A Civil War (77 page)

The habit of negotiating on an equal footing with the powers that be from one institution to another was so deep-rooted that contacts with the German and Fascist authorities must in another respect have appeared obvious to the ecclesiastical authorities. But here too the existence of the RSI posed knotty problems. The Germans, as occupiers, could in fact be recognised as having an authority with which it was legitimate to have contacts in a ‘climate of formal and bureaucratic mutual respect'.
³⁷
This was the line taken by Northern Italy's most representative cardinal archbishop, Idelfonso Schuster, who in May 1944 not only accepted the visit of General Wening, commander of the German forces in Northern Italy, but sent one of his prelates, Monsignor Giuseppe Bicchierai, on a return visit. By contrast, in the same month Schuster agreed to receive the
podestà
and two
vice-podestà
, but did not return the visit.
³⁸
Less careful, or simply more spontaneous, the bishops of Modena, Boccoleri, and of Carpi, Dalla Zuanna, paid an official visit to the head of the province, with the easily predictable result that on 30 March 1944
La Gazzetta dell'Emilia
published an exultant communication which concluded by recalling how victory was ‘the sole guarantee of salvation also for religion, the indispensable spiritual nourishment for our profoundly patriotic and Catholic people'.
³⁹

Oscillating conduct and coded messages are borne out by the judgments, contrasting in time and place, found expressed in the reports of the Fascist authorities. Thus early reassurance arrived from Grosseto that ‘the clergy has given no cause for comment, supporting the authorities in the campaign of internal resistance'.
⁴⁰
But after a few months the censor of the correspondence pointed out that ‘the clergy is very sharply rebuked for its hostile demeanour to the republican state, and for the favour it has shown towards the partisans which feeds the spirit of rebellion'.
⁴¹

For a strongly partisan zone, Mario Giovana's detailed and balanced description of the conduct of the lower clergy of the valleys around Cuneo comes closer to reality: ‘reserve that was flaunted but lacking in hostile acts', ‘assistance conceded with caution and moderation', ‘inactive sympathy', rare cases of ‘active collaboration with the partisans, leading to the death of some parish priests'.
⁴²

One point was particularly dear to the heart of the RSI, and interwove with another that attracted less attention on the part of the ecclesiastical hierarchies: the Holy See's recognition of the Republic and respect for the Lateran Pacts.
⁴³
Recognition – for which, for that matter, risky official applications do not appear to have been made – was never granted, despite pressure to do so.
⁴⁴
On 27 September 1943 a note by the secretary of state, Cardinal Luigi Maglione, explained that the Holy See

Sometimes the fact that the highest ecclesiastical authorities avoided appointing new bishops to the sees that fell vacant during the twenty months of RSI government, so as not to have to ask for the assent of that government, was offered as proof of their firm determination not to recognise the Fascist Republic.
⁴⁶
In fact this behaviour touches on the second question mentioned above: the request that the Lateran Pacts be respected by a government that one did not, however, wish to recognise. Nothing would have prevented the Holy See from seeking the assent of the government of the South, which had certainly not renounced its potential jurisdiction over the entire national territory. But such a patent gesture would have been at odds with the cautious line that had been chosen, and might have led to RSI reprisals precisely in the concordatory sphere which the Holy See had most at heart (the threats to establish a national church,
bandied about by Roberto Farinacci, ‘Crociata italica' and Lando Ferretti
⁴⁷
were all too clearly senseless). In abstract terms, even a clear anti-concordatory, and even persecutory, act on the part of the Fascists might not have been altogether unwelcome for the Church, insofar as it could then have turned this to its own honour and advantage. All the same, prudence and experience taught that it was better for certain privileges, such as those assured by the Concordat, not to be undermined by anyone, not even by an illegitimate authority, since it was easy to mar but difficult to mend them, and the public spectacle of their violation was in itself scandalous. Indicative of this is the episode of the extra-territorial convent of San Paolo, which Pietro Koch's band of Fascists overran, capturing the numerous people who had sought refuge there.
⁴⁸
The Fascist press posed a dilemma that had its share of logic: either the Vatican recognised the RSI and renewed the Lateran Pacts with the republic, or else it did not recognise it and ‘the matter therefore becomes Badoglio's affair'. The reaction of
Il Popolo
, organ of the Christian Democrats, was extremely violent, but conducted on extremely slippery ground:

Another Christian Democrat newspaper of the capital,
Il Segno
, went to great pains to refute the thesis by which the appeal to the Lateran Pacts had no value if the Social Republic was not recognised.
⁵⁰
An irreverent comment, however,
came from a minor paper, expressing what was very likely the view of many
resistenti
, but paradoxically deeming it best not to voice it publicly: ‘Both of them are right', the Church and the Fascist regime both in bad faith since 1929.
⁵¹

In many Fascists genuine stupor can be detected both at the ingratitude that the clergy and Catholics in general were showing them, and at the
fin de nonrecevoir
with which they now greeted the request that for so many years had not fallen on deaf ears: We have the same enemies, why aren't you with us? After recalling the ‘debt of recognition' that Fascism deserved from the Church a note from the
Corrispondenza Repubblicana
, inspired by Mussolini himself, stated: ‘The reasons for which the clergy should be at our side have already been mentioned: because we are fighting against all its age-old and relentless enemies.'
⁵²
Lower down the hierarchic ladder, the secretary of the
fascio
for Firenzuola expressed the same concepts: how can the priests not side with those who are fighting ‘against masonic sectarianism, against Bolshevism, against atheism and against anarchy?'
⁵³

We might think that the small minority of ecclesiastics who came out openly in favour of the RSI did so precisely because they were receptive to appeals of this kind.
⁵⁴
Responsive to them certainly was that
medico condotto
(district doctor) from Fabbrico (Reggio Emilia) who expressed the wish for a ‘perfect fusion between religious and military forces. Only then will Italian conciliation between the state and the Church be a true, profound and absolute reality.'
⁵⁵
Also responsive to them appears to have been the canny republican army colonel, a member of the Republican Fascist Party (PFR), who kept only a photo graph of the pope in his office in Udine.
⁵⁶
Highly responsive, naturally, was the group headed by don Tullio Calcagno and the Cremonese ‘Crociata italica' (‘Italic Crusade'),
⁵⁷
as well as the more moderate group that gathered around

Catholicism, in order to defend our religion?' These words formed part of a long list of the attacks Farinacci had made on the behaviour of the Church that appeared in the June 1944 northern edition of
Risorgimento Liberale
.
the Venetian review
Italia Cattolica
, issued directly by the Ministry of Popular Culture.
⁵⁸

It would have been wishful thinking for the Fascists to imagine that don Tullio Calcagno or the head chaplain of the Black Brigades, don Eusebio Zappaterreni, a Franciscan survivor of the Russian campaign, could, with their scanty and discredited followers, mobilise the uncertain, let alone constitute a powerful counterweight to the far larger minority of priests who openly sided with the
resistenti
, to the extent that some even became chaplains to Garibaldi partisan formations.
⁵⁹
In the Verona Charter it had been repeated that ‘the Religion of the Republic is the Roman Catholic Apostolic one' (words which figured as the half-title of
Italia Cattolica
, mentioned earlier). But by and large the Fascist authorities appeared somewhat prudent, if not resigned, aware as they were of the impossibility of opening another highly risky front. Mussolini might well say to Padre Eusebio, on 26 September 1944, that ‘when the priests see the black shirts they ring the church bells to warn the red shirts';
⁶⁰
but he could do nothing to prohibit those bells from being rung. In the twilight of the Social Republic, his well-chosen definition of himself as ‘Catholic and anti-Christian', which had inspired him so fruitfully on so many occasions, was doomed to be irremediably frustrated.
⁶¹

The odd tough and testy stance by the Fascists did not change matters. Farinacci's paper, polemicising against the director of Catholic Action, Monsignor Evasio Colli's declaration of disengagement, mentioned earlier, wrote that ‘at a tragic hour like this one cannot, in albeit deliberately equivocal prose, urge the young towards absenteeism, desertion, anarchy'.
⁶²
Reproaches for blindness and ingratitude were coupled with denunciations of the clergy's absenteeist and fence-sitting attitudes, which were frequent in the reports of the peripheral RSI authorities.
⁶³
Some particularly suspicious Fascists even went so far as to see don Calcagno himself as ‘the Church's hand in our ranks, and
one of her pilasters in our formation. You never know, think the old Vatican foxes.'
⁶⁴

Again, Farinacci, not altogether wrongly, considered the formula that the military RSI chaplains had to ‘mutter' in place of the oath ‘eel-like and Pharisaic': ‘I declare that I am aware of the obligations inherent in the service of spiritual assistance with the military forces of the Italian Social Republic and am fully conscious of the regulations governing the position of military chaplains. I declare furthermore that I undertake to perform all my chaplain's duties properly with all diligence and zeal.'
⁶⁵

In fact, even if they attached different weight to it, the figure of the RSI military chaplain constituted a mutual pledge given on the institutional plane by the Fascist state and the Church. The former (at odds, it seems, with German thinking)
⁶⁶
respected the Concordat and obtained indirect backing. The latter demonstrated that the Concordat was in any case in force. In fact, in addition to those who had volunteered (generally survivors from the 1940–43 campaigns), some bishops took the initiative of sending chaplains to the military formations of the RSI, including the black brigades, both ‘to try and do a bit of good even among wolves', and to ‘establish useful relations with the parade-ground commanders in order to be able to make use of them later at an opportune moment'.
⁶⁷
The chaplains, wrote
Italia Cattolica
, ‘continue to do what they have always done';
⁶⁸
but some put excessive zeal into it, like those who wore the badges of the SS above the cross.
⁶⁹

The authorisation for religious assistance to the partisans, granted by Pope Pius XII in October 1944 at Schuster's request,
⁷⁰
and the presence, in various forms, of chaplains in the Resistance formations also answered both a religious need and a need for politico-ideological presence, aimed at combating the influence of doctrines that were dangerous for the Church.
⁷¹
An
identical web of motivations was at work in the bands who accepted or even requested chaplains: genuine respect for religious conscience, and demonstration of the fact that the clergy were on your side, both against the Fascists, and, perhaps still more important for the Communists, as part of the policy of unity with the Christian Democrats. On one occasion Vincenzo Moscatelli (‘Cino') said: ‘From tomorrow you'll have two chaplains because I don't want there to be no Mass on Sundays, and in case you should die you won't die like dogs!'
⁷²

The borderline case of the RSI military chaplain raises the question of the role as stand-ins for the institutions that the clergy had played so extensively under German occupation and the RSI. This role, to which Federico Chabod has already drawn attention,
⁷³
reveals the clergy's great capacity for filling, to a considerable degree, the void which neither the RSI nor ‘the government of the CLNs' was capable of filling completely, thereby incorporating acts of human and religious assistance into their diplomatic caution and political ambitions. Their role as substitutes was immense and all too evident in the city of Rome, where it fed the myth of
defensor urbis
;
⁷⁴
but it spread extensively and in the most various forms throughout the whole of the occupied territory. In August 1944 the Northern edition of
Il Popolo
could write emphatically that ‘while [Italy's] governing class has betrayed its duty', the clergy ‘has remained all but intact against the misdeeds and acts of baseness into which many compatriots have fallen'.
⁷⁵
Still earlier,
Il Popolo
again, in its Roman edition, had indicated the parish priests as being the only active authority in the villages located in the zones of the front.
⁷⁶
In the Lower Po valley, the IOUs that substituted for coins were accepted only if they bore the parish priest's stamp.
⁷⁷
The dean of Malo imposed a ceiling price on black-market prices.
⁷⁸
A parish priest was appealed to as mediator in disputes that broke out within the ranks of a Garibaldi formation.
⁷⁹
And many more examples could be cited, both in this minute sphere and in that of relations with the Fascist and German authorities in negotiations for the exchange of prisoners.