The Pope and Mussolini (69 page)

2.
ACS, MI, DAGR, b. 1320, informatore n. 204, Roma, 28 ottobre 1928.

3.
Maryks 2012, p. 308.

4.
Alongside the threat of what he termed “internal disintegration.”

5.
ARSI, TV, b. 7, fasc. 430a, no date.

6.
The booklet was Filippo Maria Tinti,
Sionismo e Cattolicismo
(Bari, 1926). ASMAE, Gab., b. 32, Tacchi Venturi a Marchese Giacomo Balucci, capo di gabinetto, 6 settembre 1926. Balucci replied that Mussolini appreciated receiving it. ASMAE, Gab., b. 32. Tacchi Venturi saw a link between the danger posed by the Jews and their various co-conspirators and the difficulty that the Church was having in enforcing its norms of morality. In a memo to Gasparri on December 1, he recommended ways of dealing with what he called the threat posed by the “antireligious” campaign in Italy. Every Catholic, he told Gasparri, rejoiced in seeing the Fascist government work ever harder in the interests of the Catholic Church, as it tied church and state together ever more firmly. But Mussolini’s efforts were encountering resistance in the provinces, where officials often ignored his orders. Standing in the way of the renaissance of religious sentiment, the Jesuit advised, were “the Jews, the Protestants, the Masons and the Bolsheviks, all constantly and powerfully allied against religion, against the Church, and against the National Government itself.” Here again Tacchi Venturi identified the conspiracy as aimed not at the Vatican alone but at Mussolini and the Fascist government as well. Aware of Mussolini’s sensitivity about Britain’s power, he added that the Jews and their allies, in so mercilessly seeking to weaken the Catholic Church, were working on behalf of “Anglo-Saxon hegemony.” This, he warned, “is putting in place a vast plan of conquest of Italy that is today religious, but tomorrow political.” ARSI, TV, b. 8, fasc. 446, Tacchi Venturi a Gasparri, 1 dicembre 1926, lettera con allegati.

7.
The informant said he couldn’t vouch firsthand for the accuracy of the verse, or even if the whole story was made up, but it was making the rounds. In fact, other versions of the story cropped up elsewhere, each with a slightly different wording of the verse. ACS, MI, DAGRA, b. 1320, 1927.

8.
“Stabs Jesuit Agent in Vatican Issue,” NYT, February 29, 1928.

9.
“Anti-Mussolini Plot Seen in Rome Stabbing,” WP, March 1, 1928, p. 3.

10.
“Father Tacchi Venturi,” one police informant’s report read, “is convinced that the aggression against him was related to the listing of his name some months ago right after that of the Duce in a list of people to eliminate. It is said that the list was compiled in France among circles composed of Freemasons and Italian exiles. They blame him, as a member of the Jesuit order, for having suggested to the Duce that he take repressive measures against the masonry and for this they had presumably ordered his death.” ACS, MI, DAGR, b. 1320, informatore, Roma, n.d.

11.
The police chief also found it curious that after the police had expressed disbelief at finding the Jesuit’s name second on the list of targets, Tacchi Venturi’s secret report offered an explanation: Salvemini told the informant that “the Jesuit Order is completely fascist and they are the great pillar on which fascism rests.”

12.
“The document,” wrote the police chief, “was clearly a fantastic and crude tissue of facts and news that reveals paradoxically an ignorance of the most basic political circumstances.” ACS, MI, DAGR, b. 59, pp. 15–16. Salvemini would later make his way to the United States, where in 1934 he would be given a chair at Harvard.

13.
Two years earlier, when Violet Gibson had tried to assassinate Mussolini, the man had attempted to convince the police that the Irish woman was part of a plot that he knew all about. He had been in jail in Florence at the time, serving time for fraud, and the police undoubtedly suspected him of inventing the story to win his release. But no lead could be ignored in a case like this. Interviewed by police, he claimed that the assassination attempt was plotted by a previously unknown Irish women’s secret political society, in league with Italian anti-Fascist exiles in France. The police were not impressed. He got into trouble again trying to sell a secret weapon to the French military. It would, he claimed, stop the engines of enemy airplanes in midflight. It didn’t.

14.
ACS, MI, DAGR, b. 1320, Roma, 20 marzo 1928.

15.
Ibid., Roma, dal direttore, Capo Divisione Polizia Politica, 30 marzo 1928, p. 29.

16.
The police chief also observed that, in trying to prevent the police from identifying his attacker, Tacchi Venturi had given a description of him very different from that provided by the doorman. The Jesuit had attributed the discrepancy to the fact that the doorman was becoming old and demented. But in the police chief’s view, the man was “not that poor muddle-headed scatterbrain that Father Tacchi would have us believe.” ACS, MI, DAGR, b. 1320, informatore, n.d.

17.
“Naturally,” the police chief wrote in his final report, he had refused “to credit other absurd, not to say outrageous voices given the respectability of the Man, namely, of immoral relations between the victim and the aggressor.” ACS, MI, DAGR, b. 59, p. 13.

18.
Whether Tacchi Venturi had actually had an affair or a sexual liaison, or had sexually abused a boy or a young man, remains in the realm of speculation. The evidence, while tantalizing, is far from conclusive. Several years later a report from a regular police informant related that Tacchi Venturi “has great affection for a young man who is not his relative. It may be his young secretary … I had it confirmed that this is his only true love.” ACS, MI, DAGR, b. 1320, informatore n. 590 (=Eduardo Drago), Roma, maggio 1936. For the identification of police informants by their coded number, I rely on Canali 2004a.

19.
ACS, CR, b. 68, 4 maggio 1928.

20.
In the usage at the time,
pederast
referred to a man having sexual relations either with boys or with young men.

21.
Both men thought they were due a cardinal’s hat, and according to Mussolini’s “noted Vatican informer,” both were using their position at the pope’s side to poison him against Cardinal Gasparri, whom they blamed for turning the pope against them. If the pope was gradually excluding his old secretary of state from the most important decisions he was making, it was in part due to the influence that Samper and Caccia enjoyed. ACS, MCPG, b. 155, noto informatore vaticano, 1926. The note was most likely written in late June, as it references Samper’s disappointment at not being in the most recent list of newly appointed cardinals, and the consistory took place on June 21, 1926.

22.
ACS, MCPG, b. 157, noto informatore vaticano, 23 luglio 1928. Indeed, Samper was not even Italian but Colombian. The informant had previously referred to the secret papal inquiry in his reports of 22 and 30 giugno. Samper’s mysterious suspension is mentioned in
The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, Biographical Dictionary (1902–2012)
, online at
http://www2.fiu.edu/~mirandas/bios-s.htm
. In his memoir of his years as unofficial French emissary to the Vatican, in 1914–18, Charles Loiseau (1960, p. 102) recalls Samper, then Benedict XV’s majordomo, fondly as “a young, wealthy prelate of handsome presence who then enjoyed the intimate favor of Benedict XV.” He learned only much later that Samper “had fallen into disgrace and that they had driven him from the Vatican for rather delicate reasons.… Whatever they might have been,” Loiseau added, “I retain a good memory of him.” The French ambassador, Fontenay, also discussed the mysterious dismissal in a report to Paris on December 17, 1928, cited in Chiron 2006, p. 152n57.

23.
The “noted Vatican informer” also reported that Caccia employed the pope’s negotiator, Francesco Pacelli, to defend him. ACS, MCPG, b. 157, noto informatore vaticano, 30 giugno 1928.

24.
Canali 2004a, p. 288.

25.
De Felice (1968, p. 464) makes this point, noting that in this way Bocchini contrasted with his Nazi counterparts, Heydrich and Himmler, who were sadistic. Both of them, however, thought highly of Bocchini and sought his technical advice. According to the American journalist Thomas Morgan, who knew him, Bocchini was unhappy about Mussolini’s increasing embrace of the Nazis, and when he died in November 1940, still chief of police and in excellent health until then, suspicions of foul play fell on the Germans. Morgan 1941, p. 236.

26.
De Felice 1968, p. 465.

27.
Canali 2004a, pp. 283–84.

28.
Ibid., p. 766n840. Much of the information Pucci sent in got reported through Pupeschi, who appears as informant no. 35 in the secret reports. In 1929 Pupeschi would report that when a cardinal pleaded with the pope to send Pucci away from the Vatican, the pope replied that he was too valuable in handling the press but would not be given any confidential missions—“and we,” the pope added, “will know how to keep an eye on him.” ACS, MI, FP “Cerretti,” informatore n. 35 (=Bice Pupeschi), Roma, 25 ottobre 1929.

29.
The large, good-looking prelate, whose dignity was magnified by his colorful monsignor robes and his mellifluous voice, was also well known to the foreign correspondents covering the Vatican, offering them information for a price as well, and entertaining them with an inexhaustible stock of stories. See Alvarez 2002, pp. 156–57; Canali 2004a, p. 195; Franzinelli 2000, pp. 259–60, 701–3. Morgan (1944, pp. 31–36) offers a lengthy portrait of a good-natured and popular Pucci, continually playing one U.S. news organization against another in an effort to jack up his earnings.

30.
Copious grains of salt are required in interpreting these fascinating, newsy, gossipy, and unreliable reports, for its author had many axes to grind. As I mentioned, the identity of the “noted Vatican informer” remains a mystery. There has been some speculation that he was Monsignor Enrico Pucci himself, the Vatican’s unofficial press agent, who had the run of the Vatican and was friendly with many of the Vatican’s highest officials. But I have my doubts. The first report identified as coming from him predates Bocchini’s appointment to police chief, and until 1934 the informer provided a huge stream of often-lengthy reports on the highest levels of the Vatican. He sometimes describes Pucci in ways that make it seem odd that he would be referring to himself; e.g., ACS, MCPG, b. 155, 20 marzo 1926, and ibid., ca. aprile 1926, reporting on the Knights of Columbus. The “noted Vatican informer” constantly sought to discredit Cardinal Gasparri. In an April 1927 report, he colorfully quotes Gasparri as railing against Mussolini, continually saying he “should go take a shit.” ACS, MCPG, b. 156, 12 aprile 1927. But Gasparri in his memoirs expresses fondness for Pucci, so it seems odd that Pucci would have been so intent on undermining Mussolini’s view of him.

31.
ACS, MCPG, b. 157, noto informatore vaticano, 22 e 30 giugno 1928. To get Caccia away until the scandal died down, the pope sent him as a papal representative to the Eucharistic Congress in Australia. But following the monsignor’s return, months later, the rumors began again; ACS, MI, PS, Polizia Politica, b. 210, informatore n. 35, Roma, 27 settembre 1929. A handwritten note on this report records that a copy was sent to Dino Grandi, then minister of foreign affairs.

CHAPTER 8: THE PACT

1.
I tell the story of the popes’ efforts to retake Rome in Kertzer 2004. After World War I, Benedict XV tried to reach an agreement with the Italian government but had no luck. The Italian prime minister involved in the Paris negotiations wrote an account; see Orlando 1937, pp. 140–46. So did the papal representative; ibid., pp. 177–86. Victor Emmanuel III’s negative reaction to the agreement is recorded in Margiotta 1966, pp. 56–58.

2.
When newspaper stories about the commission later appeared, the pope had
L’Osservatore romano
, the Vatican newspaper, claim that “the Ecclesiastical Authority has had nothing to do either with the naming or choice of the three ecclesiastical legal consultants, or with the work of the Commission.” A copy of a memo signed by Mussolini, addressed to his minister of justice, tells the story: “In relation to previous agreements,” Mussolini begins, “I inform your Excellency that the Holy See has designated the following people to take part in the Commission for the Reform of Ecclesiastical Legislation.” The names and positions of two high Vatican officials and a professor of law at the Roman Pontifical Seminary followed: “The same Holy See has provided me with the enclosed memo in which are noted the main points that it would like to see incorporated in the reform.” Mussolini appended a memo that Tacchi Venturi had given him on behalf of the pope listing six measures that the pope wanted to see adopted. ASV, AESI, pos. 628, fasc. 56, ff. 91r–93r, 3 agosto 1924. De Felice (1995, pp. 106–10) wrote an account of these events before the documents in the Vatican archives became available; it largely agrees with what we now know. See also Margiotta 1966, pp. 131–33.