The Pope's Last Crusade

by Peter Eisner

  Decades later, when Tisserant’s charge was publicized, one of the surviving members of the Petacci family, Marcello Petacci’s son, Ferdinando Petacci, said his grandfather Francesco was being slandered by such charges. He rejected Petacci’s involvement in any such plot and said the doctor had admired Pope Pius XI. “My grandfather was an exceptionally capable, humble doctor who had high moral values . . . incapable of even hurting a fly,” he said. In addition, he said, Doctor Petacci had opposed his daughter’s liaison with Mussolini. “Personally, I do not think that Pope Pius XI was killed. He was an old man and he was very sick.”

  Doctor Petacci died in 1970 at the age of eighty-three. He had outlived two of his children. Clara and her brother Marcello were executed by Communist partisans in northern Italy along with Mussolini on April 29, 1945.

  There were other scenarios in which Pius XI could have met an untimely death. Doctors Milani and Rocchi, who attended the pope in his last hours, practiced techniques that were common in the day that might have been damaging without them realizing it. They were alternately giving the pope injections of camphor oil and adrenaline, compounds to stimulate the heart and increase the pulse rate. Camphor had been used as a traditional medicine for some time, but there had been published reports of fatal camphor poisoning.

  The timing of the pope’s death did add to the suspicion of foul play. Mussolini was worried to the point of obsession about the February 11 speech. Even if Mussolini’s informants hadn’t seen the document, they knew how much emphasis the pope was placing on his speech.

  It was also feasible that someone could have substituted, contaminated, or otherwise altered a medicine prepared for the pope. The Vatican categorically said the story from Tisserant was false, based on “statements and insinuations already amply denied on the basis of irrefutable testimony.” It did “concede that Cardinal Tisserant may have recorded it, together with other hearsay and gossip, in his diaries,” the New York Times reported in 1972.

  Others who had seen the pope in his last days were also suspicious. Bianca Penco, the student leader of the anti-Fascist Catholic youth organization FUCI, was probably the last surviving person to have met and spoken to Pius XI. At the age of ninety-three in 2011, she held to her impression of a meeting with the pope on January 31, 1939. She said in the 2008 interview published in Il Secolo XIX that she and her fellow student leaders were shocked when they heard the pope had died just a few days after their audience.

  “Especially because of the atmosphere surrounding the speech and the pope’s attitude in the meeting,” she said. “We had the agonizing thought that his death was not an accident. To our insistent inquiries for explanations and clarifications about the document that [the pope had spoken about], [the church] replied that no such thing had been written. It is a question that has never been resolved.”

  Doctor Massimo Calabresi, the Milan heart specialist who had been consulted previously on the pope’s illness through his patron Doctor Cesa-Bianchi, heard the rumors of foul play. Calabresi was an ardent opponent of Mussolini, a militant protester who had been imprisoned for his anti-Fascist activities. But he told his son, Guido—who eventually became dean of the Yale Law School and a U.S. circuit court judge—that he was also an honest man. He saw no indication of foul play. “He said he would have liked to have blamed it on the Fascists, but it would not be true. The pope was a very, very sick man.”

  The pontiff’s state of health was so precarious that he could have died at any time. Tisserant acknowledged as much in a letter to a librarian friend in the United States less than a month after the pope died. He said the pope appeared vibrant and well on February 4, six days before the death. “Nothing was inspiring the fear of a near end,” Tisserant said on February 27, 1939, “although we knew well that the end would come abruptly.”

  Tisserant died on February 21, 1972, before he could follow through on plans to edit and publish his memoirs. Selected citations from Tisserant’s diaries were published several months later in major international magazines and newspapers. Tisserant’s niece had started legal proceedings against the Vatican for the return of twelve suitcases of the cardinal’s notes and diaries. The Vatican claimed that all the material belonged to the church, but the niece, Paule Hennequin, was also Tisserant’s secretary and said that she was her uncle’s sole executor.

  At the same time, Monsignor Roche, Tisserant’s friend, said he had taken at least some of the cardinal’s papers out of Italy, presumably to safekeeping in France. Those documents have not been found. A doctoral candidate at Indiana University, Nicola Mattioli Hary, said that some of the cardinal’s papers had been secreted away to the French Pyrenees. Church historians said the bulk of Tisserant’s papers are likely still held at the Vatican Secret Archives. Part of the reason Tisserant’s files were removed has been attributed to his sometimes turbulent relationship with Pope Paul VI. Speculation about their disagreement focused on the administration of the church. Paul VI issued a decree in November 1970 that cardinals reaching the age of eighty were no longer eligible to vote in papal conclaves. Tisserant, then eighty-six, thought the measure was among several specifically aimed at forcing his retirement.

  By 1958, Tisserant was the dean of the College of Cardinals and acted as camerlengo himself. In the papal conclave that followed, some considered the French cardinal a candidate to replace the pope and he was said to have received a small number of votes in early balloting. Again, it had been unlikely that a non-Italian would be chosen. Cardinal Angelo Roncalli was elected on October 28, 1958, and chose the name Pope John XXIII. There were eleven ballots over four days. Tisserant was present when John XXIII died of stomach cancer on June 3, 1963, and he celebrated the funeral Mass.

  All that was publicly known about Tisserant’s sentiments and concerns after his friend’s death are contained in a handful of diplomatic reports and letters he wrote to friends. In a letter to a librarian friend in Michigan several weeks after the pope died, he expressed only sorrow and concern about how the next pope would deal with the world situation.

  Pius’s death was “a great loss for me, and a great pain. . . . Now we have the awful responsibility to choose a Pope, and in the most difficult circumstances since the time of the French Revolution. Evident signs of a hastened preparation of Germany to war are known: Would the next Pope be able to do something for preventing that horrible thing, war?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The New Regime

  The Vatican, March 1, 1939

  JOURNALISTS WERE ALLOWED to visit the Sistine Chapel on the night before the sixty-two cardinals were going to be sequestered there. Plush velvet seats had been arranged in a horseshoe against the frescoed walls of biblical scenes such as Moses Leaving to Egypt and The Delivery of Keys by Perugino; The Temptation of Christ and the Punishment of the Rebels by Sandro Botticelli; and The Last Supper by Cosimo Rosselli. But all of them were crowned by Michelangelo’s vault ceiling fresco, completed in 1512; some of the images were cracked and clouded from the passage of years, but the eye still sought out the Creation of Adam—God reaching down to the first man from on high, humankind’s life for all eternity never quite touching the divine.

  On leaving the chapel just as the cardinals were arriving, Camille Cianfarra, the New York Times correspondent, spotted Monsignor Joseph Hurley, who had been an excellent source for many American reporters. Cianfarra asked Hurley for his assessment of who would be chosen. “You shall know fairly soon I think,” he told Cianfarra. “I should not be surprised if you have the answer tomorrow.”

  Of the sixty-two cardinals, fifty-five were European; thirty-five of those were Italian. Even if the Italians voted in a bloc, they needed votes from other countries to provide the requisite forty-two votes. There were three cardinals from the United States, one from Quebec, one from Asia, and two from Latin America. The Latin Americans were last to arrive: Sebastiano Leme da Silveira Cintra of Brazil and Santiago Luis Copello of Argentina. Everyone believed the new pope woul
d be an Italian. There had not been a non-Italian since Adrian VI, an Englishman, was chosen in 1523. This did not appear to be a moment for experimentation, although Tisserant and some American cardinals were still being mentioned as candidates.

  There was no escaping the presence of Nazi Germany as the cardinals arrived in Rome. A swastika fluttered on a ship’s mast in Naples harbor when Cardinal George Mundelein of Chicago and Cardinal Dennis Dougherty, the archbishop of Philadelphia, arrived. The third American cardinal, William O’Connell, could see another swastika waving over his hotel balcony in central Rome where Nazi and Fascist members of the National Women’s Organization were also housed.

  A crowd at St. Peter’s cheered that afternoon as the cardinals arrived to open the conclave. Outsiders were allowed in for a time during the late afternoon prior to the traditional opening. Cardinal O’Connell, seventy-nine years old and ailing, was last to enter and had to be helped up the steps by attendants and colleagues. O’Connell, the archbishop of Boston since 1906, had officiated at the marriage in 1914 of Joseph P. Kennedy and his bride, Rose Fitzgerald.

  At around 6:00 P.M. the bells of St. Damasus signaled the final moments before the cardinals were to be sequestered. “Extra Omnes!”—Everyone out—the Latin cry echoed from the Vatican halls. Swiss Guards searched every room and walked the periphery of the chapel to ensure that no people but the cardinals were present. At 6:17 P.M., the doors of the chapel swung closed. Three locks were heard turning on the door inside the Sistine Chapel, and a guard turned three locks from the outside as well.

  So much importance was given to the event that reporters conducted a vigil from a rented apartment and set up a telescope that was fixed at the little tin chimney over the Sistine Chapel. After each vote, black smoke would signal no choice yet. White smoke meant a new pope had been chosen. Many assumed the conclave would last for days or even weeks.

  The cardinals had assumed their places around the Sistine Chapel, now dressed in specially prescribed violet cloaks that buttoned in front. They did not take a first vote that evening. Swiss Guards outside the chapel could see candles burning in the opaque windows of the chambers where the cardinals were spending the night. They had retired relatively early.

  The cardinals reconvened on Tuesday morning, March 2, which happened to be Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli’s sixty-third birthday. Immediately Pacelli received thirty-five votes, seven short of the required two-thirds to elect a new pope. They voted once more in the late morning, and this time forty votes were his. The proceedings were then delayed because the stove used to burn the ballots became clogged up and smoke began pouring out into the Sistine Chapel. The cardinals were forced to break the seal of the room and called the Vatican fire brigade, who extinguished the flames and cleared out the smoke.

  The cardinals returned to the chapel and voted once more in the afternoon. This time Pacelli had reached forty-two, and if he accepted, he would be the pope. Witnesses among the cardinals said the usually impassive Pacelli buried his head in his hands when he realized what had happened. There had never been serious opposition to Pacelli as the new pope, and all the speculation outside that room about other candidates had been meaningless. A Pacelli supporter said afterward: “We had against us nothing but a handful of dust.”

  Now the other cardinals turned to Pacelli and awaited his decision. Pacelli accepted and said, “I wish to be called Pius XII because all my ecclesiastical life, all my career has taken place under Pontiffs of that name and particularly because I have a debt of gratitude toward Pius XI, who always caused me to be indebted to him for his affection to me.”

  The conclave was now over; a pope had been chosen in record time, less than twenty-four hours and after only three ballots. Pacelli was right that he owed much to Pius XI’s support. Ironically, however, his name choice would serve to obscure the name of his predecessor. With the history that came afterward, when laypeople heard the name Pope Pius pronounced, they assumed one referred to Pope Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli.

  Preparations were now made before the world was to be told. By ritual, the new pope was to be fitted quickly with his new robes. As he left the Loggia of Raphael after emerging from the Sistine Chapel, Pacelli walked down a stairway toward the Royal Hall. “Suddenly he missed his footing,” the New York Times reported, “falling headlong down the last half-dozen steps.” Luckily he was only lightly bruised, as he had been in the car accident several months earlier.

  AMBASSADOR WILLIAM PHILLIPS felt like going down to St. Peter’s Square on the afternoon of March 2 to see if smoke might rise from the roof over the Sistine Chapel. He had a “feeling that something was happening,” he recalled, but he had just missed the white smoke emanating from the little tin chimney. “I found the Piazza San Pietro already two-thirds filled and a tapestry was being hung over the little balcony above the main entrance of St. Peter’s.” An amplified voice boomed over the crowd within moments—Habemus Papam—“we have a pope.”

  “Tremendous enthusiasm burst forth from the crowd,” Phillips said. “Everybody waved his hat and the Piazza resounded with cheers. All faces were turned toward St. Peter’s and then, led by the invisible Sistine choir a slow chanting began. It was an impressive moment.”

  In a few hours, night had fallen and a full moon cast shadows through the colonnade of St. Peter’s. Attendants draped white-and-yellow bunting emblazoned with the papal crown over the balustrade before the pope’s balcony. All attention focused there. Shortly after 6 P.M., Phillips watched as “the new Pope appeared on the balcony and the crowd knelt reverently.” Dressed in white, Pope Pius XII blessed the crowd, both hands raised to the heavens. “As the balcony was not flood-lighted, it was difficult to see his face very clearly. The crowds were again enthusiastic,” said Phillips. “There was a curious combination of reverence and cheering and waving of hats, but it was evident that the choice of Pacelli was a popular one.”

  The Vatican, March 12, 1939

  Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli was crowned with the papal tiara ten days later, on Sunday, March 12. Caroline Phillips was well situated to observe the coronation and record her observations. She wrote,

  It was a delicious morning clear and sunny and not cold, and the clear soft pearly light of early morning as we drove across the Tiber and passed the tower of St. Angelo was breathlessly lovely. For me it will I hope ever remain a vivid picture of brilliant ecclesiastical pageantry, the central figure, tall emaciated, ascetic, calm and aloof with the closed eyes of an ancient Cambodian Budda [sic], drawing into himself all that was most mystic and holy and beautiful of that ancient ritual. He seemed to be moving in a world apart, living through within the depths of his soul a great spiritual experience.

  By this point, the United States had resolved a minor diplomatic problem regarding the new pope’s coronation. Although Ambassador Phillips was in Rome, he was not accredited to the Holy See, and the United States had not yet decided to take up diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Both the Vatican and the United States wanted for their own reasons to avoid the appearance of too close relations between President Roosevelt and the Vatican.

  Roosevelt decided that Joseph Kennedy, now the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, would be the official American representative at the coronation. Phillips and Caroline were seated inconspicuously some distance from the official representatives, Ambassador Kennedy and his wife, Rose. Caroline had particularly noticed that one of the ambassador’s dashing young sons was in town as well, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a twenty-one-year-old junior at Harvard College. The Kennedys, including Jack and two of his sisters, Eunice and Kathleen, had come to dinner at the Phillipses’ house the night before. Jack Kennedy had been spending considerable time with his father at the embassy in London, learning the trade of diplomacy and traveling around Europe when he was not studying.

  The assembled dignitaries had waited for hours. At just after 10 P.M. the new pope could be seen entering. He walked slowly to the throne of St. Peter. “After His Ho
liness had taken his seat on the throne, his jeweled miter was replaced by a simple one of gold material,” Ambassador Phillips said, comparing notes with his wife.

  An unseen choir chanted throughout the Mass, which lasted two and a half hours. Then followed “the procession of all the cardinals to the throne each one kissing his ring . . . I noticed that the more important cardinals did not kiss the Pope’s toe . . . Some of them were very old and feeble and had to be helped up and down the steps leading to the dais.” By tradition, one prelate paused before the pope three times during the ceremony and intoned—sic transit gloria mundi—“thus passes the glory of the world”—a reminder to the pope that one day, too, he would die.

  The new pope’s first message made only the most indirect mention of world affairs. “We invite all to the peace of a conscience,” he said, “tranquil in the friendship of God . . . peace between nations by way of mutual help, friendly collaboration and cordial understanding, for the higher interest of the great human family . . . We have before our eyes the vision of the vast evils with which the world is struggling and to which it is our duty, unarmed but relying on the help of God, to bring succor.”

  The media and various pundits engaged in much analysis of how Pacelli would act as pope. They drew threads from his repetition of the word peace twice in the same sentence; nothing more telling was available. The use of the word, they said, signaled that he intended to seek peace. But would he confront Hitler and Mussolini as Pius XI had? It appeared to be so. His choice of name, Pius XII, appeared to mean something. Many simply assumed that Pacelli—the pope’s loyal servant and most visible understudy—would emulate old Pius’s politics.