The Popes Against the Jews

The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism

By: David I. Kertzer

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

A groundbreaking historical study based on documents previously locked in the Vatican’s secret archives: The Popes Against the Jews graphically shows how the Catholic Church helped make the Holocaust possible.

Pope John Paul II, as part of his effort to improve Catholic-Jewish relations, himself called for a clear-eyed historical investigation into any possible link between the Church and the Holocaust. An important sign of his commitment was the decision to allow the distinguished historian David I. Kertzer, a specialist in Italian history, to be one of the first scholars given access to long-sealed Vatican archives.

The result is a book filled with shocking revelations. It traces the Vatican’s role in the development of modern anti-Semitism from the 19th century up to the outbreak of the Second World War. Kertzer shows why all the recent attention given to Pope Pius XII’s failure to publicly protest the slaughter of Europe’s Jews in the war misses a far more important point. What made the Holocaust possible was groundwork laid over a period of decades. In this campaign of demonization of the Jews - identifying them as traitors to their countries, enemies of all that was good, relentlessly pursuing world domination - the Vatican itself played a key role, as is shown here for the first time.

Despite its focus, this is not an anti-Catholic book. It seeks a balanced judgment and an understanding of the historical forces that led the Church along the path it took.

Inevitably controversial, written with devastating clarity and dispassionate authority, The Popes Against the Jews is a book of the greatest importance.

©2007 David I. Kertzer (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Without sanctimony or melodrama but with meticulous documentation, David I. Kertzer tells a sickening story. The Popes Against the Jews is at once the calm, patient lesson of a born history teacher and an iron to burn scars in the mind." (Jack Miles, author of God: A Biography)

"David Kertzer's provocative new book challenges the widely accepted distinction between Catholic anti-Judaism and modern anti-Semitism. He moves beyond recent attacks on the Vatican's record during WWII, indicting not just Pius XII but the entire tradition out of which he emerged. Many will disagree with Kertzer's conclusions, but no one will be able to ignore this disturbing history of the Papacy and the Jews in the modern era." (Brian Porter, Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan and author of When Nationalism Began to Hate)

"Once again Kertzer has produced impressive evidence of the part played by the papacy in the growth of anti-Semitism in the twentieth century. Painful as his historical narrative may be for Catholics, it is a necessary prelude to a true reconciliation between the Catholic Church and Judaism." (John Cornwell, author of Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII)

We the People need to read this!

I am thankful someone has done some valuable research in the Vatican Archives & made it public knowledge. Now it is know for sure that it is not the Jews who want to rule the world but the Popes & their magisterium.

A compelling work of brilliant scholarship

Any student of Holocaust history must read or listen to this book. It is a riveting expose of Vatican & papal anti-Semitism. The narration is outstanding.

Actively frightening

Eye-opening, disheartening, maddening, and sobering. And when read within the context of human’s willingness if not eagerness to hate anyone not like themselves, actively frightening.

Sad legacy of Catholicism

This book is a repudiation of all attempted whitewashing of catholic complicity in modern anti Semitism-including nazism

Kertzer brilliantly demonstrates that catholic anti Semitism was a product of a modern and virulent strain of church sanctioned anti semitism-led by popes, future popes and those close to the pope

Kertzer - using the Vatican’s own archives - traces many of the most caustic and inhumane anti Semitic tropes, including Protocols of the Elders of Zion, jewish domination, blood libels and jewish conspiracies-back to the church, which were either created by the church or promulgated by the church.

It is sad and hypocritical, though, sadly, not shocking, that an institution that preaches confession of sin as part of forgiveness cannot bring itself to confess its own sins.

A truly shameful history, the repercussion of which we continue to live with to this day.

Shocking and Disheartening

I knew about the blood libel and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion but did not realize the Catholic Church’s active role in promoting these falsehoods. This book should give pause to those who want to return to pre-Vatican Ii “traditional” Catholicism.

A stunning expose.

I was born in Spokane, Washington in 1950 and educated in Catholic elementary and high schools. I have no memory of being exposed in daily life to anti-Semitism, and so it was stunning to listen to this overwhelming evidence of shameful conduct toward the Jewish people by church leaders. By the time I was 12 I had rejected Catholicism, but still had fond memories of my teachers. While I cannot blame them for what happened in the centuries leading up to at least 1945, I do feel shame at being associated, even without adult consent, with the church. This book was an awesome, if quite painful, experience. Brilliantly written and wonderfully read, I recommend it to everyone.

An objective assessment of one Christendom’s greatest moral failures

David Kertzer is a thorough, impassioned and objective researcher. He is also an excellent writer who is able to present these often disturbing and tragic historical narratives in a compelling manner. Christendom in general and the Catholic Church in particular has managed to reinvent itself in the post-WWII era without ever coming to terms or fully acknowledging its culpability in centuries worth of oppression of the Jewish people.

Don't Want to Believe It's True

Is this how my Catholic friends' families viewed us? We were the big boogie men.

Very informative

The book is well thought out and gives a clear and knowledgeable view of the roll of the Holy See in modern antisemitism. It serves as a painful reminder that constant vigilance is always required.