The Pope and Mussolini

by David I. Kertzer

  “The French cardinals will hold firm,” replied Tisserant reassuringly. “However, their decision will be unanimous and more solid if they learn that you plan to choose Cardinal Maglione as secretary of state.”

  “You can give them my assurance,” Pacelli replied, and the deal was struck.24

  “THE GREAT DAY HAS ARRIVED.” It was Wednesday, March 1, and the conclave was about to begin. Baudrillart was up at five-thirty A.M. and, after celebrating mass, left for the Vatican. He dressed with the other cardinals, and they then processed to the Pauline Chapel, where a mass was said, followed by a “glacial, monotonous” sermon in Latin that few of them could make any sense of. By evening the last three cardinals arrived—William O’Connell, archbishop of Boston; Sebastião Leme, archbishop of Rio de Janeiro; and Santiago Copello, archbishop of Buenos Aires—their ship having docked that morning in Naples.25

  While the other cardinals were crammed into small rooms in the Apostolic Palace, Cardinal Pacelli, as chamberlain, was granted the special privilege of staying in his own apartment, technically within the conclave’s restricted area. The other cardinals dined together. Pacelli dined alone.26

  The next morning the cardinals filed into the Sistine Chapel, some of the older ones walking only with difficulty. Each found his assigned seat with its little canopied table, forming two lines along the length of the chapel, facing each other. By now it was clear that either Pius XI’s heir apparent, Eugenio Pacelli, would win in an early vote, or if his detractors succeeded in blocking his election, the conclave would go on for many days.

  The names of three cardinals were drawn by lot, to serve as the ballot counters. Silence then filled the chapel as each cardinal dipped his pen into ink and scrawled his choice on a paper slip. One by one they rose from their seats and formed a line. As each cardinal approached the altar, he got down on his knees, offered a prayer, and recited the required vow, in Latin, then deposited the folded piece of paper with his vote.

  On the first ballot, Pacelli received thirty-two votes, a bare majority of the sixty-two cardinals present. Nine had voted for Dalla Costa, Florence’s archbishop, and seven for Maglione, the former papal nuncio to France. Pacelli needed ten more votes to reach the required two-thirds. Other favorites in the past had attained a majority but then faded when they failed to attract other support. “He who comes in the conclave as a pope leaves as a cardinal” went the old adage, not without some historical basis.

  For a second time, the cardinals sat at their tables, wrote the name of their choice on the paper, and folded it. Again they formed a line and, following the old rite, brought their ballots to the altar. This time Pacelli picked up eight more votes, but still he fell short. Again, wet straw was added to the paper slips in the fireplace so that black smoke would bellow above the Apostolic Palace. The two morning ballots were now complete. No pope had been elected. The cardinals broke for lunch.

  If some had been hoping Pacelli could be blocked, they were disappointed when the cardinals convened after lunch to hold their third ballot. Only fourteen cardinals held out against what seemed to many to be inevitable. Eugenio Pacelli, who for nine years had served Pius XI as secretary of state, received forty-eight votes. He had exceeded the required two-thirds with half a dozen votes to spare. It was his sixty-third birthday.27

  Before they could announce the new pope to the world, he would need to formally state his acceptance. The tall, gaunt Pacelli—serious, dignified, and pious—was trembling, but, Baudrillart observed, “he was not able to pretend he would turn down the position that he had desired for such a long time.” The cardinal deacon, Camillo Caccia Dominioni, strode outside on the loggia of St. Peter’s to address the excited crowd, their eyes glued on its door ever since they had seen the white smoke rise. “Habemus papam,” he intoned. Fifteen minutes later the new pope appeared on the balcony to bless the enthusiastic throng. He took the name Pius XII, honoring not only the man at whose side he had stood for so long but both Pius IX and Pius X, heroes of Church traditionalists.28

  The newly elected Pope Pius XII blesses throngs in St. Peter’s Square, March 1939. Cardinal Caccia Dominioni is in front, at the pope’s right side.

  (photograph credit 28.2)

  That evening Pignatti sent the news to Ciano, attributing Pacelli’s success to his having made it clear to his colleagues that while, as secretary of state, he had faithfully executed the pope’s orders, he preferred a much more accommodating approach to Italy and Germany.29

  Ciano received the good news while returning from a trip to Warsaw. In his diary, he recalled the conversation he had had with Pacelli the day of the pope’s death: “He was very conciliatory, and it seems also that in the meantime he has improved relations with Germany. In fact, Pignatti said only yesterday that he is the cardinal preferred by the Germans.” Back in Rome the following afternoon, Ciano went to see Mussolini, who was pleased by Pacelli’s election. He told Ciano he would help the new pope by sending him advice on how to effectively govern the Church. Mussolini ordered the press to praise the new pope: “Comment sympathetically on the election of the new pontiff,” the instructions read, “recalling his piety, his culture, and his vast political experience.”30

  Barely forty-eight hours after his election, Pope Pacelli summoned the German ambassador, meeting with him the morning of March 5. Pius XII was eager to assure the Nazi government that he sought a new era of understanding. After telling Bergen how close he felt to the German people as a result of his many years in Munich and Berlin, he came to his main point. He understood that different countries adopted different forms of government, and it was not the pope’s role to judge what system other countries chose. He reminded Bergen that the two of them had had a good relationship for thirty years. He expressed his wish that this not change.31

  Bergen was pleased, but found himself in the unusual position of warning the Nazi government about unrealistically rosy expectations. “The attitude of our press toward the new pope,” he wrote to the German Foreign Office three days later, “has been observed very closely, not only in Vatican but also in Italian circles, and has been received with satisfaction.” He had sent Pius XII copies of several positive articles from the German press on his election, hoping they would help persuade him to end the anti-Nazi tone of L’Osservatore romano. But he added a caution: “The unmistakable relaxation of tensions which has set in here since the death of the pope has aroused very strong hopes in some quarters for the early removal of differences between Germany and the Vatican.” In order to prevent “over optimistic expectations” and “overcome the considerable difficulties,” he advised, “patience and time are required, besides good will.”32

  A week later, on March 12, forty thousand people crowded into St. Peter’s to witness the new pope’s coronation. A procession of two thousand prelates in rich robes, and distinguished guests, many in diplomatic or military uniform, solemnly marched in. A platoon of Swiss Guards in full dress with glittering halberd at their side led the way, followed by a long line of representatives of all the religious orders, then hundreds of bishops, and cardinals in their scarlet robes, covered with white and gold vestments. Finally came the somber figure of the new pontiff, wearing a miter studded with radiant jewels, carried aloft on a throne by ushers in livery of red velvet. Behind him walked two prelates carrying huge ostrich-feather fans that they waved gently, followed by yet more Noble Guards and Swiss Guards, their commander wearing gleaming silver armor and a plumed helmet.33

  The man who would have the honor of placing the papal tiara on Pacelli’s head was none other than Cardinal Caccia Dominioni. Somehow the Vatican and the Fascist police had been able to conceal the cardinal’s trail of pederasty accusations. The latest episode in the Italian police files had come only recently. While riding on a bus in Rome the previous August, a policeman had found his attention drawn to the cartons of foreign cigarettes that a young messenger boy was carrying. Suspicious, he discovered that they lacked the required Italian tax s
tamp. When he asked the lad where he had gotten the contraband cigarettes, the boy replied that someone high up in the Vatican had given them to him. Pressed further, the boy identified Cardinal Caccia. When the police phoned the cardinal to check the boy’s story, he confirmed the account and asked that the boy be left alone. “As Caccia Dominioni enjoys the reputation of pederasty,” the police informant concluded, “they are saying that the reason for the offer of these cigarettes was easily explained.”34

  Joseph Kennedy, President Roosevelt’s personal emissary to the coronation ceremony, had another kind of sexual interest in mind as he found himself walking down the aisle alongside the uniformed Galeazzo Ciano. “I have never met a more pompous ass in my life,” Kennedy remarked afterward. As Ciano processed through the basilica, he kept giving the Fascist salute, strutting in such a way as to make it seem he was “trying to share honors with the Pope.” At a tea in honor of the occasion, Ciano spent all his time trying to corner attractive women. And at the dinner, “he could not talk seriously for five minutes for fear that the two or three girls, who were invited in order to get him to come, might get out of sight.” Given what he had observed of Ciano and what he had heard about Mussolini, Kennedy “came away with the belief that we could accomplish much more by sending a dozen beautiful chorus girls to Rome than a flock of diplomats and a fleet of airplanes.”35

  ON MARCH 15, THREE DAYS after the papal coronation, the German army seized the rest of Czechoslovakia. In Prague the next day, Hitler proclaimed the country a protectorate of Germany.36 Few could deny that Europe was about to endure another terrible war.

  The day after the Führer’s triumphant speech from Prague, Ciano had his first meeting with the new pope and was pleased to find him unchanged, “benevolent, courteous, and human.” Pius XII expressed his concern about the German situation but told Ciano he planned to take a more conciliatory approach to the Reich and hoped to see an improvement in the Vatican’s relationship with Berlin. If these efforts were to be successful, he observed, the Nazi government would have to do its part. Ciano, happy to hear all this, expressed his belief that Mussolini could help persuade Hitler to cooperate. As for the Vatican’s recent dispute with the Italian government, the new pope “declared himself optimistic,” wrote Ciano. He promised to remove Cardinal Pizzardo as head of Catholic Action and entrust its direction to a committee of diocesan archbishops. Mussolini had long wanted Pizzardo dismissed, but Pius XI would never agree to it.

  The Vatican had recently asked Italy’s bishops if any tensions remained between Catholic Action groups in their diocese and local government or Fascist Party officials. The replies came in during the weeks after Pius XI’s death. With the notable exception of Milan, where Cardinal Schuster reported difficulties, the picture was hopeful. Virtually all reported excellent relations. The new pope did his part, instructing Dalla Torre to avoid publishing anything in L’Osservatore romano that either the Italian or the German government would find “irritating.” For Mussolini and all those who sought a return to the happy days of collaboration between the Vatican and the Fascist regime, it was as if a dark cloud had lifted.37

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  HEADING TOWARD DISASTER

  ON GOOD FRIDAY, APRIL 7, MUSSOLINI SENT ITALIAN TROOPS INTO Albania. The new pope, under international pressure to denounce the invasion, said nothing. “Not a word from his mouth about this bloody Good Friday,” complained one prominent French Catholic intellectual.1 Italy’s ambassador to the Holy See was much relieved by the new atmosphere in the Vatican. “It is now clear,” Pignatti told Ciano two weeks later, “what peace it is that Pius XII is invoking for humanity. It is not the peace of Roosevelt, but rather that of the Duce.”2

  The contrast between the two popes was clear to all who knew them. The American reporter Thomas Morgan, who spent years in Rome and had often met both men, described the two as opposite in temperament. While Pius XI was “gladiatorial, defiant, commanding and uncompromising,” his successor was “persuasive, consoling, appealing and conciliatory.” Or as the French ambassador Charles-Roux put it, a mountaineer from Milan was succeeded by a Roman bourgeois; a man quick to speak his mind was succeeded by a cautious diplomat.3

  The Nazi government, too, was pleased by the new pope’s attempts to repair the damage done by Pius XI. In his memoirs, Ernst von Weizsäcker, the head of the German Foreign Office who would soon succeed Bergen as German ambassador to the Holy See, wrote, “If Pius XI, so impulsive and energetic, had lived a little longer, there would in all likelihood have been a break in relations between the Reich and the Curia.”4 But as it was, for Hitler’s birthday, on April 20, the papal nuncio in Berlin personally gave the Führer the new pope’s best wishes. Throughout Germany church bells rang in celebration. The German newspapers were full of praise for Pope Pacelli, lauding him for warmly congratulating Franco and his compatriots on their conquest of Spain. The papers drew special attention to the pope’s remarks equating Communism with democracy. In reporting all this to Ciano, the Italian ambassador in Berlin remarked that the new pope had come at an opportune time. As the world was condemning the Nazis’ invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Reich needed, “perhaps for the first time, to have the Church with it and not against it.”5

  Pope Pius XII, March 1939

  (photograph credit 29.1)

  In May the pope met with Giuseppe Bottai, Italy’s minister of education and one of the men closest to Mussolini. Although the room was the same that Pius XI had used, Bottai was struck by how different it seemed. Early in his papacy, Pius XI had kept a spartan office, but as he aged he increasingly accumulated mementoes as well as oft-consulted tomes. As Bottai described it, the elderly Pius XI had been surrounded by a “picturesque disorder of furniture, ornaments, knick-knacks, papers, newspapers, books.” In contrast, Pius XII sat amid a “meticulous order.” His desk held only a few indispensable objects. Most of all, compared to the voluble, excitable Pius XI—certain that God was guiding him, apt to go off on tangents—his successor exuded a sense of calm and the air of someone who knew his job.6

  Over the next months, Mussolini became more confident that a new, happier era had arrived. Among the various bits of good news he received was the pope’s decision, in July, to reestablish relations with the right-wing Action Française. In response to a request from its leader, Charles Maurras—protofascist and France’s foremost anti-Semite—the pope reversed Pius XI’s 1926 ban on Catholic participation in the organization. The move angered not only the French government but also many of France’s most influential clergymen.7

  Pius XII, Pignatti reported, was not only a conservative but “has a clear sympathy, I would almost say a weakness, for the nobility, which is in his blood.” Roman nobles were delighted. His predecessor, coming from a modest social background, had shown little deference to them and over the years cut back on their privileges. Pius XII, a product of the black aristocracy, moved quickly to reintroduce their old prerogatives.8

  Mussolini got another encouraging report about the new pope, this one from Switzerland. His ambassador there had spoken at length with the papal nuncio, recently returned from Rome. The atmosphere in the Vatican, the nuncio reported, was “completely changed,” like a “breath of fresh air.” The Holy Father spoke “with much sympathy for Fascism and with sincere admiration for the Duce.” He was convinced that his reorganization of Catholic Action in Italy would remove a major source of tension with the regime. As for Germany, the new pope could not be more eager to come to an agreement.9

  Many in the Church were also pleased by the change. After years of the stubborn, combative Pius XI, they found audiences with Pius XII a relief. In contrast to Pius XI’s long-winded monologues, the new pope listened carefully to his visitors and never seemed to forget anything they told him. Like Pius XI, the new pope followed the tradition of taking his meals alone. They were if anything even simpler than his predecessor’s, and as he ate, he enjoyed watching his canaries flutter in t
he birdcage he kept in the dining room. But Pius XII readily agreed to pose for photographs with small visiting groups, something Pius XI thought beneath his dignity, and unlike Pius XI he was happy to use the telephone. “Pacelli here,” Francis Spellman was startled to hear when the new pope decided to call his old friend, recently appointed archbishop of New York.10

  After the tensions of the last months of Pope Ratti’s life, all the elements of the clerico-Fascist regime soon returned. Emblematic was a ceremony held at one of Rome’s major churches in April 1940. The national Fascist girls’ association had long been campaigning, under the guidance of the priests attached to their local groups, to make Saint Catherine Italy’s female patron saint. The girls got their way shortly after Pacelli became pope, and to mark the first celebration of the new national holiday, the bishop overseeing the Fascist girls’ association presided over a special mass. Each of the two thousand girls there carried a white rose that, one after another, they deposited at the church altar.11

  But the normal pleasures of life in Rome were about to give way to the realities of war. Early on the morning of September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. They imprisoned or murdered many Catholic priests, but the pope confined his remarks to a generic appeal for peace and brotherhood. He did not want to take sides, not least because of a belief that the Nazis were likely to win.12 Two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany. The next month, under the supervision of Adolf Eichmann, German forces began to deport Jews from Austria and Czechoslovakia to camps in Poland. The Second World War, and the Holocaust, were under way.

  In the spring of 1940, German armies were marching from conquest to conquest. Eager to share in the spoils, on June 10 Mussolini declared war on France and Britain. He rushed Italian forces into southern France to grab territory before Nazi troops seized everything for themselves. In their enthusiasm, many Italians thought the war would be short. Tacchi Venturi predicted it would be over by Christmas.13