Pope Pius XI

Nuncio to Poland and expulsion

In 1918, Pope Benedict XV (1914–1922) appointed Ratti unusually to what was in effect a diplomatic post, as apostolic visitor (that is, in this case unofficial papal representative) in Poland. In the aftermath of the First World War a Polish state was restored, though the process was in practice incomplete, since the territory was still under the effective control of Germany and Austria-Hungary. In October 1918, Pope Benedict was the first head of state to congratulate the Polish people on the occasion of the restoration of their independence.^[14] In March 1919, he appointed ten new bishops and on 6 June 1919 reappointed Ratti, this time to the rank of papal nuncio and on 3 July appointed him a titular archbishop.^[14] Ratti was consecrated as a bishop on 28 October 1919.

According to German theologian Joseph Schmidlin's Papstgeschichte der Neuesten Zeit (Verlag Joseph Kösel & Friedrich Pustet, München 1933–1939. 4 volumes.), Benedict XV and Ratti repeatedly cautioned Polish authorities against persecuting the Lithuanian and Ruthenian clergy.^[15] During the Bolshevik advance against Warsaw during the Polish-Soviet War, the Pope asked for worldwide public prayers for Poland, while Ratti was the only foreign diplomat who refused to flee Warsaw when the Red Army was approaching the city in August 1920.^[16] On 11 June 1921, Benedict XV asked Ratti to deliver his message to the Polish episcopate, warning against political misuses of spiritual power, urging again peaceful coexistence with neighbouring peoples and stating that "love of country has its limits in justice and obligations".^[17]

Ratti intended to work for Poland by building bridges to men of goodwill in the Soviet Union, even to shedding his blood for Russia.^[18] Benedict, however, needed Ratti as a diplomat, not as a martyr, and forbade his traveling into the USSR despite his being the official papal delegate for Russia.^[18] The nuncio's continued contacts with Russians did not generate much sympathy for him within Poland at the time. After Pope Benedict sent Ratti to Silesia to forestall potential political agitation within the Polish Catholic clergy,^[15] the nuncio was asked to leave Poland. On 20 November, when German Cardinal Adolf Bertram announced a papal ban on all political activities of clergymen, calls for Ratti's expulsion climaxed.^[19] Ratti was asked to leave. "While he tried honestly to show himself as a friend of Poland, Warsaw forced his departure, after his neutrality in Silesian voting was questioned"^[20] by Germans and Poles. Nationalistic Germans objected to the Polish nuncio supervising local elections, and patriotic Poles were upset because he curtailed political action among the clergy.^[19]

Elevation to the papacy

In the consistory of 3 June 1921, Pope Benedict XV created three new cardinals, including Ratti, who was appointed Archbishop of Milan simultaneously. The pope joked with them, saying, "Well, today I gave you the red hat, but soon it will be white for one of you."^[21] After the Vatican celebration, Ratti went to the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino for a retreat to prepare spiritually for his new role. He accompanied Milanese pilgrims to Lourdes in August 1921.^[21] Ratti received a tumultuous welcome on a visit to his home town of Desio, and was enthroned in Milan on 8 September. On 22 January 1922, Pope Benedict XV died unexpectedly of pneumonia.^[22]

At the conclave to choose a new pope, which proved to be the longest of the 20th century, the College of Cardinals was divided into two factions, one led by Rafael Merry del Val favoring the policies and style of Pope Pius X and the other favoring those of Pope Benedict XV led by Pietro Gasparri.^[23]

Gasparri approached Ratti before voting began on the third day and told him he would urge his supporters to switch their votes to Ratti, who was shocked to hear this. When it became clear that neither Gasparri nor del Val could win, the cardinals approached Ratti, thinking him a compromise candidate not identified with either faction. Cardinal Gaetano de Lai approached Ratti and was believed to have said: "We will vote for Your Eminence if Your Eminence will promise that you will not choose Cardinal Gasparri as your secretary of state". Ratti is said to have responded: "I hope and pray that among so highly deserving cardinals the Holy Spirit selects someone else. If I am chosen, it is indeed Cardinal Gasparri whom I will take to be my secretary of state".^[23]

Ratti was elected pope on the conclave's fourteenth ballot on 6 February 1922 and took the name "Pius XI", explaining that Pius IX was the pope of his youth and Pius X had appointed him head of the Vatican Library. It was rumoured that immediately after the election, he decided to appoint Pietro Gasparri as his Cardinal Secretary of State.^[23] When asked if he accepted his election, Ratti was said to have replied: "In spite of my unworthiness, of which I am deeply aware, I accept". He went on to say that his choice in papal name was because "Pius is a name of peace".^[24]

It was said after the dean Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli asked if he assented to the election that Ratti paused in silence for two minutes according to Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier. The Hungarian cardinal János Csernoch later commented: "We made Cardinal Ratti pass through the fourteen stations of the Via Crucis and then we left him alone on Calvary".^[25]

As Pius XI's first act as pope, he revived the traditional public blessing from the balcony, Urbi et Orbi ("to the city and to the world"), abandoned by his predecessors since the loss of Rome to the Italian state in 1870. This suggested his openness to a rapprochement with the government of Italy.^[26] Less than a month later, considering that all four cardinals from the Western Hemisphere had been unable to participate in his election, he issued Cum proxime to allow the College of Cardinals to delay the start of a conclave for as long as eighteen days following the death of a pope.^[27][28]

Political teachings

In contrast to some of his predecessors in the nineteenth century who had favoured monarchy and dismissed democracy, Pius XI took a pragmatic approach toward the different forms of government. In his encyclical Dilectissima Nobis (1933), in which he addressed the situation of the Church in Republican Spain, he proclaimed,

Universally known is the fact that the Catholic Church is never bound to one form of government more than to another, provided the Divine rights of God and of Christian consciences are safe. She does not find any difficulty in adapting herself to various civil institutions, be they monarchic or republican, aristocratic or democratic.^[32]

Social teachings

Pius XI argued for a reconstruction of economic and political life on the basis of religious values. Quadragesimo anno (1931) was written to mark 'forty years' since Pope Leo XIII's (1878–1903) encyclical Rerum novarum, and restated that encyclical's warnings against both socialism and unrestrained capitalism, as enemies to human freedom and dignity. Pius XI instead envisioned an economy based on co-operation and solidarity.

In Quadragesimo anno, Pius XI stated that social and economic issues are vital to the Church not from a technical point of view but in terms of moral and ethical issues involved. Ethical considerations include the nature of private property^[33] in terms of its functions for society and the development of the individual.^[34] He defined fair wages and branded the exploitation both materially and spiritually by international capitalism.

Activities

Relations with France

France's republican government had long been anti-clerical, and much of the French Catholic Church anti-republican. The 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State had expelled many religious orders from France, declared all Church buildings to be government property, and had led to the closure of most Church schools. Since that time Pope Benedict XV had sought a rapprochement, but it was not achieved until the reign of Pope Pius XI. In Maximam gravissimamque (1924), many areas of dispute were tacitly settled and a bearable coexistence made possible.^[50]

In 1926, worried by the agnosticism of its leader Charles Maurras, Pius XI condemned the monarchist movement Action Française. The Pope also judged that it was folly for the French Church to continue to tie its fortunes to the unlikely dream of a monarchist restoration, and distrusted the movement's tendency to defend the Catholic religion in merely utilitarian and nationalistic terms.^[51][52] Prior to this, Action Française had operated with the support of a great number of French lay Catholics, such as Jacques Maritain, as well as members of the clergy. Pius XI's decision was strongly criticized by Cardinal Louis Billot who believed that the political activities of monarchist Catholics should not be censured by Rome.^[53] He later resigned from his position as Cardinal, the only man to do so in the twentieth century, which is believed by some to have been the ultimate result of Pius XI's condemnation,^[54] though these claims have been disputed.^[a] Pius XI's successor, Pope Pius XII, repealed the papal ban on the group in 1939, once again allowing Catholics to associate themselves with the movement.^[57] However, despite Pius XII's actions to rehabilitate the group, Action Française ultimately never recovered to their former status.

Relations with Italy and the Lateran Treaties

Pius XI aimed to end the long breach between the papacy and the Italian government and to gain recognition once more of the sovereign independence of the Holy See. Most of the Papal States had been seized by the forces of King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy (1861–1878) in 1860 at the foundation of the modern unified Italian state, and the rest, including Rome, in 1870. The Papacy and the Italian Government had been at loggerheads ever since: the Popes had refused to recognise the Italian state's seizure of the Papal States, instead withdrawing to become prisoners in the Vatican, and the Italian government's policies had always been anti-clerical. Now Pius XI thought a compromise would be the best solution.

To bolster his own new regime, Benito Mussolini was also eager for an agreement. After years of negotiation, in 1929, the Pope supervised the signing of the Lateran Treaties with the Italian government. According to the terms of the treaty that was one of the agreed documents, Vatican City was given sovereignty as an independent nation in return for the Vatican relinquishing its claim to the former territories of the Papal States. Pius XI thus became a head of state (albeit the smallest state in the world), the first Pope who could be termed a head of state since the Papal States fell after the unification of Italy in the 19th century. The concordat that was another of the agreed documents of 1929 recognised Catholicism as the sole religion of the state (as it already was under Italian law, while other religions were tolerated), paid salaries to priests and bishops, gave civil recognition to church marriages (previously couples had to have a civil ceremony), and brought religious instruction into the public schools. In turn, the bishops swore allegiance to the Italian state, which had veto power over their selection.^[58] The Church was not officially obligated to support the Fascist regime; the strong differences remained, but the seething hostility ended. Friction continued over the Catholic Action youth network, which Mussolini wanted to merge into his Fascist youth group.^[59]

The third document in the agreement paid the Vatican 1.75 billion lira (about $100 million) for the seizures of church property since 1860. Pius XI invested the money in the stock markets and real estate. To manage these investments, the Pope appointed the lay-person Bernardino Nogara, who, through shrewd investing in stocks, gold, and futures markets, significantly increased the Catholic Church's financial holdings. The income largely paid for the upkeep of the expensive-to-maintain stock of historic buildings in the Vatican which until 1870 had been maintained through funds raised from the Papal States.

The Vatican's relationship with Mussolini's government deteriorated drastically after 1930 as Mussolini's totalitarian ambitions began to impinge more and more on the autonomy of the Church. For example, the Fascists tried to absorb the Church's youth groups. In response, Pius issued the encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno ("We Have No Need)" in 1931. It denounced the regime's persecution of the church in Italy and condemned "pagan worship of the State."^[60] It also condemned Fascism's "revolution which snatches the young from the Church and from Jesus Christ, and which inculcates in its own young people hatred, violence and irreverence".^[61]

From the earliest days of the Nazi takeover in Germany, the Vatican was taking diplomatic action to attempt to defend the Jews of Germany.^{[citation needed]} In the spring of 1933, Pope Pius XI urged Mussolini to ask Hitler to restrain the anti-Semitic actions taking place in Germany.^[62] Mussolini urged Pius to excommunicate Hitler,^[when?] as he thought it would render him less powerful in Catholic Austria and reduce the danger to Italy and wider Europe. The Vatican refused to comply and thereafter Mussolini began to work with Hitler, adopting his anti-Semitic and race theories.^[63] In 1936, with the Church in Germany facing clear persecution, Italy and Germany agreed to the Berlin-Rome Axis.^[64]

Relations with Germany and Austria

The Nazis, like the Pope, were unalterably opposed to Communism. In the years leading up to the 1933 election, the German bishops opposed the Nazi Party by proscribing German Catholics from joining and participating in it. This changed by the end of March after Cardinal Michael Von Faulhaber of Munich met with the Pope. One author claims that Pius expressed support for the regime soon after Hitler's rise to power, with the author asserting that he said, "I have changed my mind about Hitler, it is for the first time that such a government voice has been raised to denounce Bolshevism in such categorical terms, joining with the voice of the pope."^[65]

A threatening, though initially sporadic persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany followed the 1933 Nazi takeover in Germany.^[66] In the dying days of the Weimar Republic, the newly appointed Chancellor Adolf Hitler moved quickly to eliminate political Catholicism. Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen was dispatched to Rome to negotiate a Reich concordat with the Holy See.^[67] Ian Kershaw wrote that the Vatican was anxious to reach an agreement with the new government, despite "continuing molestation of Catholic clergy, and other outrages committed by Nazi radicals against the Church and its organisations".^[68] Negotiations were conducted by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII (1939–1958). The Reichskonkordat was signed by Pacelli and by the German government in June 1933, and included guarantees of liberty for the Church, independence for Catholic organisations and youth groups, and religious teaching in schools.^[69] The treaty was an extension of existing concordats already signed with Prussia and Bavaria, but wrote Hebblethwaite, it seemed "more like a surrender than anything else: it involved the suicide of the [Catholic] Centre Party... ".^[49]

"The agreement", wrote William Shirer, "was hardly put to paper before it was being broken by the Nazi Government". On 25 July, the Nazis promulgated their sterilization law, an offensive policy in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Five days later, moves began to dissolve the Catholic Youth League. Clergy, nuns and lay leaders began to be targeted, leading to thousands of arrests over the ensuing years, often on trumped up charges of currency smuggling or "immorality".^[70]

In February 1936, Hitler sent Pius a telegram congratulating the Pope on the anniversary of his coronation, but Pius responded with criticisms of what was happening in Germany, so forcefully that the German foreign secretary Konstantin von Neurath wanted to suppress the response, but Pius insisted it be forwarded to Hitler.^[71]

Mit brennender Sorge

The Nazis claimed jurisdiction over all collective and social activity and interfered with Catholic schooling, youth groups, workers' clubs and cultural societies.^[79] By early 1937, the church hierarchy in Germany, which had initially attempted to co-operate with the new government, had become highly disillusioned. In March, Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge accusing the Nazi Government of violations of the 1933 Concordat, and of sowing the "tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church". The Pope noted on the horizon the "threatening storm clouds" of religious wars of extermination over Germany.^[70]

Copies had to be smuggled into Germany so they could be read from church pulpits.^[80] The encyclical, the only one ever written in German, was addressed to German bishops and was read in all parishes of Germany. The text is credited to Munich Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber and to Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII.^[81]

There was no advance announcement of the encyclical, and its distribution was kept secret in an attempt to ensure the unhindered public reading of its contents in all the Catholic churches of Germany. The encyclical condemned particularly the paganism of Nazism, the myth of race and blood, and fallacies in the Nazi conception of God:

Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community – however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things – whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.^[82]

The Nazis responded with an intensification of their campaign against the churches, beginning around April.^[83] There were mass arrests of clergy and church presses were expropriated.^[84]

Relations with East Asia

Under Pius XI, papal relations with East Asia were marked by the rise of the Japanese Empire to prominence, as well as the unification of China under Chiang Kai-shek. In 1922 he established the position of Apostolic Delegate to China, and the first person in that capacity was Celso Benigno Luigi Costantini.^[95] On 1 August 1928, the Pope addressed a message of support for the political unification of China. Following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the creation of Manchukuo, the Holy See recognized the new state. On 10 September 1938, the Pope held a reception at Castel Gandolfo for an official delegation from Manchukuo, headed by Manchukuoan Minister of Foreign Affairs Ts'ai Yün-sheng.^[96]

Involvement with American efforts

Mother Katharine Drexel, who founded the American order of Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, corresponded with Pius XI, as she had with his papal predecessors. (In 1887, Pope Leo XIII had encouraged Katharine Drexel—then a young Philadelphia socialite— to do missionary work with America's disadvantaged people of color). In the early 1930s, Mother Drexel wrote Pius XI asking him to bless a publicity campaign to acquaint white Catholics with the needs of the disadvantaged races among them. An emissary had shown him photos of Xavier University, a college for blacks in New Orleans which Mother Drexel had founded to provide higher education to Catholic African-Americans. Pius XI replied promptly, sending his blessing and encouragement. Upon his return, the emissary told Mother Katharine that the Pope said he had read the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin as a boy, and it had ignited his lifelong concern for the American Negro.^[97]

Brazil

In 1930, Pius XI declared the Immaculate Conception under the title of Our Lady of Aparecida as the Queen and Patroness of Brazil.^[98]

Persecution of Christians

Pius XI was faced with unprecedented persecution of the Catholic Church in Mexico and Spain and with the persecution of all Christians, especially the Eastern Catholic Churches, in the Soviet Union. He called this the "terrible triangle".^[99]

Humani generis unitas

Pius XI planned an encyclical Humani generis unitas (The Unity of the Human Race) to denounce racism in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, as well as antisemitism, colonialism and violent German nationalism. He died without issuing it.^[112] Pius XI's successor, Pius XII, who was not aware of the draft encyclical,^[113] chose not to publish it. However, Pius XII's first encyclical Summi Pontificatus ("On the Supreme Pontificate", 12 October 1939), published after the beginning of World War II, bore the subtitle On the Unity of Human Society and used many of the arguments of the document drafted for Pius XI, while avoiding its negative characterizations of the Jewish people.

To denounce racism and anti-Semitism, Pius XI sought out the American journalist priest John LaFarge SJ and summoned him to Castel Gandolfo on 25 June 1938. The pope told the Jesuit that he planned to write an encyclical denouncing racism, and asked LaFarge to help write it while swearing him to strict silence. LaFarge took up this task in secret in Paris, but the Jesuit Superior-General Wlodimir Ledóchowski SJ promised the pope and LaFarge that he would facilitate the encyclical's production. This proved to be a hindrance since Ledóchowski was privately an anti-Semite and conspired to block LaFarge's efforts whenever and wherever possible. In late September 1938, the Jesuit had finished his work and returned to Rome, where Ledóchowski welcomed him and promised to deliver the work to the pope immediately. LaFarge was directed to return to the United States, while Ledóchowski concealed the draft from the pope, who remained wholly unaware of what had transpired.^[114]

But in the fall of 1938, LaFarge had realized the Pope still had not received the draft and sent a letter to Pius XI where he implied that Ledóchowski had the document in his possession. Pius XI demanded that the draft be delivered to him, but did not receive it until 21 January 1939 with a note from Ledóchowski, who warned that the draft's language was excessive and advised caution. Pius XI planned to issue the encyclical following his meeting with bishops on 11 February, but died before both the meeting and encyclical's promulgation could take place.^[114]