The Pope and Mussolini (65 page)

ARCHIVAL SOURCES AND ABBREVIATIONS

The following abbreviations are used in the endnotes
.

ARCHIVAL SOURCES

MINISTÈRE DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES, PARIS

NARA: U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVE AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION, COLLEGE PARK, MARYLAND

All are found in the National Archives Microfilm Publications series

PUBLISHED DIPLOMATIC DOCUMENTS

OTHER ABBREVIATIONS

NOTES

CHAPTER 1: A NEW POPE

1.
Salvatorelli 1939, p. 9; Pizzuti 1992, p. 99; Pollard 1999, p. 14.

2.
Pollard 1999, p. 16. The American journalist Anne McCormick (1957, p. 17) offered similar observations of Della Chiesa as pope: “Benedict XV seemed one of the negative Popes, dwarfed by his position and overpowered by the events of his time. One saw him at public functions in the Vatican, drooping under his tiara, dwindling within his embroidered state, plainly bored and burdened by his augustness.”

3.
ASV, AESS, pos. 515, fasc. 529, ff. 59r–94r.

4.
At the first meeting of the new session of parliament on December 1, 1919, as King Victor Emmanuel III stood to give the ceremonial opening, the Socialist deputies rose and walked out, shouting “Long live the socialist republic!” Milza 2000, pp. 284–85.

5.
Fornari 1971, p. 50.

6.
On the proviso that it be made clear to the public that the Vatican had no authority over the party. For Carlo Sforza’s account of this meeting, see Scoppola 1976, pp. 22–23. See also De Rosa 1958; De Rosa 1959; Molony 1977. For the rest of his long life, Sturzo would say a mass in honor of Benedict XV every year on the anniversary of his death. Pollard 1999, pp. 172–74.

7.
The Italian Foreign Ministry archive has a folder filled with encrypted telegrams from its embassies abroad reporting the voting intentions of cardinals from these countries. They contain several different names. ASMAE, APIN, b. 1268.

8.
The latter remarks were made by the Belgian ambassador. Beyens 1934, pp. 102–3. The remarks about the pope’s indifference to dress were made by the British envoy, Sir Alec Randall, quoted in Pollard 1999, p. 70. My description also relies on later British envoy reports found in C. Wingfield,
Annual Report 1934
. January 12, 1935, R 402/402/22, in Hachey 1972, pp. 285–87, sections 126–36, as well as on Roberti 1960, pp. 6–7; Morgan 1944, pp. 15, 136–37; and De Vecchi 1983, p. 143.

9.
Aubert 2000, p. 230 (based on the diary of Cardinal Mercier); Lazzarini 1937, pp. 160–61; Beyens 1934, pp. 83–84.

10.
Vavasseur-Desperriers 1996, p. 141.

11.
Venini 2004, p. 128.

12.
Chiron 2006, pp. 20–25.

13.
Puricelli 1996, pp. 28, 36; Durand 2010, p. 4; Aradi 1958, p. 21.

14.
Aradi 1958, p. 43. Manzoni, the pope was convinced, would one day be recognized as a writer as great as Dante; Venini 2004, p. 181.

15.
Aradi 1958, pp. 65–66.

16.
After he was elected pope, the Alpine Club put together a number of Ratti’s own descriptions of his climbs in a little book (Ratti 1923). An English version of the book was published in March 1923, in the form of a three-part series in the daily newspaper
Atlantic Constitution
under the title “The Mountaineer Priest” (March 4, 11, and 18). Lazzarini (1937, pp. 69–71) provides a long list of his climbs.

17.
The French ambassador to the Holy See, François Charles-Roux (1947, pp. 21–22), reported his conversations with Pope Ratti about his Alpine past.

18.
Tisserant 1939, pp. 393–94; Chiron 2006, p. 86.

19.
Domenico Tardini recounted this misapprehension in a letter to Confalonieri on the publication of his memoirs about Pius XI. Confalonieri 1993, p. 276.

20.
Lazzarini 1937, pp. 35–36

21.
I tell this story in Kertzer 2001.

22.
CC 1880 IV, pp. 108–12.

23.
“La rivoluzione mondiale e gli ebrei,” CC 1922 IV, pp. 111–21; “Il socialismo giudeo-massonico tiranneggia l’Austria,” CC 1922 IV, pp. 369–71.

24.
Morozzo della Rocca 1996, p. 108; see also Kertzer 2001, pp. 247–49.

25.
ASV, ANI, b. 192, ff. 534r–38r, Achille Ratti a Pietro Gasparri, 24 ottobre 1918.

26.
Achille Ratti to Pietro Gasparri, January 9, 1919, in Wilk 1997, pp. 3:250–61. For a fuller presentation of Ratti’s views of the Jews while he was in Poland, see Kertzer 2001, pp. 245–62.

27.
Pizzuti 1992, p. 110; Chiron 2006, pp. 111–12.

28.
As Levillain (1996, p. 8) described it, “Mons. Ratti’s nomination to the see of Saint Ambrosio is a kind of response by Rome to an insurrectional climate.”

29.
For a fuller account of the circumstances that led to Ratti’s departure from Poland, see Morozzo della Rocco 1996. Gasparri’s own typescript account of this episode is found at ASV, AESS, pos. 515, fasc. 530, ff. 35r–36r. For a good look at Ratti’s experience in Poland, see Pease 2009, chap. 2.

30.
Gasparri’s memoir account of this conversation is found in Spadolini 1972, pp. 259–60. Gasparri writes that it was Pope Ratti himself who told him what had happened.

31.
Pizzuti 1992, pp. 12–13.

32.
Sources report somewhat different numbers for the various papal ballots. I use the most complete set we have, found in Aradi 1958, p. 127. For an account of Gasparri’s behind-the-scenes role in getting Ratti elected, see Falconi 1967, pp. 152–54. Falconi, along with other sources, also details the passage of
zelanti
support from Merry del Val to Cardinal Pietro La Fontaine, conservative patriarch of Venice, who on the eleventh ballot reached twenty-three votes, to Ratti’s twenty-four. Also useful is Cardinal Mercier’s diary entries, found in Aubert 2000, as well as Lazzarini 1937, pp. 160–63.

33.
Fogarty 1996, p. 549. As a result of this experience, Pius XI would change the rules governing the conclave to give more time for non-European cardinals to participate, as they would on his death in 1939.

34.
Aubert 2000, p. 200.

35.
News of Benedict XV’s illness had produced a wave of worry around the Catholic world. In New York City, the 96,000 children attending Catholic parochial schools were shepherded into their local churches on January 20 to pray for his health. That they had not been entirely optimistic was evident from the fact that many added to their prayer for a speedy recovery the additional caveat “or the grace of a happy death.” “96,803 Children Pray for the Pope,” NYT, January 21, 1922, p. 1. The next day a premature report of the pope’s demise reached the president of Germany’s Reichstag, resulting in a halt in the proceedings as members rose while the president improvised a eulogy. “Reichstag President Eulogizes the Pope,” NYT, January 22, 1922, p. 2.

36.
Among those watching for the smoke in St. Peter’s Square on February 5, the day before Pius XI was chosen, was Benito Mussolini. Gentile 2010, p. 95.

37.
Aradi 1958, p. 128.

38.
There is some controversy about whether the idea of imparting this initial benediction from the outside loggia was Ratti’s idea or was suggested to him by the worldly Cardinal Gasparri. Cardinal Mario Nasali Rocca, archbishop of Bologna, reported that it was Gasparri’s idea (Chiron 2006, p. 138n), but Confalonieri (1957, p. 24) insists it was Ratti’s own. A description of these events can be found in Aradi 1958, pp. 146–47, and in CC 1922 I, pp. 371–72.