The Pope and Mussolini (70 page)

3.
The pope’s handwritten letter is found at ASV, AESI, pos. 702, vol. 1, ff. 14r–16v.

4.
DDI, series 7, vol. 4, n. 308. On May 16, 1926, Tacchi Venturi wrote Mussolini with news that following his meeting with the Duce a few days earlier, he had spoken to Gasparri and learned that the Vatican was now ready to enter into direct talks with him to settle the Roman question; DDI, series 7, vol. 4, n. 312.

5.
NARA, M530, reel 2, U.S. ambassador Henry F. Fletcher, Rome, to secretary of state, October 4, 1927, n. 1410.

6.
No opportunity was too small to exploit. Following a prominent priest’s funeral, family members visited Mussolini and presented him the monsignor’s pectoral cross, explaining that it contained a relic of the Holy Cross. Mussolini kissed it—an effort that for the famously anticlerical rabble-rouser from Romagna must have been difficult—and told them he would always keep it with him. The pope, hearing the story, was pleased. “
Bene, bene
,” good, good, he said. ACS, MCPG, b. 155, 5 luglio 1926.

7.
“La parola di Merry del Val,”
Il Regime fascista
, 7 ottobre 1926, p. 1; Franzinelli 1998, p. 54.

8.
Franzinelli 1998, p. 68.

9.
“Aristocrazia nera,”
Il Secolo XX
, 20 febbraio 1929, p. 11, has a photo of Francesco Pacelli as an exemplar of the category. Bosworth 2011, p. 26.

10.
The Chicago paper was the
Chicago Daily News
. A secret police report in November 1926 reported that the American Knights of Columbus were coming up with the funds for the land; ACS, MI, DAGRA, b. 113, n. 52199.

11.
The Jesuit contacted the minister of internal affairs, Luigi Federzoni. The police report revealed that the headquarters of both organizations were in the same building and that the longtime local Popular Party head was a priest.

12.
It was especially outrageous, he added, that the Popular Party would oppose the Fascists while being open to the possibility of allying with the Socialists, “sworn enemies of every Christian principle.” Tacchi Venturi to Gasparri, AESI, pos. 611, fasc. 46, ff. 23r–23v; the police reports are at ff. 25r–30r.

13.
ASV, AESI, pos. 734, fasc. 241, ff. 4r–5v, Tacchi Venturi a Gasparri, 8 gennaio 1926. The Jesuit added a note on Federzoni’s view of the bishop of Brescia: “While he respects the pastoral virtues of Monsignor Gaggia, as well as his religious learning and culture, nonetheless he thought that because of his venerable age, he does not realize that, hiding themselves behind the mask or name of Catholic Action, quite a number of its members were leading a secret campaign against the government, seeking by hook or crook to involve the ecclesiastical authority in this struggle.”

14.
Balilla
is the surname of a youth who was said to have triggered a popular revolt against Austrian troops in Genoa in 1746. Gibelli 2003, p. 267.

15.
ASV, AESI, pos. 667, fasc. 129, ff. 68r–69r.

16.
ACS, MCPG, b. 157, noto informatore vaticano, 29 aprile 1928.

17.
Coco 2009, pp. 164–65.

18.
Rhodes 1974, p. 41. This account is based on the testimony of the German ambassador in Rome.

19.
Pacelli 1959, p. 99, emphasis in the original. Just a few months earlier, on March 1, the pope had been indignant when Francesco Pacelli relayed the suggestion that he abandon his desire to have Villa Doria Pamphili considered part of Vatican lands. Pius XI insisted at the time that he would rather remain without an accord than have the property excluded. Ibid., p. 82.

20.
“Not accepting,” Barone added, “would be tantamount to saying that … they didn’t want to end the conflict, but I can assure you that Mussolini thinks differently.” Ibid., p. 100. “Barone also tells me confidentially,” Pacelli reported in his diary, “that on various occasions the king had shown a lack of enthusiasm for the resolution of the Roman question.”

21.
R. Mussolini 1974, p. 154; Bosworth 2002, pp. 347–49; Milza 2000, p. 537.

22.
Navarra 2004, p. 16.

23.
The pope’s failure to appear at Gasparri’s jubilee, and its impact, are discussed in a series of reports in 1926 from the “noted Vatican informer.” ACS, MCPG, b. 155.

24.
ACS, MCPG, b. 157, noto informatore vaticano, 1 gennaio 1928; ibid., 5 gennaio 1928; ibid., 12 gennaio 1928;

25.
DDI, series 7, vol. 7, n. 240; Arnaldo Cortesi, “Only 9 to see pact signed in Rome tomorrow,” NYT, February 11, 1929, p. 3.

26.
Quoted in Gannon 1962, p. 62. Two days later, Monsignor Spellman would describe the pope as “delighted with everything.” Ibid., p. 63. Borgongini, one of Gasparri’s two undersecretaries, had brought Spellman in three years earlier to help with English-language materials and with the American Church. Mussolini’s main Vatican informant at the time, no fan of Borgongini, claimed that the nuncio had wanted to ingratiate himself with the Knights of Columbus in the United States, a group that had become an important source of funds for the Vatican. In late 1926 the pope, having heard so much about the young American priest, not least his seemingly inexhaustible ability to come up with funds from the United States, asked to meet Spellman in a private audience. Before long, the pope began referring to him as “Monsignor Prezioso,” Monsignor Valuable. ACS, MCPG, b. 155, noto informatore vaticano, 1926 (no more specific date given); and MCPG, b. 155, noto informatore vaticano, 5 gennaio 1927. Spellman told his mother of the pope’s nickname for him with great pleasure. Gannon 1962, pp. 57–59.

27.
The last dispute involved the status of the Palace of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. The imposing sixteenth-century building lies along the wall of the Vatican, to the left as one faces St. Peter’s, but its front door opens onto a public street. The pope had wanted both the building and the street in front of it to be considered part of the new Vatican City. But the king had opposed giving the Church any more territory, and in the end the pope had been willing to compromise. The street would remain outside papal control, and while the palace itself would not technically be on Vatican land, it would, like a number of other Church buildings in Rome, be granted special legal status. ASMAE, Gab., b. 718, Roma, 10 febbraio 1929.

28.
While this provision was found in the 1848 statute of the Savoyard state that was subsequently adopted by the fledgling Italian state in 1861, it was there viewed in the context of the doctrine of “a free Church in a free State.”

29.
Toschi 1931.

30.
Bosworth 2011, p. 171.

31.
Based on the 1929 Italian lira/U.S. dollar exchange value found in Nenovsky et al. 2007.

32.
Grandi 1985, pp. 254–55.

33.
Martini 1960b, p. 113. Gasparri later told Charles-Roux that he had cried five times that day: both in entering and leaving the pope’s study, when arriving at the Lateran Palace for the signing, during the act of signing itself, and in reporting on the day to the pope. Charles-Roux 1947, p. 48.

34.
Reese 1996, p. 11.

35.
Spellman to his mother, February 10, 1929, in Gannon 1962, p. 63.

36.
A photo of Mussolini getting out of his car is found in
Il Secolo XX
, 20 febbraio 1929, p. 7.

37.
“Signing in Constantine’s Palace,” NYT, February 11, 1929, p. 2.

38.
“Informazioni Stefani sul Trattato e Concordato,” OR, 13 febbraio 1929, p. 2.

39.
Arnaldo Cortesi, “Vatican and Italy Sign Pact Recreating a Papal State; 60 Years of Enmity Ended,” NYT, February 12, 1929, p. 1; Casella 2005, p. 24. Pizzardo’s salute was chronicled in NARA, M530, reel 2, n. 2140, February 15, 1929, Alexander Kirk, chargé d’affaires ad interim of the U.S. embassy in Rome, report to the U.S. secretary of state in Washington, p. 5.

40.
Grandi 1985, p. 255.

41.
The various actions that Mussolini had taken to benefit the Church over the previous few years were not all that gave the pope this hope; so did, Moro argues, Mussolini’s view of using the Church as an
instrumentum regni
, an instrument of his rule. It would be a return—or at least so the pope hoped—to the cozy arrangement that the Church had enjoyed with a number of absolute rulers in the ancien régime, before ideas of democracy and separation of church and state had transformed western Europe. No less important was the fact that the basic principles Mussolini embraced and the principles championed by the pope were in such broad agreement on the need for order, discipline, and top-down authority, and in their rejection of the idea that people should decide for themselves what is best based on their own conscience. Virtue lay in people acting not in their own personal interest but for the larger good, and that larger good was to be determined by a higher authority. Moro 1981, pp. 192–93. Moro here builds on the work of Giovanni Miccoli (1973, 1988). De Felice (1995, pp. 382–83), author of the definitive biography of Mussolini, argues that only with the signing of the Lateran Accords was the Fascist regime fully established.

42.
Quoted in Confalonieri 1957, p. 215.

43.
Prefect reports are found in ACS, MI, DAGRA, b. 187, 11 febbraio 1929.

44.
As one celebratory magazine account put it, the agreement was a miracle, “produced by the perfect coincidence … between the policies of the Church and the Fascist State in raising the moral and spiritual level of the people. That would have certainly failed in a parliamentary regime.” Giuseppe Bevione, “La portata dell’accordo fra l’Italia e il Vaticano,”
XX Secolo
, 15 febbraio 1929, p. 7.
L’Osservatore romano
, the Vatican daily, quoted at length coverage of the event in
La Gazzetta del popolo
, heralding the fact that “the Fascist Regime was able to resolve the ‘Roman question’ because it had liberated Italy from all the democratic lies of anticlericalism and parliamentarianism.” “Dopo la firma dei trattati fra la Santa Sede e l’Italia,” OR, 15 febbraio 1929, p. 1.

45.
Arnaldo Cortesi, “280,000 Cheer Pope,” NYT, February 13, 1929, p. 1; H. G. Chilton,
Annual Report 1929
, March 27, 1930, C 2470/2470/22, in Hachey 1972, p. 165, section 99; “La dimostrazione al Quirinale,” OR, 14 febbraio 1929, p. 1. Reports of other such celebrations outside Rome are found in “L’esultanza delle città italiane per il fausto evento della conciliazione,”
L’Avvenire d’Italia
[Bologna’s Catholic newspaper], 12 febbraio 1929, p. 4, and all the issues of
L’Osservatore romano
over the next several days.

46.
The
New York Times
front-page headline was typical: “60 Years of Enmity Ended.… Throngs Cheer in the Streets.” Arnaldo Cortesi, “Vatican and Italy Sign Pact Recreating a Papal State,” NYT, February 12, 1929, p. 1.

47.
The words are those of Domenico Tardini (1988, p. 294), who was then under Francesco Borgongini in the Vatican secretary of state office.

48.
NARA, M530, reel 2, n. 2140, February 15, 1929, p. 8; Caviglia 2009, p. 94.

49.
ACS, CR, b. 6, 13 febbraio VII [1929]. The three-page report bears the handwritten penciled notation “da Rosati.”

CHAPTER 9: THE SAVIOR

1.
Morgan 1939, p. 174.

2.
Arnaldo Cortesi, “Mussolini Cheered by Papal Audience,” NYT, February 18, 1920, p. 5. Rome’s aristocracy made the transition to Fascist rule without any notable difficulty. Tellingly, from 1926 to Mussolini’s fall in 1943, the Duce appointed a succession of four princes to serve as Rome’s governor, the aristocratic line broken for only a brief period in 1935–36, when Giuseppe Bottai served in that role. Insolera 1976, p. 119.