A portrait of Father Gumpel -.
He felt he was somehow “The living memory of Pius XII”, the Pope whom he had met “closely” as a young Jesuit teacher at the Germanic College and of whom he often evoked “the affability and the ability to listen”. But above all he considered himself the last witness of the many gestures of “hidden charity” made by “his” Pope in Rome occupied by the Nazis in 1943, after the death in 2014 of the postulator of Pacelli’s beatification cause, his friend and brother Paolo Molinari, of the French historian Pierre Blet, of Sister Margherita Marchione, who passed away last year.
We can thus condense the authoritative figure of Father Peter Gumpel, historian (by training he was also a theologian) and Jesuit of German origin, who died yesterday morning in Rome in the infirmary of the General Curia of the Jesuits “San Pietro Canisio” . On November 15 (he was born in Hanover) he would have turned 99 and had been rapporteur for the cause of beatification of Pius XII since 1983. After his priestly ordination in 1952 he obtained his doctorate in 1964 at the Pontifical Gregorian University. Later he was professor of History and Theology of Catholic Spirituality at the Gregorian. He then collaborated – from 1972 to 1983 – with the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
Pius XII in Rome in the San Lorenzo district 1944 -.
Coming from a family persecuted due to the open opposition shown to Hitler and his regime and forced to flee first to France and then to the Netherlands, he had dedicated his life to dismantling the “black legend” on the alleged silences of Pius XII and to defend the Pope (of whom he kept many pictures in his studio) above all from the theatrical caricature staged in 1963 by the playwright Rolf Hochhuth with Il Vicario. On the mandate of Paul VI, the Ignatian religious had had the honor, since 1965, of accessing all the documentation on the long pontificate of Pius XII (1939-1958) kept and then classified in the then secret Vatican Archive (today Apostolic Archive). A privilege that was very similar to the one always granted by Pope Montini to the four Jesuit historians Angelo Martini, Burkhart Schneider, Robert Graham and Pierre Blet, authors of the monumental publication in 12 volumes Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Second World Wars which allowed to reveal how Pius XII spent his diplomatic action often hidden and far from the spotlight in favor of persecuted Jews.
In the interviews granted to our newspaper, Gumpel had told how much Pacelli had done his utmost for the “cause of the Jewish people” and also in support of the displaced people of his hometown and of which he was bishop: Rome. «His historical secretary, the Jesuit father Robert Leiber, confirmed to me that the Pope used a good part of his personal fortune to help the Jews – the writer had revealed in 2020 -. Certainly singular is the thesis of the Jewish scholar Sir Martin Gilbert who demonstrated through his essays that Pacelli most likely saved more than 100,000 Jews in the world, paying out of his own pocket for many journeys of hope from Germany to Portugal or Brazil “.
Father Gumpel in his long life – he who had been among the curators with Carthusian expertise of the positio of the cause of beatification – had rejoiced in 2009 when Pacelli was declared venerable under the pontificate of Benedict XVI. He treasured as a relic of the heart the fact that he had collected for the canonical process the testimony of the historical collaborator of Pacelli, Sister Pascalina Lehnert. He died in the days when the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council occurs. Once he had confided to the writer: “Pius XII too had thought of a Council to complete the unfinished work of Vatican I”.
But above all he had this wish: “It doesn’t matter if I’m still alive; however I know that one day Pius XII will be raised to the honor of the altars and proclaimed a saint ».
He was 98 years old. Farewell to Gumpel, the Jesuit who “defended” Pius XII