Robert Leiber

Robert Leiber, S.J. (10 April 1887 – 18 February 1967) was a Jesuit priest from Germany, Professor for Church History at the Gregorian University in Rome from 1930 to 1960.

Leiber was the private secretary to Pius XII and, according to the pontiff's biographer Susan Zuccotti, was his closest advisor "throughout his entire papacy".

Biography Before 1924, Leiber worked with Ludwig Pastor on the publication of his 20-volume Papal History. From 1924 to 1929, he was advisor to Eugenio Pacelli while he was Nuncio in Munich and in Berlin. While Professor at the Gregorian, he continued advising Pacelli, who was then Cardinal Secretary of State. After Pacelli was elected to the papacy as Pope Pius XII in 1939, Leiber helped and advised him until the Pope's death on 9 October 1958. Leiber is described as Pius XII's "most trusted aide". However he never was a Vatican official. He was a respected and feared "unofficial official". Known in papal Rome as the "little asthmatic", some described him with a Latin quip: Timeo non Petrum sed secretarium eius - "I do not fear Peter [the Pope], but his secretary". Leiber, stationed at the Pontifical Gregorian University, three miles from the Vatican, complained after Pius XII's death that he was often expected to "drop whatever he was doing and hasten to the Vatican", taking public transportation. Later in the war, Leiber remained the point of contact for communications from Colonel-General Ludwig Beck in the lead up to the 1944 July Plot. The Holy Office in 1948 issued a monitum (or warning) to the group, due to concerns that the group's pro-Zionist activities were "encouraging religious indifferentism (the belief that one religion is as good as the next)". Leiber concluded in April 1950 there was nothing theologically wrong with the work of Luckner. Bea went further by actually affirming it.

According to a history professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Leiber had no direct authority to correspond with Hudal but "[his] role as one of Pius XII's closest confidantes allowed the German Jesuit to act as the pope's intermediary and messenger". For his statistics on the number of Jews he claimed Pius XII to have saved, Leiber relied on the fellow Jesuit Beato Ambord; the original compilation of the numbers is unknown.

Above all, Leiber disputed that the disbanding of the German Catholic Centre Party had been a quid pro quo for the signing of the Reichskonkordat. Leiber wrote in 1958m "[Pacelli] wished that [the party] could have postponed its dissolution until after the signing of the concordat. The mere fact of its existence, he said, might have been of use at the negotiating state".