The Silences of the Popes in War: Benedict XV and Belgium, Pius XII and Poland

When we talk about the Pope's "silences," we immediately think of Pius XII and the extermination of the Jews during the Second World War. But "silences," in the history of the Papacy, have a history. An important precedent is that of Benedict XV during the First World War. At that juncture, the Papacy was confronted for the first time with a global conflagration that divided Catholics between the two warring sides. Benedict XV, who refused to be drawn into war propaganda and called for peace, was accused of remaining "silence" by both sides. These dynamics are evident with respect to the question of the German invasion of Belgium, which was considered a emblematic event in which the policy of papal impartiality was interpreted as condescension towards German abuses. When Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, Pius XII, who had become Pope a few months earlier, reaffirmed the "doctrine of impartiality," drawing on the experience of Benedict XV, which he himself had personally experienced alongside the former pontiff. Pius XII applied the "doctrine of impartiality" first to the Polish question, a Catholic nation par excellence in Eastern Europe, invaded by Protestant Germans and Orthodox Russians, which awaited a desperate word from Rome, a word that never came. Poland was Pius XII's Belgium. In this context, reminiscent of the events of the First World War, the persecution and extermination of the Jews broke the moral equidistance between the contenders that had characterized the previous war, severely testing the "doctrine of impartiality," already eroded by the Nazi crimes against the Polish nation. We therefore hope for a historicization of the silences for a deeper understanding of the history of the Church in the contemporary age and up to the present day.