The Pope and Mussolini

by David I. Kertzer

  18. From Ciano’s diplomatic papers, “Conversation between the Duce and the foreign minister of the Reich, von Ribbentrop, in the presence of Count Ciano, Rome, 28th October 1938,” in Muggeridge 1948, pp. 242–46.

  19. Quoted in Ciano 2002, 148–49.

  20. ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 71r–83r, Tardini, “Appunto per l’Ufficio. Letto al Santo Padre,” 29 ottobre 1938.

  21. ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 76r–76v, Tardini appunti, 29 ottobre 1938.

  22. CC 1938 IV, pp. 371–72; Confalonieri 1957, p. 379.

  23. MAESS, vol. 38, 196–97, Charles-Roux, 27 septembre 1938.

  24. ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 88r–89v, 30 ottobre 1938.

  25. “Accustomed to seeing Mussolini very often,” Tardini observed that day, Tacchi Venturi “was struck by his good qualities and always retained a deep affection for him.” But now that Mussolini refused to see him, the Jesuit was unnerved. Although carrying that day’s date, Tardini actually wrote the note later, which makes its interpretation difficult. He added, “Notwithstanding his various attempts [to see the Duce], Mussolini no longer showed confidence in P.T.V. He received him from time to time, but rarely and coldly. At the end he would not see him at all.” ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 129r–129v, 31 ottobre 1938.

  26. ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 130r–131r, 31 ottobre 1938. Tacchi Venturi’s note on the meeting is found at ARSI, TV, b. 28, fasc. 2159, “Promemoria da me letto a S. E. Buffarini il 31 ottobre 1938.” In the midst of Mussolini’s standoff with the Vatican, a note in the German diplomatic archives reports a jarring episode. On November 1, while Mussolini and Ribbentrop were traveling on a train to Verona, the Duce made a special request. Could the foreign minister do something to improve relations with the Catholic Church in Germany? His own relations with the Vatican, he confided, had become strained as a result of his newly announced racial policy, and he was eager to see the Axis powers’ relations with the Catholic Church improved. He pressed the point hard enough that Ribbentrop ordered the foreign ministry to prepare a report on what could be done to improve relations with the Vatican. Mussolini’s request had another effect: Ribbentrop decided to leave Bergen in Rome as ambassador to the Holy See. Pacelli had for months been worrying that Bergen would be replaced by a Nazi hard-liner. DGFP, series D, vol. 4, n. 468, “Memorandum by the Director of the Political Department,” Woermann, Vienna, November 3, 1938.

  27. ASV, ANI, pos. 9, fasc. 5, ff. 139r–141r, “Provvedimenti per la tutela della razza italiana.”

  28. Tacchi Venturi also told them of the need to draft new language for the marriage instructions that the Congregation of the Discipline of the Sacraments gave to the Catholic Church in Italy. The new wording he proposed would forbid priests from performing religious marriages if the new racial law did not allow them, except for those cases involving “very serious reasons of conscience.” Exactly what was meant by this last phrase was left undefined. All present voiced their agreement. ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 139r–141r, “Adunanza presso l’E.mo sig. Card. Jorio,” 2 novembre 1938.

  29. “It is obvious that with such an addition,” observed Tardini, “the government would have fully accepted the Holy See’s principle, that is, that the concept of religion prevails over that of race.” ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 149r–150v, Tardini appunti, 3 novembre 1938, emphasis in original.

  30. ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 162r–164r, “Relazione del colloquio avuto con S.E. Buffarini il 3 novembre 1938,” Tacchi Venturi; ibid., f.171r, Tardini appunti, 4 novembre 1938.

  CHAPTER 26: FAITH IN THE KING

  1. ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 177r–178r, Pio XI a Mussolini, 4 novembre 1938.

  2. Ibid., ff. 180r–181r, Tacchi Venturi a Mussolini, 4 novembre 1938. In an effort to endear the pope to the Duce, Tacchi Venturi added that the pope had thought first to write directly to the king, as protocol would dictate, but recognizing how much the Duce had done for the Church, he decided to give him the chance to put things right first.

  3. At the pope’s request, Pacelli drafted both the letter to the king and the one to Mussolini. A published version of the letter to the king is available in DDI, series 8, vol. 10, n. 360, “Sua Santità Pio XI a Re Vittorio Emanuele III,” 5 novembre 1938; Pacelli’s original handwritten draft, with corrections, is at ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 184r–184v.

  4. A few years later Dino Grandi, who had served as Mussolini’s foreign minister and was then his ambassador to Britain, reflected on the king’s relationship with the Duce. “For twenty years,” he observed, “the King and Mussolini looked at each other over like two fencers on the mat, with their swords raised.” While Grandi captures the mutual wariness of the two men, his description fails to note that the match was unequal—the king was ever fearful of displeasing the Duce. But despite their radically different backgrounds and temperaments, and the king’s servility, they shared a profound solitude, an unlikely chemistry, and a dim view of their fellow human beings. De Felice 1981, pp. 14–15.

  5. ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, f. 186r.

  6. Mussolini communicated this response through Buffarini. ASV, ANI, pos. 9, fasc. 5, f. 141r, Buffarini a Tacchi Venturi, 7 novembre 1938.

  7. Ciano 2002, pp. 151–52.

  8. Fogarty 1996, p. 562. Roosevelt had ordered the flagship of the American naval fleet in French waters to go to Naples to assist in ceremonies honoring Mundelein, and Phillips participated in a lunch on board hosted by the American rear admiral. “At this particular moment, when religious persecution is on the increase, even in Italy,” Roosevelt told Phillips, “the significance of what I wish done will not be overlooked by the Italians and I think the effect cannot but be salutary.” Phillips 1952, pp. 222–23.

  9. Before they finished their conversation, the guest of honor joined them. Cardinal Mundelein told Ciano he was confident he spoke for all American Catholics—“and many non-Catholics in the United States”—in urging the government to maintain its commitments to the Holy See. ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 200r–202v, Borgongini a Pacelli, 9 novembre 1938.

  10. ASMAE, APG, b. 46, R. Ambasciata, Berlino, a Regio Ministero degli affari esteri, “Reazioni anti-Semite in Germania,” 26 novembre 1938. The papal nuncio, Cesare Orsenigo, also sent a detailed report on the pogrom to the Vatican, but there is no record of any words uttered by the Holy See to protest. Wolf 2010, pp. 205–6. The violence was also reported in CC 1938 IV, pp. 476–78.

  11. Perin 2011, p. 207.

  12. ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 203r–204r, Tacchi Venturi a Mussolini, 10 novembre 1938.

  13. Fornari 1971, pp. 185–86; Il Regime fascista, 8 novembre 1938, p. 3

  14. “La chiesa e gli ebrei in un discorso dell’on. Farinacci,” Il Giornale d’Italia, 9 novembre 1938.

  15. DDI, series 8, vol. 10, n. 390, Pignatti a Ciano, 12 novembre 1938.

  16. The document, possibly prepared by Tardini, is titled “Action Taken by the Holy See on the Question of Racism.” ASV, AESI, pos. 1054, fasc. 738, ff. 34r–39r. It is undated but refers to events on September 21, 1938, and so it could have been prepared no earlier than the end of September. However, the file is found in the Vatican archives immediately after one dated November 4, 1938, which suggests a date in the first half of November.

  17. ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 212r–213r, Pacelli, telegramma per Parigi, San Sabastiano, Londra, 11 novembre 1938.

  18. ASV, ANI, pos. 9, fasc. 5, ff. 162r–166r, Pacelli a Pignatti, 13 novembre 1938. The following day Pacelli sent a memo to the cardinals of the Curia to brief them on the situation, appending several documents for their information, including two of Tacchi Venturi’s obsequious letters to Mussolini, the text of the new law, the pope’s letters to Mussolini and to the king, with his suggested changes in the wording of article 7 of the proposed new law, the king’s reply, and Pacelli’s letter of protest to Pignatti of November 13. ASV, ANI, pos. 9, fasc. 5
, ff. 143r–161r.

  19. Reproduced in Sale 2009, p. 286.

  20. “A proposito di un nuovo Decreto Legge,” OR, 14–15 novembre 1938, p. 1. On November 16 the British ambassador to Italy, D’Arcy Osborne, sent his analysis of the pope’s protests to Viscount Halifax in London. After summarizing the L’Osservatore romano article and its protest of the violation of the concordat, he observed, “It will be interesting to see whether anything comes of this protest, for it will show whether Signor Mussolini attaches greater importance to the views and influence of the Fascist extremists and their Nazi confederates or to those of the Italian Catholics. I suspect that the Vatican’s protests will be weighed, not on its own merits, but on a basis of pure expediency. And I shall be agreeably surprised if considerations of compliance with Fascist principle and Nazi practice do not win the day.” FCRSE, pt. 16, October to December 1938, n. 58.

  21. The next day, talking to Tardini, Pius XI recounted his conversation with the old Jesuit: “Yesterday Father Tacchi Venturi came here solely to tell me that the article made a good impression on the government. But I really let him have it!”

  22. Whether Pacelli prevented it by waiting until the pope forgot about it, given his faltering memory, or by convincing him that it was not a good idea, is not clear from Tardini’s account, which is our only glimpse into this conversation. Tardini simply wrote that Pacelli “succeeded in preventing it.” Tardini’s handwritten account, dated November 15, 1938, but written some time later, is found at ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 321r–321v, 329r.

  23. Charles-Roux, 27 février 1937, cited in LaCroix-Riz 1994, p. 55.

  24. ASMAE, AISS, b. 5, fasc. 1, sf. 5, “Lettera aperta a S. E. il Cardinale Schuster Arcivescovo di Milano,” marzo 1930. Further details of the episode are provided in ACS, MI, FP “Schuster.”

  25. ASMAE, APSS, n. 314682, Ministero degli Affari Esteri, “Appunto per la Dir. Gen. A.E.M. Uff. V,” 1 settembre 1937.

  26. Ferrari 1982, p. 590. ACS, MI, FP “Schuster,” informatore n. 553, 27 novembre 1938. As a police informant reported, the shock in Milan occasioned by Schuster’s attack came from “the common conviction that this cardinal … was entirely tied to the PNF and as such also disposed to follow the racial policy.” Ibid., 30 novembre 1938. See also ibid., informatore n. 37, 2 dicembre 1938.

  27. ASV, ANI, pos. 9, fasc. 5, ff. 168r–169r, Pacelli a Pignatti, 22 novembre 1938.

  28. Ibid., ff. 170r–171r, Pignatti a Pacelli, 29 novembre 1938.

  29. The paper in question was Il Popolo d’Italia. The same day Milan’s prestigious Corriere della Sera claimed that Roosevelt was losing popular support in the United States and predicted that he “may soon be confronted by a violent reaction in favor of the principle of American neutrality and against the treacherous Jewish influences now dominating the White House.” The newspaper articles are all cited by Reed in NARA, M1423, reel 1, Edward L. Reed, chargé d’affaires ad interim, Rome, to secretary of state, Washington, n. 1184, December 2, 1938.

  30. Confalonieri 1957, p. 379.

  31. DDI, series 8, vol. 10, n. 510, Pignatti a Ciano, 6 dicembre 1938.

  32. ACS, MI, DAGR, b. B7-G, #81980-3, Milano, 4 dicembre 1938.

  33. ACS, MI, DAGR, b. B7-G, #81984-5, Milano, 5 dicembre 1938; Israel 2011, p. 62; Matard-Bonucci 2008, p. 293.

  CHAPTER 27: A CONVENIENT DEATH

  1. DDI, series 8, vol. 10, n. 539, Pignatti a Ciano, 12 dicembre 1938. These last words, too, are underlined in the original.

  2. Ciano 2002, pp. 165–66.

  3. Baudrillart 1996, pp. 902–3.

  4. “Parole di Padre,” OR, 25 dicembre 1938, p. 1.

  5. Pacelli enlisted Montini to help him try to convince the pope. ASV, AESI, pos. 1063, fasc. 755, ff. 479r–479v, Tardini appunti, 24 dicembre 1938.

  6. At a meeting where Ciano communicated the Duce’s anger, Borgongini defended the pope. He blamed the recent tensions on Mussolini’s embrace of the Nazis, including the government’s inexplicable drive to undermine the concordat by banning mixed marriages. The pope, with his generous remarks about the Duce in his address to the cardinals, he said, was doing his part to restore the harmonious relations they all so desired. Now it was up to Mussolini to meet him halfway. ASV, ANI, pos. 24, fasc. 5, ff. 2r–6r, Borgongini to Pacelli, 28 dicembre 1938.

  7. Ciano 2002, p. 171 (January 1, 1939).

  8. François-Bonnet, December 31, 1938, quoted in De Felice 1981, pp. 571–72.

  9. Petacci 2010, pp. 445–46.

  10. Petacci 2011, pp. 21–35.

  11. Ciano 2002, p. 172 (January 2, 1939).

  12. DDI, series 8, vol. 11, n. 6, Pignatti a Ciano, 3 gennaio 1939. Also on January 3, Ciano and Mussolini met with the American ambassador to receive a proposal from President Roosevelt. In a letter dated December 7, Roosevelt asked the Duce to help deal with the humanitarian crisis created by the large numbers of Jews who were forced to leave their homes in Europe but had nowhere to go. Roosevelt proposed that Italy designate a region of Ethiopia to create a Jewish refuge. Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. 1, pp. 858–59, “President Roosevelt to the Chief of the Italian Government (Mussolini),” December 7, 1938; and ibid., pp. 859–60, “Memorandum Elaborating the Points Referred to in President Roosevelt’s Letter to the Chief of the Italian Government, December 7, 1938.” Mussolini responded that the Italian government, given its position with respect to the Jews, could not contemplate such a role, but he told Ambassador Phillips, somewhat playfully, that the United States had vast territories and asked why the United States did not allocate a region of its own to Europe’s Jewish refugees. DGFP, series D, vol. 4, n. 424, ambassador in Italy to foreign ministry, January 4, 1939; NARA, M1423, reel 1, Edward Reed, Rome, to secretary of state, January 6, 1939, no. 1238; DDI, series 8, vol. 11, n. 47, Vitetti ai Direttori Generali degli Affari Transoceanici, Roma, 11 gennaio 1939.

  13. DDI, series 8, vol. 11, n. 26, Pignatti a Ciano, 7 gennaio 1939; ASMAE, AISS, b. 95, fasc. 1, sf. 1, Pignatti, 7 gennaio 1939.

  14. Renato Moro (2005, pp. 51–55) offers an insightful analysis of how even Cardinal Schuster, the most notable critic among Italy’s cardinals and bishops of the Fascist regime’s embrace of the racial laws, retained his belief in the goodness of the Italian Fascist regime as such. The problem was the move by some Fascist currents to transform Italian Fascism by importing what he saw as the pagan ideology of the Nazis.

  15. Charles-Roux, in his report to the French foreign minister on the December 31, 1938, quoted from the previous day’s issue. MAEI, vol. 267, 152–53.

  16. The bishop’s sermon on the Jews was published in two parts in the Vatican daily: “Un’Omelia del vescovo di Cremona, La Chiesa e gli Ebrei,” OR, 15 gennaio 1939, p. 2; “L’Omelia del vescovo di Cremona, Perchè si accusa la Chiesa,” 16–17 gennaio 1939, p. 2. The version of the bishop’s Lenten sermon published in L’Osservatore romano seems to have been toned down by deleting the bishop’s phrase: “the Church has said nothing and done nothing to defend the Jews and Judaism.” For a discussion of these changes, see Binchy 1970, pp. 622–23, and Bocchini Camaiani 1989, pp. 62–63. Gallina (1979, pp. 523–24) reproduces a segment of the Cremona prefect’s January 8 report of the sermon to Buffarini, describing it as strongly backing the Fascist anti-Semitic campaign.

  17. Bocci 2003, pp. 501–5. That Farinacci would think to call on the influential Gemelli for the task of demonstrating strong Church support for the anti-Semitic campaign was not surprising. The gist of what Gemelli said in Bologna was taken from his much-publicized recent opening address for the 1938–39 academic year at the Catholic University of Milan. Not only did he blast the “Judaic-Mason cabals” as the enemy, but his panegyric to Mussolini could scarcely have been more enthusiastic: “We must form the new Italian, the Italian of the era of Mussolini, these ‘youths of Mussolini’ as they have been called, capable of putting down the book to take up the rifle to serve the Fatherland as soldiers.” Published in Gemelli’s journal, Vita e pen
siero 15, n.1, pp. 5–12, 1939, discussed in Bocchini Camaiani 1989, p. 48n14. Gemelli’s views of the Jews were very much in line with those of the Jesuit general and La Civiltà cattolica. From the time he founded the Catholic University, he periodically raged against the Jews. Just a few months before his Bologna speech, he wrote to a friend that Western democracy was a smoke screen being manipulated by a “Jewish Masonic” conspiracy. Bocci 2003, p. 523n14.

  Gemelli was a holy terror, as he was the first to admit. He had willed the Catholic University into creation, fought for it, and regarded it as his own fiefdom. In doing so, he had gotten the strong support of both the pope and the Fascist authorities. “I have many defects,” he told an audience in 1931. “I recognize them all. I am violent, a bully, muddleheaded.” But God, he went on to say, knew how to use people’s defects for His own ends. “To make a university it takes a man like me. Even a tyrant.” Cosmacini 1985, p. 203.

  Gemelli’s anti-Semitic rant, giving timely support to Farinacci’s efforts to show that the regime’s anti-Semitic laws were in keeping with Church teachings, may have been even more squalid. There is some evidence that, in doing Farinacci’s wishes, he hoped to be appointed to the Italian Academy, Italy’s most prestigious honorary academic society. If so, Farinacci fulfilled his part of the bargain. On March 19 he urged Mussolini to appoint Gemelli to the Academy. Farinacci was convinced that Gemelli would soon be made a cardinal, and to have someone who was “truly our man” so close to the new pontiff would, he told the Duce, be most useful. ACS, CR, b. 44, n. 033912, Farinacci a Mussolini, 19 marzo 1939. Mussolini responded that “the time is not mature” and did not make the appointment. Nor was Gemelli appointed a cardinal. For a discussion of this episode, see Bocci 2003, pp. 506–8.

  18. MAEI, vol. 267, 158–59, Charles-Roux à Georges Bonnet, 19 janvier 1939.