The Pope and Mussolini (55 page)

Meanwhile Roberto Farinacci, delighted to play his part in needling the Vatican, was helping the Duce whip up popular support for the anti-Semitic laws. He cast the new measures as rooted in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. The previous summer he had run a series of anti-Semitic articles in his newspaper, citing
La Civiltà cattolica
to justify the campaign. He titled one “A Lesson in Catholicism for Catholics.” On November 7, in a widely publicized lecture given in Milan, billed as “The Church and the Jews,” he quoted extensively from the New Testament to argue that the Catholic Church was the original source of the Fascist anti-Semitic measures. Unfortunately, he lamented, the pope had recently shown signs of straying from this core Church teaching. “What has happened,” he asked, “to make the official Church today become philo-Semitic rather than anti-Semitic? … Why,” he asked, “do Communists, Freemasons, democrats, all the avowed enemies of the Church, praise her today and offer to help her?” His answer was simple: “To use her against Fascism.”

Il Regime fascista
gave Farinacci’s speech full-page coverage, adding a three-column historical insert with the title “The Dispositions of the Councils and the Popes Against the Jews Through the Centuries.”
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Many papers picked up the story.
Il Giornale d’Italia
, which had first published the Manifesto of Racial Scientists, captured the central message in a few words: “The Honorable Farinacci concludes, amid fervid applause, by stating that it is impossible for the Catholic Fascist to renounce
that anti-Semitic conscience which the Church had formed through the millennia.”
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At its November 10 meeting, the government’s Council of Ministers approved the new racial laws. The Duce waited anxiously to see if the pope would follow through on his threats. Despite all his bluster, he was not eager to see the Vatican turn against him. The support of the Church hierarchy, from the pope down to the parish priests, had proven too valuable, and he now had greater ambitions for his regime. Losing Church backing could be costly.
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If the Duce was not more worried, it was because in all the weeks of frenetic negotiations and brinksmanship, in all the weeks of the pope’s lamentations, neither Pius XI, nor his Jesuit emissary, nor his secretary of state, nor his nuncio had ever voiced any opposition to the great bulk of the racial laws, aimed at stripping Jews of their rights as Italian citizens. The Vatican had not protested the ejection of Jewish children or Jewish teachers from the schools, nor that of Jewish professors from the universities. Neither Pacelli nor the pope’s two emissaries—the offacial nuncio and the unofficial Jesuit—had ever uttered a word to challenge the government’s decision to treat Jews as a danger to healthy Italian society. For anyone eager for a sign of the Vatican view of the new campaign of persecution, including parish priests and bishops seeking guidance on how to respond to it, the message was clear. The state was finally heeding the warnings that had been appearing in the Vatican daily newspaper and that had been regularly repeated in the Vatican-supervised
La Civiltà cattolica
and in much of the Italian Catholic press, from weekly diocesan bulletins to major daily newspapers.

The recent opening of the Vatican Secret Archives has brought to light a report that makes clear that, as far as the Vatican was concerned, the August 16 agreement Tacchi Venturi negotiated with Mussolini, promising not to criticize the racial laws in exchange for favorable treatment of Catholic Action, remained in effect. Prepared in early November in the secretary of state office, it chronicles the Vatican’s dealings with the Fascist government over the anti-Semitic campaign. Following
a description of Pius XI’s July 28 remarks denouncing “exaggerated nationalism” comes a long section titled “Mussolini-Tacchi Venturi Agreement (August 16, 1938).” The entry reads “Meanwhile the Holy See directed Father Tacchi Venturi to reach an agreement. And Father Tacchi Venturi succeeded. The August 16, 1938, agreement consists of three points” and went on to summarize each of them.
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Mussolini thought the Holy See was profiting too much from its alliance with the Fascist state to want to jeopardize it. For years the Vatican had been counting on its privileged relations with the regime to have books and magazines that it found offensive confiscated, Protestants kept from proselytizing, and Church standards of women’s modesty enforced. Mussolini was, after all, the “man from Providence” who had ensured that every Fascist youth group had a priest attached to it, that Italian taxes were used to pay for Church expenses, and that Catholic clergy were given positions of honor at all state functions.

Had Mussolini seen the confidential telegram that Cardinal Pacelli sent to the papal nuncios around the world the day after the marriage
law was approved, he would have realized his gamble had paid off. By forbidding marriage between two Catholics of different races, Pacelli informed them, the new law clearly violated the concordat. What lesson were the nuncios to take from this, and what should they be telling those who asked? Pacelli did all he could to minimize the dispute: “It should be noted that the violation of the concordat is limited to a small number of cases … A few dozen, while each year in Italy more than 300,000 religious marriages are celebrated and will continue to be celebrated, all regularly recorded.”
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The racial laws, displayed in
La Difesa della razza
,
November 20, 1938

(
photograph credit 26.1
)

The Vatican’s official letter of protest to the Italian government could not have been meeker. The pope himself decided to say nothing. After all his threats, in the end he was still unwilling to let the dispute disrupt the mutually beneficial relationship between the Church and the Fascist regime. The pope told Pacelli to prepare the letter. He was to send it not to the king, nor even to Mussolini or Ciano, but to Pignatti, the Italian ambassador.

The letter began by noting that the new marriage law conflicted with article 34 of the concordat. After observing that the Church welcomed people of any race, Pacelli again tried to minimize the Church’s objections to the regime’s new racial theory. The Church, too, he wrote, had long been concerned about race mixing. “The Church, always the loving mother,” explained the future pope, “generally advises its children against contracting marriages that present the risk of defective offspring, and in this sense is disposed, within the limits of divine right, to support the civil authorities’ efforts to achieve this very virtuous goal.” But when, despite the Church’s discouragement, two Catholics of different races insisted on being married, it could not deny them that sacrament.

Pacelli’s note adopted the Fascists’—and Nazis’—view that the Jews were a separate race. He made no effort to disabuse the government of the notion of the possible noxious physical effects of “race mixing” between Italian Catholics and Jews, and he minimized the impact the new law would have. Marriages between Catholics and Jewish converts to
Catholicism were extremely rare, he wrote, “a rarity also favored by the aversion common to both Catholics and Israelites of uniting with a person of another race.”

The secretary of state concluded his letter by expressing regret that it had become necessary for him to protest the wound inflicted on the concordat, but he ended on a positive note. He voiced the hope that the government might still make the modest changes needed to restore harmony with the Church.
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The public protest, such as it was, came in the November 15 issue of
L’Osservatore romano
, in a front-page article titled rather blandly “Regarding a New Decree-Law.” Pacelli carefully reviewed the text before publication. “He wanted to give it,” Tardini noted, “a calm, serene tone, among other reasons so as not to prejudice the possibility of future improvements in the laws and an end to the conflict.”
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The article reflected the language used in Pacelli’s formal protest letter. It concluded by expressing the hope that an agreement might still be found to deal with the “exiguous number of cases affected.”
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But a dramatic story lay behind the bland protest published in the November 15 issue of the Vatican daily. At 10:20 that morning, Monsignor Tardini, the square-faced secretary for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, got an urgent message: Pius XI wanted to see him immediately. He was to bring the material prepared for the
Osservatore romano
article with him. Fearing what lay ahead, Tardini picked up the file and rushed to the pope’s quarters. “I found the pope red-faced and excited,” he recalled. The pope held a copy of the newspaper in his hands.

Why, asked the pope, was the most important part of the article missing, the one he had reviewed and approved the previous day? The pope had wanted the article to include the text of his letters to Mussolini and the king. Most of all, he had wanted to feature the king’s reply. Victor Emmanuel’s letter, Pius XI insisted, had told Mussolini to alter the marriage law to accommodate the pope’s concerns. The pope wanted the world to know Mussolini had ignored the royal request.

Tardini tried to calm him down. Yes, he said, the pope had told
them to publish the text of the letters, but he must have forgotten that Cardinal Pacelli had convinced him the previous evening not to do so. Not only was it not customary to publish diplomatic correspondence without the consent of the other party, Pacelli had argued, but the king’s response, which the pope had put so much stock in, was actually embarrassingly vague and, in the end, totally ineffective. The effect of publishing it would have been to let the world know that the king “counted for nothing.” Pacelli had not wanted to publish the king’s reply for another reason as well: it would have called attention to the fact that Mussolini had not bothered to respond, which would put Mussolini in a bad light. When Pacelli raised this point, the pope had interrupted him: “Sovereign courtesy opposed to supreme villainy!” Undaunted, Pacelli had held his ground. Highlighting Mussolini’s failure to respond, he insisted, could lead to government reprisals.

Tardini’s attempt to remind Pius XI of that conversation did nothing to stem the pope’s anger. In an aside, Tardini observed that the pontiff—famous for his attention to detail—was lately becoming increasingly forgetful. It was because he had entirely forgotten his conversation with his secretary of state the previous evening that he was so upset by the
Osservatore romano
story. When Tardini mentioned Pacelli’s hope that Mussolini might still do something to lessen the impact of the new law, the pope again grew agitated. “But who gave you these hopes?” If there was any basis for hope, thought the pontiff, it was because the king had asked Mussolini to act, and it was exactly this request that they had excised from the article.

At this point, Cardinal Pacelli joined them, and the pope tore into him. It had made him sick, he said, to see what they had done to the story. Pacelli expressed concern for the pope’s health, for he had not been well and was not sleeping. But these attempts to distract the pope were in vain.

“Who wrote the article?” asked the pope.

“I did, Holiness,” Tardini replied.

“I don’t like it at all,” he responded.

Cardinal Pacelli, unwilling to stand by while Tardini took the blame,
interrupted: “Holiness, I reviewed the article, and I take all responsibility.”

Calming down a bit, the pope insisted they rectify the problem by publishing the king’s reply in the next issue of the Vatican newspaper. Neither Pacelli nor Tardini wanted to allow this. Tardini went to find Tacchi Venturi, who might persuade the pope to change his mind. The Jesuit rushed to the Vatican.

He had been speaking with people close to Mussolini, Tacchi Venturi told Pius, and was delighted to report that the measured tone of that day’s
Osservatore romano
article had made a very good impression. If he hoped this news would please the pope, he was mistaken. The pope interrupted: “No wonder I’m upset! But this evening I am having them publish a new press release!” Tacchi Venturi was alarmed, but his pleadings failed to change the pontiff’s mind.
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Once again Cardinal Pacelli and his colleagues, by allowing the pope to vent his anger, were able to prevail.
L’Osservatore romano
never did publish the king’s letter.
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While Italians could be forgiven if they believed that the Fascist campaign against the Jews found favor in the Vatican, at least one influential Italian prelate sounded a dissonant note. His objection was surprising: Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster, archbishop of Milan, had been one of Mussolini’s most vocal and enthusiastic supporters. Only the previous year the French ambassador to the Holy See had reported that Schuster, “known for his very Fascist sentiments,” had given a lecture to the School of Fascist Mysticism praising Mussolini for establishing a new Catholic Roman empire.
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In 1930 the archbishop had received a letter from three hundred Catholics in Milan berating him for his uncritical embrace of the Fascists, leading to a request from the government authorities to hand over the list of signatories.
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In September 1937 a police informant recounted that Schuster’s prospects for succeeding the sickly Pius XI were meeting strong resistance from cardinals outside Italy, who thought he was too closely linked to the Fascist regime.
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