Pope Pius XII
Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli
Pope · 1876–1958
Who is Pope Pius XII?
Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli was born in Rome in 1876 into a family with a long history of service to the Holy See. He trained as a canon lawyer and diplomat, serving as papal nuncio to Germany during the 1920s before becoming Cardinal Secretary of State under Pope Pius XI. He was elected pope in March 1939, just months before the outbreak of the Second World War, and led the Church through the entirety of the conflict, a period that remains the subject of extensive historical debate regarding the Vatican's wartime diplomacy and its response to the Holocaust. After the war, he presided over a significant expansion of the College of Cardinals and defined the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary as dogma in 1950. He was an early advocate of using radio broadcasts to communicate directly with Catholics worldwide and addressed numerous modern scientific and social questions across his many encyclicals and allocutions. He died in 1958 after a nineteen-year pontificate.
Sources: Pope Pius XII, radio broadcast, 24 August 1939 · Pope Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus, apostolic constitution, 1 November 1950 · Frank J. Coppa, The Life and Pontificate of Pope Pius XII (2013)