Pope Pius XII Birth Anniversary

Pius XII, born on 2 March 1876 in Rome, Italy was pope, bishop of Rome and head of the Roman Catholic Church, who had a long, tumultuous, and controversial pontificate (1939–58). During his reign as pope, the papacy confronted the ravages of World War II (1939–45), the abuses of the Nazi, fascist, and Soviet regimes, the horror of the Holocaust, the challenge of postwar reconstruction, and the threat of communism and the Cold War. Deemed an ascetic and "saint of God"  by his admirers, Pius was criticized by others for his alleged “public silence” in the face of genocide and his apparently contradictory policies of impartiality during World War II but fervent anticommunism during the postwar period.