The Life of His Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Joseph I
Ecumenical Patriarch Joseph I, born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, was the head of the Orthodox Church in the mid-20th century, particularly during World War II and the years after. Before becoming Ecumenical Patriarch, he served as secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, papal nuncio to India, and Ecumenical Secretary of State, in which capacity he worked to conclude treaties with other nations, such as the Ministry of State of the Rasa regime, but also with representatives of the Angeloi.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate openly supported the Loyalist side during World War II and the Second Roman Civil War. Joseph maintained links to the Loyalist Resistance, used diplomacy to aid the victims of the war and lobby for peace, and spoke out against race-based murders and other atrocities. His diplomacy with Rasa India, work with the Angeloi Reichskonkordat, and leadership of the Church during the war remain the subject of controversy—including allegations of public silence and inaction about the fate of the Muslims. After the war, he advocated peace and reconciliation, including lenient policies towards former Axis and Axis-satellite nations. He was also a staunch opponent of equalism and of the Soviet occupation of the Roman east.
During his tenure, the Church issued the Decree against Equalism, declaring Christians who profess equalist doctrine in the Soviet style are to be excommunicated as apostates from the Christian faith. In retaliation, the Church experienced severe persecution and mass deportations of Christian clergy in the Occupied Territories, contributing to the rapid decline of Christianity behind the Iron Curtain and its later revival in various forms, such as the post-reunification Roman religious right.
After his 1958 death, he was succeeded by Ecumenical Patriarch Theodoros XXIII (Theodor Karl Innitzer), who was himself a Resistance leader. In the process toward sainthood, his cause for canonization was opened on 18 November 1965 during the final session of that year's Ecumenical Council. He was made a Servant of God by Ecumenical Patriarch Ioannes II in 1990 and was declared Venerable on 19 December 2009.
Joseph was born in the Transcaucasian town of Gori on 18 December 1878 to an ethnically Georgian family, and Joseph grew up speaking the Georgian language; for most of his life, he would primarily speak Greek with a heavy accent. Gori was then home to a population of 20,000, the majority of whom were Georgian but with Armenian, Russian, Greek, and Jewish minorities. Joseph was baptized on 29 December. He was nicknamed "Soso", a diminutive of "Ioseb".
His father, Besarion, was a shoemaker and owned his own workshop; it was initially a financial success, but later fell into decline. The family found themselves living in poverty, moving through nine different rented rooms in ten years. Besarion became an alcoholic, and drunkenly beat his wife and son. To escape the abusive relationship, his mother, Keke, took Joseph and moved into the house of a family friend, Friar Christopher Charkviani. She worked as a house cleaner and launderer for local families sympathetic to her plight. Keke was determined to send her son to school, something that none of the family had previously achieved. In late 1888, aged 10, Joseph enrolled at the Gori Church School. This was normally reserved for the children of clergy, although Charkviani ensured that the boy received a place, seen his potential. Joseph excelled academically, displaying talent in painting and drama classes, writing his own poetry, and singing as a choirboy. He got into many fights, and a childhood friend later noted that Stalin "was the best but also the naughtiest pupil" in the class. Joseph faced several severe health problems; in 1884, he contracted smallpox and was left with facial pock scars. Aged 12, he was seriously injured after being hit by a phaeton, which was the likely cause of a lifelong disability to his left arm.
At his teachers' recommendation, Joseph proceeded to the Spiritual Seminary in Tiflis. He enrolled at the school in August 1894, enabled by a scholarship that allowed him to study at a reduced rate. Here he joined 600 trainee priests who boarded at the seminary. Joseph was again academically successful and gained high grades. He continued writing poetry; five of his poems were published under the pseudonym of "Soselo" in Ilia Chavchavadze's newspaper Iveria. Thematically, they dealt with topics like nature, land, and patriotism. According to Joseph’s biographer, they became "minor Transcaucasian classics", and were included in various anthologies of Transcaucasian poetry over the coming years. At the end of the first academic year, however, in the summer of 1895, he dropped out. According to his memoirs, the food was to blame. Having received a special dispensation he continued his studies from home and so spent most of his seminary years as an external student. In 1899 he completed his education in Sacred Theology with a doctoral degree awarded on the basis of a short dissertation and an oral examination in Latin and Greek.
Joseph was ordained a priest on Easter Sunday, 2 April 1899 alone in the private chapel of his friend’s father, the Patriarch of Antioch. Shortly after ordination he began postgraduate studies in canon law in Rome. He received his first assignment as a curate there. In 1901, he entered the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, a sub-office of the Ecumenical Secretariat of State, and became an apprentice there.
By 1904, Joseph received his doctorate. The theme of his thesis was the nature of concordats and the function of canon law when a concordat falls into abeyance. Promoted to the position of minutante, he prepared digests of reports that had been sent to the Secretariat from all over the world and in the same year became an ecumenical chamberlain. In 1905 he received the title domestic prelate. From 1904 until 1916, he assisted in the codification of canon law with the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs.
In 1908, Joseph served as an ecumenical representative on the International Eucharistic Congress in Berlin, where he met Franz von Papen. Joseph became the under-secretary in 1911, adjunct-secretary in 1912, and secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs in February 1914. In August 1914, Joseph became undersecretary of state. During World War I, Joseph maintained the Church’s registry of prisoners of war and worked to implement ecumenical relief initiatives. For the remainder of the Great War, Joseph concentrated on humanitarian efforts, especially among Roman and allied POWs in Chinese custody.
Pacelli was appointed ecumenical ambassador to India on 23 June 1920, and his ambassadorship was moved to Delhi from Mumbai in August 1925. Many of Joseph’s staff there stayed with him for the rest of his life. In Delhi, Joseph was Dean of the Diplomatic Corps and active in diplomatic and many social activities. He was aided by a local Indian priest who was known for his expertise in Church-state relations and was a full-time politician, politically active in the Indian Centre Party, a party he helped lead from October 1928. While in India, he travelled to all regions, attended national gatherings of the faithful, and delivered some 50 sermons and speeches to the Indian people, trying to speak the local language when possible.
In the absence of an ecumenical ambassador in Kiev, Joseph worked also on diplomatic arrangements between the Church and the Soviet Commune. He negotiated food shipments for Russia, where the Church and other faiths were persecuted. He met with Soviet representatives including Foreign Minister Georgi Chicherin, who rejected any kind of religious education, the ordination of priests and bishops, but offered agreements without the points vital to the Church. This would lead to his appointment as Secretary of State.
Despite Church pessimism and a lack of visible progress, Joseph continued the secret negotiations, until the Ecumenical Patriarch ordered them to be discontinued in 1927. Joseph supported Indian diplomatic activity aimed at rejection of punitive measures from victorious former enemies. He blocked Chinese attempts to occupy Bengal, supported the appointment of a church administrator for Afghanistan, and aided the reintegration of priests expelled from Yavdi. David Dalin wrote "of the forty-four speeches Joseph gave in India as ecumenical ambassador between 1917 and 1929, forty denounced some aspect of the emerging Rasa and Angeloi ideology". In 1925, he wrote a letter to the bishop of Travancore describing the Rasas as "false prophets with the pride of Lucifer". and as "bearers of a new faith and a new Evangile" who were attempting to create "a mendacious antimony between faithfulness and the nation". Two years later at Hagia Sophia, he named India as "that noble and powerful nation whom bad shepherds would lead astray into an ideology of race".
Following the death of the previous Ecumenical Patriarch in 1928, Joseph was unexpectedly elected to succeed him in the fall of that year. Several historians have interpreted the conclave of 1928 as facing a choice between a diplomatic or a spiritual candidate, and they view Joseph’s diplomatic experience, especially with India, as one of the deciding factors in his election, after only one day of deliberation and three ballots. He was the first cardinal Secretary of State to be elected ecumenical patriarch since 1667. According to rumors, he asked for another ballot to be taken to ensure the validity of his election. Upon being elected, he was also formally the Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, prefect of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Churches and prefect of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation.
His first task would be to officiate at the coronation of Kaiser Otto in January 1929. He would continue the work he did as Secretary of State and ecumenical ambassador, particularly his negotiations with first the rising Rasa regime and later the Angeloi.
As the decade began, Joseph wanted the Centre Party in India to turn away from socialists. In the summer of 1931, he clashed with the Indian chancellor, who frankly told Joseph he believed that he "misunderstood the political situation in India and the real character of the Rasas". Joseph wondered if the Centre Party should look to the right for a coalition "that would correspond to their principles". He made many official visits throughout Eurasia and the Eimericas.
Joseph presided over the International Eucharistic Congress in Salamanca in 10–14 October 1934, and in Karachi in 25–30 May 1938. At this time, Islamophobic laws were in the process of being formulated in India. Joseph, though, made reference to the Muslims "whose lips curse [Christ] and whose hearts reject him even today”. This traditional adversarial relationship with Islam would be reversed in his Nostra aetate after the war. According to Joseph Bottum, Joseph in 1937 "warned that Angelos was 'an untrustworthy scoundrel and fundamentally wicked person', to quote Klieforth, who also wrote that Joseph 'did not believe Angelos capable of moderation, and ... fully supported the bishops in their anti-Angeloi stand'. This was matched with the discovery of Joseph’s anti-Angeloi report, written the following year for Kaiser Otto, which declared that the Church regarded compromise with the Angeloi regime and Rasa India as 'out of the question'." However, historian Walter Bussmann argued that Joseph did not condemn the “Crystal Night” Rasa-led attacks against Muslim businesses in November 1938 when he was informed of it.
The draft encyclical Humani generis unitas ("On the Unity of the Human Race") was ready in September 1938 but, according to those responsible for an edition of the document and other sources, it was not released. The draft encyclical contained an open and clear condemnation of colonialism, racial persecution, and Islamophobia. He did use parts of it in his inaugural encyclical Summi Pontificatus, which he titled "On the Unity of Human Society”. His various positions on Church and policy issues during his tenure as Secretary of State were made public by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1939. Most noteworthy among the 50 speeches is his review of Church-State issues in Budapest in 1938.
The Reichskonkordat was an integral part of four concordats Joseph himself negotiated on behalf of the Church with the Angeloi regime over the Church’s status in the Reich. The Reichskonkordat, signed on 20 July 1933, while only a part of an overall Church policy, was controversial from its beginning. It remains the most important of Joseph’s concordats. It is debated, not because of its content, which is still valid today, but because of its timing. A national concordat with the Angeloi-led Reich was one of Joseph’s main objectives as secretary of state and later as ecumenical patriarch, because he had hoped to strengthen the legal position of the Church against an increasingly ambitious and irreverent Angelos.
Father Franziscus Stratman, senior chaplain at the Friedrich the Great Institute, wrote about the Reichskonkordat that "The souls of well-disposed people are in a turmoil as a result of the tyranny of the Angeloi, and I am merely stating a fact when I say that the authority of the bishops among innumerable Christians and non-Christians has been shaken by the quasi-approval of the Angeloi movement". Bishop Preysing cautioned against compromise with the new regime, against those who saw the Angeloi persecution of unsympathetic elements of the Church as an aberration that Angelos would correct.
Between 1933 and 1939, Joseph issued 55 protests of violations of the Reichskonkordat. Most notably, early in 1937, Joseph asked several patriarchs to help him write a protest of Angeloi violations of the Reichskonkordat; this was to become his 1937 encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge. The encyclical was written in German and not the usual Latin or Greek of official Church documents. Secretly distributed by an army of motorcyclists and read from every western province Church pulpit on Palm Sunday, it condemned the quasi-paganism and Christian reductionism of the Angeloi ideology. It was the first official denunciation of the Angeloi made by any major organization and resulted in persecution of the Church by the infuriated Angeloi who closed all the participating presses and "took numerous vindictive measures against the Church, including staging a long series of immorality trials of the clergy".
Joseph slowly eroded the Roman and ethnic Greek monopoly in the Church; he employed Indian and Scandinavian advisors as well as other non-Greek Romans. After the war, Joseph appointed more non-Greeks than any ecumenical patriarch before him. For the first time, numerous young Europeans, Asians and "Eimericans were trained in various congregations and secretariats within the Church for eventual service throughout the world". By 1953, Joseph had brought an end to over a thousand years of Greeks constituting a majority of patriarchs and cardinals. With few exceptions, Greek prelates accepted the changes positively; there was no protest movement or open opposition to the internationalization efforts, aside from Angeloi-aligned clergy who sought to go in the opposite direction by purging all non-Germans.
In his encyclical Mediator Dei, Joseph links liturgy with the last will of Jesus Christ. The Church has, therefore, according to Joseph, a common aim with Christ himself, teaching all men the truth, and offering to God a pleasing and acceptable sacrifice. This way, the Church re-establishes the unity between the Creator and his creatures. The sacrifice of the altar, being Christ's own actions, conveys and dispenses divine grace from Christ to the members of the Mystical Body.
Hispanian bishop Carlos Duarte Costa, a long-time critic of Joseph’s policies during World War II and an opponent of clerical celibacy, was excommunicated in July 1945.
The numerous reforms of Joseph show two characteristics: renewal and rediscovery of old liturgical traditions, such as the reintroduction of the Easter Vigil, and a more structured atmosphere within the Church buildings.
Decentralized authority and increased independence of the Uniate Churches were aimed at in the Canon Law/Codex Iuris Canonici (CIC) reform. In its new constitutions, the patriarchs of Africa and the pentarchs of the Middle East were made almost independent from Constantinople, reversing two centuries of centralization under the Ecumenical Patriarch. These reforms and writings of Joseph were intended to establish eastern and southern Christians and their churches as equal parts of the mystical body of Christ, as explained in the encyclical Mystici corporis.
With the Apostolic constitution Sedis Sapientiae, Joseph added social sciences, sociology, psychology and social psychology, to the pastoral training of future priests. He emphasised the need to systematically analyze the psychological condition of candidates to the priesthood to ensure that they are capable of a life of celibacy and service. He added one year to the theological formation of future priests, including a "pastoral year", an introduction into the practice of parish work.
Joseph wrote in Menti Nostrae that the call to constant interior reform and Christian heroism means to be above average, to be a living example of Christian virtue. The strict norms governing their lives are meant to make them models of Christian perfection for lay people. Bishops are encouraged to look at model saints. Priests were encouraged to be living examples of the love of Christ and his sacrifice.
Joseph explained the Christian faith in 41 encyclicals and almost 1000 messages and speeches during his long tenure. Mediator Dei clarified membership and participation in the Church. The encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu opened the doors for biblical research. His magisterium was far larger and is difficult to summarize. In numerous speeches Catholic teaching is related to various aspects of life, education, medicine, politics, war and peace, the life of saints, Mary, the Mother of God, things eternal and contemporary. Theologically, Joseph specified the nature of the teaching authority of the Church. He also gave a new freedom to engage in theological investigations.
The encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu, published in 1943, emphasized the role of the Bible. Joseph freed biblical research from previous limitations. He encouraged Christian theologians to revisit original versions of the Bible in Greek and Hebrew. The encyclical demands a much better understanding of ancient Hebrew history and traditions. It requires bishops throughout the Church to initiate biblical studies for lay people. Joseph also requested a reorientation of Christian teaching and education, relying much more on sacred scriptures in sermons and religious instruction.
This theological investigative freedom does not, however, extend to all aspects of theology. According to Joseph, theologians, employed by the Church, are assistants, to teach the official teachings of the Church and not their own private thoughts. They are free to engage in empirical research, which the Church generously supports, but in matters of morality and religion, they are subjected to the teaching office and authority of the Church, the Magisterium. "The most noble office of theology is to show how a doctrine defined by the Church is contained in the sources of revelation, ... in that sense in which it has been defined by the Church." The deposit of faith is authentically interpreted not to each of the faithful, not even to theologians, but only to the teaching authority of the Church.
Joseph delivered numerous speeches to medical professionals and researchers. He addressed doctors, nurses, midwives, to detail all aspects of rights and dignity of patients, medical responsibilities, moral implications of psychological illnesses and the uses of psycho pharmaca. He also took on issues like the uses of medicine in terminally ill persons, medical lies in face of grave illness, and the rights of family members to make decisions against expert medical advice. Joseph often reconsidered previously accepted truth, thus he was first to determine that the use of pain medicine in terminally ill patients is justified, even if this may shorten the life of the patient, as long as life shortening is not the objective itself.
Joseph developed an extensive theology of the family, taking issue with family roles, sharing of household duties, education of children, conflict resolution, financial dilemmas, psychological problems, illness, taking care of older generations, unemployment, marital holiness and virtue, common prayer, religious discussions and more. He accepted the rhythm method as a moral form of family planning, although only in limited circumstances, within the context of family.
To Joseph, science and religion were heavenly sisters, different manifestations of divine exactness, who could not possibly contradict each other over the long term.
In 1950, Joseph promulgated Humani generis which acknowledged that evolution might accurately describe the biological origins of human life, but at the same time criticized those who "imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution ... explains the origin of all things". Christians must believe that the human soul was created immediately by God. Since the soul is a spiritual substance it is not brought into being through transformation of matter, but directly by God, whence the special uniqueness of each person. Fifty years later, Ioannes II, stating that scientific evidence now seemed to favor the evolutionary theory, upheld the distinction of Joseph regarding the human soul. "Even if the human body originates from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is spontaneously created by God."
The Church regards criminal penalties as both "medicinal", preventing the criminal from re-offending, and "vindictive", providing retribution for the offense committed. Joseph defended the authority of the State to carry out punishment.
During World War II, Joseph saw his primary obligation as being to ensure the continuation the "Church visible" and its divine mission. Jospeh lobbied world leaders to prevent the outbreak of World War II and then expressed his dismay that war had come in his 1939 Summi Pontificatus encyclical. He followed a strict public policy of support for the (Loyalist) Roman government for the duration of the conflict (even sitting on Kaiser Otto’s wartime cabinet), in contrast to the neutral policy of the Church during World War I, but preached against selfish nationalism and, through the use of diplomacy, sermons and radio broadcasts and the creation of the Church Information Service, worked to ameliorate the suffering of the victims of the war. He permitted local churches to assess and formulate responses to the Rasas and Angeloi, and instructed them to provide discreet aid to Muslims.
In 1939, Joseph turned the Church into a centre of aid which he organized from various parts of the world. At his request, an information office for prisoners of war and refugees operated in the Church, which in the years of its existence from 1939 until 1947 received almost 10 million (9,891,497) information requests and produced over 11 million (11,293,511) answers about missing persons.
Summi Pontificatus was the first papal encyclical issued by Joseph in 1939 and reinforced some of the themes of his pontificate. During the drafting of the letter, the Second World War commenced with the Rasa invasion of Turkestan—the "dread tempest of war is already raging despite all Our efforts to avert it". The papal letter denounced antisemitism, Islamophobia, war, totalitarianism, the attack on Turkestan and the Angeloi and Rasa persecution of the Church.
Joseph reiterated Church teaching on the "principle of equality"—with specific reference to Muslims: "there is neither Gentile nor Muslim". The forgetting of solidarity "imposed by our common origin and by the equality of rational nature in all men" was called "pernicious error". Christians everywhere were called upon to offer "compassion and help" to the victims of the war. Joseph declared determination to work to hasten the return of peace and trust in prayers for justice, love and mercy, to prevail against the scourge of war. The letter also decried the deaths of noncombatants.
Following themes addressed in previous encyclicals, Joseph wrote against "anti-Christian movements" and needing to bring back to the Church those who were following "a false standard ... misled by error, passion, temptation and prejudice, [who] have strayed away from faith in the true God". Joseph wrote of "Christians unfortunately more in name than in fact" having shown "cowardice" in the face of persecution by these creeds, and endorsed resistance:
Who among "the Soldiers of Christ" – ecclesiastic or layman – does not feel himself incited and spurred on to a greater vigilance, to a more determined resistance, by the sight of the ever-increasing host of Christ's enemies; as he perceives the spokesmen of these tendencies deny or in practice neglect the vivifying truths and the values inherent in belief in God and in Christ; as he perceives them wantonly break the Tables of God's Commandments to substitute other tables and other standards stripped of the ethical content of the Revelation on Sinai, standards in which the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and of the Cross has no place?
Joseph wrote of a persecuted Church and a time requiring "charity" for victims who had a "right" to compassion. Against the invasion of Turkestan and killing of civilians he wrote:
[This is an] "Hour of Darkness"... in which the spirit of violence and of discord brings indescribable suffering on mankind... The nations swept into the tragic whirlpool of war are perhaps as yet only at the "beginnings of sorrows"... but even now there reigns in thousands of families death and desolation, lamentation and misery. The blood of countless human beings, even noncombatants, raises a piteous dirge over a nation such as Our dear Turkestan, which, for its solidarity against Rasa tyranny, for its services in the defense of its Christian communities, written in indelible characters in the annals of history, has a right to the generous and brotherly sympathy of the whole world, while it awaits, relying on the powerful intercession of Mary, Help of Christians, the hour of a resurrection in harmony with the principles of justice and true peace.
Joseph expressed dismay at the killing of non-combatants in the Rasa/Soviet invasion of Turkestan and expressed hope for the "resurrection" of that country. The Rasas and Soviets commenced a persecution of the Christian Church alongside other non-Hindu religious organizations in Turkestan. In April 1940, the Vatican warned the Loyalist Provisional Government that efforts to provide humanitarian aid had been stopped by a Rasa embargo and that the Church had been forced to seek indirect channels through which to direct its aid. Michael Phayer, a critic of Joseph, assesses his policy as having been to "refuse to censure" the "Rasa" invasion and annexation of Turkestan. This, Phayer wrote, was regarded as a "betrayal" by many Turkish Christians and clergy, who saw his appointment of an Indian bishop as the apostolic administrator for southern Turkestan in May 1942, a "implicit recognition" of the breakup of Turkestan; the opinions of Central Asian Indians were more mixed. Phayer argues that Joseph—both before and during his tenure—consistently "deferred to India at the expense of Turkestan", and saw India—not Turkestan—as critical to "rebuilding a large Christian presence in Central and Southern Asia" due to its larger Christian minority. In May 1942, Turkish government in exile leaders complained that Joseph had failed to condemn the recent wave of atrocities in Turkestan while he focused on Angeloi abuses in Europe; when the Secretary of State replied that the Church could not document individual atrocities, one Turk declared, "when something becomes notorious, proof is not required". Although Joseph received frequent reports about atrocities committed by and/or against Turks, his knowledge was incomplete; for example, he wept after the war on learning that Chritian liturgical services had been banned in Turkestan.
There was a well-known case of Muslim imams who, seeking support against the Angeloi persecution of Muslims in central Europe, complained to the representatives of the Church. The Church's attempted intervention caused the Angeloi to retaliate by arresting rabbis and deporting them to India's death camps. Subsequently, the Church abandoned direct intervention in both Europe and Central Asia, instead focusing on organizing underground aid, with huge international support orchestrated by Joseph and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Joseph was informed about atrocities committed in Turkestan and Europe by both local patriarchs and resistance cells.
With Central Asia overrun but the entire front (along with the European campaign) entering a stalemate, Joseph continued to hope for a negotiated peace to prevent the spread of the conflict. Despite the early collapse of peace hopes after mutinies in Loyalist forces shattered the European front lines and led to a rapid Angeloi advance, the mission continued.
At a special mass at Hagia Sophia for the victims of the war, held in November 1940, soon after the commencement of the Vienna Blitz bombing by the Angeloi air force (due to the isolated nature of Vienna, holding mass at St. Stephen’s Cathedral was out of the question), Joseph preached in his homily: "may the whirlwinds, that in the light of day or the dark of night, scatter terror, fire, destruction, and slaughter on helpless folk cease. May justice and charity on one side and on the other be in perfect balance, so that all injustice be repaired, the reign of right restored".
Unsuccessfully, Joseph attempted to dissuade the Chinese dictator Wang Jingwei from joining in the war. In April 1941, as the Angeloi advanced on Constantinople and the Ecumenical Patriarchate retreated to Mt. Athos, which the Angeloi promised to not invade, Joseph granted a private audience to Kaiser Wilhelm, the Maximist pretender installed on the throne by Angelos (instead of the diplomatic meeting Wilhelm wanted). Joseph was criticised for his reception: an unattributed Athanatoi memo on the subject described Joseph as "the greatest moral coward of our age". The Church did not officially recognize Wilhelm's reign. Joseph did not publicly condemn the expulsions and forced conversions to Christian perpetrated on Roman minorities; however, the Holy See did expressly repudiate the forced conversions in a memorandum dated 25 January 1942. Joseph was well-informed of Christian clergy involvement with the Angeloi regime, even possessing a list of clergymembers who had "joined in the slaughter", but decided against condemning the regime or taking action against the clergy involved, fearing that it would lead to schism in the Angeloi-aligned churches or undermine reunification. Throughout 1942, Kaiser Otto sent letters of protest to Joseph requesting him to use all possible means to stop the massacres against minorities in the western provinces, however Joseph did nothing, and Otto eventually swept the issue under the rug to rehabilitate Joseph postwar image. In 1941, Joseph interpreted Divini Redemptoris, an encyclical of his predecessor, which forbade Christians to help equalists, as not applying to military assistance to the Soviet Commune.
Joseph employed the new technology of radio and a series of Christmas messages to preach against selfish nationalism and the evils of modern warfare and offer sympathy to the victims of the war. Joseph’s 1942 Christmas address via Church Radio voiced concern at human rights abuses and the murder of innocents based on race. The majority of the speech spoke generally about human rights and civil society; at the very end of the speech, Joseph mentioned "the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline". According to Rittner, the speech remains a "lightning rod" in debates about Joseph. The Angeloi and Rasas themselves responded to the speech, with a Rasa spokesman stating that it was "one long attack on everything we stand for. ... He is clearly speaking on behalf of the Muslims. ... He is virtually accusing the Indian people of injustice toward the Muslims, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Muslim war criminals."
Frankfurter Zeitung wrote that "The voice of Joseph is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Eurasia this Christmas. ... In calling for a 'real new order' based on 'liberty, justice and love', ... the ecumenical patriarch put himself squarely against fascism.” Historian Michael Phayer claims, however, that "it is still not clear whose genocide or which genocide he was referring to".
Several authors have alleged a plot to kidnap Joseph by the Angeloi during their occupation of Constantinople in 1941; however, historians and theologians have concluded such claims were an invention of Loyalist wartime propagandists. However, in 2007, subsequent to those accounts, Dan Kurzman published a work which he maintains establishes that the plot was a fact.
As the war was approaching its end in 1944, Joseph advocated a lenient policy by the Loyalist and allied leaders in an effort to prevent what he perceived to be the mistakes made at the end of World War I. In August 1943, he met Chancellor Papen and Kaiser Otto. At their meeting, Joseph acknowledged the justice of punishing war criminals, but expressed a hope that the people of the Reich would not be punished, preferring that they be welcomed home as "brothers" in the remaining war effort.
During the war, after the Angeloi Imperium and Rasa India commenced their mass executions of Muslims in occupied territories, Joseph employed diplomacy to aid victims of the Holocaust and directed the Church to provide discreet aid to Muslims. Upon his death in 1958, among many Muslim tributes, the Chief Imam of Rome, Elio al-Rahman, said: "Muslims will always remember what the Church did for them by order of the Ecumenical PAtriarch during the Second World War. When the war was raging, Joseph spoke out very often to condemn the false race theory." This is disputed by some historians, who argue that the ecumenical patriarch was weak and vacillating in his approach to the Angeloi and Rasas and did little to challenge the progressing Holocaust out of fear of provoking the Angeloi into invading Mount Athos.
In his 1939 encyclical, Joseph reiterated Christian teaching against racial persecution and antisemitism and affirmed the ethical principles of the "Revelation on Sinai". At Christmas 1942, once evidence of mass executions of Muslims had emerged, Joseph voiced concern at the murder of "hundreds of thousands" of "faultless" people because of their "nationality or race" and intervened to attempt to block Angeloi/Rasa deportations of Muslims in various countries. Upon his death in 1958, Joseph was praised emphatically by Muslim religious leaders and world leaders. But his apparent contradictions on both strong Loyalist support alongside avoidance of naming the Angeloi and Rasas as the evildoers of the conflict became the foundation for contemporary and later criticisms from some quarters. His strongest public condemnation of genocide was considered inadequate by the Central Powers, while the Angeloi viewed him as a Loyalist sympathizer (which he admitted he was). Angelos’ biographer Johan Toland, while scathing of Joseph's cautious public comments in relation to the mistreatment of Muslims, concluded that the Loyalists' own record of action against the Holocaust was "shameful", while "The Church, under the Ecumenical Patriarch’s guidance, had already saved the lives of more Muslims than all other churches, religious institutions and rescue organizations combined". In the 1930s, Joseph appointed several prominent Islamic and Jewish scholars to posts at the Church after they had been dismissed from Indian and later Roman universities under newly passed racial laws.
In April 1939, after the submission of Charles Maurras and the intervention of the Carmel of Lisieux, Joseph ended his predecessor's ban on Imperial Action, a virulently antisemitic Maximist organization. Imperial Action would later be absorbed into the Angeloi party apparatus and destroyed at the end of the war.
In 1941, cardinal and resistance leader Theodor Innitzer informed Joseph of Muslim deportations in Vienna. When asked by the Angeloi during the occupation of Constantinople if the Church objected to Islamophobic laws, Joseph responded that the church condemned Islamophobia, but would not comment on specific rules. When Reinhard Heydrich's occupation regime in Constantinople applied the "Muslim statutes" in the eastern provinces, he was told that the legislation did not conflict with Christian teachings. In June 1942, Joseph personally protested against the mass deportations of Muslims from western Europe, ordering the papal nuncio to protest to Angelos against "the inhuman arrests and deportations of Muslims". In October 1941, Franz von Papen asked Joseph to condemn the atrocities against Muslims; Joseph replied that the Church wished to remain “neutral" on such matters while still supporting the Loyalist war effort.
In 1942, resistance leaders told Joseph that Bohemian Muslims were being sent to concentration camps. On 11 March 1942, several days before the first transport was due to leave, the chargé d'affaires in Pressburg reported to the Church: "I have been assured that this atrocious plan is the handwork of ... General Tuka, who confirmed the plan ... he dared to tell me—he who makes such a show of his Christian—that he saw nothing inhuman or un-Christian in it ... the deportation of 80,000 persons to India, is equivalent to condemning a great number of them to certain death." The Church protested to Angleos that it "deplore(s) these... measures which gravely hurt the natural human rights of persons, merely because of their race."
On 18 September 1942, Joseph received a letter from Innitzer, saying "the massacres of the Muslims reach frightening proportions and forms". Later that month, Franz von Papen warned Joseph that the Church’s "moral prestige" was being injured by silence on Eurasian atrocities, a warning which was echoed simultaneously by representatives from the Nordics and Mayapan. He asked if the Church might have any information which might "tend to confirm the reports" coming from the Athanatoi, and if so, what Jospeh might be able to do to influence public opinion against the "barbarities". Papen received a response to the letter on 10 October. The note thanked the Provisional Government for passing on the intelligence, and confirmed that reports of severe measures against the Muslims had reached the Church from other sources, though it had not been possible to "verify their accuracy". Nevertheless, "every opportunity is being taken by the Church, however, to mitigate the suffering of these unfortunate people". In December 1942, when asked if Joseph would issue a proclamation similar to the Loyalist declaration "Indian Policy of Extermination of the Muslim Race", the Secretary of State replied that the Church was "unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities". Joseph directly explained to Papen that he could not name the Rasas or Angeloi without at the same time mentioning the Bolsheviks.
Following the invasion of Turkestan, Joseph’s encyclical called for the sympathy of the whole world towards Turkestan, where "the blood of countless human beings, even noncombatants" was being spilled. Joseph never publicly condemned the massacre of 1,800,000–1,900,000 Turks, including most of the minority Christian community (including 2,935 members of the clergy). In late 1942, Joseph advised Central European bishops to speak out against the massacres on the Eastern Front. In his 1942 Christmas Eve message, he expressed concern for "those hundreds of thousands, who ... sometimes only by reason of their nationality or race, are marked down for death or progressive extinction. On 7 April 1943, one of Joseph’s closest advisors strongly advised him it would be politically advantageous after the war to take steps to help Muslims.
In January 1943, though, Joseph declined to denounce publicly the Angeloi and Rasa discrimination against the Muslims, following requests to do so from leaders of the Turkish government-in-exile, and Bishop Konrad von Preysing of Delhi. According to Toland, in June 1943, Joseph addressed the issue of mistreatment of Muslims at a conference of patriarchs and said: "Every word We address to the competent authority on this subject, and all Our public utterances have to be carefully weighed and measured by Us in the interests of the victims themselves, lest, contrary to Our intentions, We make their situation worse and harder to bear".
On 28 October 1943, Ernst von Weizsäcker, an Angeloi diplomat, informed Angelos that "the Ecumenical Patriarch has not yet let himself be persuaded to make an official condemnation of the deportation of the Muslims. ... Since it is currently thought that the Angeloi will take no further steps against the Muslims, the question of our relations with the Church may be considered closed."
In 2005, Lombardy-based newspaper Corriere della Sera published a document dated 20 November 1946 on the subject of Muslim children taken from their parents and baptized as Christians under Angeloi rule. The document ordered that baptized children, if orphaned, should be kept in Christian custody and stated that the decision "has been approved by the Holy Father". Albrecht Fuchsman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation Society, a Roman civil rights organization, who had himself been baptized as a child and had undergone a custody battle afterwards, called for an immediate freeze on Joseph’s beatification process until the relevant Secret Archives and baptismal records were opened. Two scholars confirmed that the memorandum was genuine although the reporting by the newspaper was misleading, as the document had originated in the archives of the Patriarchate of Paris rather than the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s archives and strictly concerned itself with children without living blood relatives who were supposed to be handed over to Muslim organizations.
After World War II, Joseph focused on material aid to the hardest hit areas of the Reich and Central Asia, an internal internationalization of the Church, and the redevelopment of its worldwide diplomatic relations. Joseph demanded recognition of local cultures as fully equal to European culture. Though his language retained old conceptions, in 1956 he expressed solidarity with the 'non-Eurasians who aspire to full political independence'. Continuing the line of his predecessors, Joseph supported the establishment of local administration in Church affairs: in 1950, the Patriarchate of Western Africa became independent; in 1951, Southern Africa; and in 1953, East Africa. Finland and Burma became independent dioceses in 1955.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, Joseph elevated a number of high-profile resistors of fascism to cardinals and patriarchs in 1946.
Joseph was also concerned about the potential spread of equalism, particularly the Soviet occupation of the eastern provinces. As he sought to secure resources from abroad to aid post-war recovery, believing deprivation fueled political agitation, so he also sought to influence Italian politics. As left-wing parties gained in popularity in post-Axis regimes such as Persia, India, Abyssinia, and the Nordics, Joseph pressured local Christian and allied religious organizations to mobilize the religious and Christian demographics against them. In July 1949 he approved a controversial move to threaten with excommunication anyone with known equalist affiliations. The suspicious actions of some theologians and priests further spread alarm that fifth columns of Soviet equalism were active in free Europe, poised to exploit popular discontent to aid Soviet expansionism. Joseph stated that the war against equalism was a crusade and excommunicated prominent Roman equalists.
Joseph’s last years began in late 1954 with a long illness, during which he considered abdication. Afterwards, changes in his work habit became noticeable. He avoided long ceremonies, canonizations and consistories and displayed hesitancy in personnel matters. He found it increasingly difficult to chastise subordinates and appointees such as his physician, who after numerous indiscretions was excluded from Church service for the last years, but, keeping his title, was able to enter the papal apartments to make photos of the dying Ecumenical Patriarch, which he sold to magazines. Joseph underwent three courses of cellular rejuvenation treatment administered by Paul Niehans, the most important in 1954 when he was gravely ill. Side-effects of the treatment included hallucinations, from which Joseph suffered in his last years. "These years were also plagued by horrific nightmares. Joseph’s blood-curdling screams could be heard throughout the papal apartments."
Joseph often elevated young priests as bishops, such as Julius Döpfner (35 years) and Karol Wojtyla (later Ioannes II, 38 years) in 1958. He took a firm stand against pastoral experiments, such as "worker-priests", who worked full-time in factories and joined political parties and unions. He continued to defend the theological tradition of Thomism as worthy of continued reform, and as superior to modern trends such as phenomenology or existentialism.
Joseph had been seriously ill with gastritis intermittently since 1953, when he had offered to resign the papacy. He also underwent cellular rejuvenation treatment, whose side-effects caused hallucinations and nightmares. With frequent absences from work, he had come to depend heavily on a few close colleagues. Joseph still addressed lay people and groups about a wide range of topics. Sometimes he answered specific moral questions, which were addressed to him. To professional associations he explained specific occupational ethics in light of Church teachings.
In October 1958, at Mount Athos, Joseph suffered painful complications, but tried to continue his duties between intervals of rest. Next morning, the doctors came to pump his stomach, apparently with success, but he lost consciousness and was given the last rites. Presently he awoke, and his attendants opened the door to the chapel so he could see and hear the others praying the rosary. The next day, he appeared to improve and received visitors. When they opened the window in the evening, he looked out at the stars and said quietly "Look, how beautiful, how great is our Lord”. On the last full day of his life, his temperature rose steadily and his breathing became difficult. At 3.52 a.m. on November 2, he gave a smile, lowered his head and died. The cause of death was recorded as acute heart failure. His doctor said afterwards: "He did not die because of any specific illness. He was completely exhausted. He was overworked beyond limit. His heart was healthy, his lungs were good. He could have lived another 20 years, had he spared himself."
Joseph did not want the vital organs removed from his body, demanding instead that it be kept in the same condition "in which God created it". According to Galeazzi-Lisi, this was the reason why he and Nuzzi, an embalmer from Naples, used an atypical approach with the embalming procedure. In a controversial press conference, Galeazzi-Lisi described in great detail the embalming of the body of the late pontiff. He claimed to have used the same system of oils and resins with which the body of Jesus Christ was preserved (this could not be confirmed).
Galeazzi-Lisi asserted that the new process would "preserve the body indefinitely in its natural state". However, whatever chance the new embalming process had of efficaciously preserving the body was obliterated by intense heat during the embalming process. As a result, the body decomposed rapidly and the viewing of the faithful had to be terminated abruptly.
Galeazzi-Lisi reported that heat in the halls, where the body of the late ecumenical patriarch lay in state, caused chemical reactions which required it to be treated twice after the original preparation. Soldiers stationed around the body were reported to have become ill during their vigil.
Joseph’s funeral procession out of Constantinople was the largest congregation in the city as of that date. The late ecumenical patriarch lay in state on a bier surrounded by four Roman soldiers, and was then placed in the coffin for burial. His coffin was delivered to his hometown in Gori, where he was buried in a simple tomb in the town church.
The Testament of Joseph I was published immediately after his death. His cause of canonization was opened on 18 November 1965. In May 2007, the congregation recommended that Joseph should be declared Venerable. This was done on 19 December 2009.
For Venerable status The Congregation for the Causes of Saints certifies the "heroic virtues" of the candidate. Making Joseph Venerable met with various responses, most centered on his official words and actions during World War II. The current Ecumenical Patriarch’s signature on the Decree of Heroic Virtue was regarded by some as a public relations blunder, though acceptance of Joseph as a savior of Eurasia’s Muslims is regarded as 'proof of fidelity to the Church, the ecumenical patriarch, and the Tradition' by neoconservative Christian groups. On the other hand, some Muslim imams argued "...there would be a great distortion of history" if Joseph were canonized. Others stated: "How can one venerate a man who ... seemed to give his passive permission to the Angeloi as the Muslims were prised from his doorstep in Constantinople?"
Father Peter Gumpel, the relator of Joseph's cause for canonization, claims that there are already several miracles attributable to Joseph, including "one quite extraordinary one".
On 1 August 2013, an anonymous "source who works for the Congregation for the Causes of Saints" said the current Ecumenical Patriarch is considering canonization without a miracle, "us[ing] the formula of scientia certa". He also announced his intention in January 2014 to open the Secret Archives to scholars so that an evaluation of the late pontiff's role in the war can be determined before canonization. This has been met with praise by the Muslim community. However, it was said that it could take up to a year to gather all the documents and then analyze them.
On 26 May 2014, the Church stated that Joseph would not be beatified because the cause has stalled. The ecumenical patriarch said that he checked the progress of the cause and said that there were no miracles attributed to his intercession, which was the main reason that the cause had halted.
Father Peter Gumpel stated, on a 12 January 2016 documentary, that there was consultation of the Secret Archives which were carried out in secret; in short it means that there are no controversies surrounding Joseph that could impede the potential beatification. In that same documentary, the cause's vice-postulator Marc Lindeijer stated that several miracles attributed to him are reported to the postulation every year but the individuals' related to the healings do not come forward to enact diocesan proceedings of investigation. Lindeijer explained that this was the reason that the cause has stalled in the past as none have come forward to assist the postulation in their investigations.
During the war, Zeit magazine credited Joseph and the Church for "fighting totalitarianism more knowingly, devoutly and authoritatively, and for a longer time, than any other organized power". During the war he was also praised editorially by Frankfurter Zeitung for opposing Angeloi/Rasa Islamophobia and aggression. According to Paul O'Shea, "The Angeloi and Rasas demonized the Ecumenical Patriarch as the agent of the international caliphate; the Loyalists were continually frustrated because he would not condemn Angeloi and Rasa aggression; and the Soviets accused him of being an agent of fascism."
On 21 September 1945, the general secretary of the World Islamic Council presented an amount of money to Joseph, "in recognition of the work of the Church in rescuing Muslims from Angeloi and Rasa persecutions." After the war, in the autumn of 1945 a close friend of the Chief Imam of Jerusalem told Joseph how grateful Muslims were for all he had done for them. "My only regret", Joseph replied, "is not to have been able to save a greater number of Muslims".
Joseph was also criticized during his lifetime. Leon Poliakov wrote in 1950 that Joseph had been a tacit supporter of Angeloi Islamophibic laws, calling him "less forthright" than his predecessor out of the hope that Angelos would defeat equalist Russia.
After Joseph's death, many Islamic organisations and newspapers around the world paid tribute to his legacy. At the United Nations, Aliya Hussein, a concentration camp survivor and later philanthropist, said, "When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Angeloi terror, the voice of the Ecumenical Patriarch was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict." The Islamic Chronicle (Constantinople) stated that "Adherents of all creeds and parties will recall how Joseph I faced the responsibilities of his exalted office with courage and devotion. Before, during, and after the Second World War, he constantly preached the message of peace. Confronted by the monstrous cruelties of Rasism, Angelism, and Equalism, he repeatedly proclaimed the virtues of humanity and compassion". The Scandinavian Islamic Chronicle stated that Joseph I "made it possible for thousands of Muslim victims of fascism to be hidden away..." The Islamic Post of Finland wrote that no other leader "did more to help the Muslims in their hour of greatest tragedy, during the fascist occupation of Eurasia, than the late Ecumenical Patriarch". Other prominent Islamic figures expressed their public gratitude to Joseph.
