The Pope's Last Crusade

by Peter Eisner

  Joseph Hurley told Ambassador Phillips at the U.S. embassy that, characteristically, the pope insisted on trying to get up on Thursday morning, repeating the same stubborn words his aides were accustomed to, “A Pope is never ill.” But the pope had suffered a relapse in the early afternoon and was forced back to bed. “From that time on he was conscious off and on,” and seemed to be dozing, Hurley said.

  From then on, multiple versions of events circulated about the pope’s condition and what happened in the course of the night. Some said the pope, displaying a great air of spirituality, was resigned to whatever might happen and remained conscious all the while and that he prayed and blessed those around him. Others, more objective and less melodramatic in describing events, said the pope did not regain consciousness beyond the afternoon of Thursday, February 9.

  Starting that afternoon, the sequence was never pinned down. There were multiple accounts, some focused on medicine, others on prayer and divinity. All might have been partially true; some might not have been true. The pope’s state of health weakened to the point that Last Rites were administered on Thursday afternoon. Hurley said the pope had nodded that he understood what was happening as the prayers were recited. Hurley did not report his sources for this information; it was not likely he had been present at the pope’s bedside. Pacelli, Hurley’s superior at the Secretariat of State, was once again the gatekeeper at the pope’s chambers.

  The other sources of information about the following day were Monsignor Confalonieri, the secretary; Zsoldt Aradi, a biographer who worked under the auspices of Francis Spellman; and reporters for major newspapers and magazines, many of whom quoted unnamed Vatican sources.

  The main differences in the versions involved who actually was present at the pope’s bedside and whether the pope was conscious at different points during the overnight period from Thursday night into Friday, February 10. The question of who had access to the pope during those hours would later be a significant issue.

  All agreed that doctors from the Vatican health office intervened with consultation from various outside doctors. One basic element ran through all variants; the pope, who had seemed healthy and well on February 4, had caught a cold or the flu. The chief of the medical office, Milani, had also contracted the flu. He was sick enough and contagious enough to remove himself from the case those first days of February. About the same time, the pope was also coming down with a virus, which the Vatican described as a “mild catarrh.” It had grown progressively worse and it was evident that an eighty-one-year-old with a heart condition had few defenses.

  Confalonieri, who was present and assembled a chronicle of events months later, said Doctor Rocchi had remained close by. He said Rocchi gave the pope an unspecified injection on the afternoon of February 9 because the pope seemed to have grown weak and pale. According to some Vatican sources, the injection was camphor oil, the stimulant used on other occasions that seemed to help rally the pope’s recovery.

  The version written by Zsoldt Aradi had Rocchi becoming concerned and summoning Milani despite his illness. Aradi said Milani got up from his sick bed, came to the Vatican, and decided to give the pope an injection of adrenaline. “After the injection, the Pope fell asleep. As no immediate crisis was anticipated by the physicians, everybody left the room. Around 2:30 A.M. the next morning, one of the Franciscan monks nursing the pope, Brother Faustino, was alone in the sickroom with the Pontiff, when he became alarmed and called the doctors, the secretaries and Cardinal Pacelli.”

  Whatever the injection was and whichever doctor administered it, the pope had slipped into a coma. The pope’s secretary, Confalonieri, said, “After eleven o’clock that night, the temperature, almost normal, began to rise rapidly beyond 39 degrees centigrade [102 Fahrenheit]. Professor Rocchi shook his head sadly and with a typical gesture, saying nothing, gave indication that at length all had come to a finish.”

  The New York Times report on February 11 differed in significant ways. The Times said that Rocchi, not Brother Faustino, spent the night in the Pope’s bedroom. At 4 A.M., the report said, Rocchi noticed that the pope’s pulse rate had weakened and he, not Milani, had “immediately tried injections of stimulants, but the Pope failed to react to them.” The Times attempted a medical explanation at this point, saying that Rocchi “took the great personal responsibility of giving an injection of camphorated oil—a heroic measure in the circumstance because myocarditis is a dysfunction of the heart muscles that causes the organ to alternate between deficient and excessive action. Any stimulant, though giving immediate relief, may therefore prove fatal. Just as he had reacted to an injection of camphorated oil during his last attack in November, the Pope reacted well yesterday, regaining consciousness about half an hour later.”

  The New York Times report included sources who contradicted Confalonieri—the only witness who wrote a public version of events—and said the pope was awake all the evening of the ninth. It said the pope summoned all present to be close to him and that he had asked to be able to confess to Cardinal Lauri and take Communion. “A few minutes later, it being evident that the effect of the stimulants was evaporating and the end approaching, Extreme Unction [last rights] was administered.”

  The Times of London correspondent also reported the pope as conscious and that Pacelli asked Pius for a blessing. The pope “raised his right hand from the bed-covers and went through the motion of giving the apostolic blessing, at the same time mumbling the ritual formula.” This version added another element, that the pope rallied one more time, dramatically making “another attempt to regain his hold on life. He opened his eyes . . . at the same time giving a weak imitation of a smile.”

  “Finally, with what evidently was a very great effort, he raised himself in his bed and mumbled a few words that were almost completely incomprehensible to the majority who heard them. Those nearest to him report that he said, ‘God bless you, my children,’ followed more weakly by ‘Let there be peace.’”

  The Times of London correspondent also reported that the pope had asked that Last Rites be administered at 4:00 A.M. on February 10 in the presence of Pacelli, Cardinal Camillo Caccia-Dominioni who was the pope’s protégé and master of ceremonies; various prelates of the papal household; the governor of Vatican City; Count Franco Ratti, the pope’s nephew; and a “little group of doctors, attendants and penitentiary monks.” Dr. Milani had been summoned again from his sick bed and he administered oxygen at around 5:00 A.M. The pope did not respond to that treatment.

  In a fifth version of the story, Time magazine provided a moment by moment rendering of what had happened. It said that the doctor had roused Brother Faustino and another Franciscan, not the other way around. It listed Pacelli as being present late into the night, along with “Caccia-Dominioni, Count Franco Ratti, the Pope’s nephew, Governor Camillo Serafini of Vatican City,” Rocchi, and Milani.

  It said the injection “rallied Pius XI” for a time and that the pope was alert. The pope, it said, “propped up by pillows, whispered his confession, received absolution for his sins.” Even in the throes of death, according to Time magazine, “In deep emotion Cardinal Pacelli cried: ‘Holy Father, give us your blessing!’

  “In an agony of effort, while the others wept, the Pope summoned his strength to make this last, supreme gesture. He lifted his right hand, mumbled a blessing. Falteringly his hand signaled its last apostolic benediction, fell back on the bed. He mumbled something. To some it seemed that he said: ‘Jesus and Mary . . . Peace to the world.’ Others thought they heard him say: ‘In our Last Rites . . . Sister Therese and the Infant Jesus . . . art near to us. God is merciful. May His will be done.’

  “But all were agreed that earlier, the Pope’s last articulate words had been: ‘I still have so many things to do.’”

  But it wasn’t true that everyone agreed. Stories also did not coincide on who had said Last Rites and when they were administered. One biographer said Cardinal Lorenzo Lauri, the grand penitentiary of the Holy Ro
man Church, was the designated person, but could not be found. The biographer said instead that Monsignor Alfonso de Romanis, the sacristan and parish priest of the Vatican, administered the Last Rites toward the end. Time magazine said Lauri was present for the Extreme Unction ceremony, but that de Romanis had conducted the ceremony anyway.

  Confalonieri made no mention of Lauri’s presence and said that other family members had been present the afternoon before, when the pope prayed with them, and then lapsed into a coma, after uttering his last words at around 3:30 P.M. “I breathe forth my soul in peace with you.” Confalonieri said another important prelate was present, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the undersecretary of state.

  No one could say exactly what happened in the papal apartments that night. Reporters pieced together the story from sources that were most immediately available on deadline. Time magazine had a few more days to report its story on February 20. Aradi was writing in 1957 to commemorate the one hundredth year of Pius XI’s birth. Of all those who reported directly, only Confalonieri had been present, and though he might not have reported accurately or remembered every detail of who was present, he likely would have remembered whether or not the pope had been unconscious. He published his book about the pope some years later and included his account of the deathbed scene. In any case, all the stories arrived at the same terminus.

  The pope died before dawn on Friday, February 10, 1939. He appeared to have breathed his last breath at 5:31 A.M., and Milani declared he was dead. Then, according to long church tradition, Cardinal Pacelli, the camerlengo, followed a prescribed ritual. He knelt beside the pope, the Times of London reported, and “drew back the veil from the face and in a loud voice called the dead man three times by his baptismal name, ‘Achille, Achille, Achille,’ at the same time tapping his forehead gently with a silver mallet.”

  Thus satisfied he was able to declare: “The Pope is truly dead.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Change Overnight

  Trastevere, Rome, February 10, 1939

  EARLY ON THE morning of Friday, February 10, a ringing telephone woke Cardinal Eugene Tisserant at his apartment on Via Mercadante in the Trastevere section of Rome. Monsignor Carlo Grano, a member of the Vatican staff, was relaying a message from Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini (later Pope Paul VI) that the pope was alive, but “gravely ill and had received Extreme Unction.” Tisserant was saddened by this but still held out hope that his friend, the pope, would survive. After all, he had been given Last Rites twice before and recovered.

  Tisserant was one of the pope’s few friends. They had known each other for more than twenty-eight years, since 1910 when they worked together at the Vatican Library. The pope, then Monsignor Ratti, was fifty-three years old and had just been appointed assistant director of the library by Pope Pius X. Tisserant, who was twenty-six, was curator at the library.

  “I must say from the first meeting we were in very friendly terms,” Tisserant recalled.

  Ratti and Tisserant began taking regular evening strolls from St. Peter’s on the Via della Consolazione, along the Tiber and then along the river to the Palace of Justice. They had a lot in common; both were scholars and voracious readers and were dedicated to the preservation of old books.

  Ratti’s background as a famous mountain climber made him unusual among leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, and Tisserant also had an unorthodox past. He took leave from the priesthood in 1914 to enter the French Army as a cavalry officer and served in the Dardanelles and Palestine. He later served as a logistics and military intelligence officer until the end of World War I and in 1919 returned to the Vatican Library.

  Tisserant said he and the future pope had corresponded frequently. Ratti “used to write me about every month,” Tisserant told a friend, “and I have still twenty of His letters [sic], one from Milan of 1913, three from Warsaw after the war, the others from Rome in wartime.” When Ratti became pope, they remained close. “When He became a Pontiff,” Tisserant said in a letter a month after the pope died, “I felt that His affection for me remained unchanged.”

  By the time Tisserant had gotten ready to leave his apartment for the short walk to the Vatican, the bells of St. Peter’s began to toll. Within moments, church bells resounded throughout Rome. The news was broadcast everywhere that Pope Pius XI had died.

  When Tisserant arrived at the Vatican, he was told that the pope had died at 5:31 A.M. Tisserant had looked at the clock when the phone woke him up. He did not understand how he could have received a message that the pope was alive forty-nine minutes after he had been pronounced dead? He did not think the call was a mistake; he thought he had been given false information. He did not know why.

  AS WAS customary after the death of a pope, Cardinal Pacelli as camerlengo ordered the pope’s offices and files sealed. Most of the files would not be available to the public for at least seventy-five years, long after almost all witnesses to the pope’s life and death had also died. Pacelli then withdrew to his own Vatican office and began communicating with cardinals and apostolic offices around the world.

  He also sent Joseph Hurley on a special mission to inform U.S. ambassador William Phillips formally that Pope Pius XI was dead. When Hurley got to the embassy, he made it clear that this meeting was official, quite different from his normally informal chats with Phillips. He told Phillips he had come “by instruction of Cardinal Pacelli, the Secretary of State, who during the interim directs the affairs of the Vatican.” Hurley said that other nations had been contacted in writing, “but in the case of the United States, he was instructed to make an oral communication.”

  Pacelli interrupted his work later in the day when he received word that Foreign Minister Ciano was on his way to the Vatican.

  Ciano had already met with Mussolini and told him the pope had died. Il Duce was “completely indifferent,” Ciano said, and “mentioned the death only in order to inform me that this evening he will postpone the meeting of the Grand Council out of respect for the memory of the Pope, and also because the public is much too concerned with the mourning to be interested [in anything else].” Several days later Mussolini expressed his own view of the pope’s death: “At last that stiff-necked man is dead.”

  Since the pope was head of state and Italy had diplomatic relations with the Vatican, it was proper protocol for Ciano to express sympathy in person. As he crossed the Tiber in his car, then rode directly to St. Peter’s, he saw that mourners were already gathering in the square.

  Ciano walked with Pacelli to the Sistine Chapel, where the pope had been placed on a catafalque. “I conveyed the sympathy of the Italian government and of the Fascist people,” Ciano wrote, “and I said that the deceased pope had forever tied his name to history through the Lateran Treaty. They liked my expressions very much.”

  This was the highest-level meeting between the Vatican and the Italian government in some time, and Ciano had not planned to bring up political issues. But Pacelli did and hinted at an agenda to come. Pacelli acknowledged that relations with the Fascist government had not been good but indicated that things were about to change. Pacelli “spoke to me about the relationship between State and Church with very agreeable and hopeful expressions,” Ciano wrote in his diary. He was encouraged but gave no details of what was said.

  Pacelli and Ciano approached the catafalque in the chapel. “Of the Pope himself we could see nothing—only his enormous white sandals and the hem of his robe; but the atmosphere created was one of infinity.”

  It was too early to make predictions about the pope’s successor or how relations between church and state would change in that new regime. For the moment, whatever the pope had planned to do or say at the upcoming meeting with Italian bishops had been postponed.

  Now the Italian government’s focus was to make sure that the pope’s plan for that day would never be carried out. Il Duce had been increasingly troubled about the bishops’ meeting. Had Pius been preparing to excommunicate Il Duce or Hitler or bo
th? Would there be further embarrassments or challenges by the church? Persistent rumors said that the content of the pope’s speech might have been “devastating for Fascism.” The reports said the pope had worked fervently on the speech and had hoped to deliver it himself or to be present while it was read to the bishops. The rumors now were that the speech might be distributed as a tribute as his final statement to the world.

  Mussolini wanted to know the status of the speech and what it said. Ciano had told him about the meeting with Pacelli and his hint that relations with the Vatican would improve. But what did that mean in practical terms? Pacelli, who was solely in charge of the church, might have a copy of the speech. Mussolini ordered his sources at the Vatican to either get a copy of the speech or information about it.

  But Mussolini should not have been so concerned because Pacelli had already dealt with the issue when he impounded the pope’s desk and its contents. Among the papers were three important pieces of business. One was the speech to the bishops, in printed form as well as the original version that was handwritten in pencil. The second document was Ledóchowski’s cover letter to the pope, along with a third larger file, the one-hundred-page draft encyclical, with versions in French, German, and Latin—Humanis Generis Unitas, written in the pope’s name by John LaFarge.

  Pacelli might not have read the encyclical, but he knew all about the pope’s planned speech to the bishops. The camerlengo told his deputy, Monsignor Montini, to make sure all versions of the pope’s final speech were confiscated. The pope’s assistants were to “hand over all the material he has regarding the discourse [and] that the printer destroy all he possesses relative to the same discourse,” according to notes taken by Monsignor Domenico Tardini.