The Pope and Mussolini (74 page)

27.
Curiously, the French diplomat attributed Pacelli’s lack of influence to the pope’s anger at his brother. The pope blamed Francesco Pacelli for not foreseeing the regime’s move against Catholic Action and not ensuring that the concordat had clearer language protecting it. MAEI, vol. 266, 122–24, 6 août 1931, Gentil au Ministre des Affaires Étrangères. Rumors were circulating that Pacelli would be replaced as secretary of state as soon as the Catholic Action crisis was resolved. “Pacelli to Quit Soon, the Vatican Indicates,” NYT, August 13, 1931, p. 8.

28.
The typed version of this in Mussolini’s private papers refers to “Pio IX” rather than Pio XI; perhaps it was a Freudian slip. ACS, CR, b. 68, Roma, 2 settembre 1931.

29.
“L’Accordo fra la Santa Sede e il governo italiano per l’Azione cattolica,” CC 1931 III, pp. 549–52. The second paragraph dealt with Mussolini’s objection to the existence of separate Catholic Action groups linked to particular professions: they risked competing with the Fascist professional societies, which had a monopoly on the organization of labor. Professional Catholic Action groups were to limit their scope to religious activities and give their full support to the Fascist regime’s professional organizations. The final point specified that local Catholic Action groups were not to engage in any athletic activity, as all organized sports were to come under the authority of the Fascist sports groups. This was no small matter, since sports had been one of the most important attractions in recruiting boys to local Catholic Action chapters; see De Felice 1974, p. 275.

30.
De Felice 1974, p. 263.

31.
Francesco Ferrari quoted in Malgeri 1994, p. 57. Italy’s foremost historian of Fascism came to the same conclusion. “It seems to us,” wrote Renzo De Felice (1974, pp. 270–71), “to be beyond debate that at the time the agreement represented a defeat for the Church.”

32.
MAEI, vol. 266, 153–55, Gentil au Ministre des Affaires Étrangères, 8 septembre 1931. However, on his return from his summer holiday, Fontenay reported that on September 3 the pope convened a secret meeting of eleven cardinals, summoning Gasparri back to Rome from his summer mountain retreat, and of the eleven, ten expressed support for the deal he had struck. MAEI, vol. 266, 174–80, Fontenay au Ministre des Affaires Étrangères, 29 septembre 1931. Given the pope’s forceful personality and the consequences that a cardinal would suffer for incurring the pope’s wrath, it is not clear how revealing this “vote” is.

33.
MAEI, vol. 266, 167–69, Gentil au Ministre des Affaires Étrangères, 17 septembre 1931.

34.
ASV, ANI, pos. 23, fasc. 3, ff. 46r–48r, Borgongini-Duca, handwritten memorandum, “Dopo il conflitto,” n.d.

CHAPTER 13: MUSSOLINI IS ALWAYS RIGHT

1.
De Vecchi to Mussolini, January 18, 1933, quoted in De Vecchi 1998, p. 53n60. An informant described Ciriaci as “an intelligent, able man, accommodating and compliant in the relations between the highest Catholic organization in the Kingdom over which he presides and the organs of the Fascist State.” ACS, MI, FP “Ciriaci,” informatore no. 390, “Orientamento in senso nazionale e verso il Regime da parte del Comm. Ciriaci,” 18 gennaio 1933.

2.
Moro 1981, pp. 289–91. The Fascist regime, Moro writes, encouraged this moralizing campaign, but as I will argue in this chapter, this is only partly true. In many cases the Church’s moralizing campaign pushed the regime further than it wanted to go. The campaign, calling on local Catholic Action members to report offending behavior to the local police authorities, began in the 1920s. A seventy-two-page booklet,
Per la difesa della moralità
, was already in its fourth edition in 1928, published by the Central Secretariat for Morality of national Catholic Action. Praising the Fascist government’s efforts to combat “the disastrous effects of freedom that has degenerated into license,” it offered boilerplate language for local groups to use in sending denunciations in to the local authorities. ASV, AESI, pos. 929, vol. 1, fasc. 615, f. 35.

3.
The Fascist press, taking note, reported what it called Pius XI’s “holy struggle against the immorality of female fashion.” “Il papa contro la moda femminile,”
Il Regime fascista
, 22 giugno 1926, p. 2.

4.
These controls were to be enforced through the licenses granted to beachfront establishments. ARSI, TV, b. 7, fasc. 393, “Circolare per tutti i prefetti dal Ministero dell’Interno, 18 giugno 1926; Oggetto: bagni.” On June 27, 1926, the minister sent a copy of the order to Tacchi Venturi along with a letter showing how seriously the government was taking the papal concern. In an audience with a Catholic girls’ group that month, the pope called for a national crusade against women’s immoral dress. In audiences with women’s groups, he regularly denounced current female fashions. The outside world, he warned one such group in June, did all it could to seduce them into forgetting even the most elementary sense of female dignity. “Il papa contro la moda femminile,”
Il Regime fascista
, 22 giugno 1926, p. 2. By 1928 Tacchi Venturi, following the pope’s instructions, was lobbying with government ministers to extend the government’s repressive action against girls’ dress both in school and in public. Immodest female clothing, he argued, was a great source of corruption. If the government made it a crime for a woman to wear a dress that failed to go well below her knees, it “would be of huge consolation to the Vicar of Christ.” ARSI, TV, b. 15, fasc. 1067, 26 novembre 1928. Tacchi Venturi’s note bears his annotation “presentato a S.E. il 26 novembre 1928.” S.E., or “Sua Eccellenza” (His Excellency), could refer to Mussolini but could also refer to one of the government ministers. Bressan (1980, pp. 106–8) recounts the lavish attention that the pages of
L’Osservatore romano
devoted to questions of “immorality” and to pressuring the government authorities to take more aggressive action.

5.
ACS, CR, b. 68, Tacchi Venturi a Mussolini, 3 febbraio 1929. A copy of Tacchi Venturi’s letter is found in his own archive: ARSI, TV, b. 16, fasc. 1133.

6.
In order to raise healthy women,
La Civiltà cattolica
(1928 II, pp. 367–72) explained, it was “not necessary to train them to jump four meters.” Both the American embassy in Rome and the British embassy to the Holy See felt the pope’s protest over the girls’ gymnastics event to be worth reporting to their governments. NARA, M530, reel 2, Henry Fletcher to secretary of state, n. 1691, May 11, 1928; H. G. Chilton,
Annual Report 1928
, May 9, 1929, C 3397/3397/22, in Hachey 1972, p. 142, section 55.

7.
CC 1930 I, pp. 460–61. In a late 1932 meeting, when Borgongini handed Mussolini a copy of the latest issue of
La Civiltà cattolica
, the Duce waved it away, saying he already knew what it said, adding, “it’s a journal that I always read very carefully.” ASV, ANI, pos. 23, fasc. 4, ff. 47r–48r, Borgongini a Pacelli, 22 novembre 1932.

8.
“If I were to prohibit the competition,” said Mussolini, returning to the subject at hand, “and people discovered that I had done it on orders from the Holy Father, all hell would break loose.” ASV, ANI, pos. 23, fasc. 3, ff. 28r–34r, Borgongini to Pacelli, 14 febbraio 1931. This was one papal request he rejected. On earlier papal protests over girls’ gymnastics and athletic events, see CC 1928 II, pp. 367–72; ASV, AESI, pos. 773, fasc. 317, ff. 77r–85r, 28 settembre 1929; CC 1930 I, p. 460. In fact, the Fascist regime’s policies regarding women were mixed; some were much in harmony with Church teachings, like opposition to birth control and measures to discourage women from working outside the home; others supported girls’ and women’s recreational activities that the Church disapproved of. See among other works on Fascism and women, De Grazia 1992.

9.
ASV, AESI, pos. 902, fasc. 596, ff. 49r–50r.

10.
Ibid., f. 51r, 16 settembre 1932.

11.
The next time the bishop wrote to call for state action, he wrote directly to Monsignor Giuseppe Pizzardo, one of the men closest to the pope and the Vatican official then responsible for Catholic Action: “This year is worse. From morning to evening in every street and in the little piazza many women (especially foreigners and those from northern Italy) are seen dressed in such an indecent manner that it is a nauseating spectacle.… Could not the Central Authority at the Head of the Government be made to take an interest in this?” ASV, AESI, pos. 902, fasc. 596, f. 52r, 20 agosto 1933.

12.
On February 23, 1933, Augusto Ciriaci, national president of Catholic Action, wrote directly to Mussolini to praise him for all he had done to date and to indicate the areas where greater enforcement efforts were necessary. Catholic Action would continue to collaborate with the regime, wrote Ciriaci, to contribute to the greatness of the Fatherland. The government should ban objectionable movies and plays, seize immoral magazines and books, and require women to wear modest dress. “We do not ask for new laws,” concluded Ciriaci. “We ask only that the excellent existing laws—existing in fact in large part due to Your Excellency’s wisdom and strength—be respected and applied with great vigor.” ASV, AESI pos. 929, vol. 1, fasc. 616, ff. 31r–36r. By the 1930s, the pope’s battle against revealing clothing dovetailed to some extent with Mussolini’s pro-fertility campaign, which saw the liberation of women from their traditional domestic role as a cause of declining fertility. On July 11, 1933, for example, the government told newspaper editors not to publish pictures of naked women “because they constitute an anti-demographic element.” Two years later Ciano complained about magazines publishing pictures of women in revealing bathing suits, again on grounds that they were “anti-demographic.” Tranfaglia 2005, pp. 171, 177.
   The pope’s battle for public decency also took aim at the “scandal” of public dancing, in which men’s and women’s bodies touched. In June 1933, at the pope’s request, Pacelli wrote to all the bishops in northern Italy, where the problem was thought to be particularly acute, asking them to report back on conditions in their dioceses. In response, the archbishop of Milan expressed the hope that the minister of internal affairs could be prevailed upon “to heed the voice of the Episcopate of northern Italy in this matter.” To illustrate the seriousness of the problem, he included a recent letter he had received from the bishop of Cremona, reporting that the local Fascist organizations, most notably the
dopolavoro
(“after work”) social groups, had made public dances “an organized industry.” The police, the bishop complained, took little action. One of his parish priests had tried to persuade the head of one such group to hold dances less often, but he was told that many men joined precisely because of the dances. ASV, AESI, b. 935, fasc. 628, ff. 2r–3v. The Vatican’s battle against public dancing continued through the end of Pius XI’s papacy, much to the dismay of the Fascist hierarchy. Typical was the lament of Bonificio Pignatti, who in 1935 replaced Cesare De Vecchi as Mussolini’s ambassador to the Holy See: “Unfortunately, as far as popular dances are concerned, the Holy See’s attitude, from the Pope on down, is unshakeable and there is no hope of obtaining any change.” ASMAE, APSS, b. 42, Pignatti a Starace, 10 settembre 1938.

13.
ASV, AESS, pos. 430b, fasc. 360, f. 115, 14 marzo 1934. De Vecchi’s reference to the government’s silence regarding cases of clerical immorality may have in part been inspired by his spies’ reports about cardinals said to be having relations with young boys, men, and girls. The skin on display did not have to be actual flesh to attract the pope’s attention or induce him to act. In October 1937 the pope learned that nude statues had recently been put on display in a museum, so he sent Tacchi Venturi to have something done about it. The curator, who had heard of the pope’s objection, assured Tacchi Venturi that the “four or five male statues that you deplored were immediately removed so that an abundant foliage of figs could be applied.” ASV, AESI, pos. 985, fasc. 669, ff. 4r–5r.

14.
The pope made his request through Tacchi Venturi. ACDF, S.O., 1930, 1413/30i, Tacchi Venturi a Cardinale Donato Sbarretti, S.O., 13 aprile 1933. Later that same year Tacchi Venturi presented the police head, Arturo Bocchini, with a list of foreign magazines, prepared by the central office of Catholic Action, that he wanted banned. After going through the list, Bocchini explained that he could not confiscate all the titles but promised to ban many of them. In reporting the matter to Pizzardo, Tacchi Venturi especially called his attention to the police chief’s promise: if Tacchi Venturi were to bring other titles to his attention, his office would give his censorship requests very careful consideration. “Occasions to take advantage of his offer will, unfortunately, not be lacking!” Tacchi Venturi concluded, in his enthusiasm allowing himself an uncharacteristic exclamation point. AESI, pos. 929, vol. I, fasc. 617, ff. 2r–3r. For Tacchi Venturi’s role in ensuring that articles dealing with subjects of interest to the Church in the influential
Enciclopedia italiana
met with Church approval, see Turi 2002.