Prisoner of the Vatican

by David I. Kertzer

  climbed and a sudden assault made without the Government's knowledge." It concluded: "In the Vatican they fear that the republican and socialist party have already infiltrated the army and the civil authority itself... they do not believe that even the Savoyard dynasty is safe."9

  It was a dangerous moment for the papacy, for the new Italian state, and for much of Europe. Italy was in an uproar about the French invasion of "its" Tunisian territories, and murmurs of war with France were growing ever louder. Although to this point the French had been working behind the scenes to calm the Vatican waters, they now began to see some advantage in roiling them. On Monday, October 17, the French chargé d'affaires in Rome, the marquis de Reverseaux, reported just how tense the city was. The previous day, the pope had received a large number of Italian pilgrims in St. Peter's. The Italian authorities were worried that anticlerics might infiltrate the ceremonies, and for good reason. "Just one shout hostile to the Holy Father," the envoy wrote, "could have led to a clash in the church itself whose consequences would likely have been the pope's departure from Rome."

  What he then went on to suggest to his foreign minister shows that something had changed radically in the relations between France and Italy in two months. The envoy predicted that Italy's Catholics would try to form an unholy alliance with the republicans aimed at destroying the Italian monarchy. The Holy See, he wrote, believed that such a development would be in its interest, for the demise of the kingdom of Italy would give rise to a weak federal republic, allowing the Vatican "once again to take possession of the Papal States or, at least, remain the master in Rome."

  What should the French do about this prospect of Italy's descent into civil war? "We need not take the side of one or the other of the two adversaries," wrote Reverseaux, "but we can hope that in this duel to the death, the papacy is the victor. Each day we see the disadvantages of having unified Italy, and to the extent that this unity becomes better established and stronger, we will have more to fear from its hostility. We therefore can only rejoice at all the causes that lead to a weakening or disorganization in Italy's current structure. And, among these causes, the most important is the struggle between the State and the Vatican."10

  Remarkably, Vatican officials had indeed been secretly discussing the possibility of encouraging a republican revolt in Italy as a way to regain control of Rome. In a meeting in March 1881, the cardinals of the Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs had met to advise the pope on the best strategy for regaining temporal power. Among the scenarios envisioned was just this possibility: a republican victory leading to an Italian confederation. For the plan to succeed, more than one cardinal warned, the Vatican's role had to be kept completely secret. And for it to work, as another cardinal pointed out, it was "indispensable for the pope to leave Rome first." 11

  There was some irony in the French government's incipient plan to side with the Vatican, for at that very time the anticlerical majority in the National Assembly was busy scaling back the privileges enjoyed by the French clergy in an effort to promote a more secular state at home. In a royal audience in late November, King Umberto grilled the French ambassador to Italy on reports of an approaching rupture between the Church and the government of the notoriously anticlerical French prime minister, Léon Gambetta. "As for us," said the king, "we live on as good terms as possible with the pope, who is of superior mind and animated by great patriotism, and who understands that by allying himself with the kingdom's enemies, he is not only compromising the existence of Italian unity, but of the papacy itself." Umberto, it appears, had a weakness for wishful thinking, or perhaps it was a weakness for wishful speaking.12

  Talk of the pope's imminent flight was again sweeping the country. "These rumors..." the French chargé d'affaires informed Gambetta in late December, "repeated with increasing insistence in the past days, do not fail to leave an impression on the government and the king, as do the words attributed to the pope 'I hold the future of the house of Savoy in my hands,' which seems to many Italians to portray the situation exactly. The pontiff's departure could, in effect, trigger an upheaval, whose result would be fatal for the monarchy while working to the advantage of a republic. Now, the Vatican is not far from wishing for this solution."

  While the German and Austrian governments were secretly warning Italy of France's attempts to induce the pope to leave Rome and so destabilize the Italian state, the French envoy was pointing the finger at Bismarck. He had learned, Reverseaux wrote, "that the Chancellor's secret agents were actively working for the pope's departure ... it seems that most of the members of the Sacred College are disposed to heed these suggestions, thinking that in this way they can force the Powers to impose a settlement." 13

  Although this allegation was groundless, the possibility that the pope was scheming to go into exile as a way of fomenting chaos in Italy was being seriously discussed in high German government circles. Germany's major Catholic newspaper published a booklet at the time that proposed just such a scenario. The plan it set out called for restoring the pope's rule over the Holy City and its hinterland by having the pope first abandon Rome. This move, it was thought, would lead to an uprising by Italian radicals who, in their anticlerical and republican fervor, would destroy the monarchy. The resulting anticlerical republic would be so radical—and outrage at what had happened to the Church and the pope would be so great—that it would inevitably provoke a European war that would end in the pope's restoration. The Italian chargé d'affaires in Berlin, in reporting all the attention that the booklet was getting in Germany, complained that the German government had so far done nothing to indicate its own repugnance for such a prospect. The Italians were all the more concerned because in recent months, Bismarck had been seeking to make peace with the Vatican and to bring the Kulturkampf to an end. Many worried that he could not be trusted.14

  The pope himself ended 1881 with a belligerent address to the Sacred College of Cardinals. In reporting the speech, France's ambassador to the Holy See wrote that Leo had never before spoken out so strongly against the Italian government nor ever made his commitment to the restoration of temporal power so clear. The ambassador noted as well that a recent series of articles in L'Osservatore Romano had been devoted to the impossibility of the Italian king and the Roman pontiff sharing the same capital. "Does he hope," asked the ambassador, "that his protests will lead the Italian government to retreat in the face of the papacy and, as the religious press demands, leave him at least Rome and an outlet to the sea through Civitavecchia?"15

  Civiltà Cattolica, in its report, expanded on why the pope could not remain in a city that was controlled by the Italian government. Those who had taken Rome, it argued, had done so "in order to destroy the Catholic Church." It then listed all the ways the Italian government had sought to bring about this end: it had suppressed the religious orders and seized their property; it had secularized the charitable institutions of the Church and removed the teaching of religion from the schools; it had reduced the pope to a prisoner, unable to venture out of the Vatican. But the story ended on a positive note. Good Catholics should not despair, for the Church's ultimate triumph was not far off. Next to the majesty of the pontiff, the king was a mere pygmy. 16

  15. Preparing for Exile

  THROUGH OUT THE 1880s, Leo repeatedly turned to the cardinals of the Curia to advise him on whether the time had come for him to flee Rome. His near obsession with whether he should go and his worries about which country would take him in are not easy to explain because he was far from eager to leave the Holy City. Despite a great deal of diplomatic bluster and the defiant claims in the Catholic press, Leo had few illusions about being able to repeat his predecessor's success in rallying foreign powers to return him triumphantly to his capital. Indeed, when he sent a list of questions to the cardinals of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs in early 1882, seeking their advice on flight, he prefaced them with the statement that "it can be held to be certain, without ne
ed of demonstration, that no power today would use its material force against Italy in order to restore Rome to the Pontiff in exile ... Therefore it would today be a great illusion to hope that such a restoration could be brought about through governments' armed force."1

  The pope's preoccupation with the possibility of leaving Rome had the effect of keeping the governments of Europe in a state of permanent agitation. Not wanting to believe that the pope would actually abandon the Holy City, yet alarmed at the destabilizing effects that such a departure would have on all of Europe, they peppered the Italian government with pleas not to do anything that might make the pope decide to go. This response was no doubt intended by the diplomatically savvy Leo XIII, acting as a brake on the more anticlerical actions being contemplated by the Italian government.2

  In August 1884, Leo XIII issued a motu proprio, a secret proclamation in his own hand, "with dispositions and provisions for the Holy Congregations and Ecclesiastical Tribunals, for the case in which the Holy Pontiff's access to the faithful is interrupted, or that he is taken as a hostage." He explained that given the ever-increasing dangers faced by the Holy See, he believed it necessary to make plans that would allow the Church to continue to function if such misfortunes occurred. He proclaimed that in his absence a three-member commission of cardinals would guide the Church, listing in order of priority the cardinals who were to be appointed to it.3

  Individual letters were then prepared by the secretary of state to each of the cardinals on the list, as well as to the papal nuncio in Vienna, explaining the two envelopes, sealed with wax, that they received. One contained instructions for the next conclave; the other contained the motu proprio. The first envelope was to be opened only at the time of Leo's death, the second, only on receiving further instructions; should the pope die first, it was to be returned unopened to his successor. The pope also had lengthy instructions prepared for the marquis who would be responsible for the care and protection of the Vatican in his absence.4

  Two years later, in November 1886, Leo charged yet another secret commission of cardinals with the task of advising him on fleeing Rome. To guide them, he had a report prepared on "the current condition to which the Holy See and the Pontiff have been reduced in Rome." It is clear from subsequent discussion by the cardinals that this report presented the views of the pope himself, so it offers us a priceless peek into Leo's outlook eight years into his papacy.

  "The revolution," as the report labeled the unification movement, "having occupied the Papal States, took over this Capital of the Catholic world" and left the pope "in the power of his enemies." Strikingly, the secret document acknowledges that the people of Rome were no longer on the pope's side in his battle with the Italian state. Thanks to the malevolent influence of the sects, it explained, religious indifference was widespread, and the love for the Church and the papacy had greatly declined, especially among the middle classes. Fewer and fewer people believed that it was good for the pope to have temporal power. "The constant work of these same sects, together with the liberal party, has succeeded not only in spreading doubts in Italian souls about itsnecessity, but has led them to contest it openly with exaggerated ideas of national independence. Even most Romans no longer share their ancient devotion to the Pontiff, their sole legitimate Sovereign."

  But there were still grounds for hope. If things looked bleak in Italy, the situation abroad—notwithstanding the cowardice of Europe's governments—was very different. Outside Italy, the pope's cause was more popular than ever. And with Catholics feeling so strongly about the pontiff, their rulers could not long resist the pressure to come to his aid. All this afforded good reason "to hope that, whatever happens, the Pope's cause will not be abandoned, and that one day he will recover the place in Rome that is properly his." Paradoxically, even in Italy, where godless forces were making the Church's life so difficult, a glimmer of hope appeared, for the situation might have to get worse before it could get better. "Since the revolution continues, it corrupts the popular masses more every day and so ineluctably pushes them to socialism and anarchy." But once the direction they were heading in became clearer, the report argued, Italians would finally "shake off their lethargy and inertia. They will refuse to tolerate religious persecution or the Freemason's yoke any longer." They would at last realize that the pope was their only hope, that only the pontiff could bring stability to Rome, to Italy, and to Europe.5

  The commission met on November 1,1886, to consider this report. The pope and the whole Church, the first cardinal to speak lamented, find themselves in a pitiful condition. "The painful situation of the Holy See, more or less openly besieged for sixteen years in Rome, and almost for twenty-six in all Italy, is only getting worse."

  We should have no illusions, he warned. Italy had become a unified state only through the occult efforts of the various sects and the Masons, committed to the extermination of the Church "either through open violence or through the hypocritical ploys of which the sectarians are the finest masters." A new ruling class of unbelievers, "moved by a blind hatred of the Church," had arisen in Italy. The cardinal then gingerly criticized Pius IX and his mystical faith in divine intervention: "Who knows what would have happened if, after ... denouncing to the whole world the nature of the Revolution whose victim he was, the octogenarian Pontiff, so popular everywhere, had taken the path of the pilgrim, leaving his city behind him?" But today it was too late. "If I raise this hypothesis now," he said, "it is to illustrate how, when we had the chance to destroy the evil work of the government, we perhaps failed to figure out how to do it."

  Might Leo, the cardinal asked, be able to turn to Europe's other powers for help? The continent's two major conservative forces, he observed, were Germany and Austria, but the first was Protestant, and the second, while Europe's foremost Catholic power, had a government that was not well disposed to the Church.6

  What most worried the pope in these months was that a major war would break out in Europe, one in which Italy would be a combatant. A year earlier, the monarchists had won a major victory in the French parliamentary elections and installed a wildly popular new minister of war, General Georges Boulanger, who was known for his desire to avenge France's humiliating defeat by Germany. At the same time, Austria was embroiled in a tense struggle with tsarist Russia over control of the Balkans, and war seemed increasingly likely.

  At a mid-January 1887 meeting of the pope's secret commission, a cardinal warned that, given all the tensions plaguing Europe, a general conflagration could erupt at any time. If that were to happen, he said, the pope should immediately announce his departure from Rome, explaining that it was necessary both to ensure his ability to perform his religious mission freely and to put himself in a position to play the role of peacemaker. As for where he should go, it was important that he find a party not at war. The cardinal suggested two possibilities: Monaco and the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino in Switzerland.

  But the cardinals were divided. Any flight from Rome under such circumstances, said one, risked outraging the Italians, who would accuse the pope of going abroad so that he could better conspire with foreign nations against them. Another questioned the choice of destination: Monaco was fine, but not Ticino, for Switzerland was swarming with the very sects that were the Church's worst enemies

  At this point Leo asked Father Giuseppe Graniello, a Barnabite monk whose advice he greatly valued, to prepare a report on these issues to help guide their discussions. The report, a remarkably rich document, was presented to the cardinals in mid-February.

  The effect that a European war would have on Italy, wrote Graniello, was not easy to predict. Italy might end up on the winning side, but there was a good chance that it would be defeated, in which case foreign armies would certainly occupy the Italian North. Of particular concern to the monk was the distinct possibility that, in the face of this occupation, popular revolts would sweep the rest of the peninsula, leading to the fall of the monarchy and leaving Rome at the mercy of the republic
ans and other anticlerics.

  Rather than hasten the return of temporal rule, Graniello warned, the pope's leaving Rome might well make it more difficult. Should Italy win the war, there was of course no chance that temporal power would be restored to the pope. But if the pontiff had in the meantime fled Rome, Graniello warned, "the government would place the most humiliating and harshest conditions on his return." As a result, he would have to remain abroad "as long as the sacrilegious usurpation lasts."

  If, on the other hand, the Italians lost the war but still held on to Rome, Graniello advised, the crucial question was whether an armistice would mandate an international congress to determine Rome's final status. If such a congress were held, the pope's temporal power might be restored, at least in some form. Yet even in this situation, Graniello warned, much could go wrong. Many European governments, he noted, were in the grip of the sects. They were hardly interested in restoring the papacy's powers and cared nothing for public opinion. And there was another problem. Even if they sympathized with the pope's plight, the European powers were likely to be influenced more by their own political calculations. From their perspective, a territorially reduced Kingdom of Italy whose legitimacy continued to be contested by the Church was an attractive prospect, for such a state would be perennially weak.

  Yet, the monk acknowledged, there were some grounds for hope. An international postwar conference might well decide to return Rome to the pope. For one thing, Europe's governments were tired of being pestered by their Catholic populations about the pontiff's imprisonment. Second, all were worried about the revolutionary movements that were sweeping Europe. They saw the pope and the Church as bastions of the conservative social order and the main source of legitimacy for authoritarian regimes, especially in the Catholic portions of the continent. A pope restored to the fullness of his power could work to their advantage. It was also in these governments' interests, Graniello argued, for Italy to be stable. As it was, Italy was a cauldron of unrest, and the embattled state of the papacy simply encouraged further instability.