Steady as a Rock:

The Papacy of Pius XI and its relationship to Europe's turbulent generation between the wars

 By

Joseph John Florencio Jr.

On February 10, 1939, only two days before he was to address the world calling for a disarmament conference, Pope Pius XI died in the papal residence at Vatican City. This single event seemed to many to foreshadow the end of serenity in Europe. Within a few short months, armies from across the globe would be locked in mortal combat. The intricate system of appeasement and standoff had finally collapsed. It seems fitting that Pius XI did not live to see it. He had been an integral part of that system for almost seventeen years. Under his reign, the face of Europe was in a state of constant flux. The Great Depression had wrecked most of the world's major economies. The Soviet Union under Stalin had consolidated its power domestically and had begun to flex its muscle abroad. Italy, in chaos and near anarchy when Pope Pius XI was elected, had risen to be a strong state and was the home of the new political doctrine of fascism. Germany, a struggling democracy when Pius took over, had become a totalitarian regime under Adolph Hitler. She was poised to begin her conquest of the rest of Europe. France was racked by political infighting. Great Britain, along with her close friend the United States, was trying to hold together some sense of isolationism and appeasement. The Great Depression had laid waste to many of the old economic ideas. Only the Throne of Saint Peter seemed stable. While many saw the papacy as simply a relic of a backward religion, the Vatican under Pius XI was a major player in world politics. Involving the Church in the politics of a troubled and turbulent time, the pope secured a permanent place for the Church, dealt with the fascists when no one else dared, and at the same time continued the fight against the spread of communism.

Establishing a permanent home for the Church was a problem that had perplexed popes since the unification of Italy. Commonly known as the "Roman Question", popes since 1870 had been confined to the territory known as the Vatican. Since the days of the Roman Empire, popes had been temporal rulers as well as spiritual ones. Over the years, the papal territory was gradually whittled away. On the eve of Italian unification, the only thing left was a narrow strip of land across the peninsula and the city of Rome. With the capture of Rome on September 20, 1870, the papacy was without a home. True, the Vatican still existed, but now was officially controlled by the Italian government. Pius set out to change that. In doing so, he had to deal with a man who was to forever alter the European landscape: Benito Mussolini, known as "il Duce".

The Duce came to power in the Fall of 1922, only a few months after Pius XI's election. A savvy politician, the Duce realized that in order to control Italy, he needed to control, or at least appear to control, the papacy. As a disciple of Napoleon, Mussolini, "... maintained the greatest outward respect for the Church, as the first of national institutions." The doctrine of fascism, however, allows no such allegiance to the Holy See. The State is supreme. The Duce, however, realized that his country was populated by Roman Catholics. If he was seen as a friend to the Church, it would be much easier to rule. They had many things in common. After all, wasn't the church anti -- communist and anti -- liberal? Mussolini, watching the spectacle at the Vatican on the day Pius was elected, commented, "Look at this multitude of every nation; how is it that the politicians who govern the nations do not realize the immense value of this international force, this universal spiritual power!"

Negotiations with the Duce's government began early in the fall of 1926. Ironically, the government made the first overtures. Mussolini felt that to unite the Italian people, he needed a state church. The logical choice was Catholicism. Over the course of two years a treaty was hammered out. Known as the "Lateran Treaty", it was signed on February 11, 1929. In its terms, the "Roman Question" was solved for good. The Church got her independent state, although it only amounted to about one hundred acres. Italy officially recognized the Roman Catholic church as the official state religion. Anti -- clerical laws which had been passed by the Italian parliament since 1870 were declared null and void. The pope also received a cash settlement for the lands which had been confiscated over the years. Mussolini got what he wanted as well. He had his national church, and with it the support of the pope. It looked for all the world as though the papacy had irrevocably linked itself with a fascist regime. Dealings with the Duce, however, were not always smooth. Within two years a crisis had developed over the role of the church in education. It was to be the first sign of trouble with the fascists.

Since the early middle ages, the church had been responsible for the education of the youth in Italy, as was the case in much of Europe. Although the French Revolution and reforms across the continent had taken much of that power away from the bishops and monks, in Italy the Church was still held ultimately responsible. The Duce felt that he needed to change that relationship. In the spring of 1931, Mussolini's "black shirts" began to harass and beat up members of the Italian Catholic Action, a youth group devoted to the teachings of the church.

By the early summer, the pope felt strongly enough to issue an encyclical on the subject. In it, he condemned the violence. He then went on to state that although the church was grateful to the fascist regime for spreading the, "... welfare of religion ...", the recent attacks on Catholic youth groups led the Holy Father, "... to doubt whether the former benevolences and favours were indeed actuated by a sincere love and zeal for religion, or whether they were not rather due to pure calculation and to an ultimate goal of domination." The encyclical then went on to state that it was not possible for the church to only be responsible for religious education, leaving the rest to the state. Although the encyclical was suppressed in Italy, it reached Paris. Publishers there sent it out to the rest of the world. Mussolini was outraged, but realized that he had overstepped his bounds. Italian fascism wasn't strong enough to take on the Vatican just yet. In September of 1931, an uneasy peace was reached. The violence stopped. For a while, it seemed as if the Duce's only real friend sat on Saint Peter's throne. Winds of change, however, were blowing across the German lands. Within two years, a new fascist banner would be raised. The papacy had a new tyrant to deal with, and this one was much more violent and cynical that the Duce could ever be.

Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany in March of 1933. Almost immediately, he and his Nazi cronies set about totally reforming German society. Whereas Germany had been one of the most organized Catholic countries in 1922, when Pius XI came to the throne, the Nazi's goal was to rebuild Germany in their image of "volkish" nationalism. The problem for Pius was the fact that the church had taken a position against the spread of communist, and it appeared from the rhetoric coming out of Berlin that the Third Reich stood between Russian Bolshevism and the rest of Europe.

Shortly after Hitler came to power the two powers agreed to sit down and hammer out a compromise. The resulting concordat reaffirmed the legal position of the Church in Germany. Freedom of religious teaching in Catholic schools was also recognized. The Reich government received the support of the pope and the disbanding of the Catholic Center Party. Although it seemed to many that the papacy was selling her German flock out to the Nazis, Pius hoped for the best. Unfortunately, it was not long before Hitler proved to be untrustworthy.

Before the ink dried on the concordat, Gestapo troops and Nazi regulars began to round up suspected "traitors". Under the pretext of "fostering unity", Catholic presses were shut down, as were its unions. Catholic youths were required to join Hitler's growing military machine. When the Holy Father and his representatives voiced any displeasure, they were given a deaf ear. Bishops began to be denied access to their flocks and the right to travel to Rome. Finally, the pope decided to speak out. On March 14, 1937, an encyclical was issued regarding the status of the Church and her relations with the German Reich.

The document was smuggled into Germany and read on Easter Sunday in every Catholic church, much to the dismay of the vaunted Gestapo. In the encyclical, the pope calls the German leaders,

Pius then goes on to equate Nazi volkish fascism with a false god and to criticize any suggestion of racism and racial hatred. The encyclical was well received, at least by the Catholics. The German government, however, was not happy. Mussolini was caught between two opposing forces. While his German friends looked to the Duce to help control his "state church", the Vatican appealed to him to help protect her people. Mussolini did nothing. In the end, the crisis passed. They all had a common enemy, and she was beginning to make her presence felt out of the East. The Russian bear was beginning to stretch after a self imposed hibernation from world affairs. When she did, the pope had a stern answer.

Pius considered Bolshevik communism to be the evil which plagued the twentieth century. Many of the decisions regarding world affairs were with one eye to the East. When the pope dealt with the fascists, it was with the knowledge that fascism was a weapon of communism. While fascism glorified the state, communism glorified no one. Everyone was equal.

Much of what Pius felt must be attributed to his time in Poland immediately after the Great War. Called Monsignor Ratti at that time, he saw the advance of the Bolsheviks to the very outskirts of Warsaw, only to be driven back. After his election, Pius XI developed an obsession with communism and stopping it. In his most famous encyclical, Pius dealt with the subject. It was issued on March 19, 1937, (only a few days after the attack on German Nazism) and titled, "On Atheistic Communism". In it, the pope explains what he sees as wrong with the communists. First, it seeks to abolish religion and is therefore ungodly. In a seething attack, the pope goes on to say,

Class structure, according to the encyclical, is the basis for an ordered and structured society. The real crime, in Pius' eyes, wass that much of the communist doctrine had been spoon - fed to the masses in a way so that it hid the truth in a series of half truths. Only by spreading the Gospel can God triumph. Much of Pius's life and decisions were focused on the goal of eradicating communism. When he turned towards the right and tried to work with the new fascist regimes of Europe, it was in the hope of someday stamping out the international brotherhood and replacing it with Catholic unity. The encyclical itself calls for states around the world to step in and stop the "anti-God" campaign.

Pius XI had the misfortune to back two regimes which in later years came to be associated with brutality and dictatorships in Italy and Spain. By dealing with the Nazi government in Germany, he was seen as a pope who sold out the followers to a tyrannical madman. What many fail to realize, however, is that the Catholic Church during the interwar years was caught in a difficult position. The Holy See was often at odds with the very governments that it tried to work with. Much of the criticism comes only in the wake of World War II, when Germany and Italy attempted to wage war on much of humanity, therefore abandoning the principles of the treaties which had been signed by the Church. During the last two years of his reign, Pius XI tried in vain to stop the coming war. He was, above all, a man of peace. Europe as a whole, however, simply was not ready to support that type of doctrine. The major European powers looked to the policies of appeasement in the blind hope of preventing war. It was not to be. On September 1, 1939, the "interwar" years ended when the armies of the Third Reich invaded Poland. Six years later, much of the world once again stood in ashes and rubble. Through it all, however, the Vatican remained, as it always had. Popes come and go, but perhaps Pope Pius' lasting legacy is the establishment of Vatican City. Inevitably, the Church itself now stands as Pius did, steady as a rock.