“Germanic exaggerated racism,” warned Bishop Cazzani, was a “doctrine contrary to the revealed truth.” But the fact that the Nazis had gone about their anti-Jewish campaign for the wrong reasons did not mean that Italy’s racial laws were unjustified. The problem with the Nazis’ exaggerated racism was that it extended its reach to Catholics. “The Church,” said the bishop, “has always judged living together with the Jews—as long as they remain Jews—to be dangerous to the faith and to the tranquility of Christian peoples. It is for this reason that you find an ancient and long tradition of ecclesiastical legislation and discipline, directed to stopping and limiting the action and influence of the Jews in the midst of the Christians and the contacts of Christians with them, isolating the Jews and not permitting them to exercise those offices and those professions by which they could dominate or influence the spirit, the education, the custom of Christians.” The Church, he insisted, had been unfairly accused of opposing the laws aimed against the Jews. What the Church had condemned was “exaggerated Germanic racism.” It “has not and does not condemn any political defense of the integrity and the prosperity of the race, and any legal precaution taken against an excessive and damaging Judaic influence in the life of the Nation.”16
Father Gemelli was in Bologna on January 9 to take part in a high-profile tribute to a fourteenth-century surgeon who had lived there. Jarringly—for the surgeon was not Jewish—at the end of his remarks, he turned his attention to the Jews. Italians today, Gemelli told his illustrious audience, “have suffered most of all from that conflict between church and state that, as a result of the efforts of the Judaic-Masonic cabals, sought to reduce Religion to a private affair.” Thanks to the resolution of the Roman question, he said, Italians had become “one in blood, religion, language, custom, hopes, ideals.” Meanwhile, “that terrible sentence that the deicide people brought on themselves and for which they go wandering through the world, is fulfilled. They are incapable of finding the peace of a homeland, while the consequences of that horrible crime follow them everywhere and in every time.”17
Bologna’s L’Avvenire d’Italia, Italy’s most influential Catholic newspaper, gave Gemelli’s remarks heavy coverage. The lesson to be drawn from the talk was “that the cardinals and the bishops have always and everywhere combated foreign racism, but that that has nothing to do with Italy’s racial policy.” Returning to the speech a week later, the paper informed its readers that “Father Gemelli’s speech and Monsignor Cazzani’s sermon … are an authorized and solemn illustration of this Catholic doctrine that is professed and taught by all in the Church hierarchy from top to bottom and by the sovereign pontiff in the infallibility of his magisterium.”18
THE AILING POPE WAS SHOWING signs of losing control of the Church he had long ruled with an iron hand. Those around him were frustrating his every attempt to prevent Italy from joining the Nazi cause. When Pius read Gemelli’s text, he broke down and cried, sending Pacelli out of his room so that he could be alone.19 But that same week the Vatican newspaper had approvingly published the Cremona bishop’s justification of the racial laws.20 And if Pius was upset with Gemelli for his remarks, it seemed to do nothing to affect their close relationship. The pope continued to give him unusual access, receiving Gemelli again on January 22.21 For those Italians who perceived any dispute between the Fascist state and the Vatican over the racial laws, what was at issue was not laws aimed against the Jews, for these the Vatican embraced, but Mussolini’s flirtation with Nazi racial ideology, which conflicted with the Church’s doctrine and its universal ambitions.
Convinced he hadn’t much longer to live, the pope saw the upcoming tenth anniversary of the Lateran Accords as his final chance to address Italy’s bishops, two-thirds of whom he had named.22 He felt responsible for them, and amid all the dangers the world faced, and all the threats to Christian values, he believed he had a sacred duty to convey God’s will.
The pope was eager to learn if Mussolini would be in St. Peter’s for his speech. Cardinal Pacelli told him he didn’t know but thought it unlikely. “If he does not want to celebrate the tenth anniversary,” replied the pope, “I will do it by myself.”23
There was no escaping the sensation in the Vatican that an era was ending. After almost seventeen years, there would soon be a new pope. Rumors rocketed around Europe. French papers reported that the ailing pope, angry at Mussolini, wanted to leave Italy and move to France and was weighing the relative merits of Avignon and Fontainebleau. The London Daily Mail and various radio broadcasts announced that, as he prepared the Catholic world for his successor, the pope was planning to move to Castel Gandolfo in midwinter, to prepare a final testament denouncing all the errors of the time. L’Osservatore romano ridiculed the stories, in an article under the heading “Cronache della Befana” (Fairy Tales). The pope, reported the Vatican paper, was in “excellent health.”24
Mussolini was still fuming over the pope’s complaints about the persecution of Italian Catholic Action in his Christmas remarks to the cardinals, which the foreign press had quoted to trumpet the pope’s unhappiness with the regime.25 The Italian ambassador reported the Duce’s displeasure to Cardinal Pacelli. No one, replied Pacelli, could prevent such papal outbursts. “The Holy Father’s irritability gets more pronounced every day,” the ambassador reported to Ciano, “and makes his collaborators’ work extremely difficult.”
According to Pignatti, the pontiff was fixated on the idea that the government was persecuting Catholic Action groups. The pope was taking minor incidents and turning them into major problems. At a recent meeting, Pius had asked Tardini for the latest news of Catholic Action. When he responded that there were no significant incidents to report, the pope blew up. Thrusting a stack of letters in front of the hapless Tardini, he shouted, “You never know anything. Read what they are writing me.”
“I fear,” Pignatti told Ciano, “that there isn’t much to be hoped for as long as the present pontificate endures.” Pius XI, he added, suffered from “pathological cerebral irritation,” a condition that worsened as he aged.
Things were likely to improve when the pope died, but nothing should be left to chance. The government needed to work discreetly with Italy’s cardinals. “It is necessary,” he advised, “… that there be a good group of cardinals in the future conclave that can authoritatively affirm that the Fascist government has remained faithful to its agreements and to the spirit behind them. The decree on mixed marriages is a minor matter, blown up by the pope’s irritability.”26
Mussolini faced a dilemma. He dreaded participating in a Vatican extravaganza in which all attention would focus on the pontiff. Yet not to take part in commemorating what the world saw as one of his greatest triumphs could be seen as a sign of weakness, as if he felt he no longer had the Church behind him.27
Mussolini got word to Cardinal Pacelli that he was willing to discuss how best to organize the festivities. He proposed a series of events in which he was at the center, the kinds of Fascist celebrations that he presided over regularly. He and the pope would give separate speeches, exchange messages of congratulations, and hold a mass. Mussolini wanted to hold his mass at the huge Roman sports field that had been built in his honor. He would not step foot in St. Peter’s. He also wanted to host a reception for Italy’s bishops while they were in Rome.
Pacelli conveyed the Duce’s proposals to the pope the next day, hoping to find a way to present the event as a joint celebration by the Holy See and the Italian state. But the pope again went off on a tangent, tearing into Mussolini for not responding to the letter he had sent him on the marriage law. Then, turning to Mussolini’s suggestions for the celebration, the pope said he could accept the exchange of messages but would not allow the bishops to attend a reception at Palazzo Venezia. He was the one who had invited them to Rome, not Mussolini. And if Mussolini wanted to hold a mass somewhere else in Rome, the pope would certainly not have anything to do with it.
The more the pope mulled over Mu
ssolini’s proposals, the more upset he got. Two days later he told Pacelli he had changed his mind and would not exchange messages of congratulation with Mussolini. The Lateran Accords had been signed in the king’s name, he said, and any such exchange should be with the monarch, not with the Duce.28
IT WAS NOW SEVEN MONTHS since the pope had secretly summoned Father LaFarge to Castel Gandolfo to prepare a draft encyclical on racism and anti-Semitism. But he had received nothing. Unable to keep the secret from his advisers any longer, he told Tardini about the project and asked him to find out from Ledóchowski what had become of the American Jesuit’s work.
When, months earlier, Ledóchowski had sent the draft encyclical to Rosa, he had enclosed a cover note: “I send Your Reverence a copy of Father LaFarge’s work with the prayer that you look through it and tell me … if it can be presented in this form to the Holy Father as a first draft.” Ledóchowski quickly answered his own question: “I very much doubt it!” Rosa never got to finish his revisions.29 On Saturday evening, November 26, while sitting at his desk, the sixty-eight-year-old former Civiltà cattolica editor suffered a heart attack and died.30
Still Ledóchowski kept the draft encyclical from the pope. In reluctantly forwarding it to the pope in January, he attached a letter of his own. Tellingly, he referred to the encyclical’s subject as “nationalism,” not racism, much less anti-Semitism. “It seemed to both Father Rosa and me,” Ledóchowski told the pope, “that the outline does not correspond to what Your Holiness had desired.” Rosa had been working on a new outline but died before he could complete it. Ledóchowski gave no explanation for what he had been doing with the material since Rosa’s death, but he offered to assist the pope in any way he could in preparing a more acceptable version.31
Rumors of the secret encyclical against racism had somehow leaked out, and Mussolini and his entourage were worried. In late January a police informer sent in a long report on the latest high prelate to criticize Nazi racism and its Italian echoes. The archbishop—or patriarch as he was called—of Venice had recently given a sermon for Epiphany, which L’Osservatore romano had published. Nothing, Cardinal Piazza had said, justified the “excessive exaltations of races,” which had no scientific basis and went against basic Church teachings.32
The informant warned that the increasing flow of antiracist pronouncements by high churchmen “represents a steady stream that has a substantial effect on public opinion, given the authoritative nature of the persons from whom it is coming, the wide Catholic sentiment in the masses, the potent means of publicity constituted by the Catholic press, its circulation continually growing and much read by vast social strata.”33
Pignatti, commenting on the episode, argued that the problem was partly of their own creation. Cardinal Piazza would never have made his recent remarks against racism if the Fascist press hadn’t been so effusive in its praise of his earlier, more accommodating comments on the anti-Semitic laws. The patriarch had felt compelled to “clarify” his views. “No prelate,” argued Pignatti, “no matter how high-ranking he is, will dare oppose the pontiff, knowing he would be crushed if he tried.” There was only one hope: “Only a new pontificate—I have already written this repeatedly in the past—will be able to adopt a different, conciliatory approach to the racial question.”34
The pope began work on his speech, or rather his speeches, as he had decided to extend the celebration to two days, February 11–12. On Saturday the eleventh, he would mark the tenth anniversary of the Lateran Accords with the bishops in the presence of government and diplomatic dignitaries. On the following morning, he would speak to the bishops and other high clergy alone.35
Ciano was nervous, fearing what the pope might say. “The atmosphere for the celebration of the tenth anniversary is becoming murky,” he wrote in his diary.36
Mussolini was playing tough. No government official, he informed Pacelli, would take part in the celebration unless he received assurances that the pope would not use the occasion to criticize the regime.37
The pope was also keeping up the pressure. He told Pacelli to pass on a warning to the Duce: Italians would be shocked if the country’s leaders boycotted the anniversary event. He warned Mussolini that if the government were not represented at the highest level, he would feel compelled to comment on its absence in his address.
Cardinal Pacelli passed the pope’s new threat on to Pignatti, adding that the pope was still angry at the Duce for not responding to his letter on the marriage law. Exasperated, Pignatti reminded him that it was Mussolini who had dictated the king’s reply to the pope, and so the Duce believed that he had already responded. He warned Pacelli that should the pope use the anniversary ceremonies to criticize the regime, “a situation in Italy similar to the one the Church faces in Germany could result.”38
Pignatti sought a compromise. He knew he would never get Mussolini to attend the pope’s speech in St. Peter’s, but if Ciano attended, that might be enough to keep the pope from saying anything truly damaging.39
The Duce was growing more and more bellicose, believing war was near and that Italy’s greatness—and his own—were soon to be proven on the bloody fields of battle. At a Grand Council meeting, held on the same day Pacelli and Pignatti were discussing who from the government would take part in the anniversary ceremonies, Mussolini unveiled his new watchword: “March to the Ocean!” Italy, he told his colleagues, was trapped in a Mediterranean “prison.” It had to gain access to the open seas. Among his first targets would be Corsica, and if it took a war with France to acquire the island, he was ready. Only a week earlier Franco’s forces, with Italian help, had taken Barcelona, the last major Spanish city not in their hands. Europe’s map was about to be redrawn.40
The Duce agreed to let Ciano represent him at the anniversary celebration at St. Peter’s. The Prince of Piedmont, the king’s son and heir, would represent the monarch.41 By midweek all of Italy’s newspapers were reporting on the magnificent celebration to take place during the upcoming weekend, trumpeting the participation of both the Italian foreign minister and the prince.
As the big event approached, the pope’s health worsened. His heartbeat became irregular, his blood circulation, weak to begin with, grew even weaker, and he became feverish. He had begun drafting his remarks for the Saturday address late at night on January 30. On the thirty-first Cardinal Jean Verdier, archbishop of Paris, came to see him and was shocked by how frail he looked. “A truly painful impression,” he recalled. “Physically this old pope is but a ruin. He was much thinner, his face shrunken and wrinkled.” But the pope’s mind was lucid, and his voice still clear. He spoke rapidly, as if he knew he had little time left and much to say.42
Early the next morning, Pius, the former librarian, carefully went through the papers in his desk drawers, making sure they were all in order. After his morning audiences, he reread the text of his speech. He was so engrossed that his assistants had to beg him to stop and take his lunch break, for it was already three P.M. But he found it difficult to tear himself away from his text, reading it aloud with tears in his eyes. At last he relinquished the pages and gave them to Monsignor Confalonieri to type. At the elevator to go up to his apartment, he was met by his nurse, Father Faustino, who was alarmed by his pallor and weakness. Faustino felt the pope’s pulse, which he was shocked to discover had fallen to forty.43
It was Pacelli who brought the bedridden pope the welcome news that Ciano and the prince would attend the ceremony. In recent weeks, the pope’s constant refrain had been “What a boor and a traitor Mussolini has been with me!”44 Now he began to feel some peace.
Cardinal Pacelli urged the pope to put off the celebration until he recovered his strength, but the pontiff knew he had little time left. On February 7 he dictated a message for L’Osservatore romano, beginning, “The Holy Father is well.” When later that day Pacelli again urged the grievously ill pope to postpone the celebration, he replied, “But didn’t we announce this morning that the pope is well?”
45
The next day it looked as if the end could come at any moment. The pope’s breathing was labored, he was heavily medicated, his heartbeat irregular. But he did not forget the speech that meant so much to him and asked Pacelli to read it. The cardinal made some small suggestions. The sheets were sent to the Vatican printer to make copies for the bishops.46
Monsignor De Romanis normally came to take the pope’s confession every Friday. When the timid monsignor appeared at his bedside that Wednesday, the pope first told him he must have made a mistake. When the tongue-tied monsignor sputtered, too embarrassed to explain why he had been called in two days early, the reason for his visit dawned on the pope. “We understand,” said the pope, weakly. “Confess me.”
On Thursday, February 9, feeling a little better, Pius XI again asked to be sure that his text for the big event was printed and ready to give the bishops.47 Together with his two loyal assistants, who had served him since his days in Milan, he recited the rosary as he lay in bed. He then asked them to say the prayer he had learned as a child:
Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, I give you my heart and my soul,
Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, be with me in my final moments,
Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, may my soul go forth in peace with you.
That evening Pignatti reached Ciano with word that the pope was gravely ill. He passed the news on to Mussolini, who simply shrugged. Ciano was worried. Should the pope die before the anniversary celebration, the result could be “a conclave quite hostile to our purposes.” After weeks of worry, he had finally been convinced that the Vatican’s spectacular ritual at St. Peter’s would help heal the tension; it would impress on Italian Catholics how solid the link between the Holy See and the Fascist regime still was. Should the ceremony be canceled, “we might have to expect unpleasant surprises.”48
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