Ben Shapiro’s Disgraceful Rehab of Hitler’s Pope Pius XII

There are names that live in history as lights of moral courage. And then there are names that live in infamy — not because of what men did, but because of what they did not do. Pope Pius XII, the wartime pontiff, is remembered not for heroism but for a silence that bordered on complicity. He is remembered by Jews, and by honest historians, as Hitler’s Pope. And he is remembered by history not as heroic voice against genocide but as a Nazi collaborator.

Which begs the astonishing question: why would an Orthodox Jew who claims to fight for his people force his media company to create a documentary rehabilitating an evil man whom even the Catholic Church refuses to canonize. Pope John Paul II died in 2005 and just nine years later, on April 27, 2014, he was made a Saint along with Pope John XXIII. Both men saved many Jewish lives, especially John XXIII as Papal nuncio in Istanbul who, as Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, used his position to provide false baptismal certificates and visas that enabled Jews to escape Nazi-occupied Europe. He forwarded lists of Jews in danger to the Vatican and to governments that could intervene. He is credited with intervening on behalf of Jews from Slovakia, Hungary, and Greece, and he helped secure ships for Jewish refugees traveling through Turkey to reach Palestine.

By contrast, Pope Pius XII was the first man on earth to sign a treaty with Hitler after he became Chancellor, making him the earliest of Nazi collaborators, which is why, though Pius died way back 1958, the Church has never and will never make him a Saint, treating Hitler’s Pope as a radioactive embarrassment.

Pius’s Reichskonkordat with Hitler, signed on July 20, 1933 between Nazi Germany and the Vatican, under Pope Pius XI (with then–Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, as chief negotiator), remains one of the most controversial agreements in modern Church history.

Has Ben Shapiro lost his mind? Who is paying him? Why is he disgracing his yarmulke, trampling on the memory of the six million, and engaging in Holocaust revisionism?

When Jewish Holocaust revisionists like Ben Shapiro seek to cleanse Pius’ reputation, and Catholic apologists try to transform silence into sanctity, we minimize the magnitude of the Holocaust just as who those who today falsely accuse Israel of genocide seek to do.

The Concordat That Empowered Hitler

Eugenio Pacelli, before he became Pope Pius XII, served as the Vatican’s Secretary of State. In that role, in 1933, he personally negotiated and signed the Reichskonkordat with Nazi Germany.

What did this treaty mean? On paper, it protected the rights of the Catholic Church in Hitler’s Reich. In reality, it gave Hitler the international legitimacy he craved. The day the Concordat was signed, Nazi propaganda trumpeted it as proof that the Catholic Church — the moral giant of Europe — had thrown its weight behind Hitler’s new regime.

Hitler himself gloated:

“The Reich Concordat shows the world that the Vatican has recognized the new regime. This treaty is to a large extent an unprecedented achievement.”

The deal effectively dismantled Germany’s Catholic political opposition, the Centre Party, and handed Hitler a freer hand to consolidate power. It was the Vatican’s stamp of approval on a dictatorship.

A Deafening Silence Amid Genocide

When Pacelli ascended to the papacy in 1939, the world was already descending into chaos. Within months, Hitler invaded Poland and began the ruthless campaign that would culminate in the Holocaust.

And what did Pius XII do?

NOTHING. He remained silent.

Never once during the six years of carnage did Pope Pius XII utter the words “Hitler,” “Nazis,” “Auschwitz,” or “Jews” in public condemnation. Not once.

His most cited wartime statement is the 1942 Christmas radio message. There, he spoke vaguely of “hundreds of thousands who, without any fault of their own, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death.”

The words were calculatedly opaque. He did not identify the victims as Jews. He did not name the perpetrators as Germans or Nazis. He spoke in euphemism at the very moment when moral clarity was demanded.

Contrast this cowardice with others in his own Church. The Dutch bishops issued a blunt pastoral letter in 1942 denouncing deportations. The Nazis retaliated by arresting and deporting Catholic Jews, among them the philosopher Edith Stein, later canonized as a saint.

Pius XII learned from this episode not that he must speak more loudly, but that he should retreat deeper into silence. His fear was not of God’s judgment, nor of history’s verdict, but of provoking Nazi retaliation against Catholics in general and him in particular. He was a moral coward and his leadership a religious abomination. He chose institutional caution over prophetic courage.

He Knew — and Still Said Nothing

Some defenders of Pius XII plead ignorance: perhaps he did not know the scale of the genocide. This is a lie.

By 1942, Pius XII had been given detailed reports from every corner of Europe. Allied diplomats briefed him. Bishops in Poland and Eastern Europe sent descriptions of mass shootings and death camps. Jewish leaders begged him to speak.

The U.S. envoy to the Vatican, Harold Tittmann, reported that the Pope was fully informed about the slaughter of Jews but chose “not to give offense to the German government.” In other words, he knew, and he kept quiet.

Documents in the newly opened Vatican archives show the same: the Pope had knowledge, and chose silence.

The Diplomat, Not the Prophet

Pius XII was, at heart, a career diplomat. He thought in terms of neutrality, statecraft, and balance. He wanted the Vatican to remain a mediator between Axis and Allies, preserving its independence at all costs. Indeed, the only time he ever spoke out against any action during the Second World War was when he chose to publicly condemn the allies for bombing Rome. Bricks and mortar far outweighed his concern for the 1.5 million Jewish children being gassed by the Germans.

This diplomatic instinct translated into moral paralysis. When Hitler’s envoys came to the Vatican, Pius received them with courtesy. When Allied leaders begged him to speak, he demurred. Vatican newspapers were forbidden to explicitly condemn Nazi atrocities.

He had at his disposal the world’s largest moral pulpit — one capable of galvanizing hundreds of millions of Catholics, of stirring conscience in occupied Europe, of perhaps slowing the machinery of genocide. He chose instead to play diplomat, not prophet.

The Aftermath: Jewish Children Held Hostage

Even after the war, Pius XII’s policies deepened the wound. Thousands of Jewish children had been hidden in Catholic institutions during the Holocaust. Many were baptized, often without their parents’ consent.

When survivors sought to reclaim these children, the Vatican issued directives: if baptized, the children should remain in Catholic care, not returned to their Jewish families. Pius XII backed this and in the process became arguably the greatest kidnapper of Jewish children in the history of the world.

The message was clear: even after the Holocaust, the Vatican’s interest in expanding Catholicism outweighed its concern for Jewish survival. It was not enough that Jewish children had been orphaned by Hitler. The Church would orphan them a second time.

Why “Hitler’s Pope”

The phrase entered the popular lexicon after John Cornwell’s searing 1999 book Hitler’s Pope. But the charge is older than Cornwell.

Pius XII was Hitler’s Pope because:

He signed the treaty that empowered Hitler’s regime.

He conferred legitimacy on the Reich.

He had knowledge of the genocide but refused to denounce it.

He consistently chose Vatican interests over Jewish lives.

He regularly and secretly met with Nazi and SS leaders and hit it from the world.

He watched LITERALLY as 1257 Jews were rounded up 800 meters from him on 16 October, 1943 for gassing at Auschwitz and said nothing. Only 16 survived.

He oversaw policies that withheld Jewish children from their families even after liberation.

It was not just what he did that makes him Hitler’s Pope. It was what he failed to do: to wield the spiritual sword of the papacy against the greatest evil in human history.

The Whitewash Campaign

In recent years, there has been a grotesque campaign to canonize Pius XII as a saint and rehabilitate his reputation. Apologists argue that he worked “behind the scenes” to shelter Jews. They inflate the scattered cases of monasteries opening their doors into a grand narrative of papal rescue.

They an Orthodox Jew like Ben Shapiro would join this whitewash campaign. Of Holocaust denial is u forgivable and beneath contempt.

The whitewash has repeatedly failed and is all smoke and mirrors. Yes, individual priests and nuns sheltered Jews — and they are rightly honored. But they did so despite the Pope’s silence, not because of his leadership.

The fact remains: while Jews were being rounded up in Rome — in the Pope’s own backyard — Pius XII never stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s to denounce it. He never used his immense moral authority to confront Hitler’s war on the Jews.

Saint? No. He is remembered, rightly, as a man who shrank from moral duty and was an evil Nazi collaborator. Ben Shapiro, who took no action for five years as his employee Candace Owens used Ben’s platform to spew the most vile lies about Jews and Israel, has lost his last morsel of Jewish credibility and indeed can no liger be considered a defender of Jewish interests. He is a defender of his own pocketbook.

The Jewish Memory

For Jews, the Holocaust is not a historical abstraction. It is living memory. It is our parents, our grandparents, our murdered children.

We remember the silence of the world. We remember even great men, who stopped Hitler like Roosevelt still turning away Jewish ships. We remember Churchill bombing railways only after millions had died. And we remember moral cowards like Pius XII, sitting in the Vatican, issuing pathetic and vague diplomatic statements while six million Jews were annihilated.

When Jewish survivors heard the Pope praised as a “servant of peace” after his death in 1958, many wept in fury. Peace? He had chosen peace with Hitler over justice for the Jews.

The Moral Verdict

The case against Pius XII is not a smear. It is the record of history.

He empowered Hitler through the Concordat.

He legitimized Nazi power when moral delegitimization was essential.

He knew about the Holocaust and chose silence.

He valued diplomacy over prophecy, Church neutrality over Jewish life.

He withheld Jewish children from their families even after liberation.

History will not absolve him. Nor should it.

Why This Matters Today

Why does this history still burn? Because silence in the face of evil is not just a sin of the past. It is the sin of our own time.

When Hamas butchered 1,200 Jews on October 7, the world once again hesitated. Universities equivocated. Politicians balanced statements. Even faith leaders mouthed platitudes while Jewish blood cried out from the ground.

Pius XII stands as the eternal warning of what happens when leaders — religious, political, intellectual — choose caution over conscience. He is the archetype of silence in the face of genocide.

Conclusion: The Pope Who Failed God and Man

The papacy is meant to be a throne of moral leadership. But under Pius XII, it became a seat of paralysis.

He was no John Paul II, who would thunder against tyranny. He was no prophet. He was a diplomat, a bureaucrat, a man so consumed with protecting his institution that he abandoned his duty to humanity.

And that is why, to this day, he is remembered — and must be remembered — as Hitler’s Pope.

To whitewash his memory is to desecrate the six million. To excuse his silence is to excuse indifference. To call him a saint is to canonize cowardice.

Let the truth stand: in the darkest hour of Jewish history, Pope Pius XII chose silence. And that silence screams louder than any words.

Ben Shapiro should be ashamed.