Hitler's Pope
The Secret History of Pius XII
Chapter One
The Pacellis
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Eugenio Pacelli was described routinely, during his pontificate and after
his death, as a member of the Black Nobility. The Black Nobles were a
small group of aristocratic families of Rome who had stood by the
popes following the seizure of their dominions in the bitter struggle for
the creation of the nation-state of Italy. The Pacellis, intensely loyal as
they were to the papacy, were hardly aristocrats. Eugenio Pacelli's family
background was respectable but modest, rooted on his father's side in a
rural backwater close to Viterbo, a sizable town fifty miles north of
Rome. At the time of Pacelli's bir ... read full excerpt from Hitler's Pope ebook
