PIUS XII THE LAST GREAT ROMAN

THE LAST GREAT ROMAN

In 1941 and 1942, under pressure from U.S.President Roosevelt and others in the Western
Allied camp wanting to soothe any religious objections to the Western Alliance’s military
relations with the Soviet Russia, Pope Pius XII was led to believe that acceptance of the Western
Alliance’s association with the Soviet Union was the lesser of two evils facing Europe and the
Western Christian world at that time. The Pope knew enough about the philosophical creeds of
Marxism and National Socialism to make up his own mind, which he did. He looked to the future
of Germany and saw two distinct social realities on the horizon: Soviet Communism and National
Socialism under the leadership of Adolf Hitler and knew that only one would survive would take
over the immediate political future of Germany.

In the six years that Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli spent in Munich, from 1919 to 1925 he gathered
information about this new personage on the scene, Karl Heinrich Marx, German philosopher,
economist, and social theorist. He soon learned that much of the gathered information was
beginning to frighten him as a man and as a Papal Nuncio. By the time he, Pacelli, was posted to
Berlin in 1925 he knew the life and thoughts of Karl Marx in fine detail. Pacelli visited the town
where Marx was born and raised, Tier, and visited the University of Bonn where Marx was a
student for a year. He had personal interviews with living relatives of Marx and of Jerry von
Westphalen, Karl Marx’s wife.

During his stay in Berlin, Cardinal Pacelli read the records of Karl Marx’s studies at the
University of Berlin. He also visited the boarding house where Marx lived while in Berlin and
went to Stralau where Marx met regularly with members of the Young Hegelians. Pacelli
inspected police records which displayed records of anarchistic activity by the members of the
Doktor-Klub of which Marx was a member.

Pacelli noticed that Karl Marx early in his youth had written a composition titled The Union of
the Faithful with Christ, in which Marx exalted the social and spiritual Christian brotherly love
amongst men and societies. This theme of the value and benefits of Christianity continued in other early writings. Then suddenly this all changed and Marx wrote poetry and hymns charged with
anti-Christian themes which now praised the destructive power expressed in the Faustian phrase
“Everything in existence is worth being destroyed.”

Benito Mussolini also saw the menace of the Soviet Communist threat to Italy and to Europe early
in his political career. He saw that this threat was not only limited to the Soviet Union, but rather was a threat of world wide sovietization and the very real possibility of a Western European
Soviet, not only in the form of an armed military takeover but also a slow peaceful infiltration of
the Western World with the philosophical and political programs of Marxism -- a friendly open
form of Marxism posing as fellow comrades with the Christian countries of Europe -- a
diplomatic Marxism.

Pius XII on Mussolini:" The greatest man I have ever met aand without a doubt among the most kind hearted: For this matter I have a lot of evidence to prove it." 1952

Bea knows what is bothering the Pope. In 1941-1942, under pressure from U.S.President
Roosevelt among others, Pacelli had collaborated in soothing religious objections to the Western
Alliance with Soviet Russia against Hitler. He had yielded to the argument that Hitler was the
greater of two evils. But what if he had chosen neither? Now Pacelli is afraid that he had thereby
helped Marxism in taking over Europe and the whole world. Bea consoles him. Who could have
known that the Anglo-Saxons would let the Russians go that far? 4




4 Cardinal Agustin Bea, S.J. to Pope Pius XII - page 266
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church Copyright 1981 MalachI Martin
Academic Press Canada Ltd, Toronto

“We are not in conflict with weak and fragile human beings, but against . . . the cosmic dominators
of this murky world, against the spirits of evil roaming through space.” 5

5 Pope Paul VI Illustrissimi - Letters from Pope John Paul I, Copyright 1976 EDIZIONI MESSAGGERO, Padua- Page 136

The Last Centurion Volume II A Political Road To Martyrdom – pages 173 -174
www.Benito-Mussolini.com