Eugenio Maria Pacelli was elected Pope in the third ballot, on March 2, 1939. By this time I had entered an underground seminary in Mexico and was 12 years of age, and from then on, till his death at Castel Gandolfo on October 9, 1958, I keenly followed his doctrinal and pastoral activities.
I remember how fervently I prayed that he succeed in his struggle to prevent the outbreak of war, when I heard his radio broadcast in August 1939, pleading for peace. On September 1, 1939 Germany invaded Poland. Pius’s first encyclical Summi Pontificatus called upon humanity to restore God to His rightful place. He maintained a position of neutrality in the long war but spoke out in favour of peace and, more importantly, devoted all available resources to ease the suffering of refugees through the Pontifical Aid Commission.
In 1943, when the regime of Mussolini fell and Rome was occupied by Nazi troops, Vatican City was opened to a flood of refugees, including Jews. Pius has been criticized for failing to speak out against the indescribable treatment of Jews by Nazi Germany should an attack on him be orchestrated. On the contrary, the Vatican churches and papal properties were opened to provide safe shelter. There were 15,000 Jews at Castel Gandolfo alone, and thousands more at nearly 200 different sites belonging to the Vatican.
The Pope also denounced Nazi policies and atrocities. He believed that more explicit and provocative moves would be dangerous especially since Hitler had made certain threats about removing the Pontiff from the Vatican.
Millions of Catholics, including nuns and priests died in the Holocaust.
The Church in Nazi-occupied lands was also being severely persecuted. Millions of Catholics, including nuns and priests died in the Holocaust. After Rome’s liberation, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Dr. Israel Zolli, expressed his immense gratitude to Pius XII for his bravery and for having saved so many Jews in very difficult circumstances. Dr. Zolli entered the Church soon after, dying a Catholic in 1956.
On the day of my priestly ordination, December 22, 1951, I received a message which I keep with deep sentiment: “To my beloved son, Pedro Lopez-Gallo, I impart my paternal blessing”.
But what personally touched me, was that he called me to be part of his staff at the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, the Appeal Court of the Holy See, where I worked for 25 years.
In October 1957, Pius XII fell ill at his summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, and doctors diagnosed his condition as serious. I was with Cardinal Eugene Tisserant in his home in Nancy, his birthplace in France. On Tuesday, October 7, at 3:30 a.m. I was awakened by the phone. It was Sr. Pasqualina, the Pope’s housekeeper, asking for the Cardinal. “The Pope is dying. You must return at once,” she told him. He immediately called President Charles De Gaulle who promised to send a military plane to take us to Rome.
From Rome airport we drove quickly to Castel Gandolfo. The Cardinal administered the last rites to the Pope and together they prayed: “Soul of Christ, sanctify me … “
Next morning, three newspapers announced wrongly that the Pope had died the previous day, but the real time of death was after midnight when a heart attack ended his brief final agony. Pius XII died at 3:52 a.m. on Thursday, October 9, 1958. He was 82 years old, and 19 years as the successor of Peter.
A veil of sadness descended on my soul.
A veil of sadness descended on my soul. I wanted to die too, but there was Vatican protocol to be followed and all the bureaucratic tradition fell on the shoulders of Tisserant during the “Sede Vacante”.
Pius XII had left all the highest positions unfilled. There was no camerlengo to summon all the cardinals to the conclave to elect a new pope, and there was no secretary of state. For many, Msgr. Giovanni Montini, Archbishop of Milan, was the “papabile” most suitable to succeed Pius XII, but he was not a cardinal therefore he could not enter the conclave.
Tisserant appointed Cardinal Benedetto Masella the new camerlengo. There were 52 cardinals in the world, but two of them were in prison under the Soviet and Communist regimes – Cardinal Luigi Stepinac from Zagreb, the old Yugoslavia, and Cardinal Tien Ken-sin Archbishop of Peking.
To complicate matters, Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, Patriarch of Venice, presented himself as a candidate and asked for votes. He called Cardinal Tisserant, but the French cardinal did not agree to meet him – “Every cardinal is a candidate. Nobody should campaign. Tell him I will speak to him after the election.”
As it happened, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was elected under the name of John XXIII, in spite of his advanced age of 77. His victory was a shock, and rumour said that he would be a “transition” pope. He reigned for only 5 years but in this short time he accomplished the greatest changes in the history of the Church.