The Pope and Mussolini (28 page)

Foreign ambassadors to the Holy See expressed surprise that the principled and stubborn pope had capitulated so abruptly. It had been barely two months since his encyclical had denounced the Fascist regime’s claim to have a monopoly on the education of youth and warned about the worship of the state. The agreement said nothing about any of this; nor did it contain what the pope had long demanded from Mussolini, an apology for the violence against the Catholic organizations and the insults aimed at him.
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THE DAY AFTER MUSSOLINI
and Tacchi Venturi signed the final agreement, Pius XI called in his nuncio and apologized for having excluded him from the negotiations. He instructed Borgongini to make an appointment to see the Duce. It was time to restore relations to their proper channels.

“How are you?” a smiling Mussolini greeted him a few days later. “After the storm comes the calm.”

“That’s why I’ve come,” replied the nuncio. “I thought that, with calm restored, it was a good idea to reestablish contact with Your Excellency.”

“You will see,” said the dictator, pressing his point, “a long period of calm will begin now.”

“God be praised!”

“Come and we’ll take care of everything.” The Duce pointed to a series of notes that Tacchi Venturi had sent him with the familiar list of papal requests. There were books to ban and Protestant proselytizing to stamp out. “I will issue orders immediately to have everything you want done.”

The nuncio had one other request: although the Duce had been government head for almost a decade, he had never come to see the pope. “The pope,” said Borgongini, “told me to let you know that you will be the most welcome among the welcome.” Ever since the signing of the Lateran Accords, the pope had expected the Duce to visit, but the dictator had dragged his feet, finding one excuse after another for the delay—he would never be comfortable in the Vatican, surrounded by priests, and even less comfortable in a setting of such splendor that he would look insignificant in comparison. But after his latest victory, he felt more secure, less likely to be seen to be prostrating himself before the pontiff. Now that the crisis had passed, great things, he was convinced, lay ahead.
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C
HAPTER
THIRTEEN

MUSSOLINI IS ALWAYS RIGHT

W
ITH THE RESOLUTION OF THE CATHOLIC ACTION CRISIS, THE
links binding the Church to the Fascist regime became ever stronger, the collaboration deep and wide-ranging. Mussolini, now enjoying the enthusiastic support of Italy’s Catholic clergy, was acquiring an image of almost godlike proportions.

Many historians have identified the pope’s 1931 battle with the Duce over Catholic Action as a papal struggle against Fascism. But a look at what the organization actually did during the 1930s shows just how mistaken they are. The pope, far from seeing the Fascist regime as an obstacle in his efforts to use Catholic Action to Christianize Italian society, viewed it as an indispensable ally. Without close working relations between Catholic Action and Fascist authorities, the organization could not succeed. Its lay national head, Augusto Ciriaci, was an ardent admirer of the Duce; he was, De Vecchi told Mussolini, “not far from acting as my man and therefore also Yours” in the Vatican.
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Pius XI viewed Catholic Action’s members as soldiers in his “battle
for morality.” In each diocese, a Catholic Action “Secretariat for Morality” was established to identify and report any sign of immoral activity. It put out lists of plays and films to be boycotted, and members badgered the police to shut them down. Catholic Action members were told to scour their villages and towns to identify anything the Church found offensive and report it to the authorities.
²

Among the signs of moral decline that most upset the pope were reports of immodestly dressed women. Since 1926 Tacchi Venturi had been in constant contact with the regime’s highest police authorities in an effort to get them to crack down on the bare legs, bare backs, and partially uncovered bosoms of Italian women.
³
In June of that year, in reaction to this pressure, the minister of internal affairs ordered prefects to clamp down on scantily clad bathers. The minister also ordered that dancing while wearing a bathing suit—a particular irritant to the pope—be banned.
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So great was the pope’s interest in prohibiting the public exposure of women’s bodies that even in the intense final days leading to the Lateran Accords, when he heard that barely dressed dancers were to be seen in Rome, he dispatched Tacchi Venturi to get the Duce to do something about it.

Eight days before the historic signing, they met. Tacchi Venturi began by letting Mussolini know how pleased the pope was that he had banned burlesque performances in Rome. But what had been chased out the front door was coming back in through the window. Cinema owners had discovered they could attract more patrons by having dancing girls perform during intermissions. These young women, the Jesuit told Mussolini, were “dressed as their mother Eve was before the fall, save for a thin strip or sash across their private parts, more an incentive than an impediment to the impure yearnings of concupiscence.” He looked forward to the day when he could give the pope the happy news that the government had ordered a stop to the appalling spectacle.
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Among the public displays of female flesh to which the pope objected was a particular bugaboo, the participation of girls in gymnastics
competitions. In 1928, when he learned that the Fascist Party planned to hold such an event in Rome, both the Vatican daily and
La Civiltà cattolica
published his letter denouncing it. Not even in pagan Rome, he complained, had such a travesty of female delicacy been seen.
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In early 1930, in response to such pressure, the president of the national Fascist youth organization released new guidelines governing girls’ physical education. The groups were to aim not at developing girls’ athletic skills but rather at ensuring that “the future mothers learned the necessity of seeing to the physical education of their children.”
La Civiltà cattolica
praised the instruction as an example of how effectively the Fascist government was collaborating with the Vatican to improve the nation’s spiritual welfare.
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But the pope remained vigilant, and the following year was disturbed to learn of plans for an international girls’ gymnastics competition in Venice. This time he sent Borgongini to persuade Mussolini to stop it.

Mussolini was unsympathetic, explaining that international athletic groups, not the government, organized such events. In an attempt to show that he personally had little use for girls’ athletic competitions (or perhaps because he always enjoyed seeing the prim nuncio squirm), the dictator added: “Women are good for two things: to have children and to be beaten.” Egged on by Borgongini’s discomfort, he warmed to his subject. “Women are like fur coats,” he explained, “every once in a while you need to knock the dust off them.”
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Similar pleas from local Catholic Action groups to local government officials often met an unsympathetic response as well. In such cases, frustrated bishops turned to the Vatican for help.

A letter the pope received in August 1932 was unusual only in being accompanied by a number of blurry snapshots. The bishop wrote to denounce the flaunting of women’s flesh on the island of Capri. Many women could be seen there “with their backs practically entirely uncovered, often with their breasts poorly covered, and sometimes wearing a bathing top made of transparent fabric.” Most of the good people of the island, he added, were nauseated by the spectacle, which he
blamed on outsiders. He urged the Vatican to get the police to act. The four photographs he enclosed, all taken from behind, showed the naked backs of women wearing stylish evening gowns.
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Eugenio Pacelli responded on behalf of the pope. The campaign for female modesty, he assured the bishop, was one of the centerpieces of the Catholic Action program. The organization “does not let any appropriate occasion go by when it can influence the authorities to exercise greater vigilance and a severe application of the law.”
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It is worth pausing a moment to consider the date of Pacelli’s letter—September 16, 1932. Barely one year earlier Tacchi Venturi and Mussolini had initialed the agreement ending the Catholic Action dispute.
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Throughout the country, local Catholic Action groups were now collaborating with the Fascist police.
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The pope continued to complain about the exhibition of female bodies on Italy’s beaches. Church attempts to push Mussolini into action sometimes went too far, as happened in March 1934. That month the archbishop of Florence, Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa, lambasted the Fascist youth groups for sponsoring beach outings for their members. Mussolini was so incensed by the complaint that he wrote Pacelli a letter.

“The well known—perhaps too well known—Monsignor Elia Dalla Costa addressed the attached pastoral letter to his flock,” said the Duce. “He graciously describes us as pagan and savage. Let those above him know that we are neither pagan nor savage and we don’t want to become either, notwithstanding the pastoral letter of Dalla Costa.”

De Vecchi, the Italian ambassador, hand-delivered the Duce’s letter to Pacelli. Such attacks, he told Pacelli, were counterproductive. It took a lot of nerve, De Vecchi added—broaching a taboo topic—for the archbishop to accuse the Fascists of being savages when at the same time the Vatican expected the government to keep silent about widespread cases of priestly immorality. One of these days, the ambassador warned, the pope would go too far. He would not be happy with the result.
¹³

The pope also pressed the authorities to ban books that the Church
deemed offensive, like a European best seller offering advice on sex.
Ideal Marriage
, written by a Dutch gynecologist, described the biology of reproduction, advocated the pleasures of sexuality, and offered information helpful to controlling fertility. In 1930 the Vatican placed it on the Index of Prohibited Books. Sometime later, apparently prompted by the imminent appearance of an Italian edition, the pope called on Mussolini to outlaw its sale. The Duce assured him he would.
¹⁴

Pius also pressed Mussolini to ban objectionable films and plays. Even before the signing of the Lateran Accords, the pope sent Tacchi Venturi to talk with Mussolini about how they might best collaborate in this effort. In a January 1929 meeting, the two men discussed American films. Tacchi Venturi branded them a cesspool of sin and obscenity; Mussolini voiced agreement, calling American cinema a “school of corruption that will end up ruining the Nation if it isn’t stopped.” Pleased, Tacchi Venturi asked the dictator to “study how the censorship system could be made most effective.”
¹⁵

“Italy Bans Sex Appeal in Pictures … Film Censorship Rules Ordered Tightened Due to Pope’s Protests.” So read the headline in the March 20, 1931,
Los Angeles Times
, reporting Mussolini’s response to the pope’s complaints.
¹⁶

The pope’s demands on Mussolini at times seemed overwhelming. He hectored the Duce on objectionable women’s dress, books, Protestant proselytizing, films, and plays. He also regularly asked Mussolini to take action against ex-priests. Until the fall of the Papal States, the Church had been able to isolate such miscreants from the public. But following Italian unification, it lost all power over them. What especially incensed the Vatican was ex-priests teaching in public schools, which the pope thought scandalous.
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Pius had begun urging the Duce to act well before the concordat was signed. In January 1925 he asked Mussolini to fire the prominent church historian and ex-priest Ernesto Buonaiuti from his professorship at the University of Rome. Buonaiuti had long been a thorn in the Vatican’s side. A modernist who argued for separation of church and
state, he had earlier been relieved of his teaching position at one of Rome’s most prestigious seminaries. In 1921 the Church had excommunicated him after he questioned whether the body of Christ was literally present in the Eucharist.
¹⁸

In response to the pope’s 1925 plea, Mussolini ordered the ex-priest suspended for the year from his teaching position, but Buonaiuti’s faculty colleagues lobbied for his reinstatement.
¹⁹
In early 1927 the pope again, through Tacchi Venturi, urged the dictator to fire him. Mussolini replied that, while he wanted to keep the pope happy, he did not want to be accused of ignoring the law in order to please the pope. He suggested instead that he find other ways to prevent Buonaiuti from teaching.
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Three days later Tacchi Venturi paid a visit on the minister of education, Pietro Fedele, to try his luck. Fedele was not happy to see the pope’s emissary but was well aware of his special ties to the Duce. “I think it opportune from now on,” he wrote the next day to Mussolini, “that each time Father Tacchi Venturi comes to see me or someone in my cabinet, I send you a report of the conversation.”