Eugenio Pacelli’s understanding of the Jewish people began while
he was growing up in Rome and attending the Visconti School with
his best friend, an Orthodox Jewish boy Guido Mendes. Pacelli
would enjoy kosher Shabbat meals with his friend’s family. He
learned to speak Hebrew and would borrow the books of the great
rabbis. On the left is the book written by the son of Guido Mendes,
Israeli ambassador Meir Mendes, where he describes his father’s
childhood and how Pacelli intervened to save his life when the
Italian racial laws were adopted in 1938. Pacelli arranged for his
friend to go to Palestine through Switzerland.
Below contains a translation of the pertinent section.
With gratitude to Michael Mendes for sharing his father’s book
and Fr. Murray Watson for his translations.
In these pages from his book Le Vatican et Israel [Th e Vatican and Israel], the Israeli diplomat Meir Mendes
addresses some of the criticisms that have been leveled against Pius XII. Instead of denying the charges of
silence, Mendes attempts to explain the rationale for this silence. He speaks about the Jews who were saved
in Catholic institutions and by Catholic clergy (especially the well-known Pierre Benoit) and religious nuns.
He speaks about the publication of ten volumes of selected documents from the Vatican’s wartime archives
and some of the questions that they have raised. On pages 24 and 25, he cites a particular episode related to
his father, which he believes to throw some light on the offi cial attitude of high-ranking Vatican offi cials on
the eve of WWII:
To complete this historical overview, I would like to report here a fact which directly concerns
me, and which casts a diff erent light on Pius XII. My father, Prof. Guido Mendes, had stayed
in contact with Pius XII, his friend and former classmate. Although [Mendes] was Jewish, he
was named a consulting physician in several Vatican institutions, who did not fail, on several
occasions, to express to him in writing their gratitude. In 1938, the anti-Semitic campaign
began in Italy, and my father was forced to give up his responsibilities—his teaching at the
faculty of medicine of the University of Rome, his role as director of the Italian Red Cross’s
Cesare Battisti anti-tuberculosis sanatorium, and his responsibility as secretary-general of the
Anti Tuberculosis League. He was also given an absolute discharge from the army, in which
he held the rank of general in the reserve forces. Th e Holy See reacted forcefully, and Cardinal
Tisserant (who was at that time the Prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches) sent
the following letter to my father:
“Th is sacred dicastery has learned with unhappiness that you have left your role as director
of the Cesare Battisti sanatorium. Recalling the attentive and more than fatherly care that
showered on the young men of the Pontifi cal Ethiopian College who had to be hospitalized in
the sanatorium, your trips there several times for consultations, and your attentiveness to their
state of health, this sacred Congregation wishes to send to you today a word of comfort, and,
at the same time, to express to you its wholehearted gratitude and its esteem for the precious
work you have performed. With this in mind, please accept, Professor, the commemorative
pontifi cal medal for the year just ended, as a sign of homage from this sacred dicastery, which
will always be happy—if the occasion should arise—to be of usefulness to you. Please accept,
Professor, the expression of my very personal and unchanged esteem, as well as my respectful
wishes.
Yours devotedly,
Eugene Tisserant, Cardinal Secretary/G. Cesarini, Assessor
From Vatican City, 14 January 1939”
Given the circumstances and the timing of its writing, this letter is a document of a historic nature. It may
be noted that it says that the dicastery would be happy to be able to be of usefulness; this initiative—since
my father had not been asking for anything—takes on a particular value, not merely theoretical but also
practical.
Mendes mentions how, because of British foreign policy, it was extremely diffi cult to obtain entry visas for
Palestine, and so his father appealed to the Vatican for help. Although a visa for Latin America might have
been the Vatican’s fi rst choice, nevertheless eff orts were made on Mendes’s behalf, and the desired visa to
Palestine was obtained in 1939. “I have preserved in my personal archives the letters of the Secretary of State,
Cardinal Maglione; of the apostolic Nuncio to Switzerland, Archbishop Filippo Bernardini; of the Apostolic
Delegate to Palestine, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Testa; of the commissioner for the Jerusalem district, and
other ranking fi gures, who were involved with these visas—and there is even a letter from Cardinal Pacelli
himself” (p. 25).
See, for example: Yagil Limore, Chrétiens et Juifs sous Vichy (1940–1944)
Sauvetage et désobéissance civile (Pads; Cerf, 2005, pp. 300–302).
Source: Pope Pius XII and World War II: The Documented Truth
