Public statements of Pope Pius XII on the Holocaust

The public statements of Pope Pius XII on the Holocaust, or lack thereof, are one of the most controversial elements of the historical debate about Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust. Pius XII's statements have been scrutinized as much, if not more, than his actions during the same period. Pius XII's statements, both public and private, are quite well documented in the Vatican Secret Archives; eleven volumes of documents from his papacy were published between 1965 and 1981 in Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. Many of Pope Pius XII's critics have alleged "silence" by the pontiff during The Holocaust. Some of Pius XII's defenders have contested whether he was silent, while others have instead argued that to speak out would have been useless or counterproductive. According to Prof. Michael Phayer, "the question of the pope's silence has become the focus of intense historical debate and analysis". The term "Holocaust" had been used since the Middle Ages, and was used by contemporaries during World War II, although it did not come to refer exclusively to the genocide of the Jews in scholarly writing until the 1960s. Pius XII used the term "holocaust" twice in his encyclicals, but used it in its religious meaning, not referring to the historical event. The term "genocide" was not coined until 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish legal scholar. Much scrutiny has focused on whether Pius XII specifically identified the perpetrators or victims; many of his more ambiguous statements, which make no reference to Nazi Germany or the Jews, have been argued to apply to the Holocaust by some of his supporters. Many of Pius XII's more important writings and speeches were not given in English, and some of his words have roughly been translated as "race", "creed", and "blood". A far wider range of his speeches referred generally to "violence", "suffering" or the victims of war.