The Pope and Mussolini

by David I. Kertzer

  But even the greatly weakened text displeased the acting ambassador. While the Fascist press selectively quoted it to demonstrate the pope’s support for the war, outside Italy the remarks, even in expurgated form, were being used to argue that the pope opposed it.14 Upset that the Fascist press was claiming his speech had offered clear support for the war, the pope ordered the Vatican daily to print a front-page column expressing his displeasure at the misuse of his words. Talamo was not pleased. “To speak at this point of the well known stubbornness and senile insistence of the Pontiff,” he told Mussolini, “would not be very respectful, but it would be no less true.”

  At his regular Friday meeting with Pacelli that week, Talamo found a sympathetic ear. “The cardinal secretary,” he reported to Mussolini, “let me know his consternation.”15

  In fact, although Eugenio Pacelli had been secretary of state for several years, his relationship with Pius continued to be marked by formality and emotional distance. Earlier in the year, hearing that Jean Verdier, archbishop of Paris, was in Rome for a visit, Pacelli had asked to see him. A major ceremony was planned for April at the French pilgrimage site of Lourdes, and Pacelli was eager to take part. But he could only go if Pius asked him, and he was afraid to broach the subject himself. A bit abashed, he pleaded with Verdier to bring the matter up with the pontiff. It was through that indirect route that he won the pope’s blessing for his trip.16 Verdier described Pacelli’s relationship with the pope in these years as “cordial, at least insofar as the temperament of the old pope allowed for cordiality.”17

  IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, the League of Nations met to discuss the possibility that Italy would invade Ethiopia, a member state. Should Mussolini do so, the league threatened, it would impose severe economic sanctions.18

  Since the settlement of the Catholic Action controversy four years earlier, the pope had been increasingly public in his support for the regime. In September 1932 he celebrated a special mass at St. Peter’s for thousands of youths enrolled in the Organizations of Fascists abroad who had made a pilgrimage to Rome. That same month tens of thousands of Italian Fascist youth group members spent two weeks in exercises around Rome, accompanied by a large number of priests, their hats bearing a cross lying atop the Fascist emblem. The pope received hundreds of these priests at the Vatican and blessed them for their important work.19

  The Vatican’s enthusiasm for the Duce was again on display on the tenth anniversary of the March on Rome. L’Osservatore romano’s support for the dictator could scarcely have been more enthusiastic. Mussolini had worked “vast, profound, colossal changes in all branches of public administration,” the Vatican daily reported. Ever since his first address in parliament in 1921, he had “exalted the incomparable beauty of the Catholic idea and the Church’s mission in the world.” The paper reminded readers that it was Mussolini who had placed the crucifix in the nation’s schoolrooms and courtrooms. It was he who had introduced religious education in the schools and brought amity between church and state through the Lateran Accords.20

  IN THE WEEKS FOLLOWING Pius XI’s unscripted remarks to the nurses, Cardinal Pacelli and Monsignor Pizzardo tried to persuade the pope to keep his opposition to Mussolini’s war to himself. On September 13 Pacelli sent word to Mussolini that the pope would not stand in the way of an invasion.21

  But the pontiff still held out hope that he could dissuade Mussolini. On September 20 he dictated a letter to him setting out the reasons why the war would be a mistake. Although Italy had by far the greater military force, the Ethiopians would take advantage of the difficult terrain, which they knew better. Even if Italy were to conquer the country, the pope predicted—presciently as it turned out—Italian forces would face unending guerrilla attacks, not to mention the difficulties brought by high temperature and disease.22

  Worried that a formal letter from the pope opposing the war would anger Mussolini, Pacelli persuaded him to have Tacchi Venturi convey his thoughts informally instead. Pius called in the Jesuit and gave him a text to use but cautioned him not to let Mussolini have a copy. The typescript, prepared by Pacelli, began by expressing sympathy for the Duce’s stated aims of giving Italy space for expansion and exercising its right of defense. It then listed the pope’s concerns, stressing the one thought most likely to sway the Duce: the likelihood that if things went badly, Mussolini would be blamed.23

  None of this made any impression on the dictator. On the evening of October 2, he strode onto the balcony of Palazzo Venezia and electrified the crowd with the news that he had ordered Italian troops to march into Ethiopia. Buildings shook as tens of thousands took up the rhythmic chant: “Duce! Duce! Duce!”

  From a large window on the opposite side of the piazza, Margherita Sarfatti gazed out at the scene. Although her allure as a lover had passed, and in recent years he had pushed her away, she had remained a faithful and effective propagandist for Mussolini, especially abroad. But the recent rise of the Nazis in Germany had filled her with increasing horror. Launching a war in defiance of the League of Nations and risking war with Britain and France, she knew, would mean driving Italy into Hitler’s hands. Something was going terribly wrong.

  Sarfatti turned to a friend standing next to her and remarked: “It is the beginning of the end.”

  “Why do you say that?” he asked. “Do you think we will lose this war?”

  “No … I say it because unfortunately we will win it … and he will lose his head.”24

  The next day Tacchi Venturi, ever eager to promote goodwill between the Duce and Pius, assured Mussolini that the pope would not get in the way of his war plans. “In this most serious time,” he wrote, “the Holy Father was satisfied with what he learned through me, and he told me not to fail to use the first possible occasion to tell you of his pleasure.”25

  Worried that the invasion would isolate Italy, the pope took the extraordinary step of sending a plea to Britain’s King George V. It was not his first attempt—back in August he had tried to send a message to the king via the archbishop of Westminster, but learning what lay behind the archbishop’s request for a meeting, the king invented a pretext not to see him.26

  Cardinal Pacelli prepared a new letter to the king in English. “Your Majesty,” it began, “the Holy Father has entrusted to me the special and personal charge of laying before Your Majesty the following matter in a very confidential manner.” The pope “does not see how it will be possible to avoid the conflict with Ethiopia because Italy has been refused the minimum which he believes it has a right to claim in virtue of the accords, that is to say, a simple Mandate (not indeed a Protectorate) over the peripheral regions of the Ethiopian Empire.” Mussolini’s demands were reasonable, Pacelli said, explaining that the parts of Ethiopia involved were areas where “slavery and disorder” reigned, and where the Negus—Ethiopia’s ruler, Haile Selassie—had little influence.

  The astonished British envoy took the envelope from Pacelli and cabled London for instructions. The British foreign minister refused to accept the letter. The pope’s plea was returned unopened.27

  AT DAWN ON OCTOBER 3, 110,000 men, under the command of General Emilio De Bono, the goateed leader of the March on Rome, crossed south from Eritrea into Ethiopia. The troops included not only Italian soldiers but Eritreans and Somalis under Italian command. Joining in the invasion were assorted partially trained groups of Fascist militia, proud and excited to finally get their chance to do something tangible for the Duce and the Fatherland. The forces stretched across a front seventy kilometers wide, with 2,300 machine guns, 230 cannons, and 156 tanks. One hundred twenty-six planes stood ready in Eritrean airports to provide air cover. Within a few hours one unit came across a small fort, and the first Italian soldier was killed. The Italians, who until then had happily occupied themselves by singing patriotic songs, looked on with horror as a medic covered their comrade’s bloody body with a sheet. “No one thought that you could die so quickly,” commented one of them. Soon Italian planes were dropping their i
ncendiary bombs on the nearby town of Adua. Mussolini’s sons, Bruno and Vittorio, each piloted a Caproni 101 in the raid; Italian forces reduced much of the town, including its hospital, to a heap of ashes. Hundreds of residents died. The Italians pushed on.28

  A few days after the invasion, in a 54 to 4 vote, the League of Nations imposed sanctions on Italy, applying them to all Italian imports and to those exports deemed useful to the war effort, although excluding oil.29

  Later the same week Count Bonifacio Pignatti, the new Italian ambassador to the Holy See, presented his credentials to the pope. The announcement earlier in the year that Cesare De Vecchi was leaving the ambassadorship to become minister of education had been greeted with concern in the Vatican, where he had come to be viewed as a friend.30

  The fifty-seven-year-old Pignatti, ambassador to France and a thirty-year veteran of the Italian diplomatic corps, offered a striking contrast with his predecessor. De Vecchi had come to his post with no diplomatic experience, his claim to fame stemming from his days as Fascist boss of Turin and one of the leaders of the March on Rome. Pignatti, by contrast, had served in Italian embassies all across Europe and South America. Of average height, his hair largely turned gray, he fit comfortably into his formal ambassador’s suits. In short, unlike the outrageous De Vecchi, he looked very much like a diplomat.31

  At the new ambassador’s first meeting with Pius XI, the pontiff appeared tired and listless, although as they talked about the war, he became more animated. While the pope expressed optimism that French efforts at mediation might work, Pignatti was dubious. The pope raised no word of protest about the recently launched invasion and further pleased Pignatti by expressing his poor opinion of the League of Nations.32

  The British envoy to the Holy See, who also noted the change in the pope’s attitude, offered an explanation. The pope had strongly disapproved of the impending war and had tried to dissuade Mussolini from going ahead with it. But once the Duce launched it, he did not want to undermine the war effort, “being afraid that the fall of fascism might result from an unsuccessful war, and that a Communist or anti-clerical régime might seize power, with disastrous results for the Papacy.” The French ambassador, for his part, saw some pathos in the pope’s plight: the imperious pope felt powerless in the face of the pro-war zealotry of his own Italian clergy, yet he was pained by the poor impression his silence was making abroad.33

  Italy’s Catholic clergy did all they could to whip up popular enthusiasm for the war. On October 28, in a ceremony in Milan’s beautiful cathedral, marking the thirteenth anniversary of the March on Rome, Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster gave a stirring homily that attracted international attention. A Benedictine monk known for his ascetic severity, Schuster had become archbishop of Milan in 1929. Like the pope, he thought Western civilization was locked in an epic battle between good and evil, a struggle of the godly against the demonic. He saw Mussolini and the Fascist regime as crucial Church allies. “Cardinal Schuster,” remarked Cesare De Vecchi, “lacked only a black shirt, as for the rest he was as closely in tune with the party line as the most diligent party member.”34

  A few months before the mass commemorating the March on Rome, Cardinal Schuster had deposited a bouquet of flowers at the altar to the fallen Fascists and stopped to pray for their souls. “The cardinal’s act,” wrote an informant in Milan, “was very favorably remarked upon in the various circles where one sees the ever increasing fascistization of the clergy.”35 At the celebratory mass in the Duomo, Fascist government authorities, militiamen, and party bigwigs surrounded the cardinal as he explained that the commemoration of the March on Rome was not simply a political celebration “but an essentially Catholic holiday.” Fascism had brought about the restoration of Catholic Italy, and the war in Ethiopia should be seen in this light. Together the Church and the Fascist state had a holy “national and Catholic mission” to perform at a time when “in the fields of Ethiopia Italy’s flag triumphantly brings the Cross of Christ, smashes the chains of the slaves, and prepares the way for the Missionaries of the Gospel.”36

  Mussolini had the speech rebroadcast on Italian radio, and the cardinal’s picture decorated the cover of a popular newsweekly.37 His colleagues in France, however, were less pleased. “Cardinal Schuster,” wrote Alfred Baudrillart—a cardinal as of late 1935—“is a convinced fascist.”38

  During the tense months of the war, the Duce looked to the Church not only for domestic support but for international help as well. He was especially eager to enlist the pope’s aid in preventing the League of Nations’ economic sanctions from spreading.39

  In a number of long conversations with Cardinal Pacelli in mid-November, Pignatti urged the Vatican to enlist its nuncios’ help for the war effort. Convincing bishops and other influential Catholics around the world of the justness of Italy’s war aims would be crucial. The cardinal replied that such efforts were well under way—and that the Vatican had already accomplished quite a bit. Pacelli went so far as to add some advice of his own. It was critical, he told Mussolini, to win American support. The Duce should launch “an intense and intelligent Italian propaganda in the United States in the newspapers, in the universities, in the magazines, with means and forms best suited to the North American mentality.”40

  As Pacelli knew, Mussolini was worried that the United States—not a League of Nations member—might join the international boycott. Previously, both Republican and Democratic administrations had taken a benevolent view of the dictator, thinking that he offered the strong leadership that the rather aimless and undisciplined Italians needed. President Roosevelt, although having little personal sympathy for Mussolini, had expressed his belief that the Duce had accomplished a good deal for Italy. America’s press had also been supportive. But the war triggered a precipitous change. American newspapers increasingly noted similarities between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. “A tyrant remains a tyrant no matter how benevolently he may philosophize and smile,” editorialized The New York Times. Roosevelt took a much dimmer view as well, and in early 1936 he would publicly denounce Italian Fascism.41

  The coordinated campaign by the Italian government and the Vatican, aimed largely at the Italian American community, proved successful. The Italian American press continued to support Mussolini. In Philadelphia, two hundred thousand Italian Americans marched to protest the League sanctions.42 In other cities with large Italian immigrant populations, similar rallies were held, and petitions flooded Congress. Most influential of all, radio priest Charles Coughlin, who broadcast to tens of millions of Americans every Sunday, blasted the sanctions week after week.43

  Born to Irish immigrant parents in 1891 in Hamilton, Ontario, and ordained in Toronto, Coughlin had moved to Detroit in the early 1920s, preaching at a simple frame church he built there. He soon started a modest radio program devoted to religious topics. By 1930 the young priest was broadening his scope, focusing on the plight of the poor. He supported Roosevelt during his first bid for the presidency in 1932 but soon turned against him and in 1934 founded his own political party, the National Union of Social Justice. Around this time he began to denounce “Jewish bankers” and to embrace Mussolini. As contributions poured in, Coughlin—now the most popular religious figure in the country—replaced his modest wood frame church with an ultramodern sanctuary. Its most striking feature was the large stone tower that rose above it, topped by a powerful radio transmitter. His fulminations alarmed many in the Church hierarchy.44

  The Pittman-McReynolds Bill, calling on the United States to join in the sanctions, triggered an outpouring of protest from the Italian American community. Overwhelmed by thousands of letters and countless Italian American delegations, the congressmen, in the words of the head of the American arms control agency, “trembled openly in their boots.” The bill was defeated.45

  Every Italian soldier bound for Ethiopia was given a copy of a new collection of prayers, Soldier, Pray! In his introduction to the booklet, Augusto Gemelli, the indefatigable recto
r of the Catholic University of Milan, urged the young Italians to battle:

  Go where the Fatherland sends you and God calls you, ready for everything.…

  Trust, even if God asks you to sacrifice your life.…

  Soldier of Italy, your sacrifice, united with the sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God among men, will achieve the salvation and greatness of the Fatherland.46

  Over the next months, Italy’s bishops outdid one another in their fervent professions of Fascist faith and in their proclamations of divine backing for the war. Monsignor Navarra, bishop of Terracina, near Rome, captured the mood: “O Duce! … Today Italy is fascist and the hearts of all Italians beat as one with yours.… God bless you o Duce! Let Him sustain You in your daily, titanic work, and ensure … victory to the Italian armies.”47

  AS ITALY BECAME INCREASINGLY ISOLATED, conspiracy theories gained new momentum. Not least among them was the Protestant-Jewish-Masonic-Communist plot that many in the Church had long decried. In early November the archbishop of Amalfi sent a circular to his priests, with a message to share with parishioners in their Sunday sermons: “The League of Nations is acting under the influence of occult forces.” He went on to list them: “Freemasonry, Bolshevism, Anglicanism.” They were fighting Italy because they could not tolerate the sight of the Fascist regime living “in perfect collaboration with the Catholic Church.”48

  British and French denunciations of the war angered the Duce, and he feared the impact that economic sanctions might yet have. This offered a new opening for Tacchi Venturi, who had been pushing his conspiracy theories on the Duce for years.

  On November 30 the Jesuit arrived at Palazzo Venezia, sent by Pius to discuss hopes for an early end to the war. He quickly turned to the subject most on his mind.