Prisoner of the Vatican (39 page)

Other signs of a possible breakthrough also appeared in April. When the government discovered that the new equestrian statue of Victor Emmanuel II, scheduled to be unveiled in Venice, had a decidedly anticlerical cast—the papal tiara and Saint Peter's keys were shown being trampled beneath one of the horse's hoofs—the dedication ceremonies were postponed and the papal symbols ordered removed.
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That same month, the king and his ministers participated in the unveiling of the restored façade of the cathedral of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore, standing alongside the archbishop of Florence and many of Tuscany's bishops. The day before the ceremonies, the archbishop went to greet King Umberto, who, in gratitude, gave him five thousand lire for one of the archbishop's charities. During the singing of the Te Deum, King Umberto and the archbishop publicly shook hands, and the queen and the prince kissed the archbishop's ring. Word of the encounter quickly spread, with the handshake between king and archbishop transformed by popular imagination into a hearty embrace. A colorful image of the king and the pope, arm in arm, chatting affably, soon became one of the most popular prints sold on street corners throughout Italy.
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Other evidence of reconciliation comes from Germany. The grand duke of Baden, writing to Galimberti several years later, asked if he recalled a conversation they had had in Berlin in March 1887: "Among the questions that we discussed there was one that, at the time, assumed great importance. It was the question of a neutral territory joining the Leonine City with the sea! Do you think that the time was right then for the realization of that project?"
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The major Catholic newspapers were, meanwhile, showing their uneasiness at any such talk. On May 19, the Vatican's
Osservatore Romano
disputed the rumors, adding that all the proposals being discussed had come from the "liberal" party, their true purpose being "to destroy the Catholic Church in Italy in general and in Rome in particular."
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Events soon came to a head. On May 23,1887, the pope addressed the cardinals gathered for the naming of new members of the Sacred College. After expressing his pleasure at the recently concluded agreement with the German government, he turned his attention to Italy: "As We have indicated on various other occasions, We have long fervently desired security and tranquility for all Italian souls, and wanted the ruinous discord with the Roman Pontiff finally ended, but always remembering that this can only be done in keeping with justice and dignity for the Apostolic See ... the only path to harmony is by ensuring that the Roman Pontiff is not subject to anyone else's power and enjoys full and true freedom." Such an arrangement, Leo XIII argued, "would not only not damage Italy's interests in any way, but, on the contrary, would increase its safety and well-being." That the pope would speak of possible reconciliation without explicitly demanding the return of temporal power came as a surprise. As one of those present later recalled, the pope's words "shocked all of the cardinals there."
L'Osservatore Romano
quickly tried to reassure the intransigents of the Church: the pope had been clear, conciliation could only come about if the state dealt justly with the Church. "Justice demands one thing and is inflexible ... it requires the reestablishment of the temporal power, especially over the city of Rome."
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Seven days after the pope's ambiguous remarks caused such an uproar, another event took place, which was widely viewed as part of his unfolding plan to strike a deal with the government. A Benedictine abbot, Luigi Tosti, known to be close to the pope, published a booklet, "Conciliation," which urged Leo to mark his fiftieth anniversary as a priest in 1888 by ending the hostility between the Holy See and the Italian state. Tosti, born in Naples in 1811 to a noble family, had first met Gioacchino Pecci in 1839, decades before he became pope. They quickly became friends. At that time, before the revolutions of 1848, Tosti had enthusiastically supported the idea that Italian unification could best come about by creating a confederation of small states under the presidency of the pope himself. After the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, Tosti was eager to find a way to bring about conciliation between the papacy and the monarchy.

Pius IX had also been fond of the aristocratic abbot, referring to him affectionately as "that good nut Tosti." But given the gulf between Pius's politics and Tosti's, the abbot's earlier hopes of becoming a cardinal were crushed, and he would remain a simple priest. His political inclinations and his connections with men high in the government were, nonetheless, exploited by both Pius IX and later Leo XIII. A useful intermediary, he is credited with saving numerous Church institutions in Rome from government expropriation. At one point, the Italian government even named him as the superintendent of sacred monuments in the Holy City. At the time "Conciliation" was published, Tosti worked in the Vatican as vice-archivist of the Holy See.
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When the booklet came out on May 31, it was widely believed that the pope had already read a copy and given his tacit approval, using Tosti to launch a trial balloon. Just four days earlier, the pope had sent Tosti to see Francesco Crispi, the minister of the interior, on a mission similar to many he had performed in the past: he was to convince the government to reverse a decision to take control of one of Rome's Church properties. The unofficial nature of the encounter is reflected by their meeting in Crispi's home. But Tosti did not limit himself to this request, as later recalled by Crispi himself:

"The abbot had advised Leo XIII to enter St. Peter's and once again perform his ecclesiastical duties in public. His Holiness was not [said Tosti] opposed. He however first wanted to be sure that the Government would guarantee the peaceful exercise of his duties. The pope would take advantage of his upcoming jubilee to present himself to the public. That occasion seemed most propitious to the abbot for the pope and the king to meet. Just as had happened at the cathedral of Florence, where the king was received by the archbishop, the king would be received by the pope. If this proposal were accepted in principle, one could later work out the exact conditions and terms."

"I replied," wrote Crispi, "that I would guarantee public safety. The pope would have nothing to fear in the exercise of his ecclesiastical duties ... But I cannot say the same regarding the appearance of the king and queen in St. Peter's. It is a subject that must be discussed with the prime minister and perhaps by the whole cabinet. I would also have to talk to the king. After I have done so, we can speak of it again."
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Two days later, Crispi did speak to the king, and Umberto expressed his interest in the abbot's proposal. Crispi then sent Tosti a note encouraging him to go ahead, writing that he looked forward to "a favorable solution." On June 4 the men met again for two hours. There was reason to believe that a historic agreement between the Holy See and the Italian state might finally be at hand.
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But any hopes for a breakthrough were soon disappointed.
L'Osservatore Romano
published a violent attack on Tosti's booklet, which had produced a chorus of outrage from the powerful intransigents in the Curia and beyond. Pressure mounted on the abbot to retract the work and on the pope to make clear that it did not reflect his own sentiments, that he remained committed to the need for temporal power. The Vatican newspaper announced that Tosti would soon publish a retraction, but the note that Tosti furnished was deemed wholly inadequate. Alongside his note, the newspaper published a column denouncing his booklet, which it said had "disgusted the souls of sincere Catholics." It concluded: "For these reasons all individuals of good sense know just how ludicrous is the claim by certain newspapers that this booklet was, if not inspired by, at least known to the Vatican before its publication. And we are authorized to state that such a claim is completely false."
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Did the pope read the text before it was published? There is some reason to think that he did not, although Tosti almost certainly told the pope that he was preparing it and was given some kind of tacit approval. In a letter to Crispi on May 28, Tosti reported: "My little booklet on behalf of conciliation, while not read, is in harmony with the Vatican's desires." A well-informed source of the time offers an insight about what most likely happened. In this account, when the pope heard that Tosti was about to publish his booklet, he asked to see it. Tosti demurred, responding that it would be better if the pope could say he never read the text in advance, and so avoid responsibility for what it contained.
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The Vatican's pressure against conciliation had been intense even before Tosti's booklet came out. In late May, after the pope's seeming—albeit timid—opening to conciliation in his address to the cardinals,
L'Osservatore Romano
had already tried to calm the waters. The pope, the paper insisted, had in no way meant to suggest that the return of temporal power was unnecessary. At the same time, Rome's other major Catholic daily,
La Voce della Verità,
explained that the pope's generic invocation in his remarks of the need for justice "implied the restoration of temporal power, especially over Rome." In response, the Roman newspaper most closely identified with the royal court,
Fanfulla,
charged that the two Catholic newspapers' remarks "do not correspond either to Leo XIII's words nor to his sentiments ... The Holy Father has been pained by the wholly arbitrary behavior of those behind these papers." Leo again found himself in a difficult position. Things were getting out of control.
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The pope had a decision to make, one that would have great consequences. Both the intransigents and those favoring reconciliation were nervous about whom the pope would choose to be the new secretary of state. Cardinal Jacobini had died at the end of February, and Galimberti had been functioning in that role ever since Jacobini had first taken ill, the previous summer. Galimberti's appointment would be a sure sign that the pope wanted to bring about reconciliation with the Italian state.

On April 18 the pope called Galimberti in to discuss the future. Recently returned from his triumphs in Berlin, Galimberti hoped that the pope would tell him of his appointment as secretary of state and the cardinal's hat that would go with it. His hopes had been given a boost earlier in the month when word leaked out that the pope had asked his Perugian advisers—the group of aides who had followed him to the Vatican from Perugia—to investigate the precedents for appointing a prelate to the secretary of state post who was not yet a cardinal. They reported back that Pius VII had set just such a precedent when he appointed the man regarded by many as the greatest secretary of state of modern times, Ercole Consalvi. Consalvi was made a cardinal only after his appointment.
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But Galimberti was in for a great disappointment. With a tone of regret, the pope told him simply: "They advise me to appoint Rampolla."

Galimberti was devastated. Mariano Rampolla, the up-and-coming intransigent, was one of the last people he wanted in that position.

"Well then, Holiness," Galimberti replied, "I'll go to serve as a canon in St. Peter's."

Leo tried to reassure him that his diplomatic services were still valued: "No, my dear don Luigi, we have a post worthy of you," said the pope. "We are sending you to Vienna." And, before the crestfallen bishop left Leo's quarters, the pope offered him some consolation, at least according to Galimberti's later report to his friend, the Bavarian ambassador: "Should Cardinal Rampolla not work out," said the pope, "I can always recall you to Rome at a moment's notice." Galimberti was far from mollified. "For over six months," he confided to a friend, "I have, more or less alone, conducted all the [Vatican's] international political affairs, and now all of a sudden I am supposed to be ... subordinated to a secretary of state who knows absolutely nothing of all of these matters."
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Kurd von Schlozer, Berlin's ambassador to the Holy See, to whom Galimberti directed these remarks, could not have been too surprised. Several months earlier, in October 1886, in reporting Jacobini's physical inability to do his duties as secretary of state, he had written to Bismarck of the infighting at the Vatican: "In recent times the group of intransigents and other Vatican factions have repeatedly tried to distance Monsignor Galimberti from the vicinity of the pope ... The Jesuits are doing everything they can to impose as the pro-secretary of state their favorite, Rampolla, currently nuncio in Madrid."
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And so Galimberti, proponent of conciliation, was sent off as nuncio to Austria, where he would come under the heavy thumb of the new secretary of state. Rampolla's appointment was announced on June 2, in the midst of the uproar over Father Tosti's
Conciliazione,
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Described by the German ambassador as a "vibrant soul with a cool head," Rampolla had recently returned from five years as papal nuncio to Spain. Forty-four years old, he had been made a cardinal only two months earlier. The speedy promotion engendered considerable jealousy among his colleagues, offset only partially by the satisfaction many of them drew from seeing a committed intransigent become secretary of state. Born into an aristocratic Sicilian family, Rampolla had spent most of his youth in Rome and from early on had been on the fast track of the Vatican diplomatic service. Polyglot, pious, known for his extraordinary capacity for work, he would serve as secretary of state for fifteen years, until Leo's death in 1903.
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The full implications of Rampolla's appointment were not immediately clear. Ever since his elevation to the papacy, Leo had surrounded himself with a tightly knit group of trusted advisers whom he brought with him from Perugia; they were known in Vatican circles as the Perugians and viewed as the pope's secret cabinet. These men had great influence, for the pope made no diplomatic decision without consulting them. All three of his previous secretaries of state had been rather weak figures, a product of the pope's heavy reliance on this secret cabinet and his desire not to repeat what he saw as his predecessor's mistake in allowing his secretary of state to become so powerful. Leo wanted to keep close, direct control of all of the Vatican's diplomatic activity.
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