The Pope and Mussolini

by David I. Kertzer

  29. The large, good-looking prelate, whose dignity was magnified by his colorful monsignor robes and his mellifluous voice, was also well known to the foreign correspondents covering the Vatican, offering them information for a price as well, and entertaining them with an inexhaustible stock of stories. See Alvarez 2002, pp. 156–57; Canali 2004a, p. 195; Franzinelli 2000, pp. 259–60, 701–3. Morgan (1944, pp. 31–36) offers a lengthy portrait of a good-natured and popular Pucci, continually playing one U.S. news organization against another in an effort to jack up his earnings.

  30. Copious grains of salt are required in interpreting these fascinating, newsy, gossipy, and unreliable reports, for its author had many axes to grind. As I mentioned, the identity of the “noted Vatican informer” remains a mystery. There has been some speculation that he was Monsignor Enrico Pucci himself, the Vatican’s unofficial press agent, who had the run of the Vatican and was friendly with many of the Vatican’s highest officials. But I have my doubts. The first report identified as coming from him predates Bocchini’s appointment to police chief, and until 1934 the informer provided a huge stream of often-lengthy reports on the highest levels of the Vatican. He sometimes describes Pucci in ways that make it seem odd that he would be referring to himself; e.g., ACS, MCPG, b. 155, 20 marzo 1926, and ibid., ca. aprile 1926, reporting on the Knights of Columbus. The “noted Vatican informer” constantly sought to discredit Cardinal Gasparri. In an April 1927 report, he colorfully quotes Gasparri as railing against Mussolini, continually saying he “should go take a shit.” ACS, MCPG, b. 156, 12 aprile 1927. But Gasparri in his memoirs expresses fondness for Pucci, so it seems odd that Pucci would have been so intent on undermining Mussolini’s view of him.

  31. ACS, MCPG, b. 157, noto informatore vaticano, 22 e 30 giugno 1928. To get Caccia away until the scandal died down, the pope sent him as a papal representative to the Eucharistic Congress in Australia. But following the monsignor’s return, months later, the rumors began again; ACS, MI, PS, Polizia Politica, b. 210, informatore n. 35, Roma, 27 settembre 1929. A handwritten note on this report records that a copy was sent to Dino Grandi, then minister of foreign affairs.

  CHAPTER 8: THE PACT

  1. I tell the story of the popes’ efforts to retake Rome in Kertzer 2004. After World War I, Benedict XV tried to reach an agreement with the Italian government but had no luck. The Italian prime minister involved in the Paris negotiations wrote an account; see Orlando 1937, pp. 140–46. So did the papal representative; ibid., pp. 177–86. Victor Emmanuel III’s negative reaction to the agreement is recorded in Margiotta 1966, pp. 56–58.

  2. When newspaper stories about the commission later appeared, the pope had L’Osservatore romano, the Vatican newspaper, claim that “the Ecclesiastical Authority has had nothing to do either with the naming or choice of the three ecclesiastical legal consultants, or with the work of the Commission.” A copy of a memo signed by Mussolini, addressed to his minister of justice, tells the story: “In relation to previous agreements,” Mussolini begins, “I inform your Excellency that the Holy See has designated the following people to take part in the Commission for the Reform of Ecclesiastical Legislation.” The names and positions of two high Vatican officials and a professor of law at the Roman Pontifical Seminary followed: “The same Holy See has provided me with the enclosed memo in which are noted the main points that it would like to see incorporated in the reform.” Mussolini appended a memo that Tacchi Venturi had given him on behalf of the pope listing six measures that the pope wanted to see adopted. ASV, AESI, pos. 628, fasc. 56, ff. 91r–93r, 3 agosto 1924. De Felice (1995, pp. 106–10) wrote an account of these events before the documents in the Vatican archives became available; it largely agrees with what we now know. See also Margiotta 1966, pp. 131–33.

  3. The pope’s handwritten letter is found at ASV, AESI, pos. 702, vol. 1, ff. 14r–16v.

  4. DDI, series 7, vol. 4, n. 308. On May 16, 1926, Tacchi Venturi wrote Mussolini with news that following his meeting with the Duce a few days earlier, he had spoken to Gasparri and learned that the Vatican was now ready to enter into direct talks with him to settle the Roman question; DDI, series 7, vol. 4, n. 312.

  5. NARA, M530, reel 2, U.S. ambassador Henry F. Fletcher, Rome, to secretary of state, October 4, 1927, n. 1410.

  6. No opportunity was too small to exploit. Following a prominent priest’s funeral, family members visited Mussolini and presented him the monsignor’s pectoral cross, explaining that it contained a relic of the Holy Cross. Mussolini kissed it—an effort that for the famously anticlerical rabble-rouser from Romagna must have been difficult—and told them he would always keep it with him. The pope, hearing the story, was pleased. “Bene, bene,” good, good, he said. ACS, MCPG, b. 155, 5 luglio 1926.

  7. “La parola di Merry del Val,” Il Regime fascista, 7 ottobre 1926, p. 1; Franzinelli 1998, p. 54.

  8. Franzinelli 1998, p. 68.

  9. “Aristocrazia nera,” Il Secolo XX, 20 febbraio 1929, p. 11, has a photo of Francesco Pacelli as an exemplar of the category. Bosworth 2011, p. 26.

  10. The Chicago paper was the Chicago Daily News. A secret police report in November 1926 reported that the American Knights of Columbus were coming up with the funds for the land; ACS, MI, DAGRA, b. 113, n. 52199.

  11. The Jesuit contacted the minister of internal affairs, Luigi Federzoni. The police report revealed that the headquarters of both organizations were in the same building and that the longtime local Popular Party head was a priest.

  12. It was especially outrageous, he added, that the Popular Party would oppose the Fascists while being open to the possibility of allying with the Socialists, “sworn enemies of every Christian principle.” Tacchi Venturi to Gasparri, AESI, pos. 611, fasc. 46, ff. 23r–23v; the police reports are at ff. 25r–30r.

  13. ASV, AESI, pos. 734, fasc. 241, ff. 4r–5v, Tacchi Venturi a Gasparri, 8 gennaio 1926. The Jesuit added a note on Federzoni’s view of the bishop of Brescia: “While he respects the pastoral virtues of Monsignor Gaggia, as well as his religious learning and culture, nonetheless he thought that because of his venerable age, he does not realize that, hiding themselves behind the mask or name of Catholic Action, quite a number of its members were leading a secret campaign against the government, seeking by hook or crook to involve the ecclesiastical authority in this struggle.”

  14. Balilla is the surname of a youth who was said to have triggered a popular revolt against Austrian troops in Genoa in 1746. Gibelli 2003, p. 267.

  15. ASV, AESI, pos. 667, fasc. 129, ff. 68r–69r.

  16. ACS, MCPG, b. 157, noto informatore vaticano, 29 aprile 1928.

  17. Coco 2009, pp. 164–65.

  18. Rhodes 1974, p. 41. This account is based on the testimony of the German ambassador in Rome.

  19. Pacelli 1959, p. 99, emphasis in the original. Just a few months earlier, on March 1, the pope had been indignant when Francesco Pacelli relayed the suggestion that he abandon his desire to have Villa Doria Pamphili considered part of Vatican lands. Pius XI insisted at the time that he would rather remain without an accord than have the property excluded. Ibid., p. 82.

  20. “Not accepting,” Barone added, “would be tantamount to saying that … they didn’t want to end the conflict, but I can assure you that Mussolini thinks differently.” Ibid., p. 100. “Barone also tells me confidentially,” Pacelli reported in his diary, “that on various occasions the king had shown a lack of enthusiasm for the resolution of the Roman question.”

  21. R. Mussolini 1974, p. 154; Bosworth 2002, pp. 347–49; Milza 2000, p. 537.

  22. Navarra 2004, p. 16.

  23. The pope’s failure to appear at Gasparri’s jubilee, and its impact, are discussed in a series of reports in 1926 from the “noted Vatican informer.” ACS, MCPG, b. 155.

  24. ACS, MCPG, b. 157, noto informatore vaticano, 1 gennaio 1928; ibid., 5 gennaio 1928; ibid., 12 gennaio 1928;

  25. DDI, series 7, vol. 7, n. 240; Arnaldo Cortesi, “Only 9 to see pact signed i
n Rome tomorrow,” NYT, February 11, 1929, p. 3.

  26. Quoted in Gannon 1962, p. 62. Two days later, Monsignor Spellman would describe the pope as “delighted with everything.” Ibid., p. 63. Borgongini, one of Gasparri’s two undersecretaries, had brought Spellman in three years earlier to help with English-language materials and with the American Church. Mussolini’s main Vatican informant at the time, no fan of Borgongini, claimed that the nuncio had wanted to ingratiate himself with the Knights of Columbus in the United States, a group that had become an important source of funds for the Vatican. In late 1926 the pope, having heard so much about the young American priest, not least his seemingly inexhaustible ability to come up with funds from the United States, asked to meet Spellman in a private audience. Before long, the pope began referring to him as “Monsignor Prezioso,” Monsignor Valuable. ACS, MCPG, b. 155, noto informatore vaticano, 1926 (no more specific date given); and MCPG, b. 155, noto informatore vaticano, 5 gennaio 1927. Spellman told his mother of the pope’s nickname for him with great pleasure. Gannon 1962, pp. 57–59.

  27. The last dispute involved the status of the Palace of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. The imposing sixteenth-century building lies along the wall of the Vatican, to the left as one faces St. Peter’s, but its front door opens onto a public street. The pope had wanted both the building and the street in front of it to be considered part of the new Vatican City. But the king had opposed giving the Church any more territory, and in the end the pope had been willing to compromise. The street would remain outside papal control, and while the palace itself would not technically be on Vatican land, it would, like a number of other Church buildings in Rome, be granted special legal status. ASMAE, Gab., b. 718, Roma, 10 febbraio 1929.

  28. While this provision was found in the 1848 statute of the Savoyard state that was subsequently adopted by the fledgling Italian state in 1861, it was there viewed in the context of the doctrine of “a free Church in a free State.”

  29. Toschi 1931.

  30. Bosworth 2011, p. 171.

  31. Based on the 1929 Italian lira/U.S. dollar exchange value found in Nenovsky et al. 2007.

  32. Grandi 1985, pp. 254–55.

  33. Martini 1960b, p. 113. Gasparri later told Charles-Roux that he had cried five times that day: both in entering and leaving the pope’s study, when arriving at the Lateran Palace for the signing, during the act of signing itself, and in reporting on the day to the pope. Charles-Roux 1947, p. 48.

  34. Reese 1996, p. 11.

  35. Spellman to his mother, February 10, 1929, in Gannon 1962, p. 63.

  36. A photo of Mussolini getting out of his car is found in Il Secolo XX, 20 febbraio 1929, p. 7.

  37. “Signing in Constantine’s Palace,” NYT, February 11, 1929, p. 2.

  38. “Informazioni Stefani sul Trattato e Concordato,” OR, 13 febbraio 1929, p. 2.

  39. Arnaldo Cortesi, “Vatican and Italy Sign Pact Recreating a Papal State; 60 Years of Enmity Ended,” NYT, February 12, 1929, p. 1; Casella 2005, p. 24. Pizzardo’s salute was chronicled in NARA, M530, reel 2, n. 2140, February 15, 1929, Alexander Kirk, chargé d’affaires ad interim of the U.S. embassy in Rome, report to the U.S. secretary of state in Washington, p. 5.

  40. Grandi 1985, p. 255.

  41. The various actions that Mussolini had taken to benefit the Church over the previous few years were not all that gave the pope this hope; so did, Moro argues, Mussolini’s view of using the Church as an instrumentum regni, an instrument of his rule. It would be a return—or at least so the pope hoped—to the cozy arrangement that the Church had enjoyed with a number of absolute rulers in the ancien régime, before ideas of democracy and separation of church and state had transformed western Europe. No less important was the fact that the basic principles Mussolini embraced and the principles championed by the pope were in such broad agreement on the need for order, discipline, and top-down authority, and in their rejection of the idea that people should decide for themselves what is best based on their own conscience. Virtue lay in people acting not in their own personal interest but for the larger good, and that larger good was to be determined by a higher authority. Moro 1981, pp. 192–93. Moro here builds on the work of Giovanni Miccoli (1973, 1988). De Felice (1995, pp. 382–83), author of the definitive biography of Mussolini, argues that only with the signing of the Lateran Accords was the Fascist regime fully established.

  42. Quoted in Confalonieri 1957, p. 215.

  43. Prefect reports are found in ACS, MI, DAGRA, b. 187, 11 febbraio 1929.

  44. As one celebratory magazine account put it, the agreement was a miracle, “produced by the perfect coincidence … between the policies of the Church and the Fascist State in raising the moral and spiritual level of the people. That would have certainly failed in a parliamentary regime.” Giuseppe Bevione, “La portata dell’accordo fra l’Italia e il Vaticano,” XX Secolo, 15 febbraio 1929, p. 7. L’Osservatore romano, the Vatican daily, quoted at length coverage of the event in La Gazzetta del popolo, heralding the fact that “the Fascist Regime was able to resolve the ‘Roman question’ because it had liberated Italy from all the democratic lies of anticlericalism and parliamentarianism.” “Dopo la firma dei trattati fra la Santa Sede e l’Italia,” OR, 15 febbraio 1929, p. 1.

  45. Arnaldo Cortesi, “280,000 Cheer Pope,” NYT, February 13, 1929, p. 1; H. G. Chilton, Annual Report 1929, March 27, 1930, C 2470/2470/22, in Hachey 1972, p. 165, section 99; “La dimostrazione al Quirinale,” OR, 14 febbraio 1929, p. 1. Reports of other such celebrations outside Rome are found in “L’esultanza delle città italiane per il fausto evento della conciliazione,” L’Avvenire d’Italia [Bologna’s Catholic newspaper], 12 febbraio 1929, p. 4, and all the issues of L’Osservatore romano over the next several days.

  46. The New York Times front-page headline was typical: “60 Years of Enmity Ended.… Throngs Cheer in the Streets.” Arnaldo Cortesi, “Vatican and Italy Sign Pact Recreating a Papal State,” NYT, February 12, 1929, p. 1.

  47. The words are those of Domenico Tardini (1988, p. 294), who was then under Francesco Borgongini in the Vatican secretary of state office.

  48. NARA, M530, reel 2, n. 2140, February 15, 1929, p. 8; Caviglia 2009, p. 94.

  49. ACS, CR, b. 6, 13 febbraio VII [1929]. The three-page report bears the handwritten penciled notation “da Rosati.”

  CHAPTER 9: THE SAVIOR

  1. Morgan 1939, p. 174.

  2. Arnaldo Cortesi, “Mussolini Cheered by Papal Audience,” NYT, February 18, 1920, p. 5. Rome’s aristocracy made the transition to Fascist rule without any notable difficulty. Tellingly, from 1926 to Mussolini’s fall in 1943, the Duce appointed a succession of four princes to serve as Rome’s governor, the aristocratic line broken for only a brief period in 1935–36, when Giuseppe Bottai served in that role. Insolera 1976, p. 119.

  3. Parliament had approved the new electoral system in 1928; Milza 2000, p. 415. The procedure included a first step in which the Grand Council received one thousand nominations from “a list of people of unquestioned fascist faith” provided by various government-controlled groups; the final decision on candidates was to be made by the Grand Council, which also had the ability to add candidates not found among the nominees. De Felice (1995, p. 437) discusses the “plebiscite” terminology used by the regime.

  4. The appeal published in the Vatican daily was signed by the national executive board of Catholic Action and is quoted in Scoppola 1976, pp. 195–96. See also De Felice 1995, p. 445.

  5. On February 17 Mussolini got a surprising ultimatum in a letter from Cardinal Gasparri, sent via Francesco Pacelli: “The Holy See, while admiring and praising with great satisfaction the work accomplished by the Honorable Mussolini to the immense advantage to religion, keenly feels the desire for the upcoming political elections to have a great value, as it is said, of a plebiscite, a value of praise and support for the Duce and the Regime that he created and which is embodied in him.” The Holy See was eager for the elections to furnish “tr
uly eloquent and solemn proof of the full consensus of Italian Catholics with the Government of the Honorable Mussolini.” Pacelli sent the letter in with a cover note, representing it as a letter from Gasparri, although offered in Pacelli’s own “faithful” transcription. ACS, CR, b. 68, Roma, 17 febbraio 1929.

  6. The Pope gave his instructions to Cardinal Gasparri, who then dictated the letter to Francesco Pacelli. It was Pacelli who conveyed it to Mussolini. ACS, CR, b. 68.

  7. The quote is from Tacchi Venturi’s account. ASV, AESI, pos. 630a, fasc. 63, ff. 88r–89v, Tacchi Venturi a Gasparri, Roma, 21 febbraio 1929. Apparently word had gotten out that the pope’s Jesuit emissary had the power to get loyal Catholics added to Mussolini’s list of candidates. His files contain letters from various people vaunting their credential of being a “good Catholic” and asking to be put on the list. Gasparri sent Tacchi Venturi other names for the list. ARSI, TV, fasc. 1037.

  8. In February 1923 the Fascist Grand Council identified Freemasonry as a threat to Fascism and declared membership incompatible with membership in the Fascist Party. Squadristi sacked and burned Masonic lodges throughout the country. La Civiltà cattolica praised the Fascist Grand Council for its action, while warning that the Jewish-Masonic plot that it had long railed against was now aimed not only at the Church but at Mussolini as well. The government should also act against Italy’s Jews, it added, charging them with exercising influence greater than their minuscule numbers justified. CC 1923 I p. 464, quoted in Sale 2007, pp. 42–43. See also Molony 1977, p. 152.

  9. Some flavor of the mobilization by the Italian Church hierarchy is offered by a circular that one central Italian bishop sent to all his parish priests. It was the “sacred duty for all Catholics, without exception,” he instructed, to cast their vote for “the providential Man,” who had worked so closely with the pope, “to give God back to Italy and Italy back to God.” The priests were to do all they could, wrote the bishop, to persuade their parishioners to go to the polls and vote. Monsignor Alberto Romita, bishop of Campobasso, quoted in Piccardi 1995, p. 50. Luigi Colombo, national president of Catholic Action, similarly issued a public call for all members of the organization to vote yes. “Un discorso del Comm. Colombo,” OR, 13 marzo 1929, p. 4.