The Pope and Mussolini (27 page)

“F
ASCISTS TRAMPLE PORTRAIT OF POPE,
”
READ THE FRONT-PAGE
New York Times
headline in late May 1931. “Mob calls Pontiff traitor and burns books—Osservatore Romano’s sale banned.”
¹

Tensions had been building for months over Catholic Action, the linchpin of the pope’s efforts to re-Christianize Italian society. Catholic Action had a national office, its lay president appointed by the pope. Monsignor Pizzardo was technically the organization’s “ecclesiastical assistant,” but as one of the men closest to the pope, he allowed Pius XI to keep tight control over it. National directives went out to each diocese, where Catholic Action came under the authority of the local bishop and had a board that included laypeople. In areas where the Church was strongest—generally in the center and north of the country—each parish also had its own set of Catholic Action organizations, for men, women, girls, and boys.

Mussolini knew how dear Catholic Action was to Pius XI, but he decided it was time to put the pope in his place. Riled by newspaper stories charging Catholic Action with harboring old Popular Party activists
and other enemies of the regime, hundreds of Fascist college students smashed the windows of the University of Rome’s Catholic Action center. Others threw rocks through the windows of
La Civiltà cattolica
’s building and then rushed in, tossing books out the broken windows. To chants of “Down with the priests! Down with the pope,” they heaved a painting of Pius XI onto the street.
²

Furious, the pope told Pacelli to suspend his regular meetings with the Italian ambassador.
³
But Mussolini, whose ego and temper were more than equal to the pontiff’s, decided he had had enough of the pope’s pressures. He ordered all Catholic Action youth groups in Italy closed.
⁴

Romania’s ambassador, in an appointment with Pius XI, made the mistake of suggesting that the pope could give the world a lesson in peaceful dispute resolution by offering to have a trusted mediator work out his differences with Mussolini. The pope snapped back: his rights were given by God and could not be compared to those of a temporal ruler. “I am ready for anything,” he said. “I will never abandon what I believe to be my mission, never, never, never!”

Pius XI, recalled the ambassador, “became more heated, striking the table with both hands. Finally he rose and continued his protests while standing, shouting almost as loud as he could. He was panting and bursting with indignation until suddenly, probably becoming aware of the impression his excited speech was making on me, he tried to control himself, sat down again and, still panting, added, ‘But as you see, Minister, I remain calm.’ ”
⁵

The
New York Times
lead story on June 1, reporting Mussolini’s decision to close the Catholic Action youth clubs, described relations between Mussolini and the pope as at the breaking point. The fifteen thousand local clubs, with their membership of over half a million, would all be shut down by the next day.
⁶
In protest, Pius XI forbade Italy’s churches from holding their traditional—and popular—Corpus Christi processions, scheduled for June 4.
⁷

Worried that the conflict was spiraling out of control, and convinced that the new secretary of state was too weak to avert disaster, a
group of cardinals contacted Pietro Gasparri and proposed that he meet with Mussolini. Unhappiness in the Curia had been building since the crisis began, fueled by the cardinals’ anger that the pope did not consult them and their belief that Pacelli was in over his head. The pope, Gasparri was convinced, lacked any diplomatic sense—he thought he could treat Mussolini as he would an archbishop, “with whom a reprimand is more useful than a debate.”
⁸
Still upset about his dismissal, Gasparri would have loved to play the role of peacemaker, but he told the cardinals he could do so only with the pope’s approval. The pope refused.
⁹

In April rumors spread that Pacelli was about to resign.
¹⁰
In late May the Fascist daily
Il Popolo di Roma
reported that the pope was planning to fire him.
¹¹
In early June Cardinal Sbaretti, the secretary of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, told the pope that it was the unanimous opinion of the cardinals of that office that Gasparri, not Pacelli, should spearhead negotiations with the government. Pacelli was isolated. The pro-Fascist cardinals thought him too weak to get the stubborn pope to back down; the anti-Fascists thought him too eager to protect the Vatican’s alliance with Mussolini.
¹²

On June 9 Cesare De Vecchi went to see Pacelli and was pleased to discover that he “was completely on our side.”
¹³
The pope had told Pacelli not to discuss the crisis with the Italian ambassador, but Pacelli ruefully shared the pope’s instructions, and his disappointment at the pope’s lack of confidence in him, with the French ambassador to the Holy See. The ambassador marveled at how thoroughly the pope was excluding his secretary of state from handling the crisis. Pacelli, realizing he should not have said so much, begged the French diplomat not to tell anyone.
¹⁴

Seizing on the divisions in the Vatican, Dino Grandi, Italy’s foreign minister, urged Mussolini to increase the pressure. He recommended recalling the Italian ambassador and threatening to abandon the concordat. “I am convinced,” he wrote, “that if we focus only on the pope, declaring ourselves at the same time to be the most fervent supporters of the Church and of Religion, and at the same time showing the pope
to be failing in his duties as head of the Catholic religion, we will truly be able to put the Holy See in serious difficulty.”
¹⁵

Later that month Giuseppe Talamo, chargé d’affaires and De Vecchi’s number two, met with Pacelli at his Vatican office. “Combining unctuousness and embarrassment,” as Talamo described it, the secretary of state told him the pope was preparing a statement on the conflict. Pacelli added that he hoped it would not make the situation any worse.
¹⁶

In fact, the pope had decided to escalate his assault and was preparing a lengthy encyclical aimed directly at the Duce. Worried that Fascist censors would prevent its distribution, he gave copies to the American prelate, Francis Spellman, to smuggle across the French border. The encyclical,
Non abbiamo bisogno
(“We Have No Need”), appeared in foreign newspapers before being published in
L’Osservatore romano
in early July.
¹⁷

In the encyclical the pope denied that Italy’s Catholic Action was involved in anti-Fascist activities, and he rejected the claim that the Church’s only proper role in educating young people was to provide religious instruction. “For a Catholic, it is not in keeping with Catholic doctrine to pretend that the Church, the Pope, should limit themselves to the external practices of religion (Mass and Sacraments) and that the rest of education belongs totally to the State.”

But even as he lashed out, the pope was careful to distinguish between good Fascism—that which recognized the Church’s rights and followed its precepts—and bad Fascism, which did not. By protesting the harm that was being done to the Church in Italy, the pope argued, “We believe that we have at the same time done good work for the [Fascist] party itself and for the regime.”
¹⁸
While condemning those who would turn Fascism into pagan worship of the state, he concluded with conciliatory words: “In everything that We have said up to the present, We have not said that We wished to condemn the party and the regime as such. Our aim has been to point out and to condemn all those things in the program and in the activities of the party which have been found to be contrary to Catholic doctrine and Catholic practice.”
¹⁹

The pope had other levers to use in pressuring Mussolini. A grand ceremony inaugurating Milan’s new train station was scheduled for July 1, to feature the king himself. Because of the dispute, Milan’s archbishop let it be known he would not attend. The king, rather than face the embarrassment of standing alongside a lower-ranking clergyman, bowed out. For years, no major Fascist ceremony had taken place without a high prelate there to bless it.
²⁰

Surprisingly, rather than trigger a worsening of the conflict, the encyclical marked the beginning of its end. With the encyclical, the pope gave voice to his anger. Now, it seems, he was ready to get all the unpleasantness behind him. Perhaps his advisers had finally persuaded him of the need to make peace with Mussolini, or perhaps they had simply worn him down. Too much was at stake to let the conflict continue.
²¹

At a mid-July ceremony, the pope prayed for a miracle to “help the blind see.”
²²
He asked Tacchi Venturi to help them out of the impasse. Mussolini let the Jesuit envoy know that he too was eager to end the conflict.
²³
Tacchi Venturi rushed to report these encouraging words to the Vatican. “If I am not mistaken,” he wrote to Pacelli, “the Holy Father’s prayer of last Sunday is beginning to be answered. Let the Lord kindle his holy light so that the blind can see!”
²⁴

The pope relied on his Jesuit emissary to work out a deal with the dictator. On July 25 he spelled out his two conditions for settling the dispute.
²⁵
First, he wanted Mussolini to acknowledge that the Church had a role to play in educating children and that it had the right to organize Catholic Action groups within “its proper religious and supernatural ends.” When, later that day, the Jesuit met with the Duce, he said he would have no trouble agreeing to this request. It was the pope’s second condition that posed the problem. Pius XI wanted Mussolini not only to reopen the Catholic Action youth groups but to acknowledge that his order shutting them down had been illegal. On this point, the Duce would not budge. To demand an apology, he said, was to seek to humiliate him.

Convinced that the crisis would not end unless the pope backed
down, Tacchi Venturi went to Gasparri to enlist his help. The two had never been close, but they now had a common mission.

Following the meeting, Gasparri sent a letter to Pacelli. “I write with an extremely worried soul,” he told him, underlining his words for emphasis. What Mussolini had already conceded to the pope, Gasparri argued, was “enormous.” It was stupefying that over a matter of “procedure”—namely, requiring an apology from the Duce—the pope “would go to a condemnation of Fascism, and with it a renunciation of the concordat.” It was up to Pacelli, as secretary of state, to get the pope to change his mind.
²⁶

“According to the rumors that have been racing around for many weeks,” reported the French chargé d’affaires to the Vatican, “Cardinal Pacelli himself is being kept at a distance from the preparatory work for the resumption of talks with Italy.… It is the pope and the pope alone who continues to impose his will and he does not take advice from anyone.”
²⁷

In the end, it was the pope who backed down. In mid-August, after running back and forth several times between the pope and Mussolini, Tacchi Venturi drafted their agreement, which they signed on September 2.
²⁸
It specified that Catholic Action was to be organized on a diocesan basis, under the authority of the local bishop. No one known to have been critical of the regime could be chosen for a leadership position, and Catholic Action would confine its activities entirely to the religious sphere.
²⁹

The pope had bowed to the pressure. He had issued a dramatic encyclical, hoping to rally Italy’s Catholics. But the Catholic faithful, having for years heard everyone from the pope to their parish priest praise Mussolini as heaven-sent, were disoriented by the dispute and wanted it settled. The pope found himself alone, and now he drew back.
³⁰

Not all of Italy’s priests and bishops were delighted by the agreement. From exile in London, Popular Party founder Don Luigi Sturzo observed that while he was not surprised that the pope wanted to preserve his alliance with the regime, it was sad to see him agree to a deal
that represented a complete victory for Mussolini. Another former Popular Party leader, also in exile, was more cutting: “The pope gave in, he retreated, he was frightened. He bowed down before the altar of the Fascist Moloch.… This is what they are saying in Italy and abroad after the conclusion of the ill-omened agreement of September 2.”
³¹

Some of the cardinals likewise grumbled at the further limits put on the Church. They thought, according to the French chargé d’affaires, “that it was Cardinal Pacelli’s desire for appeasement that prevailed in the course of negotiations.” The French diplomat speculated that the pope was getting old and, having spent his initial anger, he had been worn down by Pacelli and others around him.
³²
There was certainly much truth to this view, although Tacchi Venturi, rather than Pacelli, seems to have played the more influential role.