A man publicly labeled as "Hitler's pope" instead deserves to have his historical reputation cleared, according to a spate of recent scholarship on World War II and Pope Pius XII.

Indeed, the wartime pope should be recognized as a "righteous gentile" at Israel's most important Holocaust memorial, said scholar Ronald J. Rychlak, who made his case last year in his book "Righteous Gentiles: How Pius XII and the Catholic Church Saved Half a Million Jews from the Nazis."

"He deserves that designation," said Mr. Rychlak, a law professor and associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Mississippi in Oxford and an adviser to the Vatican's delegation to the United Nations. "When you ... look at all of the people who were sheltered and clothed by the Catholic Church under the inspiration and direction of Pius XII, he did tremendous work saving victims of the Nazis."