Eugenio Pacelli responded on behalf of the pope. The campaign for female modesty, he assured the bishop, was one of the centerpieces of the Catholic Action program. The organization “does not let any appropriate occasion go by when it can influence the authorities to exercise greater vigilance and a severe application of the law.”10
It is worth pausing a moment to consider the date of Pacelli’s letter—September 16, 1932. Barely one year earlier Tacchi Venturi and Mussolini had initialed the agreement ending the Catholic Action dispute.11 Throughout the country, local Catholic Action groups were now collaborating with the Fascist police.12
The pope continued to complain about the exhibition of female bodies on Italy’s beaches. Church attempts to push Mussolini into action sometimes went too far, as happened in March 1934. That month the archbishop of Florence, Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa, lambasted the Fascist youth groups for sponsoring beach outings for their members. Mussolini was so incensed by the complaint that he wrote Pacelli a letter.
“The well known—perhaps too well known—Monsignor Elia Dalla Costa addressed the attached pastoral letter to his flock,” said the Duce. “He graciously describes us as pagan and savage. Let those above him know that we are neither pagan nor savage and we don’t want to become either, notwithstanding the pastoral letter of Dalla Costa.”
De Vecchi, the Italian ambassador, hand-delivered the Duce’s letter to Pacelli. Such attacks, he told Pacelli, were counterproductive. It took a lot of nerve, De Vecchi added—broaching a taboo topic—for the archbishop to accuse the Fascists of being savages when at the same time the Vatican expected the government to keep silent about widespread cases of priestly immorality. One of these days, the ambassador warned, the pope would go too far. He would not be happy with the result.13
The pope also pressed the authorities to ban books that the Church deemed offensive, like a European best seller offering advice on sex. Ideal Marriage, written by a Dutch gynecologist, described the biology of reproduction, advocated the pleasures of sexuality, and offered information helpful to controlling fertility. In 1930 the Vatican placed it on the Index of Prohibited Books. Sometime later, apparently prompted by the imminent appearance of an Italian edition, the pope called on Mussolini to outlaw its sale. The Duce assured him he would.14
Pius also pressed Mussolini to ban objectionable films and plays. Even before the signing of the Lateran Accords, the pope sent Tacchi Venturi to talk with Mussolini about how they might best collaborate in this effort. In a January 1929 meeting, the two men discussed American films. Tacchi Venturi branded them a cesspool of sin and obscenity; Mussolini voiced agreement, calling American cinema a “school of corruption that will end up ruining the Nation if it isn’t stopped.” Pleased, Tacchi Venturi asked the dictator to “study how the censorship system could be made most effective.”15
“Italy Bans Sex Appeal in Pictures … Film Censorship Rules Ordered Tightened Due to Pope’s Protests.” So read the headline in the March 20, 1931, Los Angeles Times, reporting Mussolini’s response to the pope’s complaints.16
The pope’s demands on Mussolini at times seemed overwhelming. He hectored the Duce on objectionable women’s dress, books, Protestant proselytizing, films, and plays. He also regularly asked Mussolini to take action against ex-priests. Until the fall of the Papal States, the Church had been able to isolate such miscreants from the public. But following Italian unification, it lost all power over them. What especially incensed the Vatican was ex-priests teaching in public schools, which the pope thought scandalous.17
Pius had begun urging the Duce to act well before the concordat was signed. In January 1925 he asked Mussolini to fire the prominent church historian and ex-priest Ernesto Buonaiuti from his professorship at the University of Rome. Buonaiuti had long been a thorn in the Vatican’s side. A modernist who argued for separation of church and state, he had earlier been relieved of his teaching position at one of Rome’s most prestigious seminaries. In 1921 the Church had excommunicated him after he questioned whether the body of Christ was literally present in the Eucharist.18
In response to the pope’s 1925 plea, Mussolini ordered the ex-priest suspended for the year from his teaching position, but Buonaiuti’s faculty colleagues lobbied for his reinstatement.19 In early 1927 the pope again, through Tacchi Venturi, urged the dictator to fire him. Mussolini replied that, while he wanted to keep the pope happy, he did not want to be accused of ignoring the law in order to please the pope. He suggested instead that he find other ways to prevent Buonaiuti from teaching.20 Three days later Tacchi Venturi paid a visit on the minister of education, Pietro Fedele, to try his luck. Fedele was not happy to see the pope’s emissary but was well aware of his special ties to the Duce. “I think it opportune from now on,” he wrote the next day to Mussolini, “that each time Father Tacchi Venturi comes to see me or someone in my cabinet, I send you a report of the conversation.”
Fedele assured the emissary that the ministry would again suspend Buonaiuti from teaching. Tacchi Venturi expressed satisfaction but added a papal warning. Should the government ever allow the ex-priest back in the classroom, Pius would forbid Catholics from attending the University of Rome.21
Buonaiuti remained on the University of Rome faculty until 1931 when, ironically, he ran afoul not of the pope but of Mussolini. A new law mandated that all Italian university professors swear allegiance to the Fascist regime. Of Italy’s twelve hundred faculty members, no more than a dozen or so refused. One of them was the ex-priest Ernesto Buonaiuti. He, along with the others, was dismissed.22
In another case, erupting shortly after the concordat was signed, the pope demanded that the ex-priest Giuseppe Saitta be fired from his position as professor of medieval philosophy at the University of Pisa. This case was especially ticklish for Mussolini because, in leaving the priesthood, Saitta had become an ardent Fascist. He edited Vita Nuova, a publication of the Fascist Federation of Bologna, and was a follower of Mussolini’s court philosopher, Giovanni Gentile. Indeed, he had been a student of Gentile in Palermo.
On June 2, 1930, the nuncio Borgongini met with Mussolini to present the pope’s request. He based his demand on article 5 of the concordat, which was clear enough: “apostate priests … cannot be appointed or retained as teachers, or hold office or be employed where they may be in direct contact with the public.”
“It would not be difficult for you to transfer Saitta to some museum,” suggested the nuncio.
“Why not paleontology!” the dictator responded mischievously. When he was in a good mood, the Duce rarely missed a chance to tease the ever-earnest nuncio. But Mussolini was not enthusiastic about the request. “Vedremo”—“we’ll see,” he said.
Months went by, and Saitta remained at his post. In April 1931 the pope sent a reminder to Mussolini, but still nothing was done. Saitta had been appointed to his university post before the signing of the concordat, Mussolini argued, and the provisions of the agreement were not retroactive. Two years later Saitta, far from being consigned to a remote paleontology museum, was given the plum position of professor of philosophy at the University of Bologna. This was one battle that the pope would not win.23
WHEN THE POPE’S EMISSARIES complained to Mussolini about American films, Mussolini had told them he shared their view. But in fact he was a big fan of American movies, although his tastes ran to Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and Buster Keaton, not to Jean Harlow or Mae West. The dictator even set up a special projection room at Villa Torlonia so that, after dinner, his whole family could gather in front of the screen. “It frees my mind,” he explained. Whatever relief it provided, it was brief: while the rest of the family watched the movies to the end, the paterfamilias rarely stayed more than twenty minutes.24
Those evenings in their private cinema were the happiest time for the Mussolini family. The dictator disliked sitting down to a family meal, and on the rare times he did, a deep silence enveloped the table as he nervously played with his fork and reduced
the bread crumbs to powder in his fingers.25 Rachele ruled not only the kitchen but the table as well. Children who failed to eat all their food incurred her wrath.
Although Rachele could stand up to her husband at home, outside the villa’s walls, Mussolini stood apart from other mortal men. Mussolini ha sempre ragione (“Mussolini is always right”) was the endlessly repeated slogan. Painted in huge letters on the sides of buildings throughout the country, the phrase was used to teach children to read.26
To burnish his image abroad, Mussolini somehow found time to meet with an endless parade of foreign correspondents. Rare was the reporter who interviewed the Duce in these years and failed to succumb to his rough charm. At rest, gushed one French interviewer, Mussolini resembled a marble statue sculpted by Michelangelo. His black, piercing eyes were hypnotic, his large mouth graced with beautiful teeth.27 No one who has had the Duce’s eyes fixed on him, remarked another French interviewer, could ever forget the feeling: “two eyes that see, that judge, seeing from on high, judging from afar.” And like so many others, the Frenchman was struck by the sharp contrast between the Mussolini of the public piazza, haranguing the adulatory crowds, and the pensive Mussolini of the interview, seeming so alone, so reflective, lacing his remarks with historical and philosophical references.28
A prominent German Jewish journalist published the longest and most widely read interview with the Italian dictator.29 Emil Ludwig met with Mussolini in his cavernous office several times in 1933. While considering one of his questions, Mussolini would put his fingertips together or rest his chin in his hands, his elbows on the table. He would look down at his desk and then raise his eyes to look straight at Ludwig as he replied. He took particular delight in citing statistics, preferably to the third decimal place. Ludwig also noticed that the dictator did not like to see anything wasted and, rather than use a notepad, took notes on the backs of the cards that contained his daily schedule.
Ludwig had heard the Duce address rallies in a military voice that brought to his mind the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky exhorting a crowd. But in the interviews, Mussolini never spoke loudly. Although he seemed not to understand jokes, observed Ludwig, he did have a kind of grim humor. He had only one ancestor in whom he took any pride, he said. One of his forefathers had lived in Venice and killed his wife because she was unfaithful. What recommended him to Mussolini was his élan in pausing, before fleeing the city, to place two Venetian coins on his wife’s chest to pay for her burial.
Despite himself, Ludwig, a man of the left, was being won over. When Mussolini went on to express his admiration for Caesar, Ludwig asked if a dictator could ever be loved.
“Yes,” replied Mussolini, “provided that the masses fear him at the same time. The crowd loves strong men. The crowd is like a woman.”30
Later the Duce elaborated. “For me the masses are nothing but a herd of sheep, so long as they are unorganized.” They were incapable of ruling themselves. Creatures of feeling and emotion, not intellect, they could not be won over by rational arguments. “It is faith that moves mountains, not reason. Reason … can never be the motive force of the crowd.… The capacity of the modern man for faith is illimitable. When the masses are like wax in my hands, when I stir their faith, or when I mingle with them and am almost crushed by them, I feel myself to be a part of them.”
Here Mussolini paused. Sometimes, he told Ludwig, the crowd that he had excited disgusted him. “Does not the sculptor sometimes smash his block of marble into fragments because he cannot shape it to represent the vision he has conceived?” It all came down to this: “Everything turns upon one’s ability to control the masses like an artist.”31
But by this time Mussolini had lost his major link to the world of high culture, having increasingly pushed Margherita Sarfatti away. He no longer felt the need for her political advice or encouragement, and now that she was over fifty, putting on weight, and suffering from gout, she no longer stirred his passion.32 Americans, slow to get the word, still viewed her as one of the people closest to the Duce. During a 1934 visit, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt received Sarfatti in the White House, even as back home her star was fading. Galeazzo Ciano, then undersecretary for press and propaganda, had her biography of Mussolini, Dux, pulled from circulation. Perhaps Ciano’s wife, Edda Mussolini, had pressured him. She despised her father’s former mistress. In any case, in the wake of the Lateran Accords, and later, as Mussolini sought to make a good impression on Hitler, the aging Jew had become an embarrassment. In 1935 he ordered the Italian press to ignore her. Following the anti-Semitic racial laws three years later, she would flee Italy, making her way to South America. She would return to Italy only after the war.33
Mussolini was increasingly isolated. “Fundamentally,” he told Ludwig, “I have always been alone. Besides, to-day, though not in prison, I am all the more a prisoner.”34 Around the same time, he explained to an admirer, “One must accept solitude.… A chief cannot have equals. Nor friends. The humble solace gained from exchanging confidences is denied him. He cannot open his heart. Never.”35
The year 1932, wrote one of Mussolini’s early biographers, marked the completion of the transition from the man to the mask, the reality to the legend. He had learned how to appear taller than his five-foot-six-inch frame, affecting the look of the medieval condottiere, a Renaissance warlord. His girth was expanding; despite his meager diet, he fought a constant struggle against the family tendency to fat and weighed himself every day. But his larger bulk gave new fullness to his face and helped nourish the effect of a latter-day Caesar.36
A vast government and Fascist Party effort went into nurturing the cult of the Duce. In 1929 a French observer in Italy marveled at how ubiquitous the Duce’s resolute face was: “In the news rooms, at the pastry shop, the beauty parlor, in phone booths, in smoke shops … it’s an obsession. You have to ask yourself if he keeps that mask on even when he is sleeping.”37
Pius XI viewed these efforts with some alarm. One day, during an audience with Cesare De Vecchi, the pope startled the ambassador by asking if he could count on him to take Mussolini some personal advice. Nervous but curious, he agreed.
“Tell Signor Mussolini in my name,” the pope began, “that I do not like his attempts at trying to become a quasi-divinity and it is not doing him any good either, quite the opposite. He should not be trying to put himself somewhere between the earth and the heavens.… Have him reflect, in my name, that God, Our Lord, is only one.” Mussolini “could only be an idol, a fetish, or a false god, or at most a false prophet.” He should realize, said the pope, that “sooner or later people end up smashing their idols. Tell him that if he doesn’t change what he is doing, it will end badly for him.”
De Vecchi rushed to Palazzo Venezia, where the Duce took a look at him, still in his formal morning suit, and laughed. The embarrassed ambassador explained that he had come directly from the Vatican with a personal message from the pope.
“Calm down,” said the Duce, “tell me everything.” As De Vecchi did his best to repeat what the pope had said, a smile—somewhere between ironic and incredulous—came over Mussolini’s face.
“Are you sure these are all the pope’s words?” asked the dictator. “You haven’t by any chance added anything of your own?”
A flustered De Vecchi assured him he had not.
“Then tell me,” said Mussolini, “what you think?”
“The same as the pope,” replied De Vecchi, or at least so he claimed in his later memoir.38
While the pope was worried about the growing idolization of the Duce, most of Italy’s clergy were not. The 1933 example of a priest from Bergamo, in northeastern Italy, may be extreme, but it gives some sense of the strength of the Mussolini cult. Having received a signed photograph of the Duce as a prize for a special act of Fascist loyalty, the priest wrote a thank-you note: “I kissed that figure of Your pensive face, and the characters that your hand wrote.… Your image … will remain sacred to me, and with the help
of God I will try never to do anything to fail to deserve it.… Duce, every day I have prayed to the omnipotent Lord for the holy souls of Your parents and Arnaldo … and for You and for the Fatherland.”39
The unctuous priest’s prayers for the soul of Mussolini’s brother touched an open wound for the Duce. On a foggy day in Milan in December 1931, Arnaldo, on his way home from the train station, had been felled by a heart attack. He was only forty-six years old. It was a terrible blow to Mussolini, who had shared a bed with him as a child, for there was no one he was closer to and no one he trusted nearly as much.40
In their phone conversations every night at ten P.M. Mussolini and Arnaldo had not only discussed what would go in their newspaper for the coming day but whatever else was on Mussolini’s mind. Frequently Arnaldo came to Rome to see Benito, and it was not uncommon for the Duce to get upset and shout at his younger brother. Once, Navarra reports, Arnaldo arrived at Palazzo Chigi and, perhaps to avoid such an explosion, asked to speak only to his brother’s private secretary. When Navarra mentioned to Mussolini that his brother was in the building but had not asked to see him, the Duce, annoyed, demanded that Arnaldo come immediately to his office. He complied. From outside the door, Navarra heard angry shouts aimed at the long-suffering Arnaldo. When the younger brother emerged from the office, Navarra apologized for having mentioned he was in the building.
“Don’t worry,” replied Arnaldo. “If everyone knew him as I do, they wouldn’t get so upset. He screams but he doesn’t bite.”41
Some see Arnaldo’s death as a turning point for Mussolini. The loss so suddenly and unexpectedly of the one person he could trust completely made him more closed, more suspicious of those around him. “Now,” he said on the day of his brother’s funeral, “I will have to rely on myself for everything.” A few days later he wrote to his sister, Edvige, “The blow was so unexpected and terrible that it will take much time before my nerves are back in equilibrium. I cried and cried.”42
The Pope and Mussolini Page 19