Hello, welcome to while we're added, a new series of occasional interviews.

I'll be inviting interesting and thoughtful friends of first things to my editor's desk.

We'll discuss what's going on in the world, theology, literature, the arts, and, of course,

that fractious realm known as politics.

Here at First Things, nothing is off limits.

I'm Rusty Reno, the editor of First Things magazine.

This is While We're at it.

Hello, folks. Welcome to the editor's desk, and I'm really delighted today to have Michael Knowles with me to talk about Pius the 12th. He has a new video out that it's Pius the 12 12th and Hitler, right? Is that the title of the...

Yes, the Pope and the Fuhrer, the secret Vatican files of World War II.

And it tries to educate the public about the truth, about a much maligned figure, Pius I.

12th, who was Pope from 1939 to 1958.

Am I getting that right?

I'll take your word for it.

I think, yeah, that sounds about right.

But he's, he, he was, well, as so many figures in the middle of the 20th century, the traumatic events of World War I, Great Depression, Social upheaval, and then, of course, World War II in the Holocaust, he's a major player in this defining moment of the 20th century.

And as is the case, I suppose, we should maybe not be

surprised that people contend over every one of those figures and Pius Taltly one of them.

Well, what was your, what was your, like, why, why, why was he controversial in the first place?

He was controversial, not because of anything he did or even what his contemporaries said.

He was controversial because of what propagandists said about him, really decades later.

It's kind of funny that one even needs to correct the record because there was not really

controversy at the time.

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