Prisoner of the Vatican

by David I. Kertzer

  At nine o'clock, inside St. Peter's, in the mausoleum beneath the main floor, the wall covering Pius IX's temporary resting place was demolished. Attendants struggled to extract the heavy bier, made of lead, and the prelates checked to see that the seals were intact.

  With the funeral bier scheduled to appear from the left door of St. Peter's, about three thousand members of Rome's Catholic lay associations, bearing torches and candles, formed two lines stretching from the door down the steps. As midnight struck, the prelates with the pope's bier stepped out of the basilica and walked down the steps between the lines of the faithful. They placed the bier in the waiting wagon, covering it with a red cloth bearing the pontifical insignia. Flares shot into the sky, signaling the procession to begin. Two pairs of black horses pulled the huge wagon, the front horses each carrying a black-suited rider wearing a pointed hat.

  Giuseppe Manfroni described his feelings of helplessness: "St. Peter's Square was packed, and the police (a hundred men in all)—submerged in a vast sea of people—were impotent." The carriage carrying the pope's body, with four official Vatican carriages behind it, was followed by two hundred carriages of the Catholic faithful and three thousand candle-bearing marchers chanting prayers in Latin and Italian and reciting the rosary. But the procession had no sooner left St. Peter's Square than anticlerics began to drown out the mourners' prayers with shouts and songs. At Sant'Angelo bridge, fears mounted that the assailants might succeed in tossing the papal bier into the Tiber, with two to three hundred anticlerics bellowing, "Into the river! Into the river!"8 The police desperately tried to separate the anticlerics from the processioners, but, as Bacco reported in a telegram sent to the prefect, "it was not possible because they were all mixed in among the carriages and the crowd."

  A police captain described the scene as the procession reached the other side of the river: "The demonstrators became much more aggressive, one heard loud whistles, hostile shouts against the priests, and all of a sudden almost everybody was swept up into the demonstration, people taking one side or the other, not only in the street but from the adjoining houses as well." The police did their best to keep the protesters away from the procession once it reached the other bank, but by Piazza Pasquino what had already become unruly and embarrassing turned into something much more dangerous. In Questore Bacco's words, "The shouts on the one side and on the other were growing louder and ever more threatening. The horses of one carriage reared up in fear, and in that narrow piazza, packed with people, there was great confusion." Meanwhile, all along the way, many homes—just how many was part of the polemics that would follow—had placed special lights and decorations outside their windows to mark the occasion, and from some of them people tossed flowers onto the funeral bier. But the lanterns perched on the windowsills were tempting targets for the protesters, whose well-aimed rocks showered shards of glass onto the street. Outside the palaces of those noblemen who lived on the route, servants bearing torches and dressed in their most formal livery had been instructed to form a line to pay their respects. They too faced jeers and worse.

  The police tried to summon the military squads that had been placed in reserve along the route, but so great was the crush of the crowd that they could not get through. Near Piazza del Gesù, faced by an angry crowd, a panicked municipal guardsman unsheathed his sword, provoking shouts of outrage. His horrified captain rushed in and pulled him away.

  The procession soon reached Piazza Termini, where the protesters began hacking away at a pontifical crest that a devout storekeeper had placed over his shop. When police intervened, the violence grew worse. Rocks rained on the carriages of the funeral procession, and angry demonstrators shouted, "Death to the priests!" Two military squads finally succeeded in entering the piazza and separating the protesters from the funeral cortege. But with the protesters rushing through side streets to try to reassemble farther down the route, the police urged the funeral wagons to hasten their pace, leaving many of the faithful, now disorganized and the target of hostile whistles and shouts, straggling well behind in the last stretch leading to San Lorenzo. By 3 A.M., the wagon with Pius IX's remains, accompanied by the carriages of the Vatican dignitaries, entered the piazza outside San Lorenzo, where another group of demonstrators waited. The police, in considerable force, were ready and succeeded in keeping them away from the cortege and the church door.

  There were many arrests, not all of them among the anticlerics. In fact, the first person listed in the original report of the commander of the carabinieri was Giuseppe Riedi, age fifty-seven, a pensioner of the pontifical state living near the Vatican. Described as part of the

  "clerical party," he was charged with refusing to obey police orders. But most of those arrested were anticlericals, and almost all were young men. They included an eighteen-year-old butcher, a twenty-year-old baker, an eighteen-year-old goldsmith, a nineteen-year-old hairdresser, a twenty-two-year-old clerk, and a twenty-nine-year-old municipal employee. Several people had also been injured, although none too seriously. A twenty-two-year-old cook for the priest who ran the Church's institute for Jewish converts had been hit by a blunt instrument near San Lorenzo; a twenty-four-year-old university student had been hit by a club. More embarrassing for the government, the pope's nephew, Count Pecci, had been hit by a rock in his wagon and, bloodied, been forced to flee.9

  A major public relations disaster loomed, as Depretis realized before the dawn. There is some evidence that this is exactly what those in charge of the funeral procession had in mind. In a series of reports to the British foreign minister, the British envoy in Rome reported on two conversations he had had, one with a canon of St. Peter's, who had been involved in the preparations, and another with one of the Curia's most influential cardinals. Leo XIII, according to both sources, had never been comfortable with the plans for the cortege and "highly disapproved of the proposed proceeding. His Holiness foresaw the consequences which probably would, and actually did, result from it. His Holiness never sanctioned it—but was silent." It was the Catholic clubs of Rome that had organized the marchers bearing torches. "The effect of the clubs was to create a political demonstration, which they knew beforehand would be a provocation of the national feeling, and would probably give rise to scenes which would enable them to proclaim that there was no security for religion, or for the Church, in Rome." It had all been the work of the intransigents, the zelanti, and, the envoy added, "they had only too well succeeded in their purpose."10

  On the government's side, those most directly involved each tried to blame someone else. At 5 A.M., Bacco sent the prefect a long telegram describing the mayhem but trying to play it down, stressing that the only known injuries were to "a priest and another person, both hit by rocks, and a young woman who received a blow with a lit torch," adding that their injuries were all minor. Receiving the telegram a half-hour later and by now realizing the gravity of what had just taken place, the prefect hastened to send the telegram on to Depretis, along with a note: "From this brief report it appears that some very serious things happened that would not have happened if greater precautions had been taken. Either my orders were not precise enough, or they were not fully followed. Given what has happened, I would like Your Eminence to order a rigorous inquest." 11

  Depretis was feeling great pressure. That same day two senators interrogated him on the Senate floor. The first to speak was Senator Carlo Alfieri.

  "I believe that I express my colleagues' unanimous feelings," he said, "in deploring in the strongest terms the fact that, in the Kingdom's capital, a funeral cortege was unable to proceed in perfect tranquility and perfect decorum. Considering moreover that this funeral convoy was for a person who was not only of the highest status, but of such high virtue, worthy of respect and veneration even by those having very different opinions and convictions from those of the illustrious Pontiff, the deplorable events of last night assume even greater gravity." Senator Cambray-Digny then followed, seconding Alfieri's comments and asking Depretis "
how was it that, knowing how important it was that this cortege proceed solemnly, the necessary precautions were not taken to effectively prevent the disorders that were all too easy to foresee?"

  The prime minister rose to reply. "I too," he said, "hasten to say that I deplore the painful events that took place last night no less than the senators who have spoken." But Depretis tried to minimize the commotion and to cast the blame elsewhere: "During the funeral cortege a few irresponsible people disturbed the holy ceremony. But nothing serious occurred. The authorities intervened and enforced respect for the law. Despite this, some disorders did take place which, especially in the capital of the Kingdom, under the very eyes of the Government, ought not to have occurred." Depretis went on to explain how this had happened.

  The government had been informed of Pius's funeral wishes, Depretis recalled. "Yet only yesterday the Government learned that invitations were being sent to the faithful to encourage them to take part in the holy service. The Government made the necessary arrangements, but in a stretch of road such as that running from St. Peter's all through the city to the church of San Lorenzo outside the opposite wall, it was impossible to prevent disorders at all points along the way."

  Just who was responsible, Depretis went on to say, remained unclear. He had ordered an inquiry to find out and to determine whether any of the public security forces had failed to carry out their explicit instructions to maintain order. Should the latter prove to be the case, he pledged, appropriate punishment would be meted out.12

  When, two days later, the principal inspector for the minister of the interior arrived at Bacco's office, Bacco must have already had some idea of his purpose. Yet he proved to be a difficult witness, for he kept resisting the inspector's requests that he acknowledge that it had been the Catholics who were responsible for the mayhem.

  "On my honor," Bacco replied, "I cannot say that the clericals provoked it, for they kept the agreements they made." Nor would he agree that the procession was political: "I could not see this as a demonstration against the institutions and against the State, because it was only a funeral transport followed by the faithful."

  "It hardly seems possible to me," said the inspector, "that a questore, knowing of the numerous and close-knit clerical associations existing in Rome, did not know that they were preparing a political demonstration and that it would become a provocation."

  "I believe that you begin from a false premise," replied Bacco. "I did not fail to warn the minster and the prefect of the many people on the clericali's side who would take part in the procession." But, he added, he had been told not to interfere. "The secretary general of the minister of the interior told me that I was exaggerating the number of clericali, and when at the last moment he saw that we had all erred in predicting how many there would be, I asked in vain for instructions." Yet, even with all of the clericali there, he added, "it would not have affected public order had there not been provocation."

  "But," replied the inspector, "the provocations came from the clericali who shouted, 'Long live the Pope-King!'"

  "As far as the shout 'Long live the Pope-King' goes," said Bacco, "it was limited and came only in response to great provocation. For the most part people were shouting 'Long live Pius IX! Long live the Pope!'"

  "So you persist in making all these statements?" the inspector asked.

  "Completely."

  Depretis had found his scapegoat. On July 29 he reported to parliament that the investigation into the affair had been completed and appropriate action had been taken against those who had failed to carry out the government's instructions. Bacco was relieved of his duties that day. 13

  Although those around the pope felt genuine outrage at the anticlerical sacrilege of that night, they were also excited by the political ammunition it offered. Cardinal Jacobini, the secretary of state, certainly lost no time using the episode to bolster the Vatican's cause. Within hours of the procession, he was sending coded telegrams to his nuncios, urging them to help organize a worldwide protest, although he cautioned them to be discreet. The protests had to be viewed as spontaneous.14

  On July 15, Jacobini sent a long account of the events both to his nuncios in Europe and to his emissaries in the Americas. He then highlighted the main lesson to be drawn from the affair:

  From all this you can easily deduce just how much protection Catholics are offered in Rome in carrying out their duties, how much respect and freedom is provided the pope, who among other things is by law accorded the rights and honors of a Sovereign. If they let those paying their last homage of filial respect to a dead pope, a man loved and revered by all Romans, to be injured and attacked, what disorders would darken the streets of Rome if they were traversed today by the living pope? What disorders would break out if the Holy Father wanted to visit His basilicas and carry out the sacred rites in the midst of His devoted population with all of the majesty of His court? The pope's imprisonment has received full confirmation by these sad, but inevitable, events.

  He concluded by instructing his nuncios to read his letter to the minister of foreign affairs in the country they served and then leave him a copy.15

  The same day, Pasquale Mancini, then minister of foreign affairs, sent out his own lengthy message, addressed to all the Italian ambassadors in Europe. "This telegram," he explained, "is for your information and to put you in a position to correct the erroneous versions of what happened on the occasion of the transfer of the remains of Pius IX from the Vatican to San Lorenzo." The facts he went on to recount were rather different from those in Jacobini's circular. Rome's prefect had received a request for a small, private transfer of the body of Pius IX to his final resting place, to be held without anyone following it. Authorization was given with these assurances. "But at the last minute a political demonstration was organized through calls by the heads of the clerical party of which I possess various copies, and a large and noisy procession of over two thousand people" followed. "Some groups of youths reacted against the provocateurs at various points along the route. Some jostling, which led to no injury, followed, as the police intervened immediately to protect the funeral procession, assuring its march to San Lorenzo, where the inhumation and religious ceremonies were conducted in tranquility." Mancini went on to report that the young men who had been arrested for disturbing the procession had been quickly brought to justice and that six of them had already been sentenced to two to three months in prison. 16

  While the Catholic press throughout Europe denounced the Italian government and cited the chaotic procession to support its argument that Rome must be retaken, the secular press was divided. Some papers criticized the Italian government for allowing the disorders to occur, but many lashed out at the Vatican instead. Vienna's nuncio reported on a number of these stories on July 21. The German newspaper Fremdenblatt, like many others, asked how the Vatican could criticize the Italian government for failing to obey the law of guarantees when Pius had himself so loudly rejected it. The Austrian Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung charged that the Church was using the event cynically, to support its "fable" that the pope remained a prisoner. If the Italian government was to be accused of anything, the paper argued, it was for being too lenient toward those who would hold demonstrations in favor of the pope's temporal power. "The hypocritical complaints of violence committed against the pope will everywhere be received with a courteous shrug of the shoulders." The pope, the newspaper argued, "has the fullest freedom, no one threatens him, no one places obstacles in his way." And it concluded: "The 19th century will not see any crusade for reestablishing the popes' temporal dominion."17

  If Leo was hoping to use the frenzy to gain support for his efforts against the government, the initial signs were not promising. After a visit by the papal nuncio, who presented the Vatican's protests, the French foreign minister sent a letter to his ambassador to the Holy See. The disorders of the night of the twelfth, he said, were most regrettable. However, he noted, the Italian government was doubtless just as ange
red by the actions of the anticlerical rowdies as the French government was, and unfortunately in a large city such things could sometimes not be prevented. 18

  But not all was going well for Depretis and his colleagues. The image of a holy funeral cortege, and that of a pope no less, being pelted with rocks and disrupted by obscenities was a great embarrassment. The Italian ambassador to Berlin shared in this discomfort and was angered by his government's excuses. Writing to Mancini, he was blunt: "As Your Excellency has encouraged me to speak frankly, allow me to add that your telegram [giving the official government account] produced a poor impression on me." That some people would try to mount such a noisy protest could not have been unknown to the government, and the scandal that would follow could have been entirely foreseen. "Police who serve only to put down disorders rather than try to prevent them from occurring in the first place," wrote the ambassador, "are neglecting an essential part of their job. I cannot help but lament," he added, "that we have given fodder to our enemies who are searching for just such pretexts to harm us. At the same time, we have paralyzed our friends—and certainly they are far from numerous—who also have to cope with the sentiments of their own Catholics who, in these circumstances, will not fail to exploit the matter to our detriment."19

  Sensing that it was gaining ground, the Vatican tried to step up the pressure. In a new circular, sent in code to the nuncios on July 30, the secretary of state raised the old threat of leaving the Holy City. The few malefactors who had been arrested for the violence, he reported, had received minimal sentences and had been released without bail, pending an appeal. The investigation that Depretis had promised the Senate had been conducted by one of his own men, who failed to interview any of the Catholics who had been attacked. The government's unofficial newspapers had joined the radical press in Rome in their polemics against Catholics, and various anticlerical clubs had recently been formed "with the goal of uniting all the enemies of the Church and the papacy." The secretary concluded on an ominous note. The nuncios were to inform Europe's foreign ministers that "because the position of the Holy Father in Rome has become so difficult, there are discussions in the councils of the Holy See seriously deliberating whether departure from the capital has become necessary."20