10. Binchy 1970, p. 199.
11. CC 1929 II, pp. 184–85.
12. This appears to be based on the Confessions of St. Augustine, chap. 11.
13. Jacini’s account of his visit with the pope is reproduced in Fonzi 1979, pp. 676–78. For more on Jacini, see Ignesti 2004.
14. In its brief comment on the speech, La Civiltà cattolica (1929 II, p. 473) quoted this passage disapprovingly.
15. The texts of Mussolini’s addresses to both houses of parliament were printed as a book (Mussolini 1929).
16. Following the signing, Gasparri read the text of a telegram from the pope, addressed to Victor Emmanuel III: “The first telegram that we send from the Vatican City is to tell You that the exchange of ratifications of the Lateran Accords has just been, thanks to God, completed.… It is also to offer a heartfelt, deep paternal apostolic blessing to Your Majesty, to your August Consort, to all the Royal Family, to Italy, to the World. Pius XI.” History had been made. Pius IX had excommunicated King Victor Emmanuel II; in the years since, no pope had sent a blessing—or even a letter—to an Italian king. Pacelli 1959, pp. 144–54; “Gli accordi lateranensi tra la S. Sede e l’Italia,” CC 1929 II, pp. 544–45.
17. ACS, CR, b. 4, Roma, 1 maggio 1923, Mussolini a De Vecchi. In Mussolini’s private secretary files are copies of De Vecchi’s military records. Throughout the war, his superiors gave him their highest praise for his military spirit and skills as an artillery officer. ACS, CR, b. 4.
18. Grandi 1985, p. 175 (25 ottobre 1922).
19. “It isn’t true that De Vecchi is a fool,” began one such joke. “On the contrary, he was a precocious child. At age five he thought just as he did at fifty.” A decade after De Vecchi’s appointment to the Vatican post, General Enrico Caviglia, holder of Italy’s highest military rank, Marshal of Italy, and a longtime member of the Senate, put it pithily. De Vecchi, he observed, was a “conceited weirdo.” De Begnac 1990, pp. 232, 469; Bosworth 2002, pp. 182–83; Innocenti 1992, p. 154; Caviglia 2009, p. 301; Romersa 1983, p. 5.
20. NARA, M530, reel 2, n. 2362, Rome, June 27, 1929, Henry P. Fletcher, U.S. Embassy, to secretary of state, Washington; CC 1929 III, pp. 170–72; De Vecchi 1983, pp. 136–37.
21. De Vecchi 1998, p. 141.
22. Quoted in Casella 2009, pp. 74–75.
23. De Vecchi 1998, pp. 23–25.
24. The actual Italian expression was more colorful: the pope aveva un diavolo per capello, literally, the pope “had a devil in his hair”; Casella 2009, p. 82.
25. The audience was held on November 15, 1929. ASMAE, APNSS, b. 7, De Vecchi a Dino Grandi, Minstro per gli Affari Esteri, 22 novembre 1929. See also the account in De Vecchi 1983, pp. 162–64.
26. De Vecchi 1983, p. 141. The pope had informed the cardinals of the Curia of the talks around the time they were initiated but then not again until they were virtually concluded. Showing more nerve—and less prudence—than his other colleagues, Monsignor Giuseppe Bruno, secretary of the Pontifical Commission in charge of interpreting canon law, decided to take his complaints to Pius XI himself. At a private audience, he told the pope that if he had only asked his advice in negotiating the concordat, he would have been sure to include a number of important guarantees that had gone unmentioned. The pope responded curtly, saying it had been necessary to pass over many things in order to settle the Roman question. Still upset, Bruno went to see Cardinal Sbarretti, one of the Curia’s most influential members, hoping to enlist his support. But Sbarretti knew better than to get on the wrong side of the pope and advised Bruno to let the matter go. There was nothing anyone could do. As the informant who reported all this to the police put it, “No one dares to mount any real opposition for fear of falling out of the good graces of Pope Ratti.” ASMAE, AISS, b. 2, fasc. 6, Roma, 14 luglio 1929.
27. Police informant report cited by Coco (2009, p. 168). The term Cardinal Cerretti used is not easily translated: “il papa si è fatto mangare da Mussolini la pappa in testa.”
28. ASMAE, AISS, b. 2, fasc. 6, Roma, 14 luglio 1929. On Pompili and this dispute, see Fiorentino 1999, pp. 131–33.
29. De Vecchi 1983, p. 141.
30. ASMAE, AISS, b. 2, fasc. 6, Roma, 10 agosto 1929. A copy is found at ACS, MI, FP “Pompili.” It identifies the informant as n. 39 and bears the note “Copy for His Excellency Grandi for the Ambassador.” ASMAE, AISS, b. 2, f. 6, Roma, 12 novembre 1929.
31. ACS, MI, FP “Pompili,” Città del Vaticano, 19 novembre 1929. The source for this account, according to the police informant, is Monsignor Pascucci, personal secretary of Pompili.
32. ACS, MI, FP “Pompili,” informatore n. 35, Città del Vaticano, 30 marzo 1930.
33. Just before Pompili’s death, while the Roman clergy, who had long served under the irascible cardinal, worried about his health, the pope, according to an informant, expressed gratitude that he would soon be freed from a bad nightmare. ACS, MI, FP “Pompili,” informatore n. 40 (=Virginio Troiani di Merfa), Città del Vaticano, 25 aprile 1931. See also Fiorentino 1999, pp. 131–38.
34. ACS, MI, FP “Pizzardo,” informatore n. 40, Città del Vaticano, 9 luglio 1931.
35. Four years later another informant reported that Pizzardo was widely known in the Vatican by the nickname “Rasputin.” ACS, MI, FP “Pizzardo,” informatore n. 35, Roma, 13 agosto 1929; ACS, MI, FP “Pizzardo,” informatore n. 390, Milano, 6 giugno 1933. As I’ve previously noted, these police informants’ reports need to be treated with care.
36. ACS, MI, FP “Pizzardo,” informatore n. 52 (=Filippo Tagliavacche), Roma, 21 luglio 1933; Casella 2000, pp. 176–77.
37. O. Russell, Annual Report 1924, February 28, 1925, C 3342/3342/22, in Hachey 1972, p. 71, section 60. Britain at the time had only two cardinals. Pollard (2012) details the importance of U.S. funding of the Vatican in these years. For the reasons for and significance of Mundelein’s appointment as cardinal, the first in the United States outside the east coast, see Kantowicz 1983, pp. 165–66.
38. Fogarty 1996, p. 556.
39. ACS, MI, FP “Pizzardo,” informatore n. 40, Roma 14 novembre 1929. Over the next several years, constant rumors would swirl around the Vatican that Pizzardo was about to be appointed to a nunciature abroad. Germany, the United States, and Poland were all mentioned as destinations at one time or another. See ACS, MI, FP “Pizzardo.” But each time Pizzardo pesuaded the pope to let him stay in the Vatican.
40. Borgongini’s own description of his new job is telling: “Here one writes everything by dictation. The Holy Father dictates to the Cardinal [secretary of state]; the Cardinal to me and I dictate to my assistant.” Quoted in Guasco 2012. Father Martina (2003, p. 237) similarly describes Borgongini’s abilities as “modest” and points out that when the pope needed a more “authoritative” intermediary with Mussolini, he turned to Tacchi Venturi.
41. FCRSE, part XIV, p. 72, Perth to Halifax, April 26, 1938, R 4359/280/22.
42. ACS, MI, PP, b. 154, informatore n. 40, Città del Vaticano, 20 ottobre 1930. In a meeting with Monsignor Pizzardo in June 1930, De Vecchi complained that he had been in office practically a whole year, but the pope had not yet seen fit to give him any papal honorific. He recorded in his diary that he would take up the question the next day with Borgongini; see De Vecchi 1998, pp. 216–17.
43. But Borgongini would not be put off, mentioning the pope’s further unhappiness about the recent government seizure of a number of Catholic newspapers. The argument he adopted with Mussolini was one that Tacchi Venturi had long been using with him. Indeed, it was an argument that, as the nuncio told the Duce, he had “heard many times from the Holy Father, that is, that the Church’s enemies are Fascism’s enemies, and that those who fight the Church cannot be friends of Fascism.” ASV, ANI, pos. 23, fasc. 1, ff. 8r–18r. Soon after the announcement of the Lateran Accords, senior figures in the Church warned all who would listen that various nefarious “sects” were devoted to destroying both the Roman Catholic Church and the Fascist regime. Within two weeks o
f the February 11 signing, for example, the bishop of Padua, Elia Dalla Costa (who two years later would be made a cardinal by Pius XI), thanked God for giving Mussolini “great intelligence and great courage.” In his sermon at Padua’s cathedral on February 24, he told his flock that Mussolini had needed all his strength “to confront the fury of the conspiracy of all the sects that are both enemies of God and enemies of Italy.” Quoted in Perin 2010, p. 152.
CHAPTER 10: EATING AN ARTICHOKE
1. ASV, ANI, pos. 22, fasc. 10, ff. 2r–3r, Borgongini a Mussolini, 12 settembre 1929.
2. ASMAE, AISS, b. 2, Mussolini a Borgongini, 15 settembre 1929.
3. While Mussolini claimed that September 20 proved to be a good thing for all, argued Borgongini, “all of the popes, from Pius IX to Pius XI, have always believed the opposite, and so have all Catholics.” ASMAE, AISS, b. 2, Borgongini a Mussolini, 18 settembre 1929.
4. Cannistraro and Sullivan 1993, p. 328.
5. E. Mussolini 1957, pp. 40–50, 103; De Felice 1974, pp. 19–20; De Felice 1981, p. 274n38; Morgan 1941, pp. 109–11, 138–39; Festorazzi 2010, pp. 80–81; Motti 2003, pp. 198–99; E. Mussolini 1957, p. 39.
6. CC 1929 IV, pp. 548–52; “La solenne visita dei Sovrani d’Italia al Santo Padre,” OR, 6 dicembre 1929, p. 1. Cardinal Merry del Val was afraid that Borgongini—“who is capable of anything”—might bow to the government pressure and get the pope to reciprocate the royal visit, something the former secretary of state thought beneath the pope’s dignity. Tardini 1988, p. 450n32. The following week, marking the first anniversary of the Lateran Accords, OR recalled the event as the product of “the charity of a Father, the wisdom of a King, and the genius of a Statesman”; “XI Febbraio,” OR, 11 dicembre 1929, p. 1.
7. E. Mussolini 1957, p. 135.
8. Confalonieri 1957, p. 160; CC 1930 I, pp. 80–81. Although a number of cardinals had come to Rome for the final celebrations of the Holy Year, including two from the United States, none were told of the visit and so none got to witness it. NARA, M561, reel 1, John W. Garrett, U.S. embassy in Rome, to secretary of state, December 20, 1929; “475,000 Visit in Rome for Pope’s Jubilee,” CDT, December 19, 1929, p. 35.
9. Baudrillart 2003, pp. 381–83 (6 décembre 1929), quoted in Durand 2010, p. 44.
10. R. Mussolini 2006, p. 97.
11. Moseley 1999, p. 5.
12. E. Mussolini 1957, pp. 122–24.
13. Thomas à Kempis’s Caracciolo 1982, pp. 102–5; Innocenti 1992, p. 14; Moseley 1999, pp. 4, 7, 11; Morgan 1941, p. 114.
14. CC, 1930 II, p. 284. “This business of the pope’s gift to the newlyweds,” De Vecchi (1998, pp. 147–48) wrote in his diary that day, “is terrific for public opinion not only in Italy but throughout the world.” Later that year, just before Ciano and Edda left for China, where Ciano would take up a new diplomatic post, the pope gave them a private audience and presented them with leather-bound editions of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ, bearing the pope’s autograph. “Son-in-law and Daughter of Il Duce Chat with the Pope,” CDT, September 9, 1930, p. 31.
15. Moseley 1999, p. 15.
16. DDI, series 7, vol. 9, n. 231, 26 agosto 1930. Borgongini’s draft of the letter, with corrections, is found in ASV, ANI, pos. 23, fasc. 2, ff. 165r–169r.
17. The Duce ordered the destruction of historic palaces and churches, in the words of one historian, “as if they were a sterile lava flow that had descended on Rome rather than on Pompey in the days of its glory.” De Felice 1974, pp. 52–53; Insolera 1976, pp. 128, 132–33; Painter 2005, pp. 22–23.
18. Navarra 2004, pp. 17, 44; De Felice 1968, pp. 55–56; Festorazzi 2010, p. 94; Cannistraro and Sullivan 1993, p. 298; ASV, ANI, pos. 22, fasc. 10, ff. 23r–34r, 4 settembre 1930.
19. R. Mussolini 1974, p. 97.
20. “You are perfectly correct from a logical point of view,” Mussolini told the nuncio, referring to his argument that with Conciliation it made sense to drop the contested holiday. “But I am not entirely wrong from the viewpoint of opportunità.”
21. “No, you are a believer,” replied the nuncio, “and the Lord is clearly helping Your Excellency.” See Borgongini’s lengthy account of the meeting in his letter to the new secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli. ASV, ANI, pos. 22, fasc. 10, ff. 23r–34r, 4 settembre 1930.
22. ASV, ANI, pos. 23, fasc. 10, ff. 53r–62r, Borgongini a Pacelli, 15 settembre 1930.
23. Both meetings between Borgongini and Mussolini are described in ASV, ANI, pos. 23, fasc. 2, ff. 204r–213r, Borgongini a Eugenio Pacelli, segretario di stato, 15 settembre 1930.
24. A number of historians maintain that Mussolini was constructing a civil religion in Italy. The Fascists themselves used that term: in 1930, one of the men closest to Mussolini described Fascism as “a civil and political religion … the religion of Italy.” By the late 1920s, Augusto Turati, head of the Fascist Party, was devising a system of ritual and myth modeled on the Catholic Church. He called on all Italians to believe in the Duce and Fascism without question, “as one believes in the divinity.” After the Lateran Accords, Turati published a Fascist catechism; one of its primary items of faith was “the subordination of everyone to the Head’s will.” Mussolini, like the pope, was said to be infallible in matters of faith, and his judgment, like the pope’s, was not to be questioned. The “man of Providence” knew what was best for his flock. Gentile 1995, pp. 144–45; Gentile 1993, pp. 124, 293–94.
25. Mack Smith 1982, p. 168. In February 1933 the head of the PNF, Achille Starace, announced that henceforth all official government acts would contain the name DUCE only in capital letters. Falasca-Zamponi 1997, p. 61.
26. Gentile 1995, pp. 144–45; Gentile 1993, pp. 124, 293–94. A reporter for Mussolini’s newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia, stationed in China, passed on a special request. The Catholic missionaries in Wei Chou wanted a photograph of the Duce, hoping especially to get one he himself had signed. The journalist explained, “These are people who are facing unheard of difficulties and dangers, but are raising the voice of Italy by speaking to the Chinese of Mussolini as a God.” Later, upon receiving a signed photograph, the deeply appreciative head of the mission expressed his thanks for “our Duce, whom God has chosen to guide the great destiny of our Fatherland.” Franzinelli and Marino, 2003, p. xii.
27. MacKinnon 1927, p. 81.
28. Ibid., p. xv.
29. Navarra 2004, p. 65.
CHAPTER 11: THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE SON
1. A British envoy, looking back on these years, would later express surprise that the much more experienced Gasparri had adapted so well to the pope’s “autocratic ways.” C. Wingfield, Annual Report 1934, January 12, 1935, R 402/402/22, in Hachey 1972, p. 286, section 133.
2. Ottaviani 1969, pp. 502–3.
3. Rhodes 1974, p. 40.
4. Morgan 1944, p. 137. The famous phrase—also found on the masthead of L’Osservatore romano, derives from Matthew 16:18, where Jesus says “and upon this rock I will build my church. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
5. ACS, MI, DAGRA, b. 113, 8 novembre 1926; ACS, MCPG, b. 155. These reports should be read with some caution, for the “noted Vatican informer” clearly had it in for Gasparri. According to a December 1927 secret police report, Gasparri also distrusted Tacchi Venturi, whom he accused of playing a double game, sharing confidential Vatican information with the Duce; ACS, MI, DAGR, b. 1320. At the time of the commotion over the presumed assassination attempt against Tacchi Venturi, Gasparri had tried to turn the pope against him by suggesting that the episode had been concocted by the Jesuit for some obscure purpose. ACS, MI, DAGR, b. 1320, 5 settembre 1928. Further evidence of Gasparri’s efforts to displace Tacchi Venturi comes from a police report to Mussolini in 1928, informing him of Gasparri’s opposition to the Jesuit’s involvement in the negotiations over the Roman question; ACS, CR, “Appunto,” undated report on Principe Pignatelli. The police informant also reported that Monsignors Caccia and De Samper, the pope’s master o
f ceremonies and his majordomo, blamed Gasparri for their failure to be named cardinals and were poisoning the pontiff against him.
6. The letter is published in Martini 1960b, pp. 129–30.
7. ACS, MI, FP “Pietro Gasparri,” Città del Vaticano, 8 ottobre 1929. Recently, with Borgongini’s appointment as nuncio to Italy, Pizzardo had been named to replace him as secretary of the Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs.
8. De Vecchi 1983, p. 144. When the Portuguese ambassador to the Vatican came to see him in October, Gasparri confided that he had offered his resignation, but the pope had not yet accepted it. He added that Mussolini had become a “fearful nightmare” for the pope, who, angered at pressures on Catholic Action youth groups, called him a “persecutor of young Catholics.” ACS, MI, FP “Pietro Gasparri,” Città del Vaticano, 23 ottobre 1929.
9. As early as November 1928, The New York Times was already reporting not only the rumor that Gasparri would be replaced but also that he would be replaced by Eugenio Pacelli. “Say Nuncio Will Be Raised,” NYT, November 19, 1928, p. 2.
10. Informatore n. 35, Rome, 2 ottobre 1929, in Fiorentino 1999, p. 238.
11. Coco 2009, pp. 176–77. The pope may have considered another factor in his decision as well: rumor had it that Cerretti, while in Paris, had often been seen in the company of women.
12. ACS, MI, FP “Cerretti,” informatore n. 35, Roma, 14 dicembre 1929.
13. It was not going to be easy, the ambassador concluded, to find a person of his quality to replace him in Berlin. ASMAE, AISS, b. 4, n. 6361, Berlino, 10 dicembre 1929.
The Pope and Mussolini Page 47
