The Pope's Last Crusade

by Peter Eisner

  Montini deputized Tardini to carry out Pacelli’s orders, and Tardini then passed along word to the late pope’s secretary, Confalonieri. Confalonieri did as he was told and then telephoned Tardini to say “that the vice-director of the print shop was himself taking care to destroy all the material that had been prepared so that there did not survive ‘not even a line.’” Mussolini received word through channels that Pope Pius XI’s document would never appear in any form.

  WHEN WRITING ABOUT the pope’s death, the Fascist press did not mention anything about the pope’s protest against Fascism and Nazism and presented sanitized version of relations between Pius XI and the government. Newspapers reported that Mussolini and his government lamented the pope’s passing and said the pontiff died a day before he was going to announce a full reconciliation between the church and the Italian government.

  Some Vatican spokesmen participated in this deception and transmitted Mussolini’s version to the foreign press. The New York Times reported four days after the pope died that Pope Pius “had reached a satisfactory solution of various controversial points on which the Church had differed with the Italian Government. It is presumed that a modus vivendi was reached also on the racist question, which has been the most important reason for dissent between the Italian government and the Vatican.”

  The Times story also said: “It is reported in Vatican circles, in fact that the Pope intended to make a speech, of which peace was to have been the keynote. . . . The Pope was most anxious to deliver this speech and repeatedly begged his physicians to prolong his life at least until he could attend the meeting.”

  Of course, a small group of people knew it was a lie, among them Confalonieri and Pacelli, who had each read the speech.

  The speech was far from a reconciliation between the Vatican and the government; it was an angry warning to the bishops of Italy and criticized the government, words that might have led to a permanent rupture between church and state. Conflict and overt confrontation between Mussolini and the Vatican ended within hours of the pope’s death. His final words were erased from the public record. However, at least one version of the pope’s speech did survive and was found in the Vatican Secret Archives by Italian academic researchers more than half a century later.

  He may have been sick and limited in his ability to reach the outside world, but a speech written and delivered by the pope would have broken through and had an impact.

  The pope wrote in his speech to the bishops:

  You know, dear and venerable brothers how the words of the pope are often construed. There are some, and not only in Italy, who take Our allocutions and Our audiences, and alter them in a false sense [and] have Us speak incredibly foolish and absurd things. There is a press capable of saying most anything that is opposed to Us and Our concerns, often twisting in a perverse way the recent and more distant history of the Church, arriving even at the persistent denial of any persecution in Germany and adding to that the false accusation of Our engagement in politics . . . They arrive at true irreverence; and these things are said while our press is forbidden to contradict or correct them.

  He warned the bishops to be on guard against distortions about what they say. “Dear Brothers you must take care not only about the abuse of what you say in public but also about what you say in private, especially if you . . . speak with individuals holding a government or party office.”

  Furthermore, he voiced aloud his concerns about treachery inside the Vatican, warning that there were spies on behalf of Italy and Germany around him. “Do not forget that often there are observers and informers (you would do well to call them spies) who, of their own initiative or because charged to do so, listen to you in order to condemn you.”

  Beyond informants, governments were listening in to communications as well. “Do not ever speak on the telephone words that you do not want to be known,” the pope wrote. “You may believe that your words are traveling to your distant correspondent and yet at a certain point they may be noticed and intercepted.”

  The pope referred one last time to the subject of racism. Humanity, he said, is “joined together and all of the same blood in the common link of the great human family.”

  His final words saw the likelihood of war, but with a prayer: “peace, peace, peace for all the world that instead seems seized by a homicidal and suicidal folly of weapons. Peace demands that We implore the God of peace and hope to attain it. So be it!”

  The pope had planned to follow his Saturday speech with what he called a “dialogue” with the bishops about the political situation. Since the pope was known for making emotional statements beyond the scripted word, his conversation with the bishops could have set off sparks that went beyond the text.

  The Vatican, February 13, 1939

  Twelve abreast, people filed past the bier that held the pope’s body on Monday, February 13. All day they came, thousands and thousands every hour, perhaps two hundred thousand by the end of the day. So many crowded into St. Peter’s Basilica that Cardinal Pacelli decided to leave the doors open so everyone could be accommodated. The Vatican had to ask the Italian government for help with crowd control. That morning the first of nine funeral Masses was celebrated.

  Pius XI was buried on Tuesday, February 14, in a crypt at St. Peter’s carved from marble that had been used to build the Milan Cathedral.

  The Latin inscription on the tomb said: “The body of Pius XI, Supreme Pontiff. He lived eighty-one years, eight months and ten days and he was the head of the Universal Church for seventeen years and five days. He died February tenth of the Year of Our Lord 1939.”

  He had died a day too early.

  Funerals were held for nine days from February 12 to February 20. One day was reserved for diplomats, another for the Italian government. Ambassador William Phillips was among the mourners on February 16; the next day, Mussolini, Ciano, and the Italian cabinet were at the Vatican. The king of Italy and his wife also were present. Mussolini had declared a day of national mourning in keeping with the impression that he and his government were saddened that Pope Pius XI was gone.

  Public reaction to the pope’s death outside Italy focused on his political stance against Fascism and Nazism. No pope had ever been mourned in such a way, a testament to the times and his role as the leading voice against the fanaticism of Hitler and Mussolini. In Germany, the pope’s death was treated with dismissal. As expected, the Nazi newspaper Angriff dismissed Pius as “a political pope” who did not understand the ability of Fascism and Nazism to protect the world from Communism.

  In Washington, Congress convened an unprecedented joint session in memoriam and then adjourned for the day in the pope’s honor. A declaration praised the pope “who exerted the most challenging and sincere efforts for world peace, who manifested the broadest tolerance toward all nations and creeds, and who pleaded for the protection of oppressed minorities.” Secretary of State Cordell Hull cabled Pacelli on behalf of President Roosevelt, expressing sorrow at the death of the pope whose “zeal for peace and tolerance won him a place in the hearts of all races and creeds.”

  Reaction from Jewish leaders reflected a broad understanding of what Pius XI had sought to do. Rabbi Edward L. Israel of Baltimore, a rising voice in American Jewry, expressed the significance of the pope’s actions. Pius XI was “the first of all Christian voices in Europe to be raised against the general anti-Semitic policy of Nazism in all of its ramifications. . . . The hope and prayer of the entire world . . . is that the College of Cardinals by divine guidance, may be led to place upon the papal throne one who through his love of peace and justice and brotherhood may become a worthy successor to the lamented Pius XI.”

  Francis Talbot spoke for America magazine when asked about the death of the pope. Interviewed by the New York Times, he focused on the pontiff’s special role in world politics and praised Pius XI’s “continuing enunciation of tyranny which endeavored to destroy natural political and religious rights of men in countries hurt by Fascis
m and Communism.”

  LAFARGE WROTE to Gundlach on February 16, asking if there was any news about the encyclical, but he and Gundlach knew that now they had to wait for a new pope to be elected and see if he felt the same way Pius did about these issues. Gundlach said in his reply that he thought there was a chance the pope’s successor would follow through in the aftermath of Pius’s death and issue the encyclical against racism.

  But Ledóchowski was still vacillating on the question of whether Nazism or Communism was the most dangerous. He seemed to change his political perspective depending on the audience. Sometimes, “he proclaims to anyone who will listen that National Socialism is at least as dangerous as Communism.” The next moment, Gundlach wrote, Ledóchowski changes his tune—when someone hears reports from the United States about a Communist threat there. When such “reports about Communism come in from America,” Ledóchowski says, “Communism is once again the sole true enemy!”

  LaFarge still remembered Ledóchowski’s odd reaction when they listened to Hitler’s speech on the radio in September 1938. And Gundlach was once more questioning Ledóchowski’s reliability concerning the encyclical. The final decision would come from the new pope.

  Rome, March 1, 1939

  Cardinals from around the world began arriving at the Vatican throughout the mourning period for Pius XI. Pacelli declared that the conclave to choose the new pope would begin on March 1. Speculation was rife, and Vatican sources fed the rumors that any of the sixty-two cardinals had a chance, even the twenty-seven who were not Italian. The question seemed to be: Would the new pope be a “political or spiritual pope”? A political pope would match Pius XI’s confrontations with Hitler and Mussolini. A spiritual pope would be circumspect and impartial and tend to his mission as the Holy Father of the Roman Catholic Church.

  Sources at the Vatican did not discourage talk that a liberal cardinal from the United States or a Frenchman such as Tisserant could be viable candidates. The British and French governments immediately favored Pacelli. They thought he had been groomed by years of diplomatic service in Germany and as secretary of state. They said he had been a faithful subordinate to Pius XI, whose forthright rejection of the Nazis had been attractive. And finally, Germany and Italy had publicly made negative comments about Pacelli’s candidacy, which British officials said was a point in Pacelli’s favor. If the Italians and the Germans didn’t want Pacelli, he must be a perfect choice.

  It also was possible that a counterpropaganda campaign had been under way all the while. Publicly, via Nazi and Fascist newspapers, Germany and Italy did signal that the Pacelli’s election would mean the Vatican was still taking a political, confrontational approach. Pacelli had been Pius’s enforcer and had repeatedly criticized their governments. Ciano in particular was reported to be lobbying against Pacelli with Italian cardinals.

  But behind the scenes some German and Italian officials said something different. Ciano had already had successful contacts with Pacelli early on that signaled a difference in Vatican relations with the Fascist state and had also sent word that the pope’s troublesome final speech had been erased.

  The German ambassador to the Vatican, Diego von Bergen, reported to Berlin that he thought Pacelli would be a good choice because he was a Germanophile who spoke German and had spent a long time in the country as a diplomat.

  U.S. diplomats, meanwhile, concluded that Pacelli could not be a serious candidate. Rarely in history had a Vatican secretary of state been named pope. Ambassador Phillips apparently did not have an inside line from Monsignor Hurley, whose role at the Vatican was certain to change with the death of Pius XI, his protector. Phillips reported to Washington that while a number of candidates had been mentioned, the information about candidates was “purely speculative.”

  Caroline Phillips had actually spent more time speaking with Pacelli than her husband had, and she might not have discarded his candidacy so easily. She was not only insightful, she also spoke fluent Italian. She found Pacelli to be charming and at the same time a great diplomat.

  The French ambassador, François Charles-Roux, made the rounds among diplomats in Rome in support of Pacelli. Charles-Roux urged Phillips to speak with the American cardinals about papal candidates. Phillips refused, saying that lobbying in favor of any candidate was improper for a diplomat.

  Charles-Roux, nevertheless, did lobby the French cardinals in favor of Pacelli; only one was inexorably and vehemently opposed to Pacelli: Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, who said he would not even consider the possibility, though he would not say exactly who he would vote for.

  As the day of the conclave approached, Italian police and military monitored all arrivals in Rome, searching for weapons, bombs, or anyone they considered suspicious. There had been no specific warning of trouble, just a general suspicion because, over history, conclaves had sometimes been accompanied by violence. Mussolini pretended to be disinterested, but privately he pressed for inside information once more. He ordered his intelligence apparatus to track the proceedings as a top priority and issued an order to intelligence agents commanding that they pursue “penetration of and contact with the Vatican authorities, work which needed maximum delicacy.”

  By March 1, the Italian government had gathered firsthand information from high levels at the Vatican. Italian agents were tracking all correspondence and all communications and had planted middle-level operatives inside the Vatican. Some were priests, bishops, or higher and in reality were spying for the Fascist government.

  Charles-Roux made an eleventh-hour attempt to change Tisserant’s mind about Pacelli. He was committed to the importance of the conclave and lobbied hard. He argued that “this is the election which could best maintain the Papacy on the high moral level to which Pius XI had raised it.” The French cardinal agreed with that and the argument appeared to steel him even more against Pacelli, whom he would never vote for. Tisserant’s position was so odd in Charles-Roux’s view that he thought something else must have been at play. “It is influenced by a personal antipathy towards the former Secretary of State,” the French ambassador wrote in a memoir, “an antipathy probably born of the relations during their careers.”

  Tisserant remained suspicious about the pope’s death and developed two theories. Tisserant had told his friend Monsignor George Roche that he believed Pius XI was murdered. He concluded that the evidence had been hidden during the interval between his death and the phone call Tisserant received. “They killed him and we know who did it,” the cardinal told Roche. Tisserant told Roche, according to newspaper reports, that the pope’s face “showed bluish marks unusual in cases of death by natural causes.”

  Roche said Tisserant blamed Doctor Francesco Saverio Petacci for accelerating Pius’s death, even though the pope was gravely ill. Tisserant contended that the lag between the phone call and the tolling of the church bells had given someone with access the opportunity to hide evidence that the pope had been murdered. When Tisserant’s suspicions were made known in 1972, a Vatican spokesman told reporters the idea was too “fantastic” to consider serious. The Vatican also said Petacci could not have been involved in such a thing because he had no access to the pope before or after his death.

  Although Doctor Petacci was the second-ranking physician at the Vatican, accounts of the pope’s final hours did not mention him at the pope’s bedside. The Vatican not only denied Petacci was present but also said he had no access. One question could have been asked: Why wasn’t he at the pope’s bedside? There were five doctors on the Vatican medical staff, each listed in order in the Vatican yearbook. Milani was the boss, and Petacci was listed number two. Why would the number two physician at the Vatican not be present or have access when the pontiff was gravely ill? Instead, after Milani became ill with the flu, the physician with least seniority attended the pope in his final days. Why would the Vatican say Petacci had no access to the pope?

  Petacci was the father of Clara Petacci, Mussolini’s mistress and a well-known subject of sca
ndals and gossip around Rome. She recorded pillow talk with Il Duce in her diary and Mussolini had often complained about the pope. At the height of the pope’s attacks on Italian anti-Semitic laws, Clara recorded one such outburst: “You have no idea of the bad this Pope is doing toward the Church,” Mussolini had said. “Never has there been such an ill-omened Pope towards religion. There are committed Catholics who detest him. He has lost virtually everyone. Germany completely. He doesn’t know how to keep them and he has made mistakes in everything.”

  Doctor Petacci had a long history with the Vatican. A relative, perhaps his father, Giuseppe, had been Pope Pius X’s personal doctor at the Vatican from 1906 to 1912. The Petaccis were a middle-class family who had acquired influence and power by their proximity to Mussolini. Various stories said Mussolini, married and fifty years old, met Clara in 1933. She was barely twenty-one years old and Mussolini, various stories said, met her at a party or perhaps spotted her on the road one day while she was driving with her fiancé, an Italian Air Force officer. In either case, Mussolini was smitten and telephoned the Petacci house. Clara’s mother answered the call and was happy to arrange their first romantic tryst. Less than a year after that, an affair blossomed. Clara married the air force officer for propriety’s sake, and it was a major social event. One of those who attended was Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli. Not long after the wedding, the air force officer was shipped off as a military attaché to Tokyo, and Clara moved to her own private suite in Mussolini’s Palazzo Venezia.

  Two of Doctor Petacci’s other children benefited from their proximity to power and were considered corrupt power brokers in Rome those years. A son, Marcello, also became a doctor, and it was said that he had passed his medical exams with a “recommendation” from Il Duce. Marcello frequently traveled with his sister on Mussolini’s official visits as a way of lending a veneer of propriety to the proceedings. A daughter, Maria, became an actress, changed her name to Miriam Day, and married into nobility.