(no subject)

For the rest, Pacelli's conduct was marked by serial paradoxes. At an early stage of the war, he showed readiness to aid a plot to overthrow Hitler; yet he did not protest against the invasion of Poland. He failed to warn Rome's ghetto Jews of their imminent round-up in 1943, even though many religious houses were hiding Jewish people at this time. At the liberation of Rome, Pacelli warmly greeted Allied troops of many nationalities in St Peter's Basilica, while requesting that the American authorities ban black troops from the Holy See lest they debauch Roman womanhood. On the ecclesial front, he advanced biblical studies and reformed the liturgy; yet he quashed the new French movement for theological renewal, and banned the worker priest movement. He failed to excommunicate Hitler or Nazi Catholics, but enthusiastically excommunicated Italian Communists after the war.