The Pope and Mussolini

by David I. Kertzer

  In many ways, Pacelli was Gasparri’s opposite. His father’s father had served as a minister in the papal government of Pius IX, fled with the pope in 1848 when the revolution in Rome drove him into exile, and on their return helped found L’Osservatore romano. Pacelli’s father was the dean of the Vatican lawyers and had served from 1886 to 1905 on Rome’s city council. Eugenio, born in Rome in 1876, was a shy, frail child who wore spectacles from an early age and enjoyed playing the violin. He showed no interest in sports or children’s games.14

  At age eighteen, Pacelli entered the Almo Collegio Capranica, Rome’s oldest seminary and, over the centuries, the launch pad for many high Vatican diplomatic careers. Although he did well in his studies, he craved solitude and missed home. Given his family’s clout, he won a rare dispensation and was allowed to live at home through the rest of his studies.15

  In 1901, two years after his ordination, Pacelli received a doctorate in civil and canon law and took a position in the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs in the Vatican secretary of state office. He could not have risen so rapidly over the next years without participating in the antimodernist campaign, a prerequisite for advancement under Pope Pius X.16 But Pacelli was cautious and measured in his speech and befriended Giacomo Della Chiesa while they were both in the secretary of state office. In 1914, when Della Chiesa became Pope Benedict XV, he promoted Pacelli to undersecretary of state.

  Three years later the pope appointed Pacelli to be nuncio to Bavaria. For the first time, the forty-one-year-old left his mother and his parental home. A few years later he would be named nuncio to Germany and move from Munich to Berlin.

  When he first departed for Munich, Pacelli took up two compartments in the train, one for himself and a second for the sixty cases of food he brought with him.17 Once there, he asked to have nuns take care of his household. One, the twenty-four-year-old Pascalina Lehnert, was destined to play an important role in his life. She was smitten by the nuncio. “Tall and slender, his face extremely thin and pallid,” she wrote, recalling her first impression, “he had eyes that reflected his soul and gave him a particular beauty.” She came to think he would be helpless in handling the daily necessities without her.

  In 1919 Pacelli suffered a trauma that would stay with him all his life. In April of that year, amid the postwar chaos, a Soviet Republic was briefly proclaimed in Munich. A Communist commandant, leading a squad of hastily formed militia armed with rifles, revolvers, and hand grenades, banged on the door of the nunciature. When the frightened staff opened the door, the commandant said he had come to requisition the nuncio’s limousine. Pacelli was called down to confront the intruders. Horrified by the invasion, he was especially pained by their demand for the car, since he had a soft spot for his Mercedes-Benz, describing it fondly as a “splendid carriage, with pontifical coat of arms.” Rejecting the demand as a flagrant violation of international law, he tried to show them the certificate of extraterritoriality protecting the nunciature. The commandant, described by Pacelli as “a horrible type of delinquent,” was unimpressed, and one of the men put a rifle to his chest. The invaders pushed past the nuncio and went to the garage, but the chauffeur had disabled the car. Frustrated, they told Pacelli that if he did not have the limousine ready for them the next day, they would arrest them all and blow up the building.

  Accounts of the next twenty-four hours differ sharply. In his report to Gasparri, Pacelli said that immediately following the men’s departure, he was struck by a bad bout of the flu, made worse by “a bad stomach,” and left Munich to recuperate in a rest home. But it appears that as soon as the squad left, Pacelli had collapsed, unnerved. He hastily left Munich, recuperating in a nursing home a hundred miles away. When the squad returned the next day, he was not there.18

  While in Germany, Pacelli did his best to enforce top-down rule from the Vatican—no simple matter in a country where bishops had long valued their own authority. Father Hubert Wolf, one of the foremost authorities on Pacelli’s years in Germany, describes his time there:

  “For Pacelli, the bishops were little more than papal head altar boys, called on to act only on the instructions of the pope.… Rome wanted yes-men with childlike devotion to the Holy Father. This was Pacelli’s crucial criterion for a good bishop, and he bent every effort to install just such men and to stamp out the independence of the German Church.”19

  Pacelli was impressed by the Germans’ punctuality, their reliability, and their work ethic. Although he never overcame his fear of flying, he was smitten by German technology.

  Among the experiences in Germany that would most affect him was the rising wave of hostility toward the Jews. In his early days in Munich, he wrote of a “grim Russian-Jewish-Revolutionary tyranny” and during the dozen years he spent in Germany, he made constant mention of the Jewish backgrounds of Socialists and Communists.20 In one 1919 report he described the Communist head of Munich’s short-lived revolutionary council: a “young man, also Russian and Jewish.… Pale, dirty, with expressionless eyes, and a hoarse and vulgar voice: a truly repugnant type, yet with an intelligent and sly face.”21

  RECALLED FROM BERLIN AND made a cardinal in December 1929, Eugenio Pacelli became secretary of state two months later. “Tall, thin, dark complexion, graying hair, ascetic face, a lively look, a benevolent expression, a red skullcap atop his small, aristocratic head, the purple satin cape upon his shoulders, a belt of the same color over his black soutane with braids and gleaming buttons, a gold cross hanging by a chain upon his chest”: this is how the French ambassador described him. The short, stout self-described “sheep herder” was replaced by a tall, slender, bespectacled Roman of aristocratic bearing. It was hard to imagine Pacelli sitting in the shade of a tree on a hillside.22 A favorite of Roman society, he won praise among the Vatican diplomatic corps for his considerate manner. They also appreciated his ability to speak with many of them in their own language, conversant as he was in French, German, English, and Spanish.23

  In contrast to Gasparri, who rarely spoke publicly, Pacelli was a skilled orator and would represent Pius XI at several high-profile international Church gatherings. His memory was prodigious. “When I have written or typed a sermon or a talk,” he once said, “I see the text roll by in front of my eyes as I speak the words, as if I were reading it.”24 He insisted that he be informed of everything and was meticulous in reviewing even the smallest details, down to the address on each envelope to be mailed. Every night his undersecretaries prepared a file of papers and letters for his signature, sometimes as many as a hundred. The next morning he would return them in one of two folders. One contained the documents he had signed, and the other those in which he had detected an error. They would all have to be retyped. His assistants took to calling the latter folder “the infirmary” and prayed each morning that it would have few patients.25

  Pope Pius XI, a New York Times Vatican correspondent wrote, was “not so much austere as habitually serious … he seldom smiles or relaxes.”26 Others described the pope as “melancholy.” In selecting Pacelli, he chose a man who was similarly reserved and someone who, like him, felt the heavy weight of his office. But Pacelli was very much in control of himself. He did not share the pope’s temper or his excitability. He was also a man of his habits, and he brought Sister Pascalina with him to Rome to set up his Vatican apartment. This raised some eyebrows, given her young age, but she would remain with him until the day he died. Suspicions that they had an inappropriate relationship seem misplaced. Closer to the mark are speculations that she replaced his mother in taking care of him. She was certainly as protective as any mother, and many in the Vatican would resent her influence.27

  Up by 6:15 A.M., the new secretary of state celebrated mass with a group of nuns and priests before taking a quick breakfast. He then waited for the pope’s summons to their early morning meeting. A close, although formal, relationship developed between the scholarly, undiplomatic pope—a man from a modest small-town family—and t
he worldly, politically well-connected Roman Pacelli. At their early morning meetings, the new secretary of state brought an agenda and carried a stack of nuncio reports and other materials for the pope to review.

  The cardinal returned from these meetings with thick, square pieces of paper in which he recorded the pope’s instructions in his tiny, neat handwriting.28 The secretary of state’s spacious offices were on the second floor of the Apostolic Palace. Pacelli passed the gendarme who guarded the outside entry. His colorful uniform and tall dark fur hat made it seem that Napoleon had left him behind. As he approached his own office, he would nod to his private secretary, in black clerical gown, and the uniformed Noble Guard of Honor who stood at his door. Pacelli then called in his two undersecretaries to review the pope’s instructions and plan their work for the day.

  The cardinal reserved two mornings a week to meet individually with the thirty ambassadors accredited to the Holy See. They awaited their turn in a large room of noble appearance, its walls damask red. On a typical morning, in a nearby ornate room, a papal nuncio visiting Rome might be found, along with a bearded apostolic delegate from the Orient, in a monk’s habit, and other ecclesiastical dignitaries. They sat in one of eleven gold-inlaid armchairs at a heavy table covered with a rich red cloth. Less high-ranking prelates—priests, monks, and nuns—sat in the simpler armchairs that lined the entryway to the secretary of state’s office. At any moment during their conversations with the secretary of state, visitors risked being ejected if a cardinal heading one of the Curia departments arrived unexpectedly.29

  After a half-hour break for lunch at one P.M., Pacelli took an hour off for a walk, sometimes in the gardens of the Villa Borghese, on the other side of the Tiber. An assistant carrying papers for review often accompanied him, as a policeman walked behind at a respectful distance.30 Back in the Vatican, the secretary of state had more appointments before taking time alone to go over the day’s documents. At 8:30 he stopped for supper, went to the chapel to recite the rosary, and returned to work until well after midnight.31

  The general sentiment among Vatican diplomats when Pacelli first became secretary of state was that, in contrast to the genial and self-confident Gasparri, he was rather stiff and reluctant to express any ideas of his own. He was always gracious, but whenever a difficult question came up, he responded by saying he would need to consult the pope.32 “The secretary of state,” wrote the British envoy in his annual report for 1930, “was in practice reduced to the position of a clerk.”33

  The French scholar and bishop Alfred Baudrillart recorded a similar impression, describing Cardinal Pacelli as “sickly and not very influential.” Baudrillart recalled an embarrassing meeting between Pacelli and the pope in April 1931, at a time when Pius XI was upset with Mussolini for his attacks on Catholic Action. An Italian cardinal, he had recently learned, had publicly blessed a Fascist banner. Pius, angry, asked Pacelli if he had known about it. When the uneasy Pacelli answered that he had, the pope asked him indignantly whether he had approved the cardinal’s gesture in advance. Stricken, Pacelli admitted he had, then added, “I told you, Holy Father, that I would be incapable of carrying out the functions of the Secretary of State.”34

  But the pope had a high opinion of Pacelli’s intelligence and diplomatic skills and, in these early years, no doubts as to his loyalty. “Our secretary of state,” the pope once said, “works well, works hard, and works quickly.”35 Temperamentally, Pacelli balanced the impulsive pope, putting a brake on his penchant for lashing out when he thought Church principles were under attack.36

  Gasparri, for his part, was not making Pacelli’s transition easy. “You have come to take my place!” he growled shortly after Pacelli arrived in Rome. “You should not have accepted! They have exploited me, and now they send me away! You will see what kind of man the pope is!” A distraught Pacelli did his best to calm him down, but the encounter left its mark.37

  “They have chased me out like a dog,” the former secretary of state kept repeating, complaining to a fellow cardinal that in their final meeting the pope had not offered him a word of appreciation.38 Talking to another friend, he indignantly asked how the pope could treat him so poorly. “I am the one who made the librarian a pope and a sovereign, and he chased me out worse than a mangy dog! He will pay me for it! Believe me, he will pay me for it!”39

  Gasparri aimed much of his fire at Monsignor Pizzardo, his old undersecretary, charging him with building up his friend Eugenio Pacelli in the pope’s eyes at Gasparri’s expense. The passed-over Cardinal Cerretti likewise blamed Pizzardo, dismissing Pacelli as weak-kneed and indecisive, a “slave in the hands of Pizzardo, who moves him like a puppet.”40

  TAKING UP HIS NEW POST on the first anniversary of the Lateran Accords, Pacelli was immediately swept up in the celebrations. The tensions over Mussolini’s speeches to parliament dissipated as the Duce showered gifts and honors on the pope and those around him. On the anniversary itself, the Italian ambassador presented the pope with a beautiful surplice made of Burano lace. Delighted, the pope told De Vecchi that he would wear it the next day in the Sistine Chapel for the ceremonies marking his eighth anniversary as pontiff. At the same time, the king awarded Gasparri Italy’s highest decoration, the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation.41

  Italy’s ambassador to the Vatican, Cesare De Vecchi, thought Pacelli was a man with whom he could work well. “This Cardinal secretary of state,” De Vecchi recorded in his diary, “seems to me to be basically a good person with whom as time goes on we will find complete harmony, that of a true conciliation. If the pope weren’t so agitated, things would truly go much more smoothly.”42 A week and a half later De Vecchi was lamenting how difficult it was to deal with the pope and found that Cardinal Pompili agreed with him: “I don’t know if he knows books,” Rome’s cardinal vicar said of the former librarian, “but he certainly does not understand men.” In recording these remarks, De Vecchi added, “I see every day that this pope is little loved even by those who are closest to him.”43

  A month later, at their regular Friday meeting, De Vecchi and Pacelli discussed the current tensions in Europe. “I saw yet again that he clearly favors the Germans and doesn’t love the French,” De Vecchi observed. Aware of Pacelli’s close ties to conservative circles in Germany, the ambassador suggested that he help the Fascist government establish better links with right-wing forces there. “I am certainly convinced,” De Vecchi wrote, “that Cardinal Pacelli can be very useful to us in this area and I hope to convince him by appealing to his patriotism on the one hand and his affection for Germany on the other, an affection that runs very deep in him.”44

  Germany would soon be on everyone’s mind, for in national elections in September 1930, Hitler’s National Socialist Party received more than six million votes, becoming the second-largest party in the country. Amid Germany’s severe economic depression, with widespread unemployment, government paralysis, and powerful Socialist and Communist movements, what had formerly seemed inconceivable—that the Nazis could come to power—was no longer a laughing matter. Viewing the Nazi movement as a pagan threat to the Catholic Church in Germany, the pope looked on with concern.

  Signs soon appeared of the catastrophe that was about to befall Europe. But what would sour the pope’s view of Mussolini had nothing to do with Hitler but with matters closer to home. De Vecchi’s faith that the new Vatican secretary of state would be able to keep the emotional pope in line was about to be dramatically tested. It would suddenly seem possible, even likely, that stricken by remorse at the deal he had made with Italy’s dictator, the pope would denounce both Mussolini and his Fascist regime.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  CARDINAL PACELLI HANGS ON

  “FASCISTS TRAMPLE PORTRAIT OF POPE,” READ THE FRONT-PAGE New York Times headline in late May 1931. “Mob calls Pontiff traitor and burns books—Osservatore Romano’s sale banned.”1

  Tensions had been building for months over Catholic Action
, the linchpin of the pope’s efforts to re-Christianize Italian society. Catholic Action had a national office, its lay president appointed by the pope. Monsignor Pizzardo was technically the organization’s “ecclesiastical assistant,” but as one of the men closest to the pope, he allowed Pius XI to keep tight control over it. National directives went out to each diocese, where Catholic Action came under the authority of the local bishop and had a board that included laypeople. In areas where the Church was strongest—generally in the center and north of the country—each parish also had its own set of Catholic Action organizations, for men, women, girls, and boys.

  Mussolini knew how dear Catholic Action was to Pius XI, but he decided it was time to put the pope in his place. Riled by newspaper stories charging Catholic Action with harboring old Popular Party activists and other enemies of the regime, hundreds of Fascist college students smashed the windows of the University of Rome’s Catholic Action center. Others threw rocks through the windows of La Civiltà cattolica’s building and then rushed in, tossing books out the broken windows. To chants of “Down with the priests! Down with the pope,” they heaved a painting of Pius XI onto the street.2

  Furious, the pope told Pacelli to suspend his regular meetings with the Italian ambassador.3 But Mussolini, whose ego and temper were more than equal to the pontiff’s, decided he had had enough of the pope’s pressures. He ordered all Catholic Action youth groups in Italy closed.4