Prisoner of the Vatican (15 page)

A week after the law went into effect, Visconti sent a copy (in French) to all of his ambassadors, asking them to bring it to the attention of the governments they served.
⁴
The pope did not wait so long. Just two days after the king signed the law, Pius IX released an encyclical,
Ubi nos,
addressed to bishops throughout the world. "Our days," the pope lamented, "are filled with bitterness." Conditions were getting ever worse: "We are compelled to repeat the words of St. Bernard," said the pope, "'this is the beginning of the evils; we fear worse evil.'"

Pius went on to warn of the pernicious plans of the "Piedmontese government," which, in order "to deceive Catholics and allay their anguish, has promoted certain empty immunities and privileges, commonly called 'guarantees.'" He reminded the bishops that when the guarantees were first discussed several months earlier, he had "stigmatized their absurdity, cunning, and mockery." Yet the shameless Piedmontese government had pressed ahead with its plan, a "novel and unheard-of sacrilege." There could be no compromise. "We never can and never shall allow or accept those 'guarantees' devised by the Piedmont Government, whatever their motive. Nor shall we ever accept other similar ones," the pope insisted. "Divine Providence gave the civil rule of the Holy See to the Roman Pontiff. This rule is necessary in order that the Roman Pontiff may never be subject to any ruler or civil power." Pius then turned to the foreign powers and called for their help. Voicing his belief that "the rulers of the earth do not want the usurpation which We are suffering to be established," he concluded with the prayer: "May these rulers join in a common effort to have the rights of the Holy See restored."
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The pope's constant calls to Catholics throughout the world to return him to power rattled the Italian government. With the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War in view, they expected the great powers' attention to turn once again to the Italian question, or rather the Roman question. Early in March 1871, Visconti confided his worries to Italy's ambassador to Berlin. Cynically manipulated by Italy's many enemies, Visconti wrote, "the Roman question dominates our politics," introducing "an element of uncertainty in Italy's future." He added: "The Roman Curia asks and wants one thing and one thing only: war on Italy to restore temporal power by military intervention." The Jesuits, Visconti believed—a belief that was widely shared—had the pope under their spell and were working feverishly to get him to reject any compromise.
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Long viewed with a combination of suspicion, distaste, and grudging admiration, the Jesuits had been repeatedly expelled by secular rulers. In 1773, Pope Clement XIV, bending to such pressure, disbanded the order and had its leader locked up in Sant'Angelo Castle, where he died two years later. Resuscitated in 1814, the order continued to be controversial. Pius IX himself had not been that well disposed to the Jesuits at the beginning of his papacy, resenting their opposition to his attempted reforms and suspicious of their ambition. Yet, after the revolutions of 1848 he increasingly became dependent on them, viewing them as the most theologically and politically sophisticated advisers he had.
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In 1850, eager to have a publication that would defend papal powers and champion his causes, Pius turned to a group of Jesuits in Rome; they launched
La Civiltà Cattolica
and published it twice a month. Quickly becoming the most influential Catholic publication in the world, it offered the Vatican's views on the issues of the time. By the 1860s, the influence of Rome's Jesuits was beyond dispute: they served as key advisers in preparing both the Syllabus of Errors and the Vatican Council. As articulate and dogged champions of papal infallibility and the necessity of temporal power, constantly on the lookout for signs of liberal thinking in the Church, the Jesuits viewed the world much as the pope did.
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As Lord Acton wrote in 1870, when he was in Rome to lobby against papal infallibility, Pius IX "made [the Jesuits] a channel of his influence, and became an instrument of their own."
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By early 1871, cartoons were appearing in the liberal press in Rome that portrayed the pope as a Jesuit stooge. In one, titled "The Flight to Corsica" (alluding to the Jesuits' efforts to get Pius to flee Rome), Antonelli is seated on an ass behind the pope—who is pictured as the size of a child—holding a large umbrella over him. A Jesuit leads the ass with a rope.
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The Jesuits were scarcely more popular among their fellow priests. In November 1870, one of Lanza's confidential emissaries met secretly in the Vatican with the widely respected Father Augustin Theiner, the former head of the Vatican Secret Archives. One of the major subjects of their conversation was what the Italian government should do about the Jesuits.
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The report that Lanza received offered clear advice: the Italian government must immediately expel them from all of Italy, including Rome. The Jesuits, Father Theiner warned, would forever be an insuperable obstacle to concilation, not only for the present pope but for his successor. The popular demonstrations throughout the Catholic world calling for the restoration of the pope's temporal power, said Theiner, were entirely the work of the Jesuits, who were forcing unenthusiastic bishops to toe the line.

Sending them into exile, Theiner counseled, would not only be good for the government, it would also work to the Church's benefit, and members of the other religious orders would applaud the move. The "ignorance and crude fanaticism of the Italian clergy, and the imbecility of the Italian episcopate," Theiner charged, "are the sole product of Jesuit education in Italy, the absorption of the Italian Church by Jesuitism."
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One morning a few weeks later, Lanza's emissary had a confidential meeting with Cardinal Pietro De Silvestri, another enemy of Jesuit influence in the Vatican. The cardinal was no doubt nervous, for members of the Curia had recently been warned against having any contact with Italian officials, and those coming under suspicion were being watched.

Nothing was more important for the Vatican, said the cardinal, than showing the world that disorder reigned in Rome and that the pope would remain a prisoner until freed by foreign intervention. It was crucial, he advised, for the Italian government to prevent disorders in the vicinity of the Vatican and to guard against any disruption of religious functions elsewhere in the Holy City.

"The Jesuits," said Cardinal Silvestri, "are the soul of the Vatican, and every hostile project originates with them." Father Picirillo, the director of
Civiltà Cattolica,
he charged, had become all-powerful. "It is absolutely necessary to expel them all from Italy."
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Although Theiner and Silvestri may have exaggerated the Jesuits' influence, there were in fact no greater champions of the wholesale rejection of the Italian state than the Jesuits, who were constantly pressing the pope to take a hard line. Their calls in
Civiltà Cattolica
for foreign intervention to restore the Papal States led to repeated demands from the secular press to have the paper shut down.

In an article in the spring of 1871, the Jesuits counterattacked. "The unity of a state with a nation can be a good thing or a bad thing, according to the circumstances," they argued. Ethnic Germans lived in Germany, but Germans also lived in Austria, and few argued that it posed any problem. Why must a single state encompass all Italians? As for the liberals' denunciation of Catholics who sought the help of foreign armies to restore the pope to power, this was sheer hypocrisy. In 1859, didn't Victor Emmanuel and Cavour call on the French army to help them conquer northern Italy? "What right do they have to complain if others imitate their example?" Foreign intervention, the Jesuit journal observed, "is always a good thing if it comes in aid of an innocent oppressed party, and indeed, sometimes it is obligatory." In the current case, it was not even a matter of foreign intervention, for all baptized Catholics were children of the pope and viewed Rome as their own home. Consequently, the journal concluded, their intervention on behalf of the pope "is a domestic matter, not a foreign one."
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Even before the Italian forces had seized Rome, the pope had been besieged by advisers urging him to leave Rome and Italy behind. According to all accounts, his most trusted Jesuit advisers were among the most insistent in pressing him to leave at once.
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But where exactly was he to go? Over the next two decades, no destination was mentioned more often than the British island of Malta. On September 6, Lanza received a report from another source in Rome: "The Jesuit Party, which is the strongest in the Vatican, is trying to convince the Pope to escape to Malta and believes it is succeeding."
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Three days later, another informant told him of a conversation he had had recently with a former general of a religious order, who confirmed the pope's decision to go to Malta. Antonelli, in this account, had doubts about such a course, "but the Jesuits count more than Antonelli at this moment."
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It would not be easy to convince Pius to leave Rome again, for he was now an old man, and a voyage into the unknown had little appeal. Yet his emotional reaction to the taking of Rome, and his tendency to change his mind rapidly on nondoctrinal matters, meant that his departure was far from impossible. Just before the attack on Rome, he is said to have told the Prussian ambassador: "There, you see all my things are packed up. I depart as soon as they enter."
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When the Italian troops occupied Rome, the pope could no longer put off the decision. But before making the fateful choice, he decided to ask ten cardinals to provide a written reply to the question: "Should we think of taking the difficult step of leaving Rome and if so, where to?" In the wake of the Italian invasion, it was deemed too dangerous for the cardinals to appear in their purple robes on the streets of Rome, so no meeting of the Sacred College of Cardinals was called. But what is a bit odd about the pope's survey is that, rather than ask Antonelli to coordinate the consultation, he sidestepped his secretary of state and instead asked a trusted adviser, Cardinal Costantino Patrizi, to take charge. Also curious was the selection of cardinals to be approached: while ten were asked to provide their advice, another seventeen cardinals then in Rome were not. The list was apparently prepared by the pope himself, composed of those whose judgment he most trusted. The urgent requests were sent out by Patrizi just a day after the Italian occupation of Rome, the answers dribbling back in between the twenty-fourth and the twenty-seventh of September.
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Although earlier there had been strong support among the cardinals for having the pope leave Rome in case of an Italian invasion, now that the city had fallen, many were having second thoughts. Of the ten, only two urged immediate departure, including the first response, from Monaco La Valletta, the cardinal vicar of Rome. "It seems to me," he wrote, "that staying here would result in much damage and no advantage, while leaving, although not succeeding in preventing a long series of damages for poor Rome, would however have the great virtue of safeguarding the liberty and dignity of the Holy See." Where the pope should go Monaco declined to say, urging only that "the Holy Father procure a safe refuge outside Italy as quickly as possible, and that the [Sacred] College [of Cardinals] follow him there."
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By contrast, the other cardinals were more worried about the dangers of leaving Rome. Cardinal Giuseppe Bizzarri was the first of them to respond. True, he wrote, concern for the Holy See's independence argued for leaving Rome immediately, but such a move would come at a high cost. Given the old age and increasing infirmity not only of the pope but of many of the cardinals, such a voyage would be arduous and even dangerous. And it was not difficult to predict what would then happen in Rome, for with the pope gone, the new state would feel free to bring about "the holy institutions' total destruction."

He then came to the question of where the pope might go. The places most often proposed were Malta, the Tyrol in the northeast of Italy under Austrian control, Belgium, and the Catholic provinces of southern Germany. "But would the pope even in these areas be able to freely exercise his jurisdiction and enjoy true independence?" he asked. "Malta and the provinces along the Rhine are under the authority of Protestant governments, while Tyrol is under a government that is in some ways hostile."

Cardinal Filippo de Angelis offered similar advice. The pope should not be tempted by what happened in 1848. That was a very different situation, for Rome had fallen into anarchy, the pope's palace was under siege, his life threatened, and his ability to exercise his spiritual office brought practically to an end. Rather, the proper precedents to follow were those of Pius VI and Pius VII, who, although virtually prisoners of Napoleon's army, refused to leave until they were forced to at gunpoint. And, the cardinal predicted, with the pope out of the way, no sacrilege would be spared Rome: "One might well," he warned, "see our principal churches converted into synagogues and Protestant churches."

Other cardinals were more guarded, seeing grave dangers in either staying or leaving. Such was the advice given by Cardinal Luigi Bilio, one of those closest to the pope during the recent council. Just how sure could the pope be that were he to go into exile, his calls for the restoration of his states would be heeded by Europe's powers? The cardinal also asked what would happen if, notwithstanding all the agitation of Catholics around the world, no country would take up arms on his behalf? "Where today is the Catholic power," he asked, "where is the Sovereign to whom the Holy Father can go to beg for help and aid with the
moral certainty
of being
quickly
restored to his See and to the tranquil possession of his usurped domains?"
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