Good Shepherd or Bad Samaritan?: Pius XII and the Holocaust

As mentioned back in October , international debating forum Intelligence Squared  invited John Julius Norwich, Geoffrey Robertson, Ronald Rychlak, and First Things regular William Doino to speak on the contentious motion, ” Pius XII did too little to save the Jews from the Holocaust ” on November 14 in London.

Each speaker was given about ten minutes to make his argument (with Norwich and Robertson in the affirmative and Doino and Rychlak in the negative), after which audience members were allowed to pose questions. A vote was taken both before and after the debate: before any arguments were made, the count stood 146 in the affirmative, 41 in the negative, and 170 undecided, and afterward 227 in the affirmative, 103 in the negative, and 28 undecided.

You can watch the entire debate below:

or just Doino’s remarks (he spoke directly after Norwich , and so first spends some time rebutting some of his claims):

Doino, author of The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII , has written in defense of Pius XII for First Things   here  and with Professor Rychlak here . Much has been written about the controversial WWII primate, some of which can be found right here in our archives.