 <unk> , Pius attempted to dissuade the Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini from joining Hitler in the war . In April 1941 , Pius XII granted a private audience to Ante Pavelić , the leader of the newly proclaimed Croatian state ( rather than the diplomatic audience Pavelić had wanted ) . Pius was criticised for his reception of Pavelić : an unattributed British Foreign Office memo on the subject described Pius as " the greatest moral coward of our age . " The Vatican did not officially recognise Pavelić 's regime . Pius XII did not publicly condemn the expulsions and forced conversions to Catholicism perpetrated on Serbs by Pavelić ; however , the Holy See did expressly repudiate the forced conversions in a memorandum dated 25 January 1942 , from the Vatican Secretariat of State to the Yugoslavian Legation . The pope was well @-@ informed of Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše regime , even possessing a list of <unk> 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 Croatian church or undermine the formation of a future Croatian state . Pius XII elevated Aloysius Stepinac — a Croatian archbishop convicted of collaborating with the Ustaše — to the cardinalate . Phayer agrees that Stepinac 's was a " show trial " , but states " the charge that he [ Pius XII ] supported the Ustaša regime was , of course , true , as everyone knew " , and that " if Stepinac had responded to the charges against him , his defense would have inevitably unraveled , exposing the Vatican 's support of the genocidal Pavelić . " 
