SOLDIER OF CHRIST

The legacy of Pope Pius XII

Debates over the legacy of Pope Pius XII and his canonization are so heated they are known as the “Pius wars.” Soldier of Christ moves beyond competing caricatures and considers Pius XII as Eugenio Pacelli, a flawed and gifted man. While offering insight into the pope's response to Nazism, Robert A. Ventresca argues that it was the Cold War and Pius XII's manner of engaging with the modern world that defined his pontificate. Laying the groundwork for the pope's controversial, contradictory actions from 1939 to 1958, Ventresca begins with the story of Pacelli's Roman upbringing, his intellectual formation in Rome's seminaries, and his interwar experience as papal diplomat and Vatican secretary of state. Accused of moral equivocation during the Holocaust, Pius XII later fought the spread of Communism in Western Europe, spoke against the persecution of Catholics in Eastern Europe and Asia, and tackled a range of social and political issues. By appointing the first indigenous cardinals from China and India and expanding missions in Africa while expressing solidarity with independence movements, he internationalized the church's membership and moved Catholicism beyond the colonial mentality of previous eras. Drawing from a diversity of international sources, including unexplored documentation from the Vatican, Ventresca reveals a paradoxical figure: a prophetic reformer of limited vision whose leadership both stimulated the emergence of a global Catholicism and sowed doubt and dissension among some of the church's most faithful servants. Robert A. Ventresca is Associate Professor of History at King's University College at the University of Western Ontario. “The definitive biography of the wartime pontiff Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII is a splendid work.”—Michael Coren, Catholic World Report “[An] illuminating work.”—Paul Richardson, The Church of England Newspaper “Ventresca paints a well-crafted portrait of Pacelli's remarkable consistency, deciding early on that pragmatism was his goal in both spiritual and temporal matters.”—Megan Moore Burns, Quill & Quire “Soldier of Christ is immaculately researched, well-written and judicious in its judgments, and it deserves serious consideration in the ongoing debate about the role of the Vatican in the face of the utter immorality of Nazi policies.”—Allen Mills, The Winnipeg Free Press “Ventresca does a thorough job sifting through the evidence of the complicated life and papacy of Pius XII, while keeping an open mind to the conclusion An authoritative study of a deeply flawed and tragic figure of history.”—Kirkus Reviews “Avoiding the extremes of vilification and hagiography, this well-crafted biography examines Pope Pius XII's early life, his service in the Vatican diplomatic corps and as secretary of state to his predecessor, and his papal reign during World War II, including the ‘so-called silence,' as Ventresca puts it, for which the pope has been roundly criticized A balanced, but not uncritical, examination of the life of a controversial pope, seeking to understand Pius in the context of his times, this study will appeal to anyone interested in Church history, World War II, or general modern world history.”—Augustine J. Curley, Library Journal “Eugenio Pacelli, who acceded to the papacy in March 1939, was the first Roman pope since the early 1700s. His tenure, which lasted until his death in 1958, remains highly controversial. Robert Ventresca's book is an intervention in the ‘Pius war'—the argument over Pius XII's seeming failure to defend European Jews from persecution by the Nazis.”—New Statesman “This beautifully written biography will become the standard account of Pope Pius XII's life. In Ventresca's hands, this enigmatic Pope is neither lionized nor demonized. Instead, we see Pius XII as a soldier mired in the trenches, neither advancing nor wholly retreating into silence.”—Charles R. Gallagher, author of Vatican Secret Diplomacy: Joseph P. Hurley and Pope Pius XII