Criticism of Cornwell's Work
A major response to Hitler's Pope came from University of Mississippi law professor Ronald J. Rychlak in his 2000 book on the subject, Hitler, the War, and the Pope. Rychlak was acknowledged by the Vatican to have been given special access to their closed archives for his research.
Rychlak disagreed with Cornwell's claim of having found a "time bomb letter", arguing that the letter in question had actually been written not by Pacelli but by his assistant, and moreover had been fully published and discussed in a 1992 book by Emma Fattorini (a highly respected docent at the University of Rome). With respect to Cornwell's allegations of antisemitism, Rychlak stated that "When Pius XII died in 1958, there were tributes from virtually every Jewish group around the world".
Rychlak also alleged that Cornwell manipulated the photograph on the front cover of the American edition of the book, and incorrectly dated the photo as having been taken in March 1939, the month that Pacelli was made Pope. Rychlak charged that this had been deliberately in order to give the impression that Pius had just visited Hitler when, in fact, the photo had been taken in 1927 as Pius was leaving a reception held for German President Paul von Hindenburg. Robert Royal has also repeated this allegation.
In his 2005 book The Myth of Hitler's Pope, the historian and rabbi David G. Dalin countered Cornwell. Dalin suggested that Yad Vashem should honor Pope Pius XII as a "Righteous Gentile," concluding that "he anti-papal polemics of ex-seminarians like Garry Wills and John Cornwell...of ex-priests like James Carroll, and or other lapsed or angry liberal Catholics exploit the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the Catholic Church today." Dalin called the book's conclusions "unverified" and "strongly anti-religious". Eugene Fisher, who has a PhD in Hebrew culture and education, said it was a "sad commentary on the secular media that this anti-Catholic screed was ever published".
In his book The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice, Philip Jenkins said that Hitler's Pope could not be understood except as a series of "very low blows against the modern Catholic Church, and specifically the papacy of John Paul II."
Ken Woodward, writing in Newsweek, stated that Hitler's Pope has "errors of fact and ignorance of context appear on almost every page."
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