The Pope and Mussolini

by David I. Kertzer

  “If they don’t accept under these conditions,” Domenico Barone, Mussolini’s negotiator, told Pacelli, on hearing the news, “they are idiots.”20

  MUSSOLINI AND THE KING, so different in personality and background, had by the late 1920s settled into a stable if peculiar relationship. At one point Mussolini said that it was as if the two shared a bedroom but had separate beds. But they did have a number of traits in common, not least their discomfort around priests. Both, too, made casually cutting remarks about those around them. The king once, characteristically, described Italy’s chief general, Pietro Badoglio (whom he would years later choose to replace Mussolini as prime minister) as having “the brains of a sparrow and the hide of an elephant.” Mussolini, for his part, frequently ridiculed the king in private. The pint-size monarch made a poor impression, he complained, unworthy of a great nation. He was a “sour, treacherous little man.” At various times he dubbed Victor Emmanuel “an empty carriage,” a “dead tree,” and an “old hen whose feathers should be plucked.” But he did not tolerate ridicule of the king by others, including his wife. Coming from the same antimonarchical background as her husband, Rachele, ill at ease among the wealthy and the well bred, was never comfortable anywhere near the royal family. Mussolini undoubtedly understood this, but whenever she began telling her favorite joke about the king needing a ladder to mount his horse, he told her to be quiet.21

  Every Monday and Thursday morning at ten, the Duce, in frock coat and top hat, went to meet Victor Emmanuel III in the vast and majestic Quirinal Palace, where the king would sign a raft of government decrees and personnel appointments. On those mornings, observed Quinto Navarra, he was like a different Mussolini. For the rest of the week, the imperial, dictatorial Duce who intimidated his ministers appeared frequently in his Fascist militia uniform, in a never-ending series of parades and rallies, the supreme leader in the regime’s complex choreography of power. But during his mornings at the royal palace, Mussolini played the part of the respectful prime minister, mindful of the king’s prerogatives in what was still formally a constitutional monarchy.22

  ON FEBRUARY 7, 1929, Cardinal Gasparri called in the ambassadors to the Holy See and told them that a historic agreement was soon to be announced, ending the decades-long dispute between the Church and the Italian government. The cardinal was about to become the public face of a treaty that would be hailed by churchmen around the world. But it was a bittersweet moment for him. In recent years he had been getting clear signals that the pope no longer valued his services. Although down-to-earth, Gasparri had his pride. He had been stung in 1929 when the pope, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination, snubbed him. His staff had made plans for a gala festival, a mass to be held in his honor in the Sistine Chapel, presided over by the pope; the cardinals of the Curia would all be there, along with the whole foreign diplomatic corps. But the pope did not attend, and the dignitaries who did gossiped about his surprising absence.23

  By early 1928, Gasparri was no longer young. Suffering from diabetes and heart disease, he slept poorly. The once-jovial secretary of state increasingly appeared depressed and was quick to get misty-eyed. When others remarked on his pallor and the fact that his hands had begun to shake, he assured them that he felt fine. The pope urged him to take some time off to rest, but Gasparri, fearing that the pope would take advantage of his absence to replace him, insisted there was no need.24 He did not know how long he could hold on, but he wanted to be present to bask in the glory of ending the seventy years of hostility between Italy and the Holy See.

  The day after Gasparri assembled the diplomats in the Vatican to tell them the news, Mussolini sent a telegram to all of Italy’s ambassadors with the same message. Word of the imminent signing ceremony was published in foreign newspapers, but the Italian press was silent, and few in Italy realized what was about to happen.25

  “These are wonderful days!” Monsignor Francis Spellman—the only American in the secretary of state office—wrote to his mother in Boston from Rome on February 8. “Wonderful days to be alive and still more wonderful to be alive in Rome!” He added, “Everyone here is radiantly happy and well they might be. This Holy Father, Cardinal Gasparri and Monsignor Borgongini are assured of places in history and of course also Mussolini.”26

  The final details of the Vatican-Italian or Lateran Accords were ironed out by Mussolini and Pacelli on Saturday evening, February 9, 1929.27 The first article specified that the Catholic religion was “the only religion of the State.” The accords had three parts. The first, the treaty proper, established Vatican City as a sovereign territory under papal rule, in which the Italian government had no right to interfere. (Previously the Vatican palaces and gardens, and St. Peter’s Basilica, had been under the pope’s control, but the Italian government had always regarded them as lying on Italian soil, and their legal status had been ambiguous.)28 The boundaries of Vatican City were largely to coincide with the existing medieval walls; St. Peter’s Square, which was not circumscribed by the walls, was to be considered part of the new city-state but would be open to the public and under Italian police supervision. In all, the territory comprised 109 acres. Offending the dignity of the pope would be regarded as a crime equal to offending the king. Ambassadors to the Holy See were to enjoy the same immunities and privileges as ambassadors to Italy. In addition to its sovereignty over Vatican City, the Holy See was granted special rights to Rome’s basilicas and to the papal summer palace in Castel Gandolfo, in the nearby Alban Hills. All cardinals in Rome would be regarded as citizens of the new state.29

  The second part of the Lateran Accords, the concordat, governed relations between the Holy See and Italy. The Italian government would not allow anything to take place in Rome that would interfere with the Vatican’s character as the sacred center of the Catholic world. The concordat recognized a series of Catholic feast days as public holidays, and for the first time the Italian state would recognize religious marriages. (Until then, couples who wed only in church were not considered legally married.) The concordat also specified that Catholic religious instruction, which the regime had already made mandatory in elementary schools, be extended to all secondary schools. Although no more than one in five Italian children made it beyond elementary school at the time, those who did would form the elite of the next generation, and their religious education was precious to the Church.30 In another provision dear to the pope, the Italian state accepted the right of Catholic Action groups to operate freely.

  The third and final part of the accords consisted of a financial agreement. Italy would pay 750 million lire, plus one billion lire in Italian bonds (totaling roughly one billion 2013 U.S. dollars), in exchange for the Holy See’s agreement to give up all claims for the loss of its Papal States.31

  At nine A.M. on Monday, February 11, Dino Grandi, undersecretary of foreign affairs, arrived at Mussolini’s home. The Duce was in an unusually upbeat mood. In the car on the way to the signing, he sang an old Romagna folk song. While the Duce was happy, Grandi was nervous.

  “Should I kiss the cardinal’s ring?” he asked.

  Cardinal Gasparri would likely expect it, replied Mussolini. Giddy, he told Grandi he knew the best way to decide the question. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a coin, and flipped it. The dictator glanced at the result and announced, “We’ll kiss the ring!”32

  At the Vatican early that morning, Gasparri and his undersecretary, Monsignor Borgongini, met in the pope’s private library, where they assured the pontiff that everything was ready for the signing. They handed him the text of the treaty, fresh from the Vatican printer, along with a map that reflected the last-minute changes. After carefully examining the documents, the pope nodded his approval. Gasparri and Borgongini had to get going, but before leaving they knelt and asked for the pope’s blessing. They all felt the enormity of what was about to take place. Tears clouded Cardinal Gasparri’s eyes as he left the room.33

  The ceremony was held in the Hall o
f the Popes in the Lateran Palace, on the other side of the city from the Vatican. The pope’s seat as bishop of Rome was not St. Peter’s Basilica but the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran. For a thousand years, from the fourth century (when the Emperor Constantine had given the popes his own palace on that site) to the fourteenth (when the popes went into exile in Avignon), popes had lived in St. John Lateran.34 Vandals had devastated it in the fifth century, and it had been partly destroyed by fires in the fourteenth, but it was always rebuilt, ever grander. As “prisoners of the Vatican,” however, no pope had set foot there since Italian troops took Rome in 1870.

  Gasparri and Borgongini had already arrived—in a new Chrysler donated by a wealthy American—when Mussolini’s car pulled up. A light rain fell.35 The Duce emerged from his car, clutching white gloves in his left hand. He wore a morning suit, complete with tails and top hat.36 The cardinal greeted Mussolini and Grandi, who were joined by Minister of Justice Alfredo Rocco and Mussolini’s undersecretary, Francesco Giunta, and invited them to climb the imposing stairway with him. They walked slowly through what Grandi described as an “interminable” number of ornate rooms of the museum dedicated to the Church’s missions around the world. The ebullient Gasparri waved his arms as he identified all the countries whose exhibits they were passing, from New Guinea and the Fiji Islands to Mongolia, India, and Nicaragua. “Names of strange and distant lands,” recalled Grandi, “that the Prince of the Church pronounced with a smile, as if wanting to emphasize for us how vast was the power and the reach of the Catholic Church in the world.”

  Finally they reached their destination. At one end of the large room stood a sixteen-by-four-foot rose-colored table; eight heavily carved black armchairs were arranged in a row along the far side.37 At the center, Mussolini and Gasparri took their seats. As they prepared to sign the document, the dictator, who had earlier been so relaxed, looked pale and ill at ease, while the cardinal, feeling at home, kept smiling.38

  Signing the Lateran Accords, February 11, 1929. Left to right: Monsignor Francesco Borgongini-Duca, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, Francesco Pacelli, Benito Mussolini, Dino Grandi

  (photograph credit 8.1)

  Following the signing of the accords, Lateran Palace, February 11, 1929. Cardinal Gasparri and Mussolini, front center; Monsignor Pizzardo on far left; Francesco Pacelli in top hat on Gasparri’s right; Monsignor Borgongini on Mussolini’s left, with Dino Grandi to his left.

  (photograph credit 8.2)

  When Mussolini and Gasparri emerged from the Lateran Palace, the rapidly growing crowd erupted in applause. No advance notice of the ceremony had been given, but the presence of so many police and militiamen outside the cathedral, and then the arrival of the Duce, had triggered rumors, and journalists and photographers had rushed over. Despite the light rain, the mood was bright. Priests and seminarians sang prayers of thanksgiving in chorus, interspersed with shouts of “Long live Pius, our Pope and King!” while others, gathering in the piazza in front of the historic church, cried “Viva Mussolini! Viva Italy!,” intermingled with Fascist shouts of “alalà!” As he was being driven away, Monsignor Pizzardo got so carried away that he responded to the crowd’s shouts by raising his arm in Fascist salute.39

  Mussolini, in a more subdued mood, remained silent for the drive back to his office. Although this would be his greatest triumph, he would never feel comfortable around priests or in churches.40

  It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance the pope gave to the accords. Renato Moro, one of Italy’s foremost Church historians, observes that despite the establishment of the Italian government in the nineteenth century, with its commitments to separation of church and state and to liberal democracy, the popes had never abandoned their belief in a hierarchical, authoritarian Italian society run according to Church principles. After years in which these dreams for a return to the Church’s former authority seemed unrealistic, the appearance of Fascism offered new grounds for hope.41

  Until the signing, Catholics unhappy with the dictatorship could argue that the pope was not enthusiastic about the Fascist regime. Now this was no longer possible. Italian Catholics could have no doubt that in supporting Mussolini, they were following the pope’s wishes. The pope himself, speaking to a group of university students two days after the signing, explained how the historic agreement had finally been made possible. Perhaps, he told them, it helped that one side was headed by a librarian, expert in combing through historical documents; and “perhaps too what was needed was a man such as the one that Providence had us encounter, a man who did not share the concerns of the liberal school.” The pope’s reference to Mussolini as the man sent by Providence would be repeated by bishops, priests, and lay Catholics thousands of times in the years to follow.42

  In Bologna, special editions of local dailies sold out in a flash. The archbishop announced a special mass of thanksgiving for the next day, to which both government and military officials were invited. The archbishop of Chieti did not wait another day—an excited crowd packed into the cathedral for a special mass of thanksgiving on the very evening of the signing. The local Fascist authorities proudly took part in the ceremonies, carrying their flags and pennants, undaunted by the snowstorm outside.43 Newspapers throughout the country, including the Vatican daily, hammered on the theme that the historic event could never have happened if Italy had still been under democratic rule. Only Mussolini, and Fascism, had made it possible.44

  In Rome, government buildings and private homes were covered by a previously unthinkable combination: yellow and white papal banners alongside tricolored Italian flags. As it happened, it was the seventh anniversary of the pope’s coronation, and he was scheduled to preside over a celebratory mass in St. Peter’s. Twelve footmen in red uniforms, six on a side, carried the pope in his sedia gestatoria, his red-silk-covered throne, into the immense basilica. Tens of thousands of the faithful, having waited shoulder to shoulder for hours, finally got a glimpse of the pontiff. Rome’s Fascist Federation had called on Fascists to show their enthusiasm by gathering in St. Peter’s Square. Two hundred thousand people stood outside in the pouring rain. When later the pope stepped out onto the balcony to bless them, they roared in joy. Below him stood representatives of each of Rome’s Fascist militia units, holding their banners aloft, as the endless crowd of the faithful and the curious stretched far beyond the piazza. Later that afternoon, summoned by Fascist Party and militia officials, swarms of other celebrants gathered outside the Quirinal Palace, where the king appeared on a balcony, with the queen at his right and the national head of the Fascist Party on his left.45

  Throughout the world, the Duce was being hailed as a great statesman.46 In the Vatican, a top aide described the thrill. Not even the celebrations of victory in the Great War could compare with the delirium in Italy that day: “The joy was complete, without a single cloud. Everyone felt that new heights of greatness and glory were on Italy’s horizon.” Throughout the country, from Turin to Sicily, bishops and priests ordered their church bells rung in celebration, honoring the man who had finally brought harmony between church and state.47 For most Italians, the end of the decades-long hostility came as a huge relief. There was no longer any conflict between being a loyal Italian and being a good Catholic.

  The agreement, as the American chargé d’affaires in Rome told the U.S. secretary of state, was “a triumph for Mussolini in ending the controversy and in winning over the clergy to Fascism.” In his diary entry for that day, General Enrico Caviglia, hero of the First World War and confidant of the king, offered a different perspective: “These men who come to power through coup d’états need to legitimize themselves through the Vatican.” But in twenty years, he asked, what would happen when people came to resent the dictatorship that had robbed them of their freedom? “How would they judge the Vatican,” he wondered, “which had given the regime its moral support?”48

  Mussolini heard only one sour note from his national network of spies. The February 13 report, b
ased on informants in Rome, began warmly: “The news of the Conciliation produced joy and unspeakable enthusiasm in virtually all the population.… People say that the historical event represents an unparalleled success produced by the genius of the Duce … that the prestige and strength of Fascism have been increased enormously.” But there were some malcontents, “a scattering of old and bitter liberals, what remained of the Masons, and the Jews.” For Italy’s Jews, the Lateran Accords prompted nervousness and fear. Little more than a half century earlier, the demise of the Papal States had liberated them from the pope’s ghettoes. Italian unification and the separation of church and state had been their salvation. Now they worried what the future might bring.49

  PART TWO

  ENEMIES IN COMMON

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  THE SAVIOR

  TELEGRAMS POURED IN, CONGRATULATING PIUS XI ON THE HISTORIC accord. An American journalist who met with the pope shortly after the signing found him smiling and rejuvenated, “as fresh and dynamic as the day on which he was elected.”1 On February 17 the pope’s Noble Guards held a lavish reception inside the Vatican, where Rome’s black aristocracy fraternized with high prelates of the Curia. Lights were dimmed as they gathered around a movie screen to watch a news film commemorating the signing ceremony. When the Duce’s image appeared, applause and cheers swept the room.2

  The dictator had been eager to conclude the deal, for he had an important vote coming up. Since Italy now had only one political party, it needed a new way to elect parliament. Mussolini’s casual comment at the time of the last vote in 1924 turned out to be prophetic: that would be the last time he would suffer the indignity of running against an opposition. In the new system, it would be up to the Grand Council of Fascism to select the candidates for the four hundred seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Voters would get to vote yes or no on the slate as a whole. Mussolini himself referred to it not as an election but a plebiscite on the regime.3