The Pope and Mussolini

by David I. Kertzer

  Their wedding, in April 1930, was held in a nearby parish church. Afterward hundreds of guests—women in fur-collared coats and men in dark suits—gathered on the grounds of Villa Torlonia for the reception. Before a broad, long stairway leading up to the large gleaming white columns fronting the white villa, a newsreel captured the papal nuncio, Borgongini, chatting with Fascist bigwig Dino Grandi. The papal nuncio would later have the honor of sitting for the meal in the garden at a small round table with the hatless, balding Mussolini. Roman schoolgirls in long white dresses, each with a big white bow at her neck, sang in a chorus. Edda’s little brothers were there as well, dressed in dark shorts and white open-necked shirts, hair slicked back. Following their concert, the schoolgirls paraded past the newlyweds. While Edda kept her right arm up in the Fascist salute, Galeazzo kept his hands clasped together behind his back, clutching his black top hat.

  The young couple and their parents then went to St. Peter’s. Galeazzo and Edda, in her white wedding dress, white lace cap wrapped around her head in a style recalling a twenties flapper, climbed the imposing stairs of the basilica, two small children carrying the end of her long, flowing trellis. Mussolini, like his new son-in-law, was dressed in tails and top hat. An enthusiastic crowd raised their arms in Fascist salute. Inside the basilica, Borgongini offered the couple Pius XI’s benediction and gave Edda a present from the pope, a stunning rosary made of gold and malachite.14 The newlyweds moved into Galeazzo’s parents’ home, but only briefly, for the free-spirited Edda could not stand her rather large mother-in-law, whom she took to calling “la bertuccia,” the ape.15

  AS AUTUMN 1930 APPROACHED, the pope, through his nuncio, repeatedly reminded Mussolini of his promise to end Italy’s patriotic holiday. But the Duce was having second thoughts, worried that abolishing it would make him look weak. The pope would give no ground. Should September 20 be celebrated again, he warned, he would make his protest public.16

  The threat got the Duce’s attention. He summoned the nuncio to Palazzo Venezia, the massive medieval palace where he had moved his office into a year earlier. Built by Pope Paul II in the fifteenth century, it stood on a large piazza catercorner to the Victor Emmanuel II Monument (ridiculed by its critics as resembling a monstrous white wedding cake). In 1924 Mussolini had kicked off his program of resurrecting ancient Rome by demolishing the houses and churches—some from Renaissance times—that covered the nearby Trajan Market and Roman Forum. He would soon destroy more buildings to create an imposing avenue, its road and sidewalks thirty meters wide, running from Piazza Venezia past these ancient ruins to the Colosseum.17

  As the bespectacled nuncio, a bit of a paunch extending his black cassock, entered Mussolini’s office on the first day of September, the Duce greeted him with his usual air of gruff beneficence. He had made his new office in the cavernous Hall of the Map of the World. The room was sixty feet long and fifty feet wide, with a frescoed ceiling forty feet above. The whole western wall was covered with a huge mosaic of the world map. Mussolini was in a good mood and looked well, his suntanned skin set off against his white woolen suit.

  Asked about the tan, Mussolini said he had been going to the beach every day, swimming and taking what he called la cura dell’uva, the grape cure. “The grape,” Mussolini explained to the mystified nuncio, “is the medicine that nature has given men, who however don’t appreciate its virtue. A bunch of grapes eaten on an empty stomach stimulates the liver, has a lightly laxative effect, and makes you feel full all day long.”

  The dictator was plagued by a nervous stomach. At moments of great stress, excruciating pains were likely to double him over and confine him to bed. One such bout several years earlier, right after he had announced the dictatorship, had him spitting up blood. Although medical experts were called in, no one could offer a firm diagnosis. So it was that the man once known for his love of double espressos had moved to a diet heavy on chamomile tea, fruit, and vegetables. At late-night meetings of the Grand Council, as members downed one espresso after another to stay awake, the Duce drank glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice. He avoided all coffee and alcohol.18

  “You know why I am here,” Borgongini said. Mussolini then pulled out the nuncio’s recent letter, with the pope’s threat, and pointed to the passages that he had underlined with his blue pencil. Mussolini was tireless in scribbling marginal notes in the documents he pored through, using a thick red or blue pencil, replacing them only when they had become small stubs.19

  The Duce shook his head. The September 20 holiday was fixed by law, he said, and could be changed only by a vote of parliament. “So for this year let’s minimize the festivities even more,” he proposed by way of compromise. “We’ll get rid of the lights, the flags—other than on the public buildings that is. At the next cabinet meeting we’ll decide on ending it, and I will support it in parliament.”20

  “No, Your Excellency,” replied the tenacious Borgongini, “these are not solutions. The holiday must be suppressed, and before next September 20. Otherwise the Holy Father’s conscience will force him to make a public protest.… And the whole world will laugh at us, saying: ‘What a great conciliation this is!’ ” Article six of the treaty in the Lateran Accords, he observed, abrogated all previous government acts that were inconsistent with it, and so Mussolini could simply announce that the holiday was being abolished as part of its provisions.

  Mussolini thought a bit and then agreed that perhaps this offered a way out. He would talk to his legal advisers and get back to the nuncio soon.

  As Borgongini got up to leave, he expressed his condolences on the recent death of Mussolini’s young nephew, son of Arnaldo. This put the Duce in a pensive mood, as he reflected about the boy’s final days of suffering and his brother’s deep Catholic faith.

  “I’m a believer too,” the Duce assured the nuncio. “As if I weren’t!

  “But,” he added, “men have made me bad.”21

  THE DUCE SOON SUMMONED the nuncio back. Although it would take a law to formally abolish the September 20 holiday, such a proposal would be on the agenda of the next cabinet meeting. It would be replaced with a new holiday on October 28, the anniversary of the March on Rome.

  The pope, replied Borgongini, might find the compromise acceptable. But he would not be happy with the proposal to replace the old holiday with one commemorating October 28, rather than February 11, the date of Conciliation.

  “Let’s not get into this,” said Mussolini, his voice rising. “You wanted me to abolish the September 20 holiday, let’s content ourselves with that. Enough! I wouldn’t want you now to start asking me to change the name of via 20 settembre or have you complain because the elementary school textbooks talk about Italians’ entry into Rome on September 20.”

  Mussolini got up. “I have more important things to worry about,” he said, dismissing the nuncio.22

  Not one to be intimidated, the pope pressed for more. Although Borgongini had told him what Mussolini had said about changing street names, he insisted that Mussolini must now rename via 20 settembre, one of Rome’s major roads. It should be called, the pope proposed, via 11 febbraio, honoring the date of the Lateran Accords.

  When Mussolini learned of the pope’s latest demand, he summoned the nuncio. “You must want to unleash a ferocious anticlerical reaction,” the furious Duce told him. “I regret what I’ve done with September 20.… I no sooner conceded one thing when you demanded another, even before the cabinet met, before the law could be approved, despite the fact I specifically told you that the name of that street was not to be spoken of.”

  There was a reason he had brought up the name of the street at their last meeting, said the Duce. “I know you and I expected that, having gotten me to abolish the holiday, you would ask for the abolition of the street, and after getting rid of the street, who knows what other things?” What would come next? he asked. Italy had nine thousand towns, and who knew how many had streets with names that offended the pope?

  Walking
the nuncio to the door, Mussolini calmed down. “We are making policy like you eat an artichoke, one leaf at a time,” he explained. “Because this is my strength. I do things in my own way, without any unnecessary steps. I have to respect the letter of the law. I don’t want to be the elephant in the china shop.”23

  IN THE AFTERMATH of the Lateran Accords, Mussolini entered what historians portray as an era of consensus. Facing no significant opposition, his craving for adulation grew.24 Not only did he now require newspapers to refer to him as the Duce, but he insisted that they print DUCE in capital letters.25 Images of him were everywhere, in public buildings, homes, and shops. Newspapers and magazines ran heroic photographs of him, which he carefully reviewed before publication. He excluded any that showed him with nuns, monks, or priests, convinced they brought bad luck.26

  Mussolini cultivated his cinematic image as well. Rome was filled with movie theaters—one of them even had a retractable roof to allow in fresh air—and people flocked to the latest offerings.27 The Duce worked closely with the new national film agency, and a 1927 law required that all of Italy’s movie theaters show its news clips.

  An endless spate of news films recorded the dictator’s dedications of new projects, addresses to Fascist youth groups, laying of wreaths to Fascist martyrs, and awarding of medals to brightly clad peasant women. Other clips showed him dressed in a white suit inspecting public works projects, or in open-necked shirt saddled atop a brown horse jumping over hastily placed steeple-jumps on the grounds of Villa Torlonia. Some news films offered lighter fare, a look at popular life. Some chronicled the triumphs of famous Italian boxers and cyclists. One recorded a popular festival in Rome’s Trastevere, not far from the Vatican. Cinemagoers got to see men clutching the tops of large burlap bags around their chests, hopping down the street toward the finish line. An egg race followed, as each contestant (not a woman among them) struggled to keep an egg balanced atop a spoon as he scooted down the street. A playful shot of the egg-splattered cobblestones after the race’s end testified to those who never made it to the finish line. The laughter in the theater quickly subsided when Mussolini appeared on-screen—people rose to their feet.

  Not everyone was happy with this forced homage to the dictator. A story made the rounds that one day Mussolini decided to go to a theater, wearing a disguise. When everyone stood up as his image came on the screen, he remained seated. A man standing behind him in the darkened theater tapped him on the shoulder and whispered in his ear: “Signore, I feel the same way you do, but I would advise you to stand up if you don’t want one of these goons to crack your head open.”28

  At public appearances, the Duce’s aides made sure he was surrounded by adoring crowds, even if it meant recruiting police agents dressed in civilian clothes. Navarra, Mussolini’s personal assistant, recalled that once when a picture was published of the Duce waltzing with a peasant woman, a rumor circulated that his dancing partner was really a policeman in disguise.

  Mussolini sometimes forgot that the workers, peasants, and artisans with whom he was photographed were his own police agents. But at one dedication ceremony for a new building, the thought did occur to him. Turning to the “bricklayer” who was standing beside him, he asked, in a whisper, if he was a policeman.

  “No, Duce!” the man replied.

  “Ah, bravo!” the delighted Mussolini replied. “So what are you then, the master mason?”

  “No, Duce,” he responded, “I am an army sergeant.”29

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE SON

  BY THE TIME THE LATERAN ACCORDS WERE RATIFIED, SEVENTY-SEVEN-YEAR-OLD Cardinal Gasparri had been secretary of state for fifteen years under two popes. In 1922, after helping secure Ratti’s election, he could count on having the pope’s support, and Pius valued his secretary of state’s experience. But as the years passed, conflict between the two was bound to emerge, for the pontiff would tolerate no separate pocket of power in the Vatican.1

  Gasparri rarely left Rome, except to spend the summer vacation in his mountain hometown, northeast of the capital. There his extended family treated him like a celebrity, the local boy made good. When Gasparri was in Rome, his staff members came by his office each morning. He sat at a large round table, covered with piles of documents and correspondence. As each staff member entered, Gasparri gave him his own little stack. When he was at his summer retreat, his aides took turns bringing him papers. There they found the short, rotund cardinal, dressed in a simple clerical black gown, his large black, round-brim cloth hat nestled beside him, sitting underneath a large tree enjoying the shade, the fresh air, and the view.2

  Gasparri’s down-home sense of humor put others at ease, but ambassadors to the Holy See did not find him completely forthcoming. As the British envoy reported, he was “far from candid … or put more bluntly, he can lie well.” When the French ambassador accused him one day of not telling the truth, Gasparri replied that he was simply doing what was required of all diplomats, adding, with a sparkle in his eye, that if necessary the pope would give him absolution.3

  Thomas Morgan, an American reporter, tells of visiting Gasparri’s office during the height of a crisis with the Mexican government that, in the 1920s and beyond, shut down large numbers of churches and seminaries. Morgan found Gasparri remarkably calm, talking “like a great sage.” The Church, he said, had survived for many centuries and had endured much worse. It would continue to outlast its foes.

  “Non prevalebunt,” he repeated, in Latin. “They shall not prevail.”

  As the cardinal ushered the reporter to the door, the parrots that Gasparri kept in his rooms began squawking. “Non prevalebunt! Non prevalebunt!” Apparently the secretary of state had taken the time to teach them this lesson in Church history.4

  As early as 1926, however, rumors spread that the pope was unhappy with his secretary of state. In an effort to get him to resign, the pope was said to be humiliating him, making him wait in the anteroom before seeing him, and mortifying him in ways, as one police informant put it, that not even a servant would tolerate.5

  The signing of the Lateran Accords in 1929 proved to be Gasparri’s greatest public triumph. Few photographs were more familiar than the one showing him with pen in hand sitting alongside Mussolini. But the agreement turned out to be a mixed blessing. Pius, angered by Mussolini’s parliamentary speeches and worried that the dictator was not going to cooperate as he had hoped in establishing a Catholic state, decided he needed a new secretary of state. He first informed Gasparri in July that he thought it was time for a change and told him to think the matter over. From his summer mountain retreat, Gasparri responded in a letter to the pope: “I have not forgotten (and how could I forget it) what Your Holiness told me last July, which, if I am not mistaken, is that, especially in view of the likely struggles with the Fascist Government in defense of Catholic Action, Your Holiness thought it opportune that someone else take my place.” He added that he too had been thinking of leaving the position he had held so many years, “although for different reasons than the one Your Holiness cited.” At his age, he said, he no longer had either the memory or the energy he once did.6

  The pope waited another several months before making the change. He saw Gasparri less and less often, relying on others, especially his undersecretary, Monsignor Pizzardo.7 The strain of waiting to be dismissed eroded what diplomatic reserve the secretary of state had left. “It’s a difficult life,” Gasparri sighed after one meeting with the pope. Pius XI, he told the Italian ambassador, had many merits, but he was often “as cold as marble.”8

  The secretary of state’s replacement became a topic of intense speculation.9 Gasparri hoped the pope would appoint his disciple, Cardinal Bonaventura Cerretti, and had reason to believe that the pope might follow this advice. In 1925, shortly after Cerretti returned from his post as nuncio to Paris and was named a cardinal, the pope had hinted that he might want him to succeed Gasparri one day. One of the Vatican’s
leading diplomats, Cerretti had served in Mexico, the United States, and Australia and had represented Pope Benedict XV at the postwar peace negotiations in Paris. But in the fall of 1929, Cerretti told a journalist he did not want the post. “With Pius XI,” he explained, “the secretary of state has little to do. He’s more of a decorative figure than someone with any power or independence. He can’t assume any direct, serious responsibilities, nor give his personal stamp to the Church government. You could say, in other words, that he is simply an executor of orders from above.”10

  Cerretti’s comments are a bit suspect, for while many saw him as the obvious choice, he had reason to fear that the pope would pass him over. Cerretti’s sympathies for the democratic countries, and for the Popular Party in Italy, were well known, and as the pope was aware, he opposed the deal Pius had struck with Mussolini.11 In December the pope chose instead his nuncio to Germany, Eugenio Pacelli, to be the new secretary of state. Cerretti was indignant. He was certain that Francesco Pacelli, a mere layman, had used his frequent meetings with Pius XI to build up his brother in the pope’s eyes.

  “That Pius XI will prefer Pacelli over me, to everything I have done for him, to my tenacious loyalty, to my diplomatic experience of over thirty years … it makes me furious to think of it, I can’t accept it,” Cerretti fumed. “Pacelli and his brother, servants and slaves of Fascism, accomplices bought by Mussolini, bring discredit on the Holy See. They humiliate the papacy, weaken its power, and lower its moral and educational authority in the eyes of all the Catholic powers.”12

  Mussolini’s ambassador to Germany, Luigi Aldrovandi, viewed the appointment much more sympathetically. Eugenio Pacelli was a person of stature, he said, combining deep intelligence with the ability to stay calm. He projected both dignity and a deep religious faith. Perhaps most important, thought the ambassador, he would be a friend of the Fascist government. “Monsignor Pacelli,” he reported, “had expressed his admiration for His Excellency Mussolini even before the Lateran Accords.”13