The Church Confronting Totalitarianisms (1917-1991)

A concept forged at the same time as the struggle

The word totalitarianism appeared in the early 1920s, first from the mouths of Italian opponents of Benito Mussolini, who used it as a foil, then proudly claimed by the Fascists themselves. Mussolini himself formulated on 28 October 1925 in Milan the famous motto: "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."^[6] The concept would be theorized scientifically from the 1940s-1950s by Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951)^[7], with her own analytical framework, then systematized by Raymond Aron (Democracy and Totalitarianism, 1965)^[8], who identified five structural criteria: (1) universal official ideology, (2) single mass party, (3) police terror, (4) monopoly of the means of information and education, (5) directed economy.

The Catholic Church, for its part, did not wait for Hannah Arendt to identify the spiritual nature of these regimes. As early as 1931, Pius XI forged in Non abbiamo bisogno the Catholic concept of pagan statolatry — statolatria pagana — which designates the central mechanism of all totalitarianism: the political absolutization of what is not God.

"A conception of the State that claims the younger generations wholly and without exception, from the earliest age to adulthood, is irreconcilable for a Catholic neither with Catholic doctrine nor with the natural right of the family." — Pius XI, Non abbiamo bisogno (29 June 1931, translated from the official Italian text)^[9]

The three absolutizations of the 20th century

Three objects were successively deified by the totalitarianisms of the century. The table below summarizes the doctrinal matrix the Church opposes to each:

Each time, the mechanism is the same: a political absolute takes God's place, demands the total sacrifice of conscience, and crushes the individual to serve a collective destiny. This mechanism is what Saint Thomas Aquinas analyzes under the name of idolatry in general (Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIae, q. 94)^[10]: applied to the modern absolutization of the State, of class or of race, it becomes what the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes in these terms: "Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc."^[11]

Why the Church could not negotiate on substance

Catholic opposition to totalitarianism is not political pragmatism: it flows from the profession of faith in a transcendent God and from Christian anthropology. If man is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), no nation, no class, no race can claim to absorb him. If upright conscience obliges before any human power ("We must obey God rather than men", Acts 5:29^[12]), no State can demand apostasy. This is the line defended from Pius XI to John Paul II, through all diplomatic, concordat-based and tactical variations.

Three encyclicals in fourteen days

In fourteen days, from 14 to 28 March 1937, Pius XI published three major encyclicals: the first two still form today the doctrinal heart of Catholic resistance to totalitarianisms, while the third concerns the Mexican persecution:

• 14 March 1937: Mit brennender Sorge, against German Nazism.
• 19 March 1937: Divini Redemptoris, against atheistic communism.
• 28 March 1937: Firmissimam Constantiam, on the Mexican persecution.

This closeness in time can be read as a concerted doctrinal salvo: after condemning Nazism and then communism, Pius XI placed the Mexican persecution within the same horizon of a multiform political idolatry — though Firmissimam Constantiam, addressed to the Mexican bishops on a national situation, does not carry the weight of a condemnation of a totalitarian regime in the same way as the two preceding ones.

Mit brennender Sorge — the only encyclical written directly in German

Mit brennender Sorge ("With burning concern") is the only encyclical written directly in German — and the only one to this day. So that it could be understood in every parish of the Reich before the Gestapo could react, it was promulgated directly in German: the initial draft was written by Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber (Munich) at the request of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (Secretary of State, the future Pius XII), then reworked by Pacelli and by Pius XI himself. Printed clandestinely in some ten diocesan printing houses and distributed by motorcyclists, it was read from the pulpit on Palm Sunday, 21 March 1937, in nearly all German Catholic parishes — a total surprise for the Nazi regime, which only reacted in the following days by closing the offending printing houses and confiscating stocks.

The encyclical opens with a prophetic cry:

"It is with burning concern and mounting astonishment that We have observed for quite some time the painful path of the Church, and the ever more trying situation of those who remain faithful to Her in spirit and in deed, in that country and among that people to whom Saint Boniface once brought the light and the joyful message of Christ and the kingdom of God." — Pius XI, Mit brennender Sorge, § 1^[13]

The doctrinal heart lies in paragraph 8: Pius XI formally condemns there the Nazi idolatry of race and State. The formula would remain the matrix of all Catholic criticism of Nazism:

"Whoever takes race, or the people, or the State, or the form of the State, or the holders of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community, as the supreme norm of all values, even religious ones, and divinizes them by an idolatrous cult, that man overturns and falsifies the order of things created and commanded by God." — Pius XI, Mit brennender Sorge, § 8^[14]

The encyclical also denounces (§ 7) the Nazi attempt to revive pre-Christian Germanicism and its obscure impersonal destiny as a substitute for the Christian personal God, and (§ 22) the lure of a German national Church as "a negation of the one Church of Christ". It finally reaffirms the permanent value of the Old Testament against the Nazi theorists who claimed to de-Judaize Christianity.

Divini Redemptoris — "communism is intrinsically perverse"

Five days later, on 19 March 1937, Pius XI signed Divini Redemptoris, the encyclical directed against atheistic communism. The text was written in Latin according to custom. It opens with an observation: since the October Revolution of 1917, in Russia, in Mexico and now in Spain (the civil war had been raging since July 1936), humanity is seeing for the first time in its history an "organized system" combining "disregard and organized persecution of all religion" (§ 8).

The central diagnosis, in Latin, became a Catholic watchword: Communismus intrinsecus pravus est:

"Communism is intrinsically perverse, and no one who wishes to save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking." — Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, § 58^[15]

The condemnation bears on the doctrine itself (dialectical materialism), not on persons: Pius XI recalls that communists remain objects of Christian charity, but that their system, "which today hides under seductive appearances" (§ 9), is radically incompatible with the faith because it "denies the existence of God" (§ 22) and "considers religion the opium of the people". The encyclical explicitly denounces the persecution in Soviet Russia, in Mexico and in republican Spain — precisely the three theatres where, on that same date, tens of thousands of clerics and lay faithful were already paying with their lives for their fidelity to the Church.

Firmissimam Constantiam — the Mexican persecution

On 28 March 1937, Pius XI published in Spanish Firmissimam Constantiam — whose incipit Nos es muy conocida ("It is well known to Us") long served as its current title^[16] — issued nine days after Divini Redemptoris and often linked with the two preceding encyclicals, on the Mexican anti-Catholic persecution initiated by President Plutarco Elías Calles (1924-1928) and the Cristero War (1926-1929). The pope denounces the summary executions of priests, the closing of seminaries, the expulsion of bishops, and he hails the martyrdom of those who died crying "¡Viva Cristo Rey!". The collective canonization of the 25 Mexican martyrs by John Paul II on 21 May 2000, foremost among them Saint Christopher Magallanes Jara (a parish priest shot on 25 May 1927 at Colotlán)^[17], would give this dossier its liturgical crowning.

The Lateran Agreements (11 February 1929)

Mussolini's march on Rome (October 1922) inaugurated a Fascist regime that defined itself as totalitarian in the strong sense. Yet in 1929, the Vatican signed with this regime the Lateran Agreements, which settled three parallel questions: a treaty creating the State of Vatican City (about 44 hectares — 110 acres —, a recognized sovereign State), a concordat organizing Church-State relations in Italy, and a financial convention compensating the Holy See for the loss of the Papal States in 1870. The agreement was signed for the Vatican by Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, Secretary of State to Pius XI.

This signature does not constitute an approval of Fascism. It closed the "Roman Question" opened in 1870 and guaranteed the juridical sovereignty of the Holy See, an indispensable condition for the worldwide exercise of the pontifical ministry. Mussolini himself, in his speech of 13 May 1929 before the Chamber during the debate on ratifying the Agreements, harshly affirmed the sovereignty of the Fascist State, describing the Church in the Italian State as "not sovereign and not even free" (non sovrana e nemmeno libera)^[18] — an illustration of the totalitarian claim itself.

The 1931 crisis: Non abbiamo bisogno

Two years later, on 30 May 1931, Mussolini ordered the dissolution of the youth associations of Italian Catholic Action, which he accused of competing with the Balilla and other Fascist organizations regimenting youth. The break was immediate. On 29 June 1931, on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, Pius XI published Non abbiamo bisogno — "We have no need", the first words of a sentence meaning that the pope needs no reminding of his duties in the face of error. A very unusual choice: the encyclical was written directly in Italian so as to be understood by every Italian Catholic without depending on a translation, and it was distributed outside Italy to escape Fascist censorship.

It is in this text that Pius XI forged the formula statolatria pagana, which would remain in the Catholic lexicon to describe the totalitarian claim to absolutize the State. The pope also condemned the Fascist oath demanded of young Catholics, and he explicitly defended the freedom of Catholic Action as a school of lay formation independent of the State.

The 1938 racial laws and the unfinished encyclical Humani Generis Unitas

At the moment when, in July-September 1938, the Fascist regime published the Manifesto of Race and then the antisemitic racial laws, Pius XI reacted publicly with a sharpness that surprised his contemporaries. On 6 September 1938, receiving a group of Belgian pilgrims, he spoke words that became emblematic:

"Antisemitism is inadmissible. Spiritually, we are Semites." — Pius XI, address to Belgian pilgrims, 6 September 1938^[19]

At the same time, the pope asked three Jesuits — the American John LaFarge, the German Gustav Gundlach and the Frenchman Gustave Desbuquois — to draft in secret a project for an encyclical explicitly condemning racism and antisemitism: Humani Generis Unitas ("The Unity of the Human Race"). The text reached the Vatican in autumn 1938. Pius XI died on 10 February 1939, the day before the address he was to deliver for the tenth anniversary of the Lateran Agreements. The encyclical was never promulgated: its text would be recovered and published in 1995 by the historians Georges Passelecq and Bernard Suchecky^[20].

The concordat of 20 July 1933

When Hitler came to power on 30 January 1933, the Holy See did not rush. On 20 July 1933, after several months of negotiations conducted by Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pius XII), a concordat was signed between the Reich (Franz von Papen for Hitler) and the Holy See (Pacelli)^[21]. The text guaranteed in principle the freedom of the Catholic Church, the maintenance of confessional schools, the inviolability of the seal of confession, and the canonical appointment of bishops. In the Vatican's mind, it was a juridical dike: there was no question of discussing Hitler's legitimacy; the aim was to codify the Church's rights within a regime whose extremity was not yet measured.

This signature has often been exploited by the Vatican's detractors (notably John Cornwell in Hitler's Pope, 1999^[22]) to suggest Catholic complicity with Nazism. Serious historians, notably Hubert Wolf (Papst und Teufel, 2008)^[23] and Philippe Chenaux (Pius XII: Diplomat and Pastor, 2003), have since shown that it was on the contrary a defensive manoeuvre: Pacelli knew that without a concordat the Church would be crushed even faster. The facts confirmed it: between 1933 and 1937, the Nazi regime violated the concordat's clauses on many occasions, closing Catholic associations, abolishing confessional schools, and staging show trials for "immorality" or "violation of currency rules" against religious.

Mit brennender Sorge and the domestic persecution

The encyclical of 14 March 1937 (see above) marked the public break. In the following weeks, the Gestapo arrested the printers, seized the remaining copies, and hardened the persecution. The Dachau statistics tell what the concordat could not prevent: between 1938 and 1945, 2,720 clerics were deported to the camp's Pfarrerblock ("priests' barracks"). 1,034 died there^[24]. Of the 2,720 deported clerics, 2,579 were Catholic (94.9%); the largest national contingent was Polish (1,780), and of the 1,034 dead, 868 were Poles.

Bishop von Galen and the August 1941 sermons against Aktion T4

On 3 August 1941, in Münster Cathedral, Bishop Clemens August von Galen preached the third of his three public sermons denouncing the Nazi Aktion T4 euthanasia programme — the extermination of the mentally ill and disabled. The sermon was mimeographed, circulated clandestinely throughout Germany, and even dropped by the Royal Air Force over Reich territory.

"If the principle is accepted that an 'unproductive' man may be killed, woe betide us all when we become old and weak! It will then suffice to label any enemy of the people 'unproductive' to have him disappear. There will be no security left for any man." — Bishop Clemens August von Galen, sermon of 3 August 1941, Münster Cathedral^[25]

Hitler officially suspended the programme a few weeks later (on 24 August 1941), although it continued in secret. Von Galen's gesture is one of the very rare cases in which a public protest by a religious institution obtained a political result under the Third Reich. Von Galen would be created cardinal by Pius XII on 21 February 1946 and beatified by Benedict XVI on 9 October 2005.

Pius XII and the Second World War

Eugenio Pacelli, former nuncio in Munich and Berlin, former Secretary of State to Pius XI, principal drafter of Mit brennender Sorge, was elected pope on 2 March 1939 under the name of Pius XII. He knew the Nazi regime better than anyone. His first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, published on 20 October 1939 — seven weeks after the German invasion of Poland — explicitly denounced "the denial of universality" (racism), "State totalitarianism" and the forgetting of the "inviolable" rights of the human person. The text evoked Poland "for the outstanding merits it has acquired towards Christian civilization"^[26] — which was interpreted, rightly, as a direct condemnation of the German invasion.

During the war, Pius XII's position was complex and became the subject of a major historiographical controversy in the 1960s (Rolf Hochhuth's play The Deputy, 1963) and then in the 1990s (John Cornwell's book Hitler's Pope, 1999). The Vatican archives of the pontificate, opened in full by Francis on 2 March 2020, have since transformed the debate. The historians Andrea Riccardi (La guerra del silenzio, Laterza, 2022^[27]) and Andrea Tornielli showed, on the basis of these archives, that Pius XII:

• explicitly denounced, in the Christmas 1942 radio message, the extermination of persons "without any fault of their own, sometimes only because of their nationality or race" (see quotation below);
• organized, through the nunciatures and religious orders, the massive rescue of Jews: Roman convents and monasteries, the pontifical palace of Castel Gandolfo (about 3,000 refugees sheltered in 1943-1944, including 477 Jews according to historian Michael Feldkamp^[28]), the nunciatures of Budapest (Cardinal Rotta), Bucharest, Istanbul (Mgr Roncalli, the future John XXIII), Sofia. The estimate advanced as early as 1967 by the Israeli diplomat Pinchas Lapide — 700,000 to 860,000 Jews saved by coordinated Vatican action^[29] — remains debated: work following the opening of the Vatican archives in 2020 (Riccardi, Tornielli) confirms the scale of the rescues without taking up this range as an agreed figure;
• supported, according to Andrea Riccardi's work based on the archives opened in 2020^[30], the clandestine networks of false identity papers and evacuation.

The radio message of Christmas night 1942 is regarded by many historians as the most explicit public condemnation of the Shoah that Pius XII could utter without triggering, in reprisal, the immediate arrest of the German bishops and the end of the clandestine rescue operations:

"This pledge humanity owes to the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault of their own, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, are destined for death or progressive decline." — Pius XII, radio message of Christmas night 1942^[31]

The New York Times saluted the pope in two famous Christmas editorials. On 25 December 1941: "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas" (translation: "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas")^[32]. On 25 December 1942, after the radio message quoted above: "No Christmas sermon reaches a larger congregation than the message Pope Pius XII addresses to a war-torn world at this season. This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent" (translation: "No Christmas sermon reaches a vaster gathering than the message Pope Pius XII addresses to the war-torn world in this season. This Christmas more than ever, he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent")^[33]. A secret SS report noted that the pope "practically accuses the German people of injustice towards the Jews"^[34].

The great German and Austrian martyr figures

The German and Austrian Catholic martyrology of Nazism brings together figures as diverse as a Polish Franciscan religious of Auschwitz, an Austrian peasant conscientious objector, a Berlin provost, a seminarian ordained in a camp, or a Jewish philosopher converted to Carmel. The principal ones:

• Saint Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941). Polish Conventual Franciscan, founder of Niepokalanów (the City of the Immaculate). Arrested in February 1941, deported to Auschwitz (number 16670) on 28 May 1941. When a Polish prisoner escaped, Commander Karl Fritzsch selected ten prisoners to be condemned to the starvation bunker. Kolbe voluntarily presented himself in place of Franciszek Gajowniczek, a family father. He died by phenol injection on 14 August 1941, after comforting the other condemned men. Canonized by John Paul II on 10 October 1982 "as a martyr of charity"^[35].

• Saint Edith Stein (1891-1942). German Jewish philosopher, pupil of Edmund Husserl, converted to Catholicism in 1922, entered the Carmel of Cologne in 1933 under the name of Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. A refugee at the Echt Carmel (Netherlands) in 1938. On 26 July 1942, the Dutch episcopal conference published a letter denouncing the deportations of Jews. In reprisal, on 2 August 1942, the Gestapo arrested Edith Stein and her sister Rosa, also a religious. Gassed at Auschwitz on 9 August 1942. Canonized by John Paul II on 11 October 1998, proclaimed co-patroness of Europe on 1 October 1999^[36].

• Blessed Bernhard Lichtenberg (1875-1943). Provost of Saint Hedwig's Cathedral in Berlin. From the pogrom of Kristallnacht (9 November 1938), he began to pray publicly each day for the persecuted Jews at his cathedral's vespers. Arrested in October 1941, sentenced to two years in prison. Died on 5 November 1943 during his transfer to Dachau. Beatified by John Paul II on 23 June 1996.

• Blessed Franz Jägerstätter (1907-1943). Austrian peasant of Sankt Radegund, married, father of three daughters. Convinced in conscience that the Nazi war was morally unjust, he refused to take the military oath to Hitler. Arrested in March 1943, tried for "undermining military strength", beheaded at Brandenburg-Görden on 9 August 1943 (same calendar day as Edith Stein's death, which occurred one year earlier). Before his execution, he wrote from his prison several letters to his wife Franziska in which he stood by his refusal to the end in the name of his Christian conscience^[37]. Beatified by Benedict XVI on 26 October 2007.

• Blessed Rupert Mayer (1876-1945). Munich Jesuit, famous anti-Nazi preacher from 1923. Arrested three times (1937, 1939, 1940), interned at Sachsenhausen then confined to Ettal Abbey. Died in Munich on 1 November 1945 of a stroke in the pulpit of Saint Michael's. Beatified by John Paul II on 3 May 1987.

• Blessed Karl Leisner (1915-1945). German seminarian deported to Dachau, where he was ordained priest clandestinely in the camp, on 17 December 1944 (Gaudete Sunday), by Bishop Gabriel Piguet, Bishop of Clermont, also deported. He celebrated a single Mass before dying of tuberculosis on 12 August 1945. Beatified by John Paul II on 23 June 1996.

"Bless also, O Most High, my enemies." — Blessed Karl Leisner, last entry of his journal, 25 July 1945^[38]

The Italian martyrs of Monte Sole (1944), beatified in 2026

On 27 September 2026, in the basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, beatified three priests killed in 1944 during the Nazi massacres of Monte Sole, near Bologna, for having stayed with the population entrusted to them: the diocesan priest Ubaldo Marchioni, the Salesian Elia Comini and the Dehonian Martino Capelli^[39].

The original Soviet persecution (1917-1939)

From the Bolshevik seizure of power (November 1917), a decree by Lenin (23 January 1918) separated Church from State and nationalized all ecclesiastical property. The anti-Christian persecution was immediate and massive: the Russian Presidential Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression (Yakovlev Commission) announced in November 1995 that a very large number of clergy, mostly Orthodox, had been systematically murdered under the Soviet regime — an announcement reported notably by the Reuters agency on 29 November 1995 and taken up by the National Catholic Register^[40]. The Latin Catholic Church in Russia, a minority, was annihilated: by late 1938, on pre-September 1939 Soviet territory, only two churches remained open — in Moscow and Leningrad — served by two foreign priests under surveillance, with no priest of Soviet citizenship freely exercising; the Latin episcopate had been shot, deported or exiled^[41][42][43].

The trial and execution, on 31 March 1923, of Bishop Konstantin Romuald Budkiewicz, Catholic vicar general of Petrograd, marked the first global public shock. His confrere Archbishop Jan Cieplak, Catholic Archbishop of Mohilev, also condemned to death, saw his sentence commuted to 10 years in prison thanks to international protests. Pius XI, in 1922, had sent a humanitarian mission (the Jesuit Edmund Walsh's Missio Pontificia) to aid the starving Russians; it could not prevent the persecution.

Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and Ukraine

In western Ukraine, the Greek-Catholic Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky (1865-1944) is one of the luminous figures of simultaneous opposition to both totalitarianisms. Major Archbishop of Lviv since 1900, he resisted the Soviet occupation of Galicia (1939-1941) then the Nazi occupation (1941-1944). During the Shoah, he organized the rescue of about 150 Jews, mostly children — estimates ranging from a hundred to more than 160 persons sheltered^[44] — hidden in his episcopal palace and in Studite monasteries — including Rabbi David Kahane, hidden with his wife and daughter, who would recount his rescue in his Lvov Ghetto Diary^[45]. His pastoral letter "Thou Shalt Not Kill" of November 1942, distributed in all Greek-Catholic parishes, explicitly condemned antisemitic massacres as mortal sins^[46]. His cause for beatification was opened in 1958; he was declared Venerable by Pope Francis on 16 July 2015.

His successor Josyf Slipyj (1892-1984) would be arrested by the Soviets in April 1945 and deported to the Mordovia gulag for 18 years. Freed in 1963 thanks to the intervention of John XXIII with Nikita Khrushchev — a step carried by the American emissary Norman Cousins, mandated by President John F. Kennedy^[47][48] — he was created cardinal by Paul VI in 1965. The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, formally "liquidated" by Stalin at the false council of Lviv (8-10 March 1946) where it was forced to merge into Moscow Orthodoxy under threat of arrest, became for 45 years the largest clandestine Church of the 20th century; it officially emerged in 1989-1991 with the fall of the USSR.

Central Europe after 1945 — the imprisoned cardinals

From 1945, the Iron Curtain fell on eight European countries where local communists, backed by Moscow, seized power: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, East Germany. In each of these countries, the Catholic Church (and Orthodox, and Protestant) was massively persecuted: nationalization of Church property, suppression of seminaries, dissolution of religious orders, arrest of the cardinal primates.

The principal figures are:

Cardinal József Mindszenty (1892-1975) — Hungary

Archbishop of Esztergom, Primate of Hungary. Already imprisoned by the Hungarian Nazis (Arrow Cross regime) in 1944, he was arrested by the communist regime of Mátyás Rákosi on 26 December 1948. Drugged and tortured by the ÁVO political police, he signed pseudo-confessions under duress. On 8 February 1949, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in a show trial universally condemned, including by the American and French episcopates. Freed on 30 October 1956 during the Hungarian uprising, he took refuge on 4 November in the American embassy in Budapest and lived there cloistered for 15 years (1956-1971). Pope Paul VI obtained his extraction in 1971; he died in Vienna in 1975. His beatification process has been open since 1993; he was declared Venerable by Francis on 12 February 2019.

Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac (1898-1960) — Croatia/Yugoslavia

Archbishop of Zagreb from 1937. Stepinac is one of the most complex figures of the Catholic 20th century: under the Croatian Ustasha regime of Ante Pavelić (1941-1945), he publicly denounced the forced conversions of the Orthodox and the antisemitic and anti-Serb massacres — his sermon of 31 October 1943 (feast of Christ the King), in Zagreb Cathedral, affirmed the equality of all nations and all races before God and condemned racism by name^[49]. Under Tito's communist regime after 1945, tried in a Stalinist trial on 30 September 1946, he was sentenced to 16 years of forced labour at Lepoglava prison. Under house arrest at Krašić from 1951 until his death, created cardinal by Pius XII in 1952. Beatified by John Paul II on 3 October 1998 at Marija Bistrica before 500,000 faithful, despite a Serbian and Yugoslav historiography that still reproaches him today for too great a closeness to the Ustasha regime in its early days — a debate that remains open among historians (see notably the inquiry by Robert Alexander Graham^[50]). It was to ease this dispute that Francis instituted in May 2016 a mixed Catholic-Orthodox historical commission, which concluded in July 2017 that divergent interpretations persisted: Stepinac's canonization has remained deferred ever since^[51].

Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński (1901-1981) — Poland

Primate of Poland from 1948 until his death in 1981. His strategy towards the Polish communist regime was radically different from Mindszenty's: refuse frontal trial of strength, gain time, mobilize the people through Marian devotion, save the spiritual heritage rather than property. Under house arrest from 25 September 1953 to 28 October 1956 by the regime of Bolesław Bierut. There he wrote "Prison Notes". Upon his release, he launched the Great Novena (1957-1966) preparing the Millennium of Poland's baptism celebrated in 1966 — the largest popular Catholic mobilization in the Soviet bloc. It was under his leadership that Karol Wojtyła became Archbishop of Kraków in 1964, then pope in 1978. Wyszyński was beatified by Francis on 12 September 2021.

Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko (1947-1984)

The last of the great Catholic martyrs under European communism. A Polish priest, chaplain of Solidarność at Saint Stanislaus Kostka parish in Warsaw. His "Masses for the homeland" on Sunday evenings gathered from 1982 tens of thousands of people (15,000 to 20,000 according to current estimates^[52]), clandestinely broadcast across the country. On 19 October 1984, he was abducted by three SB agents (Służba Bezpieczeństwa, communist political police): Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski and his subordinates Leszek Pękala and Waldemar Chmielewski^[53]. He was tortured for several hours then drowned in the Vistula, bound to bags of stones. His body was recovered on 30 October 1984 near the Włocławek dam^[54]. His funeral gathered at least 250,000 people in Warsaw on 3 November 1984 — estimates ranging from 250,000 to nearly a million^[55].

His murder became a breaking point: the murderers were tried and convicted; the Solidarność movement, which had seemed stifled after the state of siege of 13 December 1981, found new breath. Beatified by Benedict XVI on 6 June 2010.

Albania under Enver Hoxha — "the world's first atheist State"

In 1967, Enver Hoxha's communist Albania proclaimed itself "the world's first atheist State". The 1976 Constitution banned all religion. For 23 years (1967-1990), no public worship was authorized: churches were turned into gymnasiums, cinemas, agricultural depots; crosses were torn down; baptism was punished with prison. Of the 38 Albanian Catholic martyrs beatified by Francis on 5 November 2016 at Shkodër, there are two bishops, 21 secular priests, 7 Franciscans, 3 Jesuits, 1 seminarian and 4 laypeople — including Maria Tuci^[56]. All were killed between 1945 and 1974 in hatred of the faith.

China under Mao and after

The Chinese Catholic Church is one of the last great theatres of contemporary communist persecution. After Mao's victory in 1949, all foreign missionaries were expelled (1950-1955). In 1957, the regime created the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), run by the State, which ordains bishops without pontifical mandate. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), all bishops faithful to Rome were deported, tortured, sometimes executed. A clandestine "underground Church", faithful to the pope, survived. On 22 September 2018, after several decades of negotiations, the Vatican signed with Beijing a provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops (renewed in 2020 and 2022, then for four years on 22 October 2024, i.e. until 22 October 2028^[57]) — an agreement controversial among some Chinese Catholics who fear a "handover" of the underground Church, but defended by the Holy See as the only pragmatic way to preserve ecclesial communion.

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)

The anti-Catholic persecution in republican-zone Spain during the civil war (July 1936 - April 1939) is, according to historian Antonio Montero Moreno (Historia de la persecución religiosa en España 1936-1939, BAC, 1961), one of the most massive in all modern history^[58]. The official figures established by the diocesan inquiries:

The murdered bishops are already counted among the 4,184 victims of the secular clergy: 4,184 + 2,365 + 283 = 6,832. Presenting them as a fourth separate category produced an erroneous total of 6,845 by double counting.

The collective beatifications of the Spanish martyrs constitute the largest of the 20th century:

• 11 March 2001 — John Paul II — 233 martyrs.
• 28 October 2007 — Benedict XVI — 498 martyrs (the largest beatification in history until then).
• 13 October 2013 — Francis at Tarragona — 522 martyrs (which surpassed the previous record).

That is more than 1,900 Spanish martyrs beatified between 1987 and 2024, not counting those whose causes are still ongoing.

The Cristero War in Mexico (1926-1929)

The Mexican anti-Catholic persecution began with the 1917 constitution (articles 3, 5, 24, 27, 130) and culminated with the "Calles Laws" of July 1926 imposing State registration of priests. The Mexican bishops, in response, suspended public worship on 31 July 1926. Catholic peasants rose spontaneously crying "¡Viva Cristo Rey!" (Long live Christ the King!). The Cristiada caused about 90,000 deaths between 1926 and 1929 — federal soldiers and Cristeros on both sides, plus civilians killed in the raids — according to the toll commonly attributed to the French historian Jean Meyer (La Cristiada, 3 volumes, Siglo XXI, 1973-1974)^[59], the world historical reference on the conflict.

On 21 May 2000, John Paul II canonized in Rome the 25 Mexican martyrs led by Saint Christopher Magallanes Jara (Cristóbal Magallanes Jara, 1869-1927), parish priest of Totatiche, shot without trial on 25 May 1927 at Colotlán. According to witnesses of the execution, he reportedly declared himself innocent, wholeheartedly forgave his executioners and offered his blood for the peace of divided Mexicans^[60].

Poland 1939-1945 — double persecution

Poland offers the unique case of a Catholic country crushed simultaneously by both totalitarianisms. The German-Soviet pact of 23 August 1939 provided for its partition: German invasion on 1 September, Soviet invasion on 17 September. The Nazis murdered more than 2,800 Polish clerics (including about 1,800 secular priests)^[61]; some dioceses lost nearly half their clergy (Wrocław: 49.2%, Chełmno: 47.8%^[62]). The Soviets shot at Katyń (April-May 1940) part of the Polish elite, including military chaplains. 108 Polish martyrs of the Nazi persecution were beatified together by John Paul II on 13 June 1999.

No other figure of the Catholic 20th century has been the subject of so much debate. Four stages mark the historiography:

1. 1939-1958: During his pontificate, Pius XII enjoyed international recognition, including Jewish: thanks presented on 21 September 1945 by Léo Kubowitzki, Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress, on behalf of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities^[63], then, at his death on 9 October 1958, the tribute of Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir hailing "the voice of the pope" raised "for the victims"^[64].
2. 1963: the play The Deputy (Der Stellvertreter) by German dramatist Rolf Hochhuth accused Pius XII of complicity through silence with the Shoah — a charge whose resonance some authors (Romanian General Ion Mihai Pacepa and historian Ronald Rychlak^[65]) attribute to a Soviet-bloc disinformation campaign, a contested thesis. This is the origin of the "black legend" of Pius XII.
3. 1965-2018: edition by the Jesuits Pierre Blet, Robert A. Graham, Burkhart Schneider, Angelo Martini of the Acts and Documents of the Holy See relating to the Second World War in 11 volumes (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1965-1981) — the documentary foundation of all subsequent work^[66].
4. 2020-2026: full opening of the archives of Pius XII's pontificate by Pope Francis on 2 March 2020. The first scholarly works (Riccardi, Tornielli, Coppa, Chappel, Mazzini, Sale) go for the most part in the same direction as Blet's conclusions: Pius XII knew very early the nature of the Shoah, he actively organized large-scale rescues of Jews, he renounced frontal public condemnation for fear of immediate reprisals against the German bishops and the clandestine rescue operations.

The beatification process of Pius XII was opened by Paul VI in 1965; he was declared Venerable by Benedict XVI on 19 December 2009^[67], and his beatification remains pending — notably awaiting the recognition of a miracle — in the context of the post-2020 historiographical advance.

On 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. In fourteen months, seven European communist regimes collapsed almost all without civil war. On 25 December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned; the USSR was officially dissolved. For John Paul II, this was the culmination of a lifelong struggle. The role of John Paul II's pontificate in this collapse is underlined by historians of the 1989 revolutions^[68].

In the centenary year of Rerum Novarum (1891), on 1 May 1991, John Paul II published Centesimus Annus, which draws the theological assessment of the event. Three key passages:

"Almost everywhere, it has been possible to bring down such a 'bloc', such an empire, by peaceful struggle, using only the weapons of truth and justice." — Saint John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, § 23^[69]

"The decisive factor that set the changes in motion was certainly the violation of the rights of labour." — Saint John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, § 23

"But the true cause of these novelties is the spiritual void brought about by atheism, which has left the younger generations deprived of direction." — Saint John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, § 24

The encyclical immediately warns: the fall of communism is not an automatic victory for liberalism. John Paul II warns against a dehumanized capitalism that would make the market a new absolute (§ 42-43). The Catholic struggle against political idolatries is not over; it simply takes new forms.

• Read the Shoah and the Catholic Church for a focused study on anti-Judaism, antisemitism, and the teaching of contempt discussed by Nostra Aetate (1965).
• Read totalitarianism as a political category: analysis of the concept beyond ecclesial history, in the line of Hannah Arendt and Raymond Aron.
• Read the new evangelization: John Paul II's pastoral response to the spiritual void following the collapse of communism in Central Europe.
• Read where evil abounds, grace abounds all the more: a spiritual reading of the last 150 years, of which the totalitarianisms form the heart.
• Retain the heart of the subject: three totalitarianisms in one century, three major encyclicals in fourteen days (March 1937), tens of thousands of Catholic martyrs, and the peaceful victory of 1989-1991 — crowned by Centesimus Annus (1991).