The Pope and Mussolini

by David I. Kertzer

  The Vatican threw its full weight behind Mussolini’s campaign. On March 17, a week before Election Day 1929, L’Osservatore romano published an appeal urging all Catholics to vote yes. This was no small matter for Mussolini, for 99 percent of Italians were Catholic. The rest of the Catholic press, and priests throughout the country, eagerly joined the campaign.4

  To most observers, it seemed that a grateful pope had simply mobilized the Church to support Mussolini’s list of faithful Fascists. But behind the scenes, something else was going on. The pope was not willing to simply rubber-stamp Mussolini’s choices.5 Of the thousand names presented to the Grand Council from various Fascist and state organizations, from which it was to choose the four hundred candidates, the pope deemed three-quarters insufficiently Catholic. With the signing of the concordat, the pope argued, Italy was now “a confessional state.” The membership of parliament should reflect that new reality.

  The pope wanted the Duce to scrap his list and substitute one composed of those “free from any tie with Freemasonry, with Judaism and, in short, with any of the anticlerical parties.” “In this way,” the letter conveying the pope’s wishes concluded, “the Duce will place … the most beautiful and necessary crown atop the great work of the treaty and the concordat. He will show one more time that he is (in conformity with what His Holiness recently called him) the Man sent by Providence.”6

  A few days later Tacchi Venturi brought Mussolini a list of the men the pope considered “worthy representatives of a confessional State.”7 The popes had long condemned Freemasonry, and one of the first things Mussolini had done to please the Vatican after coming to power was to declare Freemasons ineligible for membership in the Fascist Party.8 Now the pope demanded that Jews and Masons be purged from the candidate list, and that Fascists of sure Catholic faith be added. Only after Mussolini made the changes did the Vatican organize a massive Church mobilization for a yes vote.9 On Election Day, a Sunday, parish priests throughout Italy literally led their parishioners to the ballot box.10 Mussolini’s triumph was complete, winning 98.3 percent of the vote.11

  The day after the plebiscite, one of the pope’s old protégés came to see him. Stefano Jacini was one of the boys of Milan’s nobility for whom Ratti had, years earlier, served as spiritual mentor. Entering the bronze door along the Bernini colonnade, to the right of St. Peter’s, Jacini was greeted by Swiss Guards in their brightly striped uniforms. They checked his invitation and let him ascend the long stairway into the Vatican palaces. Jacini was then escorted through the vast, splendiferous halls by men from the pope’s Noble Guard, Italians from aristocratic families. It was as if he had walked into a Renaissance costume drama. As he passed through the richly decorated halls, clusters of Papal Gendarmes—Italians dressed in exact replicas of the uniforms worn by Napoleon’s grenadiers—stood watch. A domestic prelate of the pope came to walk the forty-two-year-old Jacini to the office of the man he had once known as a simple priest.

  Pius XI smiled as he entered. In their seventy-minute conversation, the pope often slipped into the first person singular “I” rather than his customary “We.” They spent a good deal of their time discussing the Lateran Accords.

  “Situation resolved!” the pope told him happily. “Yes, I am pleased, but now comes the hard part, seeing that the provisions are applied. We have never had greater need to pray than we do now, but the future is in God’s hands. I can’t be expected to predict the future.” He reminded Jacini of verses by Metastasio, an eighteenth-century Italian poet. “ ‘There is no past, memory paints it,’ ” the pope recited. “ ‘There is no future, for hope shapes it. There is only the present, but it is always escaping us.’ ”12

  Knowing that Jacini had been a Popular Party leader, the pope was eager to justify his deal with the Duce. He could not have let the opportunity pass, he argued, for if he had, history might well judge him harshly. “The Lord helped me in all this.” He complained of those who had criticized him for coming to terms with the Fascist regime. “It was like saying that you should stop breathing because you are in a room where the air is polluted.” He explained, “For the Church, there is revolution and there is revolution, that which destroys authority, destroys the existing order, and that which transforms it. The Italian one is a revolution made with the king’s and the monarchy’s approval. We couldn’t ask for more than that.

  “It was not a real revolution,” continued the pope, still trying to justify himself to the young nobleman. “An upheaval, yes. We need to see what comes of it.” Words of his beloved Manzoni came to his mind: “ ‘The twilight hour is neither light, nor dark. What will come of it? Day or night? Wait a bit and then you will see.’ ”

  As the pope spoke, he grew more animated, shifting position in his chair, putting his elbows on his desk, using his hand to push his white zucchetto back into place on his head. “Hair still blonde, smiling behind his gold spectacles,” recalled Jacini, “his face animated, a brief chuckle punctuating his remarks, he seemed for a time to become once again the Don Achille of olden times.”13

  ALTHOUGH THE DEAL WITH THE POPE had been a great public relations success for Mussolini, it was not without its downside. Nothing angered him more than being called the pope’s patsy, and some were now accusing him of being just that. A proud, arrogant man whose ego was growing ever larger, Mussolini was sensitive to whisperings that he was selling out his principles and creating a state run not by Fascists but by priests. The fact that La Civiltà cattolica praised Mussolini’s plebiscite victory as ushering in a “Christian restoration of society” did not help.

  It was a delicate moment for Mussolini. There were those in and out of parliament who were unhappy. Fascists of the first hour—those who had been with the movement from its earliest days—saw the agreement as a betrayal of true Fascism, ceding unwanted influence to the pope. And some of the old liberal elite were upset that the Duce had abandoned the separation of church and state.

  On May 13 Mussolini rose in the Chamber of Deputies to conclude its debate over the ratification of the accords. It would be one of his most famous speeches.

  “Honorable comrades,” he began, before a packed gallery. Much confusion was being spread about the recent agreement. In the Italian state, he assured them, “the Church is not sovereign nor is it even free.” It remained subject to the laws of the land. Italy had the great advantage of being the home of a universal religion. But the Catholic Church’s success owed much to Italy itself: “This religion was born in Palestine, but it became Catholic in Rome.” He then added, in a remark destined to infuriate the pope, that if the early Christian community had remained in Palestine, “very probably it would have simply been one of the many sects that flourished in that overheated environment … and very likely it would have died out, without leaving a trace.”14 The Italian state, he concluded, “is Catholic but also Fascist, indeed before all else exclusively and essentially Fascist.”15

  The next day Pius dispatched the lawyer Francesco Pacelli to see the dictator. He carried a threat: the pope was irate and might suspend the talks on implementing the accords. Mussolini tried to calm the pope down. He would use his upcoming Senate speech, he said, to clear up any misunderstanding.

  Three days later, as the Senate took up the motion to confirm the accords, Pacelli sat in the gallery to listen to Mussolini’s speech. But what he heard was little different from what he had heard in the Chamber. “I have the impression,” he wrote in his diary, “that [the speech] will not succeed in wholly pleasing the Holy Father.”

  Although few were aware of it, over the next two weeks both Mussolini and the pope in turn threatened to bring down the whole carefully constructed Lateran Accords. Pacelli shuttled back and forth in a desperate effort to avoid disaster. In the end, both sides realized they had too much to lose. On June 7 Mussolini went to the Vatican, and in Cardinal Gasparri’s rooms, the two men sat down for the final signing.16

  With the Lateran Accords, the pope and the Duce entered
into a peculiar partnership. Each saw himself as heading a “totalitarian” organization, a term they both embraced. It could have only one head and demanded total loyalty. The pope was eager to use the Fascists’ power to resurrect a Catholic state, although he was not so foolish as to think he could ever “Christianize” Mussolini. The Duce was eager to use the power of the Church to solidify his own rule, but in his view the Catholic clergy were to be the handmaidens of the Fascist government, tools to ensure popular support for the regime.

  Mussolini and Gasparri following ratification of the Lateran Accords at the Vatican, June 7, 1929. Cardinal Gasparri and Mussolini seated; Monsignor Borgongini standing between them, with, to his left, Francesco Pacelli and Monsignor Pizzardo.

  (photograph credit 9.1)

  Each side had much to gain by the deal, but neither Mussolini nor the pope would ever be entirely comfortable with it. The pope would not be happy unless he could get Mussolini to respect what he regarded as the Church’s divinely ordained prerogatives. Mussolini was willing to give the pope what he wanted as long as it did not conflict with his dictatorship and his own dreams of glory. As the pope would discover, Mussolini could be pushed only so far. Both men jealously guarded the rights they thought were theirs. Both were prone to bursts of temper. There was ample reason to suspect that the partnership might not last.

  WITH THE ESTABLISHMENT OF diplomatic relations, Mussolini appointed forty-four-year-old Cesare De Vecchi to be Italy’s first ambassador to the Holy See. Trained as a lawyer, from a middle-class family in Piedmont, De Vecchi had commanded a shock troop unit during the war. He later became leader of the squadristi in Turin. One of the Fascist Party deputies elected in 1921, his moment of greatest triumph had come as one of the Quadrumvirate who led the March on Rome.

  Why the Duce chose De Vecchi for the delicate diplomatic mission is a bit of a mystery. Mussolini regularly made fun of his pomposity and thickheadedness and complained that he had no political sense. In May 1923 he fired De Vecchi from his position as undersecretary of the Treasury, saying he was unfit for anything but a soldier’s life.17 He sent him to Italian Somalia to serve as governor, where he stayed for five years. But De Vecchi had some qualities that recommended him. A devout Catholic, he had ties both with the royal family and with the upper reaches of the military, two spheres that had largely resisted Fascist control. In appreciation for his devotion to the monarchy, the king gave De Vecchi the title of Count of Val Cismon, which he proudly bore. According to Dino Grandi, whenever anyone mentioned the king’s name to De Vecchi, an involuntary tremor flashed through his body, as though a soldier were being called to attention.18 But his arrogance, poor judgment, booming voice, shaved head, small eyes, big nose, and outlandish mustache—vaguely resembling a small squirrel—made him one of the regime’s most frequent targets of popular ridicule.19

  On the morning of June 25, the new ambassador arrived at the Vatican in a royal coach drawn by two gaily festooned horses. The coachman and three outriders standing on the back of the coach were dressed as if for the court of Louis XIV. Wearing a diplomatic uniform reminiscent of the admiral in H.M.S. Pinafore, De Vecchi presented his credentials to the pope. He was ushered into the small throne room, where the pope sat surrounded by his court. The new ambassador bowed three times, as was the custom, and after the formal exchange of greetings, Pius XI invited him to his library for a private conversation. De Vecchi got to say little, while the pope—perhaps prompted by the new ambassador’s roots in the north—reminisced with pleasure about his past Alpine exploits. In then recalling his years as a young priest in the Eternal City, his mood momentarily darkened. He told De Vecchi of the time when jeering youths had chased him down the streets of Rome, throwing stones and shouting “Cockroach!”

  Cesare De Vecchi, Italian ambassador to the Holy See, 1929–35

  (photograph credit 9.2)

  Those days, De Vecchi assured him, were past. Since Fascism had come to power, priests were treated with respect.20

  A month later De Vecchi again met with the pope, but this time their encounter was far less pleasant. He stepped into the pontiff’s library with some trepidation, knowing how angry the pope was about the recent publication of Mussolini’s parliamentary speeches. As he entered, a trick of the sunlight shining through the window made it look as if fire were flaring from the pope’s eyeglasses. The pope tore into De Vecchi in terms the ambassador described as “harsh, resentful, often crude and cutting.” “Things can’t go on this way,” he warned, shaking his head, “they absolutely cannot go on this way. Your behavior,” said the pope, referring to the government’s publication of the speeches, “offends the Church and its head. I went out to meet Italy with an open heart and in payment for our loyalty Signor Mussolini has shot us in the back with a machine gun.” Riffling through papers on his desk, the pope pulled out reports of recent mistreatment of local Catholic Action chapters. In some areas, officers had been roughed up, and people had been told that good Italians did not join Catholic Action.

  De Vecchi tried to defend the government. It could hardly be expected to stand by, he said, while anti-Fascists hid behind the Catholic groups.

  The pope reacted as if he had been stung by a wasp and banged the table with his palm. “I don’t want to hear this!” He had given explicit orders that Catholic Action not engage in politics, and the government had no right to harass its members.

  That was all well and good, replied De Vecchi, but it was one thing to give orders and another to have them obeyed.

  Darkness fell during their two-and-a-half-hour meeting. As De Vecchi prepared to leave, the pope, calmer now, said, “Tell Signor Mussolini, in my name, not to confuse his friends with his enemies and vice versa, for confusion of that kind would limit the place that he will have in history.… And,” added the pope, “tell him that every day, in my prayers, I ask the Lord to bless him.”21

  In mid-September the pope addressed a huge group of young Italian Catholics. Still upset about the treatment of Catholic Action, he bewailed the “martyrdom” they faced. Soon afterward, De Vecchi told the pope how upset Mussolini had been to hear of his remarks. It would be best, he suggested, for the pope to remain silent about his Catholic Action complaints so that De Vecchi and others could work through diplomatic channels to resolve them.

  The ambassador should have known better. The pope slammed his hand on the desk and asked indignantly, “So you don’t want me to speak, you don’t want me to say that which it is my duty to say?”

  “That’s not exactly what I mean, Holiness,” responded De Vecchi. “I know the person on the other side and my advice is meant only to aid the common good.”

  “For the common good,” Pius repeated. “Let me tell you how I will proceed from now on to satisfy you on certain occasions. I will open this window”—here the pope, his voice rising, pointed with his finger to the window behind his desk—“and I will shout so that everyone in Saint Peter’s Square can hear me!”

  De Vecchi was momentarily speechless. “That’s what I will do,” the pope repeated, “whether you like it or not, Mr. Ambassador!”22

  Later in the fall, the hapless De Vecchi suffered through another bout of papal temper. Prince Umberto, the king’s son and heir, was eager to be married in one of Rome’s major churches, either in St. John in Lateran or in the monumental Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. But the pope turned down the request. Since the Savoyard kings had so long kept the popes a prisoner of the Vatican, he said, he himself had not yet visited either church, and it would not be appropriate for the great-grandson of the king who had deprived the popes of their lands to be married there.23

  De Vecchi came to ask the pope to reconsider. “He is in a foul mood,” Gasparri warned the ambassador, before he entered.24 But under pressure from the royal family, the mustachioed monarchist nonetheless pressed the case.

  In response, the pope “flew into a rage, sharply raising his voice, and often interrupting when I tried to speak,” De Vecchi
recalled. Unable to get a word in, he sat straight, immobile, in an effort to wait out the tirade. He tried his best to be expressionless but found it difficult to keep a nervous smile from his face.

  The pope gesticulated dramatically. “I am offended, mortally offended,” he kept repeating, shaking his head and twisting in his seat. “Open your mouth, and your breath offends the Pope; you move, and you humiliate me; you get your sinister brain in motion and you do it to plot things that insult the Church.… Enough! Enough!”

  Then the pope returned to complaining about how Catholic Action members were being treated. The overmatched ambassador again tried to defend his leader, but the pope got so angry, he jumped to his feet. The muscles in his face pulsed, his mouth clenched. The heavy marble statue of Christ on his desk swayed as the pope pounded his fist. “Lies! Lies!” he shouted.

  Pius paced the room, talking angrily as if to himself. He stopped periodically to bang his fist again on his desk. “This is what you have done,” he exclaimed, regaining volume. “You have deceived the Pope! Everyone is saying so, everyone knows it, they are writing about it everywhere, inside Italy and abroad!”

  De Vecchi endured it all, but when the pope went on to say, “Rome is mine,” the ambassador could not contain himself.

  “Rome,” he sputtered, “is the capital of Italy, home of His Majesty the king and the government.”

  “Rome,” replied the pontiff, “is my diocese.”