The Church policies after World War II of Pope Pius XII focused on material aid to war-torn Europe, the internationalization of the Roman Catholic Church, its persecution in Eastern Europe, China and Vietnam, and relations with the United States and the emerging European Union.
After 1946, Church policies, with wars ongoing in Korea, the Mandate of Palestine and other places, continued to propagate peace and aid the afflicted, especially in war-torn Europe. Pius XII began a process of worldwide reconstruction of war-damaged Catholic institutions. He promoted the internationalization of the Church with reforms of the Church, internationalizing the College of Cardinals in two consistories. For working women he repeatedly demanded equal pay for equal work.AAS, XXXVII (1945
Church policies After World War II, some 60,000,000 Catholics were under the influence of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Relations with the United States were cordial. Faced with a war in the Middle East, Pius called for mutual respect for and between the three major religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. He insisted on their free access to Holy Sites, especially in Jerusalem. In his war-time message, Pius had called for an international order and the establishment of international organizations. He therefore welcomed the creation of such organizations after the war, and appointed papal representatives or observers to them. Pacelli supported a unification of Europe. In 1957, following the signing of the Treaty of Rome, he received the heads of government and State of the newly founded European Union, to express his gratification and give his blessings.
Papal charity: policies and practices
Displaced persons and prisoners of war On 6 January 1946, the encyclical Quemadmodum issued an urgent call for charity. The Pope described the misery of millions of people in war-torn areas, and insisted that all persons must help. He was especially concerned with the millions of small children without families, food or shelter. As in the war years, the Pope offered material help. During the war, some 200,000 messages were sent via Vatican identifying displaced persons and prisoners to their respective families.Smit, p. 230
Pius was an outspoken advocate of clemency for those accused of war crimes, including Ernst von Weizsäcker, who was ambassador to the Vatican in the last two years of the war. The U.S. nuncio appealed to commute the sentences of several Germans convicted by the occupation authorities. The Vatican, opposed to the death penalty, asked for a blanket pardon for all those who had received death sentences after the ban on execution of war criminals was lifted in 1948. After the war, the Vatican continued its information services. Vatican Radio began a daily hour for prisoners and interned to South Africa, Belgian Congo, Kenya, North Africa, Australia, India, England and North America.Smit, 231 The DPs created often special problems, because many thousands of them did not have any identification. Preliminary identity papers and food were distributed to long lines of persons, waiting for hours. Identity papers were issued throughout Italy by Vatican charity officials and Red Cross representatives. Forty years later, controversy arose as to whether some Nazi officials benefited from these Red Cross or Vatican papers, issued in the grand chaos of 1945–1947. Most certainly, neither the Red Cross nor the Vatican had the time or resources to check individual identity claims at the time. This situation was possibly exploited by the controversial Alois Hudal, who was later dismissed from his posts, the rat line, but by also many persons of other persuasions, who wanted to start a new life under a new name away from friends and family.
Immigration rights As millions of refugees without any home or place to go, wandered all over the Europe, Pius XII insisted that immigration is a natural right and duty. In 1946, he declared, that all people have a right to immigration, because the Creator himself demands access to material goods. In addition, compassion supports immigration rights. Conversely, no state which can support additional people, has a right to close its immigration doors without reason.Smit, p. 233
Natural law even more than mere compassion compels States to secure people a chance of immigration, because the Creator demands that the goods of this world should be at the service of all mankind. Therefore, no state whose territory is in a condition to feed more people, has the right to refuse admission to foreigners without good and acceptable reasons.Acta Apostolica Sedis, XLI, 1949, pp. 69–71
Charitable works
Madre Pascalina
Pius dealt with the human tragedies by organizing a two-tier papal charity. Monsignore Ferdinando Baldelli, Carlo Egger and Otto Faller started on behalf of the pope the official Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza.Primo Mazzolari, La Carita Del Papa, Pio XII.e la ricostruzione dell’Italia, Edizione Paoline, 1991) Madre Pascalina Lehnert was asked by the Pope to direct his personal charity efforts, officially under Monsignore Montini, later Pope Paul VI. To assist the pope in the many calls for his help and charity, Pascalina organized and led the Magazino, a private papal charity office, which began with 40 helpers and continued until 1959. "It started from modest beginnings and became a gigantic charity".Lehnert, Pascalina. p. 104 Lehnert organized truck caravans filled with medicine, clothing, shoes and food to prison camps and hospitals, provided first aid, food and shelter for bomb victims, fed the hungry population of Rome, answered emergency calls for aid to the Pope, sent care packages to France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Austria and other countries. After the war, the calls for papal help continued in war-torn Europe: Madre Pascalina organized emergency aid to displaced persons, prisoners of war, victims of floods, and many victims of the war. Pascalina distributed also hundreds of religious items to needy priests. In later years, priests with very large parishes received small cars or motor bikes."Lehnert, p. 104 The Pope was personally involved, constantly asking bishops from the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada, Mexico and other countries for help."Lehnert, p. 103 Cardinals and bishops freely visited Madre Pascalina, who by now was nicknamed "Virgo Potens" (:Powerful Virgin").
The papal Commissione di Assistenza to the most needy populations of Europe delivered more than ninety thousand crates. They were shipped by rail from Vatican station to dozens of countries Smit, p. 234 In 1946, the Pontiff invited 50,000 children to receive a full meal after which the Pope thanked the benefactors of the United Nations for their generosity.L'Osservatore Romano, 27 January 1946
As Bishop of Rome he increased papal soup kitchen rations from three million annually to forty million by 1947. At Christmas 1944, he personally gave gift packages to three thousand Roman children and delivered another four thousand to children on the Feast of Epiphany, two weeks later. By Christmas 1945, Pope Pius had forty thousand packages. The Swedish King Gustav V awarded Pope Pius XII with the "Prince Carl Medal", given annually to the person with the most outstanding record in charity in the world.L'Osservatore Romano, 1 March 1947 Pope Pius responded in his Easter message to Communist leaders who attacked his policies:
The Church of Rome is subjected these days to public denunciations and the most unjust attacks. In vain, the Church multiplied its charities to this city, the centre of Christianity. In vain, the Church accepted, protected, and saved persons of all kinds, including its most ardent opponents. In vain she was upholding in times of tyrannic repression the rights and dignity of every person. In vain, she fed the population of Eternal Rome in times of need and massive hunger. The Church which helped, is now allegedly responsible for the impoverisation and proletarisation of the masses, which in times of need she assisted and continues to assist."Herder Korrespondenz, p. 303
In his 1944 speech to the directors of the Pontifical Missionary Society, he stated:
The herald of the Gospel and messenger of Christ is an apostle. His office does not demand that he transplant European civilization and culture, and no other, to foreign soil, there to take root and propagate itself. His task in dealing with these peoples, who sometimes boast of a very old and highly developed culture of their own, is to teach and form them so that they are ready to accept willingly and in a practical manner the principles of Christian life and morality; principles, I might add, that fit into any culture, provided it be good and sound, and which give that culture greater force in safeguarding human dignity and in gaining human happiness.Evangelii 60
China
For centuries, access to the people of China was difficult for the Catholic Church, because it did not recognize the ancient local Confucian customs of honouring deceased family members. The Vatican regarded these as religious exercises which conflicted with Catholic dogma. As a result, the Church made little progress in China. Within months of his election, Pope Pius issued a dramatic change in policies. On 8 December 1939 the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith issued at the request of Pius XII new instructions, by which Chinese customs were no longer considered superstitious but rather an honourable way of esteeming one's relatives, and therefore permitted by Catholics.Smit, pp. 186-187
The government of China established diplomatic relations with the Vatican within a short interval. The papal degree changed the ecclesiastical situation in China in an almost revolutionary way.Smit, p. 188 As the Church began to flourish, Pius established a local ecclesiastical hierarchy and received the Archbishop of Peking, Thomas Tien Ken-sin, SVD, into the College of Cardinals.Smit 188. The establishment of Mao Zedong's communist regime in 1949 put these early advances on hold and led to the persecution of thousands of clergy and faithful in China.
Japan Diplomatic relations with the Japanese government were established in 1942, during the war. Following the defeat of the Japanese Empire, these relations were broken, but were reestablished in 1952 as Japan regained its independence.
Korea In 1947 when Pope Pius XII sent the first apostolic delegate, Father Patrick James Byrne to Korea, shortly after the liberation of Korea from Japanese dominion. By sending a permanent delegate, the Holy See was one of the first countries to recognize Korea as an independent nation after the liberation from the Japanese colonization. Patrick James Byrne, American missionary of the Maryknoll's fathers, was consecrated Bishop in 1949, but when the Korean War broke out in 1950, he was kidnapped and died in prison.
In those years, the South Korean government sent a delegation to the Paris conference in 1948 to be recognized as the only government of the Korean peninsula. At that time the Holy See and the Apostolic Nuncio in Paris (then Angelo Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII) greatly helped the Korean delegation to obtain recognition from many delegations of Catholic countries.ASIA/SOUTH KOREA – A Bishop represents Korea to celebrate 70 years of diplomatic relations with the Holy See Material was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Africa and Asia