The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer (review)

The Pope and Mussolini examines the relationship between the Holy See and the Italian Fascist government, primarily through the lens of their respective leaders, Pope Pius XI and Benito Mussolini. In 1907 the fifty-year-old Achille Ratti, the future Pius XI, took on the position of prefect of Milan’s Ambrosian Library. Four years later, the service and skills he displayed in this position led Pope Benedict XV to name Ratti prefect of the Vatican Library. Immediately following World War I, Benedict called on Ratti again to serve as apostolic visitor to the newly constituted Polish government. By 1921, Ratti had demonstrated sufficient leadership skills that Benedict recalled him to Italy and named him archbishop of Milan. Ratti held this position for less than a year as, upon Benedict’s death, the conclave on February 6, 1922, elected him pope on the fourteenth ballot. Ratti chose Pius as his pontifical name.

By contrast to the religiously devout Ratti family, Benito Mussolini grew up among anti-Catholic “rabble-rousers and revolutionaries” (p. 19). A charismatic entrepreneur, Mussolini engaged in numerous endeavors to capture the attention of Italy’s radically disenfranchised public, including founding his own newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia (The Italian People), and organizing revolutionary cells to push for political and societal change. By March 1919, such efforts led to the establishment of a Fascist movement. Within two years, the movement gained sufficient support to win thirty-five parliamentary seats to form a coalition with the old conservative elite in an effort to thwart the growth of socialism in Italy. In late October 1922 approximately 26,000 of Mussolini’s followers “marched” on Rome to take over the Italian government permanently. In reality, a consortium of military leaders and the heads of industry led a push for Mussolini to be appointed prime minister, a step to which King Victor Emmanuel III acquiesced.

Surprisingly, after Mussolini’s political appointment, his parliamentary actions did not reflect his anti-Catholic past. Rather, the new prime minister made sweeping overtures to the Holy See to ensure its support. Such steps included placing crucifixes in classrooms, courthouses, and hospitals; restoring the Catholic chaplaincy core to the military; increasing state pay for clergy; and mandating Catholic catechism be taught in Italian elementary schools. Pope Pius welcomed such measures, especially as they reflected the goals for his papacy expressed in his first encyclical, Ubi arcano, promulgated in December 1922. In it, Pius made it clear he rejected modern society’s turn from Christianity and proposed a plan to “bring about the Kingdom of Christ on earth” (p. 49). Thus refraining from falling into an adversarial relationship with Mussolini, Pius radically altered his outlook by looking benevolently upon the new prime minister. To ensure the continuation of these positive developments, Pius also appointed Pietro Tacchi Venturi, S.J., a historian whom he knew from his time as prefect of the Ambrosian Library, as a liaison between himself and Mussolini and his government.

In April 1923 the Holy See publicly began to withdraw its support from the Popular Party, the Italian political party most aligned with the Catholic Church. This was not a sudden move but a shift that expressed Pius’s distrust of politicians and political parties in general that proposed to speak or act in the interests of Roman Catholicism. Mussolini welcomed Pius’s support and demanded the Popular Party’s “unqualified support” (p. 57). This demand and the pontiff’s stance eventually led to the removal of Don Luigi Sturzo as leader of the Popular Party. Tacchi-Venturi worked behind the scenes to help orchestrate Sturzo’s removal. Before September 1923, Tacchi-Venturi had ironed out a...