The Pope and Mussolini (30 page)

Mussolini increasingly found his strength in the adulation of the crowds. A ceremony held in Rome three months after Arnaldo’s death was one of scores of such rituals that fed his ever-growing sense that he was a man of destiny who would lead Italy to new greatness. It was the thirteenth anniversary of the founding of the Fascist movement. An unending stream of Blackshirts, from children to old men, marched in
formation toward Piazza Venezia. A squad of airplanes flew overhead, as scores of musical bands played the Fascist hymns. Fascist cries of “alalà!” pierced the air. By six
P.M.
the planes were gone, but tens of thousands of delirious Fascists still filled the immense piazza, waving their banners. Veterans of the Great War, veterans of the March on Rome, members of Fascist youth groups, workers, university students, people of all ages and occupations pressed toward the balcony from which Mussolini would speak. As the joyous crowd glimpsed the dictator at his window, his right arm raised in Roman salute, the bands struck up the Fascist anthem, “
Giovinezza
,” and thousands of voices sang together in holy communion.

“Du-ce! Du-ce!” they chanted. In its glowing description,
Il Popolo d’Italia
, the Mussolinis’ newspaper, remarked that the demonstration was like “an immense religious rite of faith.” When the call of “attention” rang out, the thunderous noise died down, and an eerie, expectant silence fell over the piazza. Mussolini, wearing his Fascist militia uniform, his head uncovered, addressed the crowd. He ended, as he often did, with his trademark refrain, asking: “For whom is Italy?” “For us!” tens of thousands of voices responded together. After he left, two, three times the crowd got him to return to the balcony, his hand raised in Roman salute offering a kind of benediction. Finally, emotionally spent but glowing with energy and pride, the Fascists, old and young, made their way home. Italians throughout the country would endlessly repeat the rite in the coming months and years.
⁴³

The Catholic clergy played a crucial role in lending the Duce cult a religious flavor, promoting a heady mix of Fascist and Catholic ritual. Priests were an integral part of the Fascist youth organizations; twenty-five hundred chaplains ministered to over four million members. Appointed to oversee the chaplains’ work was a bishop devoted entirely to Fascist youth. They helped ensure that Italians of the future would see their allegiance to the Catholic Church and their allegiance to Mussolini and Fascism as two sides of the same coin.
⁴⁴

In October 1933, in one of many such instances, 152 priests serving
as chaplains to the Fascist militia gathered at Palazzo Venezia. As their hero looked on, they sang a musical tribute they had prepared for him, titled “Acclamation to the Duce.”

Hail to You indomitable Duce
Savior of our land
In peace and in war
We are ready to follow Your signals
Inspiration and force, guide and light
To the new heroes of Italy, you are the Leader
Duce to us, Duce to us
!
⁴⁵

Major Fascist rituals typically began with a morning mass, celebrated by a priest (in a small town) or by a bishop (in a city). A parade and rally followed, and a message from the Duce was read. Churches and cathedrals were important props in these rites, adding to their emotional power. For the 1933 anniversary of the March on Rome, the stark image of Mussolini’s face was projected at night halfway up Milan’s Duomo; the spectral visage towered over the crowd. “The Pope,” remarked European historian Piers Brendon, “gave the impression that the Catholic Church in Italy was the Fascist party at prayer; and he implied that the citizen, like the worshipper, might best do his duty on his knees.”
⁴⁶

The few priests who dared say anything remotely critical of the Fascist regime were reported by local Fascists to the authorities. Many such complaints were dealt with at the local level, as bishops disciplined their wayward priests. But when a bishop balked, the matter was taken to Rome. Among the duties of Italy’s ambassador to the Holy See was getting the Vatican to act when such reports came in. In a typical case, in November 1932, the Vatican received a complaint about a parish priest in the diocese of Cremona. The local bishop was told to investigate. When he tried to minimize the offense, Monsignor Pizzardo informed him that his response was inadequate. The bishop was to
have the priest use the next possible opportunity “to give a speech in the opposite sense from the one he gave on November 4 that did not give a good impression.”
⁴⁷

A few months later the pope acted on complaints that Giovanni Montini, the chaplain of the Catholic Action university organization, was anti-Fascist: he dismissed him from his position. Upset, Montini, whose father had been a Popular Party deputy in parliament, directed his anger not at the pontiff but at Pizzardo, who had conveyed the pope’s decision. Pizzardo, he complained, had fired him without “a word of comfort, of esteem, of praise.” A few years later the pope, by then less enamored of Mussolini, would rehabilitate Montini. The detour would do nothing to damage Montini’s career, for three decades later he would ascend St. Peter’s throne, taking the name Pope Paul VI.
⁴⁸

In 1932 Mussolini announced that the handshake—a “bourgeois” custom—was to be replaced by the more virile Roman salute. He not only required university professors to take a Fascist oath of allegiance but insisted they wear black shirts on graduation days. By the end of 1934, all elementary school teachers had to wear a black shirt and party uniform whenever they were in school.
⁴⁹

Earlier that year another plebiscite was held. Turin’s diocesan weekly expressed the same sentiment that Catholics throughout the country were hearing from their priests and bishops: “Catholics of Turin! To the urns to give your consensus to the government of Benito Mussolini.… Anti-Fascism is finished.”
⁵⁰
It was the last election that Mussolini would bother holding. Ten million Italians voted yes, only fifteen thousand no.
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C
HAPTER
FOURTEEN

THE PROTESTANT ENEMY AND THE JEWS

O
N THE MORNING OF FEBRUARY 11, 1932, THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY
of the Lateran Accords, a caravan of four black limousines made its way to the Vatican, with festively dressed carabinieri on horseback riding among them. Saluted at their entry into Vatican City by Swiss Guards, the cars entered the San Damaso Courtyard. There they were met by Papal Gendarmes, who carried a papal flag aloft, and a contingent of the Palatine Guard of Honor, in their neck ruffs, with small curved swords in gleaming halberds strapped to their sides. Mussolini emerged, dressed in his swallowtailed diplomatic uniform. Lavish gold designs covered his sleeves, and a wide gold stripe ran down the sides of his trousers. He carried his plumed hat in one hand, a ceremonial sword strapped to his waist.
¹

The press had been speculating about the visit for months. The previous September, three days after Mussolini and Tacchi Venturi signed their agreement ending the battle over Catholic Action, a front-page
New York Times
headline announced “Mussolini Will Visit the
Pope This Week.”
²
Thereafter a steady stream of newspaper stories and diplomats’ dispatches reported that the Duce’s long-awaited papal visit was soon to take place, but each predicted date passed without any meeting.
³
Finally Mussolini fixed the visit for February.
⁴

In preparation, Pius XI awarded the dictator a special papal honor. On a January morning, Borgongini arrived at Palazzo Venezia for the presentation. A beaming Duce, formally dressed in morning coat, proudly welcomed him. The nuncio presented him with a papal brief. Mussolini studied the scroll carefully. “I am one of the few Italians who can read and understand Latin!” he boasted implausibly. The nuncio then gave the dictator the pope’s gift, the Collar of the Golden Militia, a beautiful golden collar with a gold cross. The former anticlerical rabble-rouser was now a knight of the papal court.
⁵

On the day of the historic meeting with the pope, Mussolini arrived with the papal cross hanging over his chest. He was a dozen minutes early, and embarrassingly, Monsignor Pizzardo, charged with greeting him, was nowhere to be seen. The papal guards had no idea what to do other than to remain at attention and salute. Alongside the door, given the honor of being among the first to see the Duce’s arrival, stood the pope’s elderly sister. She was certainly not going to say anything. At last Pizzardo scurried down the stairs, running late because the pope had kept him in his library giving last-minute instructions. Accompanied by various gendarmes, Swiss Guards, and papal chamberlains, they climbed the stairs.

Mussolini made his way up the broad winding staircase toward the Clementine Hall. The top two-thirds of the towering walls of the ornate hall and all of its ceiling were covered in Renaissance frescoes. On one wall, a frieze depicted the cardinal virtues, while a frieze on the facing wall depicted the theological virtues. Alberti’s fresco
The Apotheosis of St. Clement
adorned the ceiling. Colorful mosaics covered the lower portion of the walls and the whole floor of the large rectangular room. The twenty people who had been invited to witness the Duce’s historic arrival there seemed lost amid its grandeur.

Mussolini greeted by Monsignor Pizzardo on his arrival at the Vatican to meet with the pope, February 11, 1932

(
photograph credit 14.1
)

But when Monsignor Caccia Dominioni, master of ceremonies and in charge of accompanying Mussolini to the pope’s library, entered the hall to greet the Duce, he was taken aback. There amid the formally dressed men stood a woman, a foreign journalist. This was impossible. No woman was allowed to be present for such an occasion. And Mussolini was already halfway up the stairs.

“Signorina,” Caccia pleaded, “I beg you to leave immediately.”

The blond woman’s face reddened with embarrassment, but she stood her ground. “I have a perfect right to be here, Monsignor,” she replied.

“Rights here are decided by me,” he responded. “You have no right to be here. I am acting under the orders of the Holy Father.”

The woman waved her invitation in reproach. Caccia, hearing Mussolini’s party ascend the stairs, grew frantic. “Signorina, I do not want to adopt anything but kind words.” He glanced at a couple of the imposing gendarmes standing nearby. “But if you do not leave immediately you will force me to act.”

Angry and humiliated, the woman relented, and a prelate guided her to a back exit. Just then Mussolini entered, and Caccia greeted him effusively. The Swiss Guards presented their arms, their swords aloft.

Caccia led Mussolini through a series of grand halls, each with a contingent of papal troops, Noble Guards, and high Church officials. They reached the Small Throne Room, and from there the Duce entered the pope’s library, where Pius awaited him.
⁶
As had been previously arranged at the Duce’s insistence, Mussolini neither bowed nor kissed the pope’s ring, obeisances that were customarily expected of a Catholic head of government. The pope would allow no photograph to be taken, but an artist for a popular newsweekly captured the scene for the public. It showed the pope, wearing his white robe, white papal cap, and red shoes, sitting in one of his richly upholstered red armchairs in front of his desk facing Mussolini, who sat wearing his embroidered
diplomatic jacket and yellow-striped pants, the pope’s cross around his neck.
⁷