CHURCH OF SPIES: The Pope's secret war against Hitler
By Mark Riebling. Scribe Publications. $35.

The author of Church of Spies, Mark Riebling, paints a vivid picture of two critical events in the year 1939.

In March of that year, Eugenio Pacelli was enthroned as Pope Pius XII. It was a time of deep crisis with Hitler having seized Czechoslovakia the year before. With the shadow of the swastika looming over Europe the cardinals chose a political pope, a man with a deep piety but with a long career in the papal diplomatic service and with a profound knowledge of political realities.

On August 22, 1939, Hitler called his generals to his private Bavarian mountain retreat and told them that he had decided to invade Poland within a week.

What Hitler then went on to say shocked even the generals. He said that special units would be formed to liquidate thousands of Catholic priests, the systematic extermination of the Polish clergy. No mercy would be shown to them.

At the back of the room was the chief of German military intelligence (Abwehr), Admiral Canaris, taking notes.  At that time Hitler and his High Command trusted Canaris but in fact Canaris was even then a double agent. Canaris, with a distinguished war record, hated Hitler and in the years that followed used his trusted position to feed information to Hitler's enemies, especially the Vatican.

Meanwhile, the newly chosen Pope was wrestling with the existential problem which faced the Church yet again, how to be a spiritual institution in a brutally political world. As German atrocities in Poland unfolded he issued an encyclical Darkness over the Earth. The blunt words of this document, condemning Nazi Germany, startled and impressed the world.

But it was not to last. The Pope would not use the word "Jew" in public again until 1945.

His silence in the face of Nazi atrocities has trashed his reputation ever since and branded him "Hitler's Pope" As this splendid book puts it: During the world's greatest moral crisis the Pope seemed at a loss for words.

Yet there is another side to the story. We learn why Hitler wanted the Pope kidnapped or killed. Far from being "Hitler's lackey", Pius XII was a very active anti-Nazi with a ring of spies at his direction. Whether this book will help to restore the reputation of the wartime Pope each reader must decide. Church of Spies is a fascinating contribution to this debate.

Robert Willson is an Anglican priest and a regular Canberra Times reviewer.