The Pope and Mussolini

by David I. Kertzer

  The pope’s moods continued to swing sharply, linked in part to his health. His periods of depression and lashing out were followed by days when he seemed much mellower. In early October, while asking Tardini to send a letter dealing with a Milanese monastery, he joked, “Friars’ stuff! It really is true what they say, ‘Those who wear surplice and hood, never mutter a word to the good!’ ”44 A few days later he asked his staff to find a young priest in Vienna who could send secret reports on what was going on there. He quipped, “If I were younger, I would be very happy to get an assignment like that!”45

  But the pope’s mood could change quickly. When Tardini reported that a new Fascist Party head had been appointed in Bergamo, he added his hope that the situation there would improve. “If they take away another [Fascist Party] membership card,” replied the pope, in a flash of his old temper, “I will intervene energetically! I will make a scandal! I will let the world know! Taking away a person’s membership means taking away his bread.” He grew more agitated: “Fascism will look really good! One doesn’t become old for nothing! Old folks have a certain immunity, and I intend to take advantage of it!”46

  If the ailing pope was upset with Mussolini, he also was developing a dim view of his countrymen. “The Italians,” the pope told Tardini, when the subject of the new racial laws came up in their conversation in mid-October, “are a bunch of sheep.” Then he added, “For this we certainly don’t need to be grateful to Mussolini.”47

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  THE FINAL BATTLE

  GUSTAV GUNDLACH, WHO HAD HELPED DRAFT THE POPE’S SECRET encyclical on racism, was back in Rome, and he was not happy. In September he and his two colleagues had given their text to Ledóchowski, thinking the Jesuit general would send it on to the pope. The appearance of the Manifesto of Racial Scientists and the announcement of the first racial laws had fortified their belief that the pope wanted to see their work quickly. But Gundlach, informed that the Jesuit general had sent an “abridged version” of their draft to Father Enrico Rosa, urged his American collaborator to tell the pope what had happened. “Your intention not to let the document pass through other hands has not been realized,” he told LaFarge. “Your loyalty to the Boss”—their code for Ledóchowski—“has not been rewarded. Indeed, you might be subject to the reproach that your loyalty toward Mr. Fischer”—their rather curious code name for Pius XI—“has suffered from your loyalty to the Boss.” He concluded, “A person unconnected with the affair might see in all this an attempt to sabotage, through dilatory action, and for tactical and diplomatic reasons, the mission with which you were directly entrusted by Mr. Fischer.”1

  ––

  HITLER’S TRIUMPHAL TOUR THROUGH Italy had soured many Americans on the Duce. Now, with the imposition of the racial laws, Mussolini’s popularity in the United States was plummeting. The Italian embassy in Washington sent a long report to Rome chronicling the decline. “As is known, American Catholics—beginning with the Church upper hierarchy, with Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago foremost among them—have from the very beginning reacted with hostility and with growing anger to the officially anti-Catholic and in part anti-Christian attitude of the Nazi authorities.” Imposition of the racial laws and the latest battle over Italian Catholic Action “have led,” the embassy reported, “to the rise here of further worries for the future of the Church in Italy, identifying Fascism with Nazism in the not too discerning eyes of the general public … who view them together as the not overly loved so-called authoritarian regimes.”2

  Relations between the Fascist regime and the American government were rapidly cooling. Italian newspapers did nothing to help, charging that Jews ruled the United States. They offered a list of the all-Jewish makeup of what was said to be the likely next American cabinet, headed by President Bernard Baruch and Vice President Albert Einstein.3 Leon Trotsky was slated to be secretary of war; the fact that he was neither American nor lived in the country was apparently no impediment.4

  PIUS WAS UPSET OVER MUSSOLINI’S planned new marriage law, which threatened to forbid baptized Jews from marrying other Catholics. He asked his nuncio to prepare a formal position paper.5 The pope had in mind a statement of Catholic principle, but Borgongini thought it important that it contain something more. The Vatican needed to offer guidance for drafting racial laws that would not run afoul of Church teachings. “We must,” the nuncio said, “suggest a way out. Otherwise the government … won’t know how to find it by themselves. And then without a doubt there will be a rift.”6 It was a rift that the nuncio would spend the next weeks doing everything he could to avoid.

  Borgongini’s draft urged the government not to ignore the “religious element” in formulating its new laws. “It is therefore necessary that Jews not be confused with converts to Catholicism, for these have had the courage and the heroism to tear themselves once and for all from their nation of origin.”7

  In an effort to make his proposal more palatable to Mussolini, he added an aside expressing the Vatican’s sympathy for the goals of the racial laws. “Certainly, for both moral and health reasons, [the Church] uses all the arguments at its disposal to try to discourage unions between whites and blacks and any union that is heterogeneous.8 In this way it tries to avoid producing half-breeds, who combine the defects of both races.” But “it cannot push its efforts of dissuasion to the point of an absolute ban.”

  Borgongini offered two possible compromises. The marriages in question could be allowed under the king’s already existing authority to grant royal dispensations. Alternatively, language could be added to the new law stating that marriages that conflicted with its provisions but fell under article 34 of the concordat—recognizing the civil effects of religious marriages—would be recognized if the pope reviewed and approved them.9

  The pope met with Tardini and Tacchi Venturi to discuss next steps. Tardini mentioned that the government had banned publication of articles critical of racism, even if they only criticized the German variety. “But all this is a disgrace!” said the pope. “I am ashamed, not as pope, but as an Italian! The Italian people have become a flock of stupid sheep. I will speak up, have no fear of that. The concordat means a lot to me, but my conscience means more.… Here they have become like so many Farinaccis. I am truly upset, as a pope and as an Italian!”

  Once the storm—as Tardini described the pope’s outburst—passed, Tacchi Venturi, not one to be easily thrown off course, incongruously took out a photograph of the pontiff and asked him to sign it, with a dedication to Mussolini’s son Bruno, who was to get married a few days later. “I have little taste for putting my signature under the name of Mussolini!” said the pope. But he signed the photo anyway, as Tacchi Venturi had known he would.10

  Their business over, Pius XI and the Jesuit began to reminisce. “They are two old men,” reflected Tardini, recalling the scene, “one eighty-two and the other seventy-seven, sprightly and intelligent.” They traded references to the Old and New Testaments and chuckled over stories of the men they had known, some long gone.11 It was the kind of easy banter that the pope would have with few others.

  Later that day Tardini, Tacchi Venturi, and Borgongini gathered in the apartment of Cardinal Domenico Jorio.12 As prefect of the Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments, Jorio oversaw marriage regulations. The pope had asked the men to find a way out of the impasse. They came up with a plan, which the pope approved. The nuncio and Tacchi Venturi would try to convince government officials that it was not in their interest to cause a rupture in relations with the Holy See “for the few, rare cases [of mixed marriages], when it is possible to find a way out.” They would try to get a copy of the proposed law, “to be in a position to advise on appropriate modifications.”13

  But when Tacchi Venturi asked Mussolini for a meeting, the Duce refused, telling him to put what he wanted to say in writing.14 So the Jesuit subsequently sent the Duce a letter, in which he claimed that the Catholic Church had long opposed mi
xed marriages. They were “extremely rare and only tolerated for serious reasons of conscience.” The pope, he assured Mussolini, was willing to go even further to reach an understanding: “The Holy Father is ready to see to it that they are even rarer and can never take place without being directly subject to the Holy Pontiff’s direct review.”

  In his desperation to reach a deal, Tacchi Venturi was not only willing to make the pope a direct participant in the racial campaign, he was concealing a distinction that was crucial to the Church and central to the Vatican’s problem with the racial laws. The pope’s principal objection involved not the ban on what the Church considered to be “mixed marriages”—that is, marriages between Jews and Catholics—but rather those uniting two Catholics, one of whom had once been Jewish or who had a Jewish parent.

  The Jesuit devoted the final page of his letter to singing the Duce’s praises. He concluded by describing himself as “one who loves You and the Fatherland, one who—and I say it without a shadow of boasting—feels incapable of betraying You and Fascism.”15

  But the proposal failed to move Mussolini. Guido Buffarini, the intimidating undersecretary for internal affairs, told them the news: the Duce would never allow the pope to grant exceptions for mixed marriages; nor would he want to have the king review such requests.16

  IN LATE OCTOBER THE DUCE met in Rome with Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Nazis’ foreign minister. Ribbentrop had come to persuade Mussolini that it was time for a military pact binding Italy with Germany and Japan.17 Sensing that, despite all his bombast, Mussolini still had qualms about signing a formal military alliance, Ribbentrop promised him that, with German support, the whole Mediterranean would one day become an Italian sea. Curiously, the main sour note that Mussolini sounded in the meeting regarded the Church and the pope. The Nazis’ continued battle against the Catholic Church, he told the German foreign minister, remained a major impediment to a military alliance, for it undermined Italian popular support. He suggested that before such a pact be signed, the German government find a way to make peace with the Church. Should the Germans reach such an agreement, said Mussolini, alliance with the Nazis “would become very popular.” Nor were all the problems with the Church on the German side. His own relations with the pope had lately become strained, he said. Having the pope denounce the pact would, he worried, place Italy’s Catholics “in a difficult position.”18

  In his diary, Ciano painted a chilling picture of his own meeting with Ribbentrop at Rome’s Grand Hotel. “He has a fixation about war on his mind,” he wrote. “He wants war, his war. He doesn’t have or doesn’t say what his general marching plan is. He doesn’t single out his enemies, nor does he indicate the objectives. But he wants war within three or four years.” When Ciano discussed Ribbentrop’s proposed military alliance with his father-in-law, Mussolini told him that the announcement of such an alliance should be put off, “above all because of the anti-German bitterness dominant in the great Catholic masses.”19

  Italy’s anti-Semitic campaign was drawing a great deal of negative attention outside Italy, and given the Vatican’s close ties to the Fascist regime, the pope found himself in an uncomfortable position. Tardini warned him against collaborating with Mussolini to produce a mutually acceptable text of the new racial law. Such a deal would leave the Vatican open to the accusation of collusion in the anti-Semitic campaign. Better simply to let the government do what it was going to do, he advised; assuming Mussolini went ahead with his plan, the Vatican could then condemn the provision that undercut article 34 of the concordat but take comfort from the fact that few marriages would be affected. Most important, he told the pope, the rest of the concordat would remain in effect.20

  At first the pope agreed. But under pressure from his other advisers to work out a deal with the dictator, he would find it impossible to follow Tardini’s advice.21

  On October 29 a crowd gathered in the piazza in front of the pope’s summer palace, hoping to get his blessing as he departed. It was a cold, windy day. A miserable mixture of hail, snow, and icy rain drove the faithful to seek cover in nearby shops. When it let up, the pope appeared at the small balcony of the palace, and people rushed back into the piazza. It was the last time he would ever be seen in Castel Gandolfo.22

  A month earlier, much to the surprise of the Vatican diplomatic corps, Cardinal Pacelli had left for his regular vacation in Switzerland.23 He arrived back in Rome on the overnight train, Sunday morning, October 30, and went directly from the station to the pope’s office.24 Tacchi Venturi, who was already there, reported the latest developments. The pope agreed to let him make one last attempt to speak with Mussolini and find an amicable solution.25

  In an attempt to get through to the Duce, the Jesuit gave Buffarini a note. The Holy Father, it said, was distressed to think of all the damage that would be done to Catholic support for the regime if the government went ahead with the new racial law without coming to an understanding with the Vatican. It would bring “immense joy to the anti-Fascists of every language and nation.” The pope believed there was still time to find wording for a new marriage law that would be “to the mutual satisfaction of both parties.”26

  Although Pius was ailing, over the next weeks he met repeatedly with Tacchi Venturi, Pacelli, and Tardini to direct the frenetic, last-minute negotiations. On November 2, when they finally procured a copy of the proposed new law, the pope asked the group that had been meeting at Cardinal Jorio’s apartment to convene again.

  Article 1 of the draft law stated, “Marriage between an Italian citizen of the Aryan race with a person belonging to another race is prohibited.” It excepted only those marriages provided for in article 7, which Mussolini had added as a sop to the Vatican: it allowed exceptions for a person who was dying or to legitimize children.27

  Tardini repeated the advice he had earlier given the pope: the Vatican should officially oppose the racist principle behind the new law and let the world know it had not had a hand in its drafting.

  But the others rejected Tardini’s pleas. Terrified of opening a rift with the regime, Borgongini, the nuncio, proposed that they threaten to announce that the new law conflicted with the concordat but, should it go into effect, not actually make any public protest. This would allow them to continue to lobby behind the scenes for the changes they sought.28

  “It is obvious,” wrote Tardini, in later reporting that day’s developments, “that the nuncio’s great concern was to avoid a conflict between the Holy See and the Italian government. And since any declaration or protest by the Holy See (no matter how attenuated) might have been exploited by Fascism’s enemies both internally and especially abroad to provoke a conflict, the nuncio sought to find a way—with some opportune modification of the law—to avoid any protest at all by the Holy See.”

  Borgongini recalled that in its October 6 statement, the Fascist Grand Council declared that the children of a mixed marriage who professed another religion (namely, Catholicism) would not be considered Jews under the law. If the Vatican could get the regime to agree to insert this language in the new law, it would substantially reduce the number of marriages between Catholics that would be affected. That would be enough, thought the nuncio, to allow the Holy See to permit the new law to go into effect without protest.

  But the pope did not agree, for under such terms Catholic converts from Judaism would still be considered Jewish. He insisted that the new law contain an exception permitting marriages of former Jews with other Catholics.29

  Tacchi Venturi took the suggested revisions to Buffarini, although he knew the pope’s proposal had no chance of winning the dictator’s approval. Reading the suggested text as Tacchi Venturi looked on, Buffarini shook his head. He would not show it to the Duce, he said. It would only make matters worse.

  That same evening Tacchi Venturi received the final text of the marriage law. Even the few exceptions contained in the earlier version, he saw, had been deleted.30 Mussolini was willing to bet that, despite all his threats
, the pope would not in the end break with the Fascist regime.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  FAITH IN THE KING

  INCREDULOUS THAT MUSSOLINI WOULD SO BRAZENLY VIOLATE THE concordat that had served them both so well, Pius XI wrote to the Duce to warn him of his folly.

  “To Our Dearest Son,” the pope began. He made no mention of the first article of the new law, which established that “marriage between an Italian citizen of the Aryan race with a person belonging to another race is prohibited.” Rather he objected to article 7, which clearly violated the concordat’s provision that Church-approved marriages be civilly recognized. “Such a vulnus [wound] can easily be avoided,” the pope told the Duce, “if instead of the text of the above-mentioned article … one substituted the version that we provided to your collaborators, but that unfortunately we do not see accepted here.” The pope appended his recommended text, the revision of article 7 that Buffarini had so angrily rejected a day earlier. It would permit marriage between two Catholics, regardless of their “race.”1

  In a last desperate effort to sway the dictator, Tacchi Venturi sent him a personal appeal. As someone who served the Duce for so many years and who had constantly proved his faithfulness and his love, he begged him to accept the pope’s request.2

  Mussolini rejected the pontiff’s last-minute appeal out of hand, letting him know the next morning that he would make no change in the law. Furious at the brush-off, the pope decided to appeal to the king. Never had Pius written to Victor Emmanuel other than for ceremonial purposes. Now he asked him “to intervene with Your supreme authority to obtain that which we were not able to accomplish … with Your Prime Minister.” The pope reminded the king of the treaty that had been solemnly signed in his name in 1929, and the fact that the proposed marriage law ran directly contrary to its provisions. He attached his proposed alternative version of article 7.3