The Pope and Mussolini (2 page)

CACCIA DOMINIONI, CAMILLO
(1877–1946) Appointed prefect of the papal household by Benedict XV in 1921, Caccia had known Achille Ratti when he and the future pope were in Milan earlier in the century. Kept on by Pius XI, charged with organizing his daily schedule and determining who would get to see him, he stood at the pope’s side every day. Caccia had a terrible secret, widely known in the Vatican and among the Fascist police, that threatened him with disgrace.

CERRETTI, BONAVENTURA
(1872–1933) One of the Vatican’s leading diplomats, Cerretti was papal nuncio to France when Pius XI appointed him cardinal in 1926. A critic of the pope’s partnership with Mussolini, he was further angered when Pius XI passed him over and named a rival as secretary of state in 1930.

CIANO, GALEAZZO
(1903–1944) Son of a government minister, Ciano married Mussolini’s eldest daughter, Edda, in 1930. A self-styled ladies’ man, intensely disliked by Mussolini’s wife, he quickly became his father-in-law’s heir apparent, much to the dismay of the other Fascist leaders. After Ciano served a brief stint as minister of press and propaganda, Mussolini shocked the diplomatic world by appointing him minister of foreign affairs in 1936.

COUGHLIN, CHARLES
(1891–1979) Born and ordained a Catholic priest in Canada, Coughlin used his parish in Detroit to broadcast a radio program that reached tens of millions of Americans in the 1930s. Initially a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt and social reform, he turned sharply rightward, accusing the president of being a Communist agent. An apologist for Hitler’s crusade against the Jews, Coughlin was also eager to be of service to the Italian dictator.

DE VECCHI, CESARE
(1884–1959) A monarchist from Turin, De Vecchi was one of the four leaders of the March on Rome. He served as Italy’s first ambassador to the Holy See from 1929 to 1935. Arrogant, petty, thickheaded, and easily recognizable by his outlandish mustache, he was the object of much ridicule, not least by Mussolini. Although De Vecchi suffered through many of Pius XI’s table-pounding tantrums, the pope ended up viewing him with some affection.

GASPARRI, PIETRO
(1852–1934) Child of a poor family of mountain shepherds in central Italy, Gasparri became a scholar of canon law and one of the Vatican’s most influential diplomats. As secretary of state first under Pope Benedict XV and then under Pius XI, the short, rotund Gasparri disguised his sharp political sense beneath a show of gregarious good humor.

GÖRING, HERMANN
(1893–1946) One of the Nazi leaders closest to Hitler, he founded the Gestapo and held many top government positions in Nazi Germany. Mussolini at first dismissed him as a lunatic.

GRANDI, DINO
(1895–1988) Undersecretary of the interior and then, from 1929 to 1932, Mussolini’s minister of foreign affairs. The goateed Grandi was initially among the most radical of the Fascists. But the life of Italian ambassador in London (1932–39) agreed with him and would affect his view of Mussolini’s increasing embrace of Nazi Germany.

HITLER, ADOLF
(1889–1945) For years Hitler kept a huge bust of his hero, Benito Mussolini, in his Munich office. After becoming German chancellor in January 1933, he reached out to the Vatican in an effort to get Catholic support. Although suspicious of him, the pope was initially encouraged by his strong anti-Communist stance.

LEDÓCHOWSKI, WŁODZIMIERZ
(1866–1942) Son of a Polish count and nephew of a cardinal, Ledóchowski was elected superior general—world head—of the Society of Jesus in 1915, a position he would retain until his death twenty-seven years later. A virulent anti-Semite, kindly disposed toward Fascism, he was a man Mussolini looked to for help.

MONTINI, GIOVANNI
(1897–1978) As a priest in 1922, he joined the Vatican secretary of state office, where he remained for many years. In 1933 Pius XI
dismissed him from his additional position as national chaplain of Italy’s Catholic Action university organization but brought him back in 1937 to be one of his undersecretaries of state. In 1963 Montini would ascend to St. Peter’s throne as Pope Paul VI.

MUNDELEIN, GEORGE
(1872–1939) Named archbishop of Chicago in 1915 and appointed cardinal in 1924, Mundelein presided over an expanding Catholic Church and became a friend and political supporter of Franklin Roosevelt. His verbal assault on Adolf Hitler in 1937 provoked the Führer’s rage.

MUSSOLINI, ARNALDO
(1885–1931) Growing up sharing a corn-husk bed with Benito, Arnaldo became editor of his older brother’s newspaper,
Il Popolo d’Italia
, in 1922, when Mussolini became prime minister. Every night Mussolini would phone him to discuss the next day’s paper and whatever else was on his mind. Arnaldo—who unlike his brother thought of himself as a devout Catholic—was the one person Mussolini trusted fully.

MUSSOLINI, BENITO
(1883–1945) Born to a modest family in a small town in Romagna, the center of Italian anarchism and socialism, Mussolini became one of the country’s most prominent radical socialists in the early years of the twentieth century. In 1912 he was named national editor of the Socialist Party newspaper
Avanti!
, based in Milan. The Great War led him to break from the Socialists, establishing the Fascist movement in 1919. Formerly a fierce opponent of the Catholic Church, he recognized the benefit that a deal with the Vatican would have for his political ambitions.

MUSSOLINI, EDDA
(1910–95) Edda was Mussolini’s eldest, and favorite, child. Willful, impetuous, temperamental, and fond of riding horses and driving fast cars, she was much like her father. She settled down a bit in 1930 when she married Galeazzo Ciano.

MUSSOLINI, RACHELE
(1890–1979) Born to a poor peasant family that lived not far from the Mussolinis, she dropped out of school at age eight and went to work as a maid. Benito became attracted to the blond, blue-eyed Rachele, whose mother was his father’s mistress. Described by her daughter Edda as “the true dictator in the family,” the strong-willed, semiliterate
Rachele never felt comfortable among the rich and well-connected. She would also never give up her deep aversion to the Church and the priests.

ORSENIGO, CESARE
(1873–1946) A man of limited intelligence and even more limited worldview, Orsenigo was a priest in Milan when Pius XI appointed him nuncio to the Netherlands in 1922 and then to Hungary in 1925. In naming him to replace Eugenio Pacelli as nuncio to Germany in 1930, he bypassed many more qualified men of the Vatican diplomatic corps.

PACELLI, EUGENIO
(1876–1958) The frail but highly intelligent child of a Roman family closely linked to the popes for generations, Pacelli joined the Vatican secretary of state office shortly after his ordination. Sent in 1917 to be papal nuncio to Munich, and from there to Berlin, he lived in Germany for a dozen years. Pius XI called him to Rome in 1929 to become cardinal and, in early 1930, to replace Pietro Gasparri as secretary of state. The cautious, soft-spoken Pacelli and the authoritarian, temperamental Pius XI developed a curious relationship. On the pope’s death in 1939, he would be elected pope himself, taking the name Pius XII.

PACELLI, FRANCESCO
(1872–1935) Older brother of Eugenio, Francesco Pacelli followed in their father’s footsteps, becoming one of the Vatican’s most prominent lawyers. Pius XI turned to him in 1926 to conduct secret negotiations with the Fascist government, aimed at ending the state of hostility that had existed between the Holy See and Italy since the nation’s founding in 1861.

PETACCI, CLARA
(1912–45) Daughter of a Vatican physician, the attractive, green-eyed, curly-haired Clara was twenty-four when she began her affair with the then fifty-three-year-old Mussolini. She lived for the call each day that would beckon her to their love nest at his office in Palazzo Venezia in central Rome. Her thousands of pages of diaries offer priceless insight into Mussolini.

PIGNATTI, BONIFACIO
(1877–1957) Son of a count and a well-regarded career diplomat, Pignatti was Italy’s ambassador to France when in 1935 he replaced Cesare De Vecchi as ambassador to the Holy See. Like most members of the pre-Fascist Italian diplomatic corps, Pignatti made the transition to serving the Fascist dictatorship without missing a beat.

POPE PIUS XI (ACHILLE RATTI)
(1857–1939) The son of a silk factory supervisor from a small town north of Milan, Ratti decided as a child to become a priest. Appointed professor at Milan’s Grand Seminary at age twenty-five, he soon took a position at Milan’s famous Ambrosiana Library, ultimately becoming its director. In 1914 Ratti was appointed prefect of the Vatican Library, a position he assumed would be his last. But in 1918 Benedict XV unexpectedly chose him to be his envoy to Poland, where he experienced the invasion of the Red Army in the wake of the Russian revolution and developed a lifelong loathing of Communism. Recalled to Rome in 1921, he was appointed cardinal and archbishop of Milan. He had barely taken his new office when, following Benedict’s death, his fellow cardinals elected him pope on their fourteenth ballot in February 1922.

POPE PIUS XII
(see
Eugenio Pacelli
)

PIZZARDO, GIUSEPPE
(1877–1970) Born near Genoa, Pizzardo joined the Vatican secretary of state office shortly after ordination. He left Rome for only three years (1909–12) to serve in the Vatican’s nunciature (embassy) in Munich. Named substitute secretary of state in 1921, he replaced Borgongini as secretary of ecclesiastical affairs in 1929, a position he held until his appointment as cardinal in 1937. From 1923 until the new pope, Pius XII, replaced him in 1939, he was also the national chaplain of Italian Catholic Action, which often drew him into the crosshairs of the anticlerical wing of the Fascist movement. Pizzardo was a favorite of Pius XI but unpopular with many in the Vatican who linked his influence to his access to American Catholic money.

RATTI, ACHILLE
(see
Pope Pius XI
)

ROSA, ENRICO, S.J
. (1870–1938) A member since 1905 of the editorial group that put out the twice-monthly Jesuit journal
La Civiltà cattolica
, widely viewed as the unofficial voice of the Vatican, Rosa became its director in 1915. A close adviser of Pius XI, he was called upon by the pope to explain the Church’s position on the Jews. Although initially hostile to Fascism, Rosa, on instructions from the Vatican, ended up using the pages of his journal to warn Catholics against abandoning the dictator.

SARFATTI, MARGHERITA
(1880–1961) Born to a wealthy Jewish family in Venice, she developed a passion for literature and the arts. Married at eighteen to a Jewish lawyer, she and her husband moved to Milan, where she became involved in the socialist movement and met Mussolini soon after he arrived there. By the time Mussolini returned from the war in 1917, they were inseparable. Not only were they lovers, but for a decade Mussolini turned to her for advice. By the later 1920s her allure would begin to wear off.

SPELLMAN, FRANCIS
(1889–1967) The son of Irish immigrants to Massachusetts, in 1925 he became the first American priest to serve in the Vatican secretary of state office. There he became close to Francesco Borgongini and later became a friend of Eugenio Pacelli. He was appointed archbishop of New York in 1939.

STARACE, ACHILLE
(1889–1945) One of the few southerners among Fascism’s leaders, Starace became national head of the Italian Fascist Party in 1931. A master of bad taste, lacking in intelligence, and without the faintest trace of sophistication, the sycophantic Starace would take Mussolini’s cult of personality to a frightening new level.

TACCHI VENTURI, PIETRO
, S.J. (1861–1956) Born to a prosperous central Italian family, Tacchi Venturi studied for the priesthood in Rome, where he joined the Jesuit order. When Pius XI and Mussolini decided they needed a secret go-between in early 1923, they chose him, and over the next sixteen years he met privately more than a hundred times with Mussolini, carrying the pope’s requests.

TARDINI, DOMENICO
(1881–1961) Part of the Roman clergy, he would spend much of his adult life in the Vatican secretary of state office, which he joined in 1921. Named undersecretary of ecclesiastical affairs there in 1929 under Pizzardo, be became substitute secretary of state in 1935, before taking the position of secretary for ecclesiastical affairs in 1937. A middle-of-the-roader, he blamed frictions with the Fascist regime not on Mussolini but on the anticlerics who surrounded him.

VICTOR EMMANUEL III
(1869–1947) Made king of Italy at age thirty in 1900, when his father was assassinated, Victor Emmanuel III never felt secure as
monarch. The object of much ridicule for his pint-size stature, he was intelligent and well informed but weak. Twice each week Mussolini put on his top hat to meet the king at Rome’s Quirinal Palace to get the necessary royal signature on all new laws. Victor Emmanuel always obliged him. Although theirs was a marriage of convenience, the roughhouse Mussolini and the diminutive monarch found common ground. Not least, they shared a dim view of humanity and a visceral dislike of the clergy.

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