“Spiritually we are all Semites.”

Today in 1937 marks the day that Pope Pius XI issued his encyclical condemning Nazi national and racial theories, Mit brennender sorge (“with burning anxiety”). In 1933 the Holy See had signed a Concordat with Nazi Germany, but the Church’s relationship with the Nazis was never a pleasant or an easy one. Historian Eamon Duffy writes: “Pius XI viewed with horror the claims of the dictatorship to the absolute submission of their subjects, and he detested the racial doctrine which underlay Nazism.” By 1937, the Vatican had evidence of Nazi attacks on the Church’s freedom of movement in Germany. Pius XI’s encyclical had to be smuggled into Germany. It denounced specific government actions against the Church in violation of the 1933 Concordat, and it went on to condemn the “idolatrous cult” with its “national religion” and its “myth of race and blood.” While affirming the validity of the Hebrew Scriptures, he stressed that the Church was a home “for all peoples and all nations.” The encyclical certainly dispelled the myth of a Fascist pope, and in 1938 Pius declared, “Spiritually we are all Semites.” Before his death he was planning to issue and encyclical condemning anti-Semitism. When Benito Mussolini heard of the pontiff’s passing, he said, “At last, that stubborn old man is dead.”