Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: Financing the Vatican, 1850-1950 (review)

Many attempts have been made to shed light on Vatican finances, but all come up against the paucity of crucial documents in the Vatican archives. At the time of this book's writing, those archives were not available for documents more recent than 1921, and, even for the earlier period covered by this book, which focuses on the 100 years from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, Vatican archives notably lack records of key financial dealings.

Pollard has done a commendable job in tracking down available sources from state archives—from Italy to Britain to the United States—from various Italian bank archives, and from the archives of an American and a British archdiocese to shed new light on Vatican finance. He also makes good use of the diary of Bernardino Nogara, financial advisor to Pius XI, in illuminating Vatican finance in the contentious 1930s. The author's ambition is great; his intention is not simply to trace such evolving financial arrangements but to make the case that the changing sources of Vatican income had a significant effect on papal and Church religious and political policy.

The story that the book tells is of the evolution of a Holy See supported largely by a semifeudal system of landholding in the Papal States into a Vatican that has vast financial holdings throughout the world. Thus it is the story of how the Church came to terms with modern capitalism, a fraught relationship not without its elements of contradiction. Pollard argues that the post-1870 (the year the papacy lost Rome to Italian forces) rapprochement of the Church with the new Italian state—which it would not recognize until 1929—was aided greatly by the Vatican's involvement in the Banco di Roma, which brought the Church elite into close working relationships with the patriotic Italian elites. More controversially, Pollard argues that it was Benito Mussolini's offer to rescue the Banco di Roma from a financial crisis that led Pope Pius XI to abandon the Catholic Popular Party, and its leader, Don Sturzo, and deliver Italy to the full force of the fascist dictatorship. Likewise, he argues that one of the major reasons for Vatican support of Mussolini through the 1920s and 1930s was the pope's view that the Italian dictator would best protect the Vatican's financial interests. These are not implausible arguments, but Pollard does not produce the evidence that would convince a skeptic of their veracity.

There are a handful of small errors in the book: La Civiltà Cattolica published its first number in 1850 not 1854 (8); Pius IX died in February, not January 1878 (53); the police chief of the zone around the Vatican in the late nineteenth century was Giuseppe, not Guido, Manfroni. But Pollard's scholarship is impressive. He tackles material that most Italian historians regard as important but, because of its sometimes arcane economic and business nature, most of them try to avoid.

Those seeking to understand the transformation of the Roman Catholic Church during this period—when the pope became an object of popular adulation and established absolute power over the far-flung national churches—will benefit greatly from reading this book. The story of a center of moral authority that became one of the world's largest financial holding companies offers more than one lesson.