The Pope and Mussolini (20 page)

The ceremony was held in the Hall of the Popes in the Lateran Palace, on the other side of the city from the Vatican. The pope’s seat as bishop of Rome was not St. Peter’s Basilica but the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran. For a thousand years, from the fourth century (when the Emperor Constantine had given the popes his own palace on that site) to the fourteenth (when the popes went into exile in Avignon), popes had lived in St. John Lateran.
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Vandals had devastated it in the fifth century, and it had been partly destroyed by fires in the fourteenth, but it was always rebuilt, ever grander. As “prisoners of the Vatican,” however, no pope had set foot there since Italian troops took Rome in 1870.

Gasparri and Borgongini had already arrived—in a new Chrysler donated by a wealthy American—when Mussolini’s car pulled up. A light rain fell.
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The Duce emerged from his car, clutching white gloves in his left hand. He wore a morning suit, complete with tails and top hat.
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The cardinal greeted Mussolini and Grandi, who were joined by Minister of Justice Alfredo Rocco and Mussolini’s undersecretary, Francesco Giunta, and invited them to climb the imposing stairway with him. They walked slowly through what Grandi described as an “interminable” number of ornate rooms of the museum dedicated to the Church’s missions around the world. The ebullient Gasparri waved his arms as he identified all the countries whose exhibits they were passing, from New Guinea and the Fiji Islands to Mongolia, India, and Nicaragua. “Names of strange and distant lands,” recalled Grandi, “that the Prince of the Church pronounced with a smile, as if wanting to emphasize for us how vast was the power and the reach of the Catholic Church in the world.”

Finally they reached their destination. At one end of the large room
stood a sixteen-by-four-foot rose-colored table; eight heavily carved black armchairs were arranged in a row along the far side.
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At the center, Mussolini and Gasparri took their seats. As they prepared to sign the document, the dictator, who had earlier been so relaxed, looked pale and ill at ease, while the cardinal, feeling at home, kept smiling.
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Signing the Lateran Accords, February 11, 1929. Left to right: Monsignor Francesco Borgongini-Duca, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, Francesco Pacelli, Benito Mussolini, Dino Grandi

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photograph credit 8.1
)

Following the signing of the accords, Lateran Palace, February 11, 1929. Cardinal Gasparri and Mussolini, front center; Monsignor Pizzardo on far left; Francesco Pacelli in top hat on Gasparri’s right; Monsignor Borgongini on Mussolini’s left, with Dino Grandi to his left
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photograph credit 8.2
)

When Mussolini and Gasparri emerged from the Lateran Palace, the rapidly growing crowd erupted in applause. No advance notice of the ceremony had been given, but the presence of so many police and militiamen outside the cathedral, and then the arrival of the Duce, had triggered rumors, and journalists and photographers had rushed over. Despite the light rain, the mood was bright. Priests and seminarians sang prayers of thanksgiving in chorus, interspersed with shouts of “Long live Pius, our Pope and King!” while others, gathering in the piazza in front of the historic church, cried “Viva Mussolini! Viva Italy!,” intermingled with Fascist shouts of “alalà!” As he was being driven away, Monsignor Pizzardo got so carried away that he responded to the crowd’s shouts by raising his arm in Fascist salute.
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Mussolini, in a more subdued mood, remained silent for the drive back to his office. Although this would be his greatest triumph, he would never feel comfortable around priests or in churches.
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It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance the pope gave to the accords. Renato Moro, one of Italy’s foremost Church historians, observes that despite the establishment of the Italian government in the nineteenth century, with its commitments to separation of church and state and to liberal democracy, the popes had never abandoned their belief in a hierarchical, authoritarian Italian society run according to Church principles. After years in which these dreams for a return to the Church’s former authority seemed unrealistic, the appearance of Fascism offered new grounds for hope.
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Until the signing, Catholics unhappy with the dictatorship could argue that the pope was not enthusiastic about the Fascist regime. Now this was no longer possible. Italian Catholics could have no doubt that in supporting Mussolini, they were following the pope’s wishes. The pope himself, speaking to a group of university students two days after
the signing, explained how the historic agreement had finally been made possible. Perhaps, he told them, it helped that one side was headed by a librarian, expert in combing through historical documents; and “perhaps too what was needed was a man such as the one that Providence had us encounter, a man who did not share the concerns of the liberal school.” The pope’s reference to Mussolini as the man sent by Providence would be repeated by bishops, priests, and lay Catholics thousands of times in the years to follow.
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In Bologna, special editions of local dailies sold out in a flash. The archbishop announced a special mass of thanksgiving for the next day, to which both government and military officials were invited. The archbishop of Chieti did not wait another day—an excited crowd packed into the cathedral for a special mass of thanksgiving on the very evening of the signing. The local Fascist authorities proudly took part in the ceremonies, carrying their flags and pennants, undaunted by the snowstorm outside.
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Newspapers throughout the country, including the Vatican daily, hammered on the theme that the historic event could never have happened if Italy had still been under democratic rule. Only Mussolini, and Fascism, had made it possible.
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In Rome, government buildings and private homes were covered by a previously unthinkable combination: yellow and white papal banners alongside tricolored Italian flags. As it happened, it was the seventh anniversary of the pope’s coronation, and he was scheduled to preside over a celebratory mass in St. Peter’s. Twelve footmen in red uniforms, six on a side, carried the pope in his
sedia gestatoria
, his red-silk-covered throne, into the immense basilica. Tens of thousands of the faithful, having waited shoulder to shoulder for hours, finally got a glimpse of the pontiff. Rome’s Fascist Federation had called on Fascists to show their enthusiasm by gathering in St. Peter’s Square. Two hundred thousand people stood outside in the pouring rain. When later the pope stepped out onto the balcony to bless them, they roared in joy. Below him stood representatives of each of Rome’s Fascist militia units, holding their banners aloft, as the endless crowd of the faithful and the curious stretched far beyond the piazza. Later that afternoon, summoned
by Fascist Party and militia officials, swarms of other celebrants gathered outside the Quirinal Palace, where the king appeared on a balcony, with the queen at his right and the national head of the Fascist Party on his left.
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Throughout the world, the Duce was being hailed as a great statesman.
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In the Vatican, a top aide described the thrill. Not even the celebrations of victory in the Great War could compare with the delirium in Italy that day: “The joy was complete, without a single cloud. Everyone felt that new heights of greatness and glory were on Italy’s horizon.” Throughout the country, from Turin to Sicily, bishops and priests ordered their church bells rung in celebration, honoring the man who had finally brought harmony between church and state.
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For most Italians, the end of the decades-long hostility came as a huge relief. There was no longer any conflict between being a loyal Italian and being a good Catholic.

The agreement, as the American chargé d’affaires in Rome told the U.S. secretary of state, was “a triumph for Mussolini in ending the controversy and in winning over the clergy to Fascism.” In his diary entry for that day, General Enrico Caviglia, hero of the First World War and confidant of the king, offered a different perspective: “These men who come to power through coup d’états need to legitimize themselves through the Vatican.” But in twenty years, he asked, what would happen when people came to resent the dictatorship that had robbed them of their freedom? “How would they judge the Vatican,” he wondered, “which had given the regime its moral support?”
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Mussolini heard only one sour note from his national network of spies. The February 13 report, based on informants in Rome, began warmly: “The news of the Conciliation produced joy and unspeakable enthusiasm in virtually all the population.… People say that the historical event represents an unparalleled success produced by the genius of the Duce … that the prestige and strength of Fascism have been increased enormously.” But there were some malcontents, “a scattering of old and bitter liberals, what remained of the Masons, and the Jews.”
For Italy’s Jews, the Lateran Accords prompted nervousness and fear. Little more than a half century earlier, the demise of the Papal States had liberated them from the pope’s ghettoes. Italian unification and the separation of church and state had been their salvation. Now they worried what the future might bring.
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PART TWO

ENEMIES
IN
COMMON

C
HAPTER
NINE

THE SAVIOR

T
ELEGRAMS POURED IN, CONGRATULATING PIUS XI ON THE HISTORIC
accord. An American journalist who met with the pope shortly after the signing found him smiling and rejuvenated, “as fresh and dynamic as the day on which he was elected.”
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On February 17 the pope’s Noble Guards held a lavish reception inside the Vatican, where Rome’s black aristocracy fraternized with high prelates of the Curia. Lights were dimmed as they gathered around a movie screen to watch a news film commemorating the signing ceremony. When the Duce’s image appeared, applause and cheers swept the room.
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The dictator had been eager to conclude the deal, for he had an important vote coming up. Since Italy now had only one political party, it needed a new way to elect parliament. Mussolini’s casual comment at the time of the last vote in 1924 turned out to be prophetic: that would be the last time he would suffer the indignity of running against an opposition. In the new system, it would be up to the Grand Council of Fascism to select the candidates for the four hundred seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Voters would get to vote yes or no on the slate as a whole. Mussolini himself referred to it not as an election but a plebiscite on the regime.
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