 In 1939 , the newly elected Pope Pius XII appointed several prominent Jewish scholars to posts at the Vatican after they had been dismissed from Italian universities under Fascist leader Benito Mussolini 's racial laws . In 1939 , the Pope employed a Jewish cartographer , Roberto Almagia , to work on old maps in the Vatican library . Almagia had been at the University of Rome since 1915 but was dismissed after Benito Mussolini 's antisemitic legislation of 1938 . The Pope 's appointment of two Jews to the Vatican Academy of Science as well as the hiring of Almagia were reported by The New York Times in the editions of 11 November 1939 and 10 January 1940 . 
