The coin is L.10 and bears the face of the Pope.
 
Pope Pius XII (Italian: Pio XII; born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pace . 2 March 1876 – 9 October 1958) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City from 2 March 1939 until his death on 9 October 1958.
The papacy of Pius XII was long, even by modern standards; it lasted 19 years, spanning a consequential fifth of the 20th century. Pius was pope during the Second World War, the foundation of the United Nations, and the beginning of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. Born, raised, educated, ordained, and resident for most of his life in Rome, his work in the Roman Curia—as a priest, then bishop, then cardinal—was extensive. He served as secretary of the Vatican's diplomatic Department of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, papal nuncio to Germany, Camerlengo of the Apostolic Chamber, and Cardinal Secretary of State for the Holy See, in which capacity he worked to conclude treaties with various European and Latin American nations.
While the Vatican was officially neutral during the Second World War, the Reichskonkordat[1] and Pius' leadership of during the war remain the subject of debate—including accusations of public silence and inaction concerning the fate of the Jews.[2] Pius's defenders state that he employed diplomacy to aid the victims of the Nazis during the war and, by directing the church to provide discreet aid to Jews and others, saved thousands of lives.[3][4] Pius maintained links to the German resistance, and shared intelligence with the Allies. His generalized public condemnation of genocide did not specifically mention Europe's Jews and was considered inadequate by the Allied Powers, while the Nazis viewed him as an Allied sympathizer who had dishonoured his policy of Vatican neutrality.[5]
During his papacy, the Catholic Church issued the Decree against Communism, declaring that Catholics who profess the atheistic and materialist doctrines of communism are to be excommunicated as apostates from the Christian faith. The church experienced severe persecution and mass deportations of Catholic clergy in the Eastern Bloc. He explicitly invoked ex cathedra papal infallibility with the dogma of the Assumption of Mary in his Apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus.[6] His forty-one encyclicals include Mystici Corporis Christi, on the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ; Mediator Dei on liturgy reform; and Humani generis, in which he instructed theologians to adhere to episcopal teaching and allowed that the human body might have evolved from earlier forms. He removed, by additional international cardinal appointments, the Italian majority in the College of Cardinals in 1946.
After he died in 1958, Pius XII was succeeded by Pope John XXIII. In the process towards sainthood, his cause for canonization was opened on 18 November 1965 by Pope Paul VI during the final session of the Second Vatican Council. Upon the opening of his beatification process in 1990, Pius was titled a Servant of God. Pope Benedict XVI declared Pius XII venerable on 19 December 2009.
Early life