, monasteries and Catholic institutions

In Rome, under the German occupation (September 1943 – June 1944), convents, monasteries, seminaries and pontifical institutions served as hiding places for thousands of refugees, including many Jews. The joint statement published in 2023 lists 55 male and 100 female congregations that took part in this welcome — a total not to be confused with its breakdown. Figures vary according to authors and scope: Pinchas Lapide puts forward some 4,500 Jews sheltered^[61]; Susan Zuccotti retains a similar order of magnitude with stricter criteria^[62]. The surviving name lists remain partial: a distinction must be made between persons sheltered, names identified, and persons identified as Jews, without converting the total number of refugees into a number of Jews. A few documented points of reference:

• Castel Gandolfo (papal summer residence): hundreds of refugees sheltered between 1943 and 1944 — refugees of all categories, number of Jews not established^[63];
• Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls: more than 100 Jews;
• Collegio Internazionale Cappuccino (Father Marie-Benoît network): several hundred;
• Notre-Dame de Sion Institute: several dozen;
• Roman Pontifical Seminary of the Lateran: several dozen;
• Pius XI Institute (Salesians): several dozen.

The directive of welcome — "open religious houses, including cloistered ones, to persecuted Jews" — is said to have been transmitted orally by the Holy See so as to spare religious superiors legal liability in case of arrest; the precise references in the archives opened in 2020 remain to be established, and no general book title replaces the necessary document here.

DELASEM and Cardinal Boetto in Genoa

DELASEM (Delegazione per l'Assistenza degli Emigranti Ebrei), founded in 1939 by the Italian Jewish community, became from September 1943 — when its official Jewish headquarters had to close to escape the Nazis — a Judeo-Catholic network co-led, until the arrest of the rabbi on November 3, 1943, by Rabbi Riccardo Pacifici (deported to Auschwitz, where he died on December 12, 1943) and Cardinal Pietro Boetto, Archbishop of Genoa, and then continued under the cover of the Genoese curia. Between 1943 and 1945 DELASEM helped several thousand Italian Jews hide, flee or obtain false papers — the order of magnitude of 9,000 put forward by some authors being indicative and not proven documentarily.^[64]

The network collaborated with Father Don Francesco Repetto, secretary to Cardinal Boetto and operational coordinator, and with laypeople such as Massimo Teglio and Lelio Vittorio Valobra. Boetto would be recognized as Righteous Among the Nations in 2016, as would Don Repetto.^[65] The recognitions attributed to other priests of the network (Don Lino Spaggiari, Don Angelo Massimo) remain to be verified individually, with exact identity and case file.

The Amitié Chrétienne in Lyon: a Judeo-Catholic network

In Lyon, under the aegis of Cardinal Pierre Gerlier, the Amitié Chrétienne network was founded in 1941, led by Father Pierre Chaillet (Jesuit, founder of the Cahiers du Témoignage Chrétien). The Amitié Chrétienne organized the hiding of Jewish children in Catholic institutions, provided false papers, and maintained links with the Jewish OSE and the Protestant CIMADE. Several hundred Jewish children owe their lives to it.^[66]

Father Pierre Chaillet, who would be arrested several times by the Gestapo and survive the war, was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations in 1981.^[67] The Cahiers du Témoignage Chrétien, which he founded clandestinely in November 1941 with Jesuits including Gaston Fessard and Henri de Lubac, published two essential titles: "France, beware lest you lose your soul" — the first cahier (November 1941), written by Gaston Fessard, and not by Henri de Lubac — and "Antisémites" (exact reference of the cahier to be collated), which denounced the racial doctrine of the Vichy regime in precise theological terms.^[68]

The nuns: the invisible resistance

A significant part of the Catholic rescue in occupied Europe was carried out by nuns, in a discretion that long cost them recognition. Several orders distinguished themselves:

• Notre-Dame de Sion (founded in 1843 by the brothers Théodore and Alphonse Ratisbonne): a Judeo-Christian missionary order whose houses in France, Italy and Belgium hid hundreds of Jewish children;
• Sisters of Our Lady of Charity (Refuge), Franciscan Sisters of Mary, Sisters of the Sacred Heart, Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny, Benedictines of various monasteries;
• In Poland, more than 2,000 Jewish children were hidden in women's convents — a figure confirmed by the work of Ewa Kurek.^[69]

Several nuns paid with their lives: Sister Maria Stella of the Blessed Sacrament and her ten Nazarene companions — eleven nuns in total — shot on August 1, 1943 at Nowogródek (in present-day Belarus) for having offered their lives in exchange for the prisoners of the town jail, were beatified by John Paul II in 2000.^[70]

Edith Stein: philosopher, Carmelite, Jew, saint

Born Jewish in Breslau in 1891, a philosopher and assistant to Edmund Husserl at Göttingen and Freiburg, Edith Stein converted to Catholicism after reading the works of Saint Teresa of Avila in the summer of 1921. Baptized on January 1, 1922, she entered the Cologne Carmel in October 1933 under the name of Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. As the Nazis intensified persecutions, she was transferred to the Carmel of Echt in the Netherlands (1938) and then, in reprisal for the pastoral letter of the Dutch bishops of July 26, 1942, arrested on August 2, 1942 with her sister Rosa and 244 other Catholic Jews. Deported via the Westerbork transit camp, she was gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau on August 9, 1942.^[71]

John Paul II beatified her on May 1, 1987, canonized her on October 11, 1998, and proclaimed her co-patroness of Europe on October 1, 1999 — alongside Saint Benedict, Saints Cyril and Methodius, Saint Bridget of Sweden and Saint Catherine of Siena.^[72]

Maximilian Kolbe: the offering at Auschwitz

A Polish Conventual Franciscan, founder of the Militia of the Immaculata and of the mother-house of Niepokalanów (which before the war counted nearly 800 religious), Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe (1894-1941) welcomed from September 1939 into his monastery some 2,000 Polish Jewish refugees, as well as many fleeing Polish soldiers. Arrested by the Gestapo in February 1941, deported to Auschwitz on May 28, 1941 (registration number 16670), he died there on August 14, 1941 after offering his life in exchange for that of Sergeant Franciszek Gajowniczek, a family father condemned to die of starvation in the death bunker.^[73]

"I am a Catholic priest. I am old. I want to take his place." — Saint Maximilian Kolbe to commander Karl Fritzsch, Auschwitz, July 29, 1941^[74]

Gajowniczek would survive the war and attend the canonization of Kolbe by John Paul II on October 10, 1982. He died in 1995, aged 93.^[75]

Titus Brandsma: the Dutch Carmelite who died at Dachau

Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carmelite (1881-1942), rector of the Catholic University of Nijmegen, journalist and theologian specializing in Flemish mysticism, became in 1935 ecclesiastical adviser to the Catholic Association of Journalists. In 1941, as the Nazis ordered the Dutch Catholic press to publish the antisemitic propaganda of the NSB, Brandsma wrote and circulated from parish to parish a letter instructing all Catholic editors-in-chief to refuse. Arrested on January 19, 1942, he was interned at Dachau and died on July 26, 1942 by lethal injection administered by a Kapo on SS orders, in the Dachau medical barracks.^[76]

Beatified by John Paul II on November 3, 1985, he was canonized by Pope Francis on May 15, 2022.^[77]

Jakob Gapp: a Marianist beheaded at Plötzensee

Father Jakob Gapp (1897-1943), an Austrian Marianist, took a public stand against Nazism from his pulpit at Breitenwang as early as 1934. Expelled from Austria in 1938 after the Anschluss, he joined France and then Spain, where he continued preaching against racism. Betrayed by Nazi agents posing as fleeing Jews, he was abducted in France in 1942, taken to Berlin and beheaded at Plötzensee prison on August 13, 1943. Beatified by John Paul II on November 24, 1996.^[78]

The 108 Polish martyrs and the extermination of the Catholic clergy

Nazi Germany applied to occupied Poland a policy of cultural extermination directly targeting the Catholic clergy, regarded as the cement of Polish national identity. The Dachau memorial tablet (the "camp of priests") records 2,720 interned clerics of all nationalities — including 1,780 Poles — and 1,034 dead, including 868 Poles: these scopes must not be confused nor attributed wholesale to the Polish clergy alone.^[79] In total, historians estimate at nearly 3,000 the number of Polish priests killed by the Nazis — an indicative order of magnitude, not proven documentarily to date — out of some 18,000 Polish priests before the war (3,000 out of 18,000 not amounting to 20 percent).^[80] Across the whole country, the Germans killed between 1.8 and 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians — to which must be added at least 3 million Jewish citizens of Poland murdered.^[81]

On June 13, 1999, in Warsaw, John Paul II beatified 108 Polish martyrs — 3 bishops, 52 diocesan priests, 26 religious priests, 7 brothers, 3 seminarians, 8 nuns and 9 laypeople, 108 in total — all killed by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945.^[82] Among them, Bishop Antoni Julian Nowowiejski (Bishop of Płock, died at Soldau in 1941). By contrast, Bishop Michał Kozal (Auxiliary Bishop of Włocławek, died at Dachau in 1943) does not belong to this group: he had been beatified separately as early as June 14, 1987. The eleven Nazarene nuns of Nowogródek, mentioned above, are likewise not part of this group of 108: they were beatified separately in 2000.^[83]

The Lapide estimate (1967): between 700,000 and 860,000

The Jewish historian Pinchas Lapide, an Israeli diplomat in Milan in the 1950s, published in 1967 the reference book Three Popes and the Jews. On the basis of surveys of survivors, Italian diocesan archives and registers kept in several European convents, he proposed an estimate that would long remain authoritative:

"The Catholic Church, under the pontificate of Pius XII, was the means of saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jewish lives, from certain death at Nazi hands." — Pinchas Lapide, Three Popes and the Jews, Hawthorn Books, New York, 1967, p. 215^[84]

Lapide arrived at this figure by summing the known rescues of Rome (4,500), Hungary via the nuncios (170,000), Slovakia (between 30,000 and 50,000), Romania (about 200,000 thanks to the interventions of Nuncio Cassulo and the Vatican), Bulgaria (about 48,000), the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain.

Contemporary estimates: debated figures, without consensus

Contemporary historians have criticized Lapide's figures as excessive, notably in Hungary and Romania, where other actors (the Antonescu government eventually blocking deportations, Swedish diplomatic intervention via Raoul Wallenberg, etc.) played a major role. Michael Phayer, in The Catholic Church and the Holocaust 1930-1965 (2000), concludes with a figure "well below" that of Lapide, but gives no precise estimate.^[85] Susan Zuccotti, in Under His Very Windows (2000), disputes several of the cases attributed directly to Pius XII but acknowledges the scale of rescue by Italian religious institutions.^[86]

No overall count commands consensus: estimates depend on the scope adopted (rescues directly organized by religious, diplomatic interventions of the Holy See, actions shared with other actors — Swedish, international, or local authorities that blocked deportations) and on the share attributed to each. Some syntheses put forward an order of magnitude of 200,000 to 400,000 Jews saved with the direct involvement of Catholic religious, nuns and institutions — an indicative and debated range, resting on no common method and proving no confessional proportion, since Yad Vashem publishes no breakdown by religion.^[87]

The Catholic Righteous Among the Nations

The Yad Vashem institute, founded in 1953, has awarded since 1963 — the date the recognition program was set up — the title of Righteous Among the Nations to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Shoah: the founding of the institute and that of the program must be distinguished. As of January 1, 2024 — last verified on October 4, 2026 — the total number of Righteous Among the Nations stood at 28,707 persons from 51 countries.^[88] Many of them are practicing Catholics, religious or clerics, but since Yad Vashem publishes no breakdown by religion, these national figures prove no confessional proportion.

The table below distinguishes verified holders of the distinction from figures of Catholic resistance whose recognition as Righteous is not established — a person's sanctity or action does not prove the title. Names without an individual case file provided have been removed or reclassified.

Jules Isaac and the Seelisberg meeting (1947)

The French survivor and historian Jules Isaac (1877-1963) — whose wife Laure and daughter Juliette, deported by convoy no. 61 on October 28, 1943, perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, while his son-in-law Robert Boudeville died at Bergen-Belsen on June 4, 1944^[89] — published in 1948 Jesus and Israel, which traces the development of the Christian teaching of contempt since the Church Fathers. As early as 1947, Isaac took part in the Seelisberg conference (Switzerland) bringing Christians and Jews together around the Ten Points — ten recommendations for Christian preaching, the first of which stipulates: "Remember that it is the same living God who speaks to all Christians and to all Jews, through the Old and the New Testament".^[90]

"If the Shoah had not been prepared by nineteen centuries of the teaching of contempt, it would not have been possible in Christendom." — Jules Isaac, Genesis of Antisemitism, Calmann-Lévy, 1956, p. 17^[91]

Isaac met Pius XII on October 16, 1949, then John XXIII on June 13, 1960. During this second audience, he submitted a dossier that would become the textual embryo of the future paragraph 4 of Nostra Aetate.^[92] Without Isaac, the Second Vatican Council would probably not have included a specific chapter on Judaism.

Nostra Aetate §4 (October 28, 1965)

The Second Vatican Council, under the personal impetus of John XXIII and then of Paul VI, promulgated on October 28, 1965 the declaration Nostra Aetate on the relations of the Church with non-Christian religions. §4 is devoted to the Jews:

"Even though the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ, neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during his passion. It is true that the church is the new people of God, yet the Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if this followed from holy scripture. Consequently, all must take care, lest in catechizing or in preaching the word of God, they teach anything which is not in accord with the truth of the Gospel message and the spirit of Christ. Furthermore, the church, which rejects all persecutions against any man, and, mindful of her common patrimony with the Jews, and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of antisemitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone." — Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate, §4, October 28, 1965 (official text, restored without omission or substitution of determiner)^[93]

This text rejects the portrayal of the Jews as a people rejected or accursed — without denying that the Church is the new People of God, which the text itself affirms — and breaks with any Christian legitimation of antisemitism. It would be completed by the document of the Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church (June 24, 1985), and by We Remember (March 16, 1998).

Memorial gestures: John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis

On April 13, 1986, Saint John Paul II visited the Great Synagogue of Rome — the first pope in history to cross the threshold of a synagogue since Saint Peter. There he uttered, in the presence of Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff, a phrase that endures: "You are our dearly beloved brothers and, in a certain way, one could say our elder brothers."^[94]

On March 26, 2000, during the Jubilee, John Paul II slipped into a crevice of the Western Wall in Jerusalem a prayer of forgiveness written in his own hand:

"God of our fathers, You chose Abraham and his descendants to bring Your Name to the nations: we are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of Yours to suffer and, asking Your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant." — John Paul II, prayer placed at the Western Wall, March 26, 2000^[95]

On May 28, 2006, Benedict XVI visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. There he delivered a speech of rare intensity, in his capacity as pope and as a German: "To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible — and it is particularly difficult and oppressive for a Christian, for a Pope who comes from Germany."^[96] He added that, in such a place, "words fail" and that there can only be "a terrified silence" — a silence that then becomes, he said, a plea for forgiveness and a cry to God that never again may such horror be permitted.

On January 17, 2016, Pope Francis in turn visited the Great Synagogue of Rome, and on July 29, 2016, he visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he chose to pray in silence instead of delivering a speech.^[97]

The Catholic Church emerges from the Shoah file with a mixed history it no longer seeks to embellish: heavy silences — that of the majority of the Vichy French episcopate, that of certain hierarchies in occupied countries — coexist with strong words (Saliège, Théas, Lichtenberg, Galen) and massive actions (Roman convents, DELASEM, Father Marie-Benoît, Archbishop Roncalli, Polish and Belgian networks). The quantified record varies according to authors and scope — from a few hundred thousand (low and debated estimates) to the 700,000-860,000 put forward by Pinchas Lapide — and the claim that Catholic action exceeded that of all other relief institutions combined is Lapide's: it remains attributed to him and does not become here a universal finding of the article.^[98]

But the Church does not invoke this as an excuse. The document We Remember (1998) holds this twofold truth: the Shoah was the work of a modern neo-pagan regime whose antisemitism had its roots outside Christianity, but anti-Jewish prejudices present among some Christians may have made them less sensitive to the persecution.^[99] This twofold truth — a strong doctrinal distance between Christianity and Nazism, and the partial passive complicity of compromised Christians — is the only reading that does justice to the facts.

The martyrology of the Nazi persecutions is, for Catholicism, one of the densest chapters of the 20th century: Edith Stein, Maximilian Kolbe, Titus Brandsma, Bernhard Lichtenberg, Jakob Gapp, the 108 Polish martyrs, the eleven Nazarene nuns of Nowogródek, the clerics who died at Dachau. But they do not all belong in the same way to the memory of the Shoah: only Edith Stein was murdered as a Jew, at Auschwitz, because of her origin; the others were victims of the Nazi persecution of Catholics — resistance press, anti-Nazi preaching, charity toward prisoners, clergy taken hostage — and their memory belongs to the martyrology of the Nazi persecutions, distinct from the memory proper of the extermination of the Jews. This distinction protects both the history of the saints and that of the Shoah. At the heart of Auschwitz, where industrial evil reached its peak, the Church also bore witness through saints. This does not console Jewish suffering — nothing can — but it inscribes, in the very flesh of the Christian people, the absolute condemnation of racist idolatry.

There remains the demand that the document We Remember itself formulates: to make this heavy burden of conscience a call to repentance and to a renewed brotherhood between Jews and Christians.^[100]

• Christian Anti-Judaism and the Silence of Pius XII — the file devoted to the Pius XII controversy, 2020 archives, contemporary Jewish testimonies.
• The Church Confronting Totalitarianisms (1917-1989) — Mit Brennender Sorge, Divini Redemptoris, martyrs of communism and Nazism.
• What the Church Says About Judaism — contemporary Catholic theology of the people of Israel after Nostra Aetate.
• The Wars of Religion — Christian responsibility and political violence in Europe.
• Outside the Church, No Salvation? — the refusal of religious contempt and the theology of the salvation of non-Christians.