Not many months had gone by since the complete subjugation of the first Fascist victim (late spring, 1936), when a second battle flared up, this time in Europe. In the summer of 1936 the Spanish Civil War was let loose on the Iberian Penisula (July 16, 1936).

We have already examined the part which Mussolini played in preparation for the Civil War, and the help he gave Franco. The Vatican mobilized the Spanish Hierarchy and the Italian as well---the first to help Franco, the second to increase support of Mussolini, who was helping in the war against the Reds. We shall limit ourselves to quoting only a typical example of the enthusiasm of the Catholic Church for Mussolini at this period.

At the beginning of 1938, 60 archbishops and bishops and 2,000 priests, after having assisted at a ceremony connected with agriculture, asked to be received by Mussolini. Preceded by flags carried by priests, they went not only before the cenotaph of the unknown soldier, but also to render homage to the monument erected to those killed in the Fascist Revolution. Before being received by the Duce the bishops and archbishops led a procession, and when at last they were before him, they burst into frantic acclamation. The Archbishop of Udine read an address in which, amongst other things, he declared: "...Duce, may God protect you! We will all pray to Him, so that He will help you to win all the battles which you so wisely and energetically are directing for the prosperity, the greatness, and the glory of Christian Rome, Centre of Christianity---of this Rome which is the Capital of Imperial Rome."

After this a priest read an Order of the Day, approved beforehand by the whole assembly, repeating the will of the archbishops, bishops, and priests to co-operate with the Fascist regime, "for the wheat campaign as well as for the conquest of the Empire...so that Italy should be spiritually, economically, and militarily prepared to defend its peace against the enemies of her Imperial greatness." The clergy of Italy are invoking on your person, on your work as a creator of the Empire, and of the Fascist regime, the blessing of the Lord. Duce, the priests of Christ give honor to you and swear their allegiance to you."

The archbishops, bishops, and priests then began to repeat, "Duce, Duce, Duce." When at last Mussolini was allowed to speak, he asserted that the collaboration between the Catholic Church and Fascism had borne great fruits for all. He reminded them, with the deepest gratitude, of "the efficient co-operation given by all the clergy during the war against the Abyssinians...remembering with particular sympathy the example of patriotism shown by the Italian bishops, who brought their gold to the local offices of the Fascist Party, while the parish priests were preaching to the Italians to resist and fight." When Mussolini ended, the archbishops, and bishops, after having repeatedly invoked the blessing of Divine Providence upon Mussolini, began enthusiastically to acclaim him and again chant "Duce, Duce, Duce" (Corriere della Sera, January 10, 1938).

In the spring of the following year Pius XI died. Cardinal Pacelli was elected Pope, and assumed the name of Pius XII (March 12, 1939).

The change of the Catholic Church's supreme ruler did not affect in the least the policy of the Vatican towards Fascism. This for the very reason that the new Pope had been directing the Vatican's foreign policy for the preceding ten years and was mainly responsible for helping Hitler to assume power, as we shall see presently. He had always been in agreement with Pius XI, the only difference between the two being that Pius XI was more diplomatically-minded than his predecessor.

The commencement of the new Pope's reign coincided with Mussolini's decree for the expulsion of Jews (about 69,000) from Italy. The new Pope kept his silence, and when, a few weeks later, Fascist Italy invaded Albania, the Pope protested, not because a country had been wantonly attacked, but because the aggression had been carried out on Good Friday.

A fortnight after Easter, 1939, the Pope received a letter so secret that only his Secretary of State was allowed to see its contents (according to his biographer, Rankin). There followed "feverish activity" with the representatives of various Powers, especially Poland, France, and Germany. Not many days later Hitler gave the first mortal blow which was to disintegrate Czechoslovakia. The storm of war was approaching rapidly, and finally, on September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and two days later France and Great Britain declared war.

The Pope made various proposals for peace, without success; and when, after Poland was crushed and shared between Germany and Russia, an uneasy lull descended upon Europe, Pius XII went on courting Fascist Italy. He ended that fateful year by taking the unprecedented step of receiving the King and Queen of Italy at an official reception at the Vatican, and shortly afterwards himself driving to the Quirinal.

There were several reasons why the Pope wanted to keep Fascist Italy out of the war: so that hostilities would not be extended; in order not to complicate the situation with the Western Powers while there existed a chance of peace; so that Italy might help later on, when the war was brought against Soviet Russia; and, last but not least, because if Fascism had collapsed, through either military defeat or internal revolution, the Catholic Church would have found itself in an unenviable plight.

Immediately Germany attacked Poland, the Vatican notified the Italian Government of its gratification that Italy was neutral. Count Ciano told Fr. Tacchi Venturi---a Jesuit go-between for the Vatican and Mussolini---that it was Italy's intention to remain outside the war; and on February 29 he told the Papal Nuncio to Italy: "I have the impression that a great offensive is about to break out...Germany will make the maximum effort to bring us into the war." (The Holy See's Work for Peace in Italy, issued by the Vatican, June 1945).

On April 24, the Pope, in an autograph letter to Mussolini, asked that Italy might be spared war.

Meanwhile Hitler was preparing to attack in the West, and sent Ribbentrop to appease the Vatican about the Nazi-Soviet Pact. And when Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium, the Pope for the first time sent a mild protest in the form of letters to the Belgium King and Dutch Queen, deprecating the fact that their countries had been invaded "against their will."

Upon this Hitler commanded Mussolini to keep Pius XII silent. The Duce, threatening reprisals and invoking article 24 of the Lateran Treaty, imposed silence on the Vatican, which could not bear the thought of the alliance between Germany and Russia. The Osservatore Romano ceased to publish political views.

The first notification that Italy had decided to enter the war was made on May 22 to Archbishop Borgongini-Duca by the Fascist Under-Secretary of State, and repeated by Ciano on May 28. A few weeks later, when France lay prostrate, Mussolini brought Italy into the war (June 10, 1940).

Once the country had joined in the conflict, the Catholic Church again aligned itself on the side of Fascism. Only nine days after the declaration of war the Pope, after having received a few hundred newly wed Italian couples, told them that it was their "duty to pray for their country, which, rendered fertile by the sweat and blood of their forefathers, waited that her sons should serve her faithfully."

On September 4, 1940, the Pope addressed 5,000 members of Catholic Action and exhorted them to be ready to give their own lives for their country.

When Mussolini attacked Greece, the Pope not only failed to condemn the invasion, but did not even mention it. Two days later, however, he granted audience to 200 Italian officers in uniform "who represented the Italian Army," and declared that it was most gratifying for him to bless men "who serve the beloved Fatherland with fealty and love." The following February the Pope received 50 German pilots and 200 Italian soldiers, all in uniform, and stated that he was "happy to receive and bless them."

In May 1941 he received the Duke of Spoleto, the day before the latter was to be proclaimed King of Croatia; and the day after the ceremony he received a Croat delegation led by Ante-Pavelich, the Fascist Dictator of Croatia, who had been condemned to death in France for having taken part in the assassination of the King of Yugoslavia.

On August 13, 1941, Pius XII received 3,000 Catholics and 600 Italian soldiers, to whom he said: "To-day there is great heroism in the battlefields, in the air, and on the sea. Although the war is horrible, yet one cannot deny that it shows the greatness of many heroic souls who sacrifice their lives to follow the duties imposed upon them by the Christian conscience" (see Il Vatican e il Fascismo, by G. Salvemini).

The Pope had to be cautious in his encouragement of Fascist soldiers, knowing he was watched by millions of Catholics in the Allied countries. but what the Pope himself could not say, the Catholic Church did. Its support and enthusiasm for the war surpassed even that shown during the Abyssinian campaign. The Church was one with Fascism, inciting the Italians to support the new adventure. Parish priests, bishops, archbishops, and even cardinals, preached and wrote exalting the glory of fighting and dying for Fascist Italy, emphasizing the duty of every citizen and Catholic to obey the Government. As before, the Cardinal of Milan, followed by bishops from all over Italy, made a tour of various military camps, blessing departing soldiers, machine guns, warplanes, and submarines; pinning holy medals on the chests of the faithful; distributing holy images in which the Fascist legions were represented marching towards certain victory, guided by angels, or the image of the Archangel Gabriel killing the dragon, Gabriel representing Fascist power and the dragon its enemies. Prayers and Mass were said everywhere. The Catholic Church, in fact, did not stint its support of Fascist Italy, and it enthusiasm went so far that the Vatican itself had on numerous occasions to restrain the Italian Hierarchy.

The Pope went on receiving and blessing Italian and German soldiers up to May 1942, when the audiences were reduced, until, finally, they were stopped altogether. The picture had changed greatly since 1940.

Soviet Russia, which Hitler had promised to crush before the end of 1941, was far from being defeated, and in fact was hitting back. The battle of Stalingrad told the world and the Vatican that Germany was on the defensive. A Nazi victory, which in 1940-1 seemed almost certain, began to grow more and more doubtful. With the weakening of Germany's military impetus, the defeat in Africa, the almost complete obliteration of the Fascist armies, and finally the invasion of the Italian Peninsula itself, the situation had completely changed. The Vatican, therefore, prepared to take appropriate measures to ensure that, if Fascism should fall, Bolshevism would not engulf Italy.

Months before the invasion of their country the Italian people had become increasingly restless and organized menacing strikes. Socialist propaganda appeared in the industrial North. The great peril of Socialism, which had begun to sweep over the country, made the Vatican move.

A plan to cope with the new situation was devised after the Vatican had contacted the Allies (Great Britain and the United States of America) and certain Fascist and military elements in Italy, headed by the Italian Monarchy. The plan consisted simply of forestalling the fall of Mussolini, rendered inevitable by the internal state of the country, the inability of the regime to defend Italian soil, and, above all, by the war aims of the victorious Allies, which included the destruction of Mussolini's regime.

Both the Vatican and the Western Allies, however, had the same fear that the revolutionary forces in Italy might get the upper hand. Accordingly they came to an agreement by which, although Mussolini would be brought down, the general structure of the regime, with due modifications, would remain intact. Thus would be prevented the vacuum which would have been left by its disappearance and which would have given a golden opportunity to the enemies of social order and religion to take advantage of the situation. The plan was worked out in early spring of 1943, the main agents being:

"Mgr. Spellman, Archbishop of New York, who was chosen as the intermediary between the Pope, President Roosevelt, and the Italian plotters.

The Fascist ex-Ambassador to London, Count Grandi (see chapter on Germany).

And the Fascist Minister Federzoni.

During his stay in Rome, in the early spring of 1943, Mgr. Spellman's activities consisted mainly of contacting the chief Fascist conspirators, Count Grandi, Federzoni, and the King of Italy (on February 22 and 23), and minutely reporting the progress of his talks to both the Pope and President Roosevelt.

After their plans had been laid down, Mgr. Spellman traveled in Europe and outside Europe, dividing his time between blessing bombers before they left to drop their deadly loads on German towns (e.g. April 6, 1943), and seeing people who were carrying out the new policy in which the Vatican, Great Britain, and the United States of America were so closely concerned. He visited especially the American Ambassador in Instanbul and the two Papal representatives then in that town (Mgr. Pappalardo of the Oriental Church, and Mgr. Clarizio of the State Secretariat of the Vatican).

The Vatican began to take the first cautious steps in Italy itself. On the outbreak of strikes organized by Socialists and Communists in North Italy, who demanded the fall of the regime and the abolition of the Monarchy, to be followed by social revolution. High Prelates began to warn Italians to be faithful to the Monarchy. For instance, as early as March 30, 1943, the Archbishop of Milan told Italians that they should "remember that the pledge of national unity is the Monarchy of the House of Savoy."

News of the secret negotiations, however, leaked out, and the first public hint of them was given on May 12, 1943, by the French journalist Pertinax, who was in extremely intimate relations with the Vatican Delegation in Washington. Pertinax stated that "the Vatican is deeply concerned with the social upheavals that in the peninsula are likely to be the outcome of military defeat beyond the sea and of unlimited destruction by air-raids at home."

A few days later (May 18, 1943), the New York Times broke the news from Berne that

"...the Vatican had informed the British and American Governments that an Italian collapse now would have disastrous results unless Italy was neutralized at once or immediately occupied by Allied armies."

The Times correspondent, Mr. Brigham, on May 19, 1943, stated that he had learned from a "well-informed Vatican source" that a "plan" had been "elaborated in a special message from Pope Pius to Archbishop Francis J. Spellman of New York, at present in the Middle East." The plan aimed to make possible Italian "voluntary collaboration in the ousting of the Fascist regime" and " an armistice at once." The Fascist party as such would be immediately disbanded. No provision was made in the first plan, Mr. Brigham continued, "for the arrest or handing over to the Allies of any Fascist leaders."

The double campaign of the Vatican to help to forestall a popular revolt against the regime, and at the same time to prevent a social revolution, grew in intensity, and the Pope himself spoke with all his authority to a gathering of Italian workers, advising them to shrink from revolution. (June 13, 1943).

The result of all these plans was soon apparent. On the night of July 25-26, 1943, Grandi led a revolt against Mussolini inside the Fascist Great Council. The Grandi resolution proposed that the King should take over supreme control of all armed forces. It was approved by seventeen and opposed by eight members. Mussolini went to see the King, and was told that he was no longer Prime Minister. Then Mussolini was arrested. The fall of the regime was as simple as that.

One of the plotters, Marshal Badoglioi, who took over, declared: "The war goes on." But, behind the scenes, negotiations were taking place for the military surrender of Italy and the preservation of the Fascist regime in disguise.

There were minor changes in the Government; Fascists were kept in their former positions; while the revolutionary underground forces came into the open, only to be restrained again immediately by the new Government. Communist papers had two days of freedom, and were then suppressed. Badoglio called on the Italians to be "loyal to the King and all other stable and ancient institutions." The Church and its bishops spoke against the revolutionary and Bolshevist elements, and forbade opposition to the new Government.

There were great activities at the Vatican, the Pope and his Secretary of State holding meetings with the Portuguese, Spanish, German, and British Ambassadors. As the negotiations went on and the weight of Allied air-raids on Italy increased, the Pope grew impatient, being afraid that "the Italian people might become prey to Bolshevism." The Vatican pestered Great Britain and United States of America for generous terms, "for in the fair land of Italy, the menace of Communism, instead of diminishing, is increasing." "The prolongation of the war," the Pope repeated, "creates danger that the young generation can be driven into the arms of Communism...Moscow is awaiting the moment when Italy will merge with the European State Union under Communist supervision."

While the Pope continued to impress upon Roosevelt that "bombing breeds Bolshevism," Badoglio began a persecution of the Reds, enthusiastically supported by the Catholic Hierarchy and the Vatican.

At last, on September 3, 1943, Italy surrendered unconditionally. Mussolini had disappeared; the most outstanding features of the regime had been suppressed; the Western democracies had been satisfied that the Dictator would rule no more; in his stead there remained the fundamental structure of an authoritarian regime, ruled by a General and a King.

With King and General in the domestic field, and Britain and America in the foreign, Italy had been saved from internal Bolshevik revolution and external Bolshevik political pressure from Russia. The first great political counter-move by the Vatican and its lay allies had succeeded.

Soon afterwards Italy became a vast battlefield where Allied armies had painfully to fight their way northwards against the retreating Nazis, bringing untold destruction and social, economic, and political chaos with them.

While the armies battled, the Vatican and the Western Allies lost no time in carrying out the second part of their plan in the freed territory of the peninsula---namely, that of impeding revolutionary forces from gaining the upper hand.

The Allies carried out this policy through the organization they set up in free Italy (A.M.G.O.T.), which forbade political gatherings, political freedom, or the organization of anti-Fascist parties, at the same time prohibiting the purge of Fascists from public positions. The main administrative pillars of the former Fascists regime (the prefects) were kept in their former positions, while high civil and military officers were protected by an Allied Commission, which not only impeded any attempt to purge the country of them, but which admitted into the American-British fold Fascists who had been "active" up to the moment of defeat.

The Vatican's policy of directly and indirectly encouraging and supporting all those Conservative forces, with special regard to the military elements, which desired the preservation of the Monarchy, contrary to the will of the Italian people, came suddenly to light in May 1944. "Special investigators" of the American Army then intercepted messengers near the lines in Southern Italy, and opened a Vatican mail pouch. In it was found documentary evidence that the Vatican was engaged in active and highly secret machinations to preserve the House of Savoy.

The preservation of the Monarchy had become the main object of the Vatican and had the warm support of the Conservative British Prime Minister, Churchill, who, in order to put his plans into effect, personally visited Rome and was received in private audience four or five times by Pius XII (August 1944), and in the following year when, although no longer Prime Minister, he had long interviews with the Papal Nuncio to the new Italian Government. (September 1945).

With the end of the Italian Fascist regime, the certain defeat of Nazi Germany, and the breakdown of Fascism all over Europe, the failure of the policy which the Vatican had pursued for over twenty-five years became more than obvious. A new policy, new methods, and new tactics proper to the changed conditions had to be adopted in order to save as much as was possible from disaster.

The Powers who had defeated Fascist Totalitarianism professed to be based on democratic principles, and, what was more, proclaimed their desire to see such principles adopted in liberated Europe. The enemies that the Vatican had fought during and after the First World War not only had survived, but had become stronger and bolder than ever. Soviet Russia, contrary to what had been the case after the First World War, emerged from the Second World War as one of the victors, with strengthened prestige, as a world Power whose political influence extended all over Eastern and Southern Europe to the very borders of Italy, where Bolshevism had grown by leaps and bounds.

To counteract these great changes the Vatican had to adopt two definite and interdependent lines, which together formed the new grand strategy of the Catholic Church in the post-Second-World-War period. The long-range international policy was to fight Soviet Russia by all means available, and to this end the Vatican, as in the past, had to ally itself with the Western democracies, who were no less eager than the Catholic Church to see that Soviet Russia's influence should be checked and, if possible, stopped.

The short-range policy, dealing with the domestic life of the nations, was to organize all the anti-Red elements into a solid block, led by Catholics, guided by the Vatican, and united into fighting political parties. These forces had to deal with economic issues and had to fight Socialism, not only on political, but also on social, grounds. It was at this point that the Vatican again gave permission to Catholics to organize themselves into a political movement.

Thanks to the new policy adopted by the Vatican, one of the first new Catholic parties to appear in post-Fascist Europe came to light in Italy and adopted the name of Christian Democratic Party. Leaders who were devoted to the Church were carefully chosen and soon began to shape the policy of the New Italy, hampering the efforts not only of the reborn Socialist and Communist Parties, but also of a restless section of Catholics who began to show alarming signs of revolutionary spirit.

Thus in the years immediately after the cessation of hostilities a distressed Italy watched an over-eager Vatican plunge directly into the political life of the country, openly organizing powerful Catholic parties, indicting any political movement which it considered was not in harmony with the Catholic doctrine, condemning Socialism, and branding Communism, with a zeal that had lost nothing of its old fire but which, on the contrary, had become even more fiercer, since, with the disappearance of Mussolini, the Red danger had surged more threateningly than ever.

The Pope and his cardinals, bishops and village priests all preached from the churches, the Press, and the radio, not only on religious, but on social and political issues, attempting to lead the bewildered Italian masses along a path traced for them by the Church. The Vatican openly supported institutions and men who had been responsible for the rise of Fascism. It ordered Italians to be loyal to King Victor, the man who had put Mussolini into power; and although the Italians, through a plebiscite, had voted overwhelmingly for a Republic, it went against the will of the people by making repeated attempts to preserve the House of Savoy.

In addition to its efforts to preserve the Monarchy, the Vatican, following its old policy, indirectly supported movements which had everything in common with the former Fascist Party except in name. A typical example was the Right-wing Uomo Qualunque (Common Man) Party, which in the general election of 1946 polled more than 1,000,000 votes. Its leader, until a short while before an Atheist, seeing the sympathy with which the Vatican looked upon his movement, made haste at this period, with all solemnity, to enter the Catholic Church. Vatican Radio gave the news (June 10,1946) that Signor Gianini was baptized, had had his first Communion, received confirmation, and was married in the Church of the Sacred Heart in Rome, while the Pope had sent him his good wishes and blessing.

This, significantly enough, when several Catholics, including priests, were admonished, or even excommunicated, by the Holy Office for sponsoring social doctrines not in conformity with those of the Church---that is, Socialist doctrines (e.g. Fr. Fernando Tartaglia, a Florentine priest, excommunicated by decree of the Supreme S. Congregation of the Holy Office; Vatican Radio, June 12, 1946).

At the same time, those Catholics and priests who were helping the Fascist underground movement were never publicly reprimanded by the higher ecclesiastical authorities. Witness the occasion when the body of Mussolini, which had secretly been buried in a Milan cemetery, was stolen by Fascists and several months later found to have been hidden by the monks in the Pavia Monastery (night August 12-13, 1946), having previously been kept by the monks of another monastery (St. Angelo). Several fanatical Fascists and several monks were arrested as accomplices in the theft of the body.

But these two instances, however significant, pale before two other moves, inspired directly by the Vatican, which more than anything else since the end of the war gave unmistakable signs of the policy on which the Church had definitely embarked.

These moves were connected with the creation of two new political parties which, although formed by Catholics, were poles apart, notwithstanding the fact that, besides having in common the same religion, they were both of an extremist nature.

The first was a Catholic party with a marked tendency to the Left, and which, although a supporter of the Church, asked for radical social and economic reforms similar to those advocated by Socialism. It was called originally the Catholic Communist Party and subsequently the Italian Christian Left Party. After a few weeks the movement was denounced to the Cardinal Secretary of State, who commanded the Catholic members to dissolve it. On its dissolution Vatican Radio made the following comments:

"Another party...has disappeared. This had the monstrous name of "Christian Left" and pretended to bring the new world to God through class war----that is to say, to bring Christian workers to the aide of Socialism and heresy. Of course this was not achieved. Through this policy the Christian Left committed suicide. This is the tragedy of a small but dynamic party composed of enthusiastic youths who called themselves Apostles of Christ but spoke and acted like followers of Marx (January 1946).

But not many months had passed before another Catholic party with extremist tendencies appeared on the scene (August-September 1946), supported by the Vatican. It was called the National Christian Party, and openly proclaimed that it belonged to the Centre, or more precisely to the Left. This because "the referendum proved the necessity of separation from Christian Democracy, which was tactically and ideologically comprised with the Marxist Parties (Italian Socialist and Communist Parties)." (Dr Padoan, quoted by Radio Rome, August 24, 1946.)

Notwithstanding all the Vatican's efforts, however, in the first years after the Second World War the Socialists and Communists had swollen their ranks in a most alarming way; Italy was flooded from one end to the other by a gigantic Red wave. It was the first great wave of the released popular forces which were soon to turn Red, not only in Italy, but also in France and Belgium. In 1948 the Italian Communist Party, with the exception of the Russian, was the largest Communist Party in the world.

After the First World War the first Fascist movement had been born in Italy, where for the first time a Catholic Party was destroyed by the Vatican in pursuance of a new policy. After the Second World War the first Catholic Party to be reborn and to be hurled against the adversaries of the Catholic Church in the social and political arena of a restless age appeared significantly enough in the Italian peninsula. It was no mere coincidence. Deeming the time opportune for a change of tactics, the Vatican had turned of a new leaf of its policy, a leaf which, from the very beginning, gave unmistakable signs that it was but the old policy under a different name, pursued in a different manner owing to changed times and circumstances, but aimed more relentlessly than ever at the same old goal; the furtherance of the Church's supremacy in the life of the Italian people. Chapter 10