fme_700504 - VATICAN - PIE XII (Eugenio Pacelli) Médaille, 450e anniversaire de la fondation du corps des gardes suisses

VATICAN - PIUS XII (Eugenio Pacelli)

(1939-1958)

Born in 1876, Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli was elected pope on March 2, 1939, just a few months before the start of the Second World War, and succeeded Pius XI under the name of Pius XII (in Latin Pius XII, in Italian Pio XII ). Coming from a family of lawyers attached to the Holy See, and noticed from the age of 25 by a secretary of the Secretariat of State (Vatican Ministry of Foreign Affairs), he successively became nuncio in Bavaria then, in 1920, in Berlin, and, in 1930, Secretary of State. During the 1920s, he prepared a Concordat between the Vatican and Germany, but the text was not signed until six months after Hitler's arrival at the Chancellery, on July 20, 1933. During the Second World War, he condemned moderately Hitlerian ideology in fear that the Nazis would retaliate by persecuting German worshipers and clergy. Although having enjoyed great popularity during his pontificate and after his death, he was the subject of posthumous criticisms which will call into question his action during the world conflict and his attitude towards the Jews..