Since 1965, there has been discussion in Catholic circles about the possibility of conferring sainthood on Eugenio Pacelli, who held the title of Pope Pius XII from 1939 until 1958. Besides the lack, thus far, of verifiable miracles ascribed to Pius—a prerequisite for sainthood—there is the matter of his checkered, and highly controversial, wartime record. Abraham Foxman and Ben Cohen write:

The foremost problem with the historical debate up until recently has been the absence from public view of definitive documentation about the Vatican’s wartime role; locked out of its archives for decades, the many reputable historians and scholars who took one side or the other had no access to the critical records concerning Pius that were finally unveiled by Pope Francis in 2019, who declared as he did so that the Church should “not be afraid of history.”

Thanks to the opening of the archives, the authoritative account of Pius’s actions (or lack of them) with regard to the Nazi extermination program was finally published last year. The Brown University historian David Kertzer’s book The Pope at War . . . astonishingly has made no impact on the deliberations of the two main parties to the dispute. [Pius], Kertzer writes, manifestly failed ever to “denounce the Nazis clearly for their ongoing campaign to exterminate Europe’s Jews, or even allow the word ‘Jew’ to escape from his lips as they were being systematically murdered.”

That does not mean that Pius did not privately disapprove of the Nazi persecution nor make his objections discreetly clear in personal encounters. What Kertzer shows us, though, is that Pius’s direct back channel to Hitler—opened early on during the war—made him even more wary of displeasing the Nazi dictator. For example, he relates how, when the Nazis began rounding up Rome’s Jews under Pius’s very nose in October 1943, the pope sent an emissary to the German ambassador at the Vatican to inquire whether the operation was strictly necessary at that moment. When the ambassador explained that the round-up had been ordered by Hitler himself and asked whether the Vatican still wanted to protest, Pius’s emissary demurred.

Ultimately, Pius made a conscious decision from the beginning of his papacy to prioritize the retention of good relations with Mussolini and avoid offending Hitler, in order to “plan for a future in which Germany would dominate continental Europe,” as Kertzer writes.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.