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The Pope and Mussolini

The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe

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1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER  • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

From National Book Award finalist David I. Kertzer comes the gripping story of Pope Pius XI’s secret relations with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. This groundbreaking work, based on seven years of research in the Vatican and Fascist archives, including reports from Mussolini’s spies inside the highest levels of the Church, will forever change our understanding of the Vatican’s role in the rise of Fascism in Europe.

 
The Pope and Mussolini tells the story of two men who came to power in 1922, and together changed the course of twentieth-century history. In most respects, they could not have been more different. One was scholarly and devout, the other thuggish and profane. Yet Pius XI and “Il Duce” had many things in common. They shared a distrust of democracy and a visceral hatred of Communism. Both were prone to sudden fits of temper and were fiercely protective of the prerogatives of their office. (“We have many interests to protect,” the Pope declared, soon after Mussolini seized control of the government in 1922.) Each relied on the other to consolidate his power and achieve his political goals.
 
In a challenge to the conventional history of this period, in which a heroic Church does battle with the Fascist regime, Kertzer shows how Pius XI played a crucial role in making Mussolini’s dictatorship possible and keeping him in power. In exchange for Vatican support, Mussolini restored many of the privileges the Church had lost and gave in to the pope’s demands that the police enforce Catholic morality. Yet in the last years of his life—as the Italian dictator grew ever closer to Hitler—the pontiff’s faith in this treacherous bargain started to waver. With his health failing, he began to lash out at the Duce and threatened to denounce Mussolini’s anti-Semitic racial laws before it was too late. Horrified by the threat to the Church-Fascist alliance, the Vatican’s inner circle, including the future Pope Pius XII, struggled to restrain the headstrong pope from destroying a partnership that had served both the Church and the dictator for many years.
 
The Pope and Mussolini brims with memorable portraits of the men who helped enable the reign of Fascism in Italy: Father Pietro Tacchi Venturi, Pius’s personal emissary to the dictator, a wily anti-Semite known as Mussolini’s Rasputin; Victor Emmanuel III, the king of Italy, an object of widespread derision who lacked the stature—literally and figuratively—to stand up to the domineering Duce; and Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, whose political skills and ambition made him Mussolini’s most powerful ally inside the Vatican, and positioned him to succeed the pontiff as the controversial Pius XII, whose actions during World War II would be subject for debate for decades to come.
 
With the recent opening of the Vatican archives covering Pius XI’s papacy, the full story of the Pope’s complex relationship with his Fascist partner can finally be told. Vivid, dramatic, with surprises at every turn, The Pope and Mussolini is history writ large and with the lightning hand of truth.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from October 21, 2013
      The 2002 public release of the archives of Pius XI’s papacy revealed a trove of historical treasures that Brown University professor Kertzer (The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara) found “irresistible.” He brings to life an intriguing and unlikely alliance of two powerful individuals, using extensive primary sources from both sides. Whether or not it was truly a partnership is suspect, but they undoubtedly needed each other’s cooperation. The reader is taken inside the papacy in incredible detail, exposing the Vatican’s inner workings, from the Pope’s schedule to what he kept on his desk, to the knife’s-edge particulars of dealing with Mussolini. The insidious way that Il Duce was able to create his dictatorship predates the rise of Hitler in Germany, though their stories possess remarkable parallels. Mussolini’s numerous love affairs offer interesting asides as the myriad intricacies of world-historical events like the Lateran Accords—which ended decades of antagonism between Italy and the Vatican, while establishing the latter’s sovereignty—play out. Kertzer unravels the relationship between two of 20th-century Europe’s most important political figures and does so in an accessible style that makes for a fast-paced must-read. 2 maps, 40 photos. Agent: Wendy Strothman, WJS LLC.

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from December 1, 2013
      More deeply troubling revelations around Vatican collaboration with evil. With the unsealing of archives in 2006 concerning the papacy of Pius XI, Kertzer (Social Science, Anthropology and Italian Studies/Brown Univ.; Amalia's Tale: A Poor Peasant, an Ambitious Attorney, and a Fight for Justice, 2008, etc.) found the call to scrutinize them "irresistible." The author spares no toes in his crushing of the church's "comforting narrative" around its relationship with Mussolini's fascist regime. The signing of the Lateran Accord in 1929 between the Holy See and the dictator established the Vatican as sovereign territory and bound the Catholic Church and the regime to a new period of codependence. Having been elected to the papacy just as Italy was rocked by cataclysmic violence between fascists thugs and socialists, Pius XI and his advisers "began to question the wisdom of opposing Mussolini's crusade." While Mussolini had previously spoken out against the power and holdings of the church, and the fascists unleashed a campaign of beatings of priests and Catholic activists, Mussolini's sudden and opportunistic embrace of the church by 1922--for example, asking for "God's help" in his first address to parliament--charmed Pius into thinking he had an ally to bring the church more firmly back into Italian life, which had been challenged by modernism. Although Mussolini's increasing cultivation of cult status alarmed Pius, his minions and, indeed, the church organ extolled fascism for seeking to "place spiritual values once again in the place of honor they once occupied, especially as required by the battle against liberalism." Even Mussolini's suppression of the pope's darling Catholic Action youth groups did not fray collaboration between them to marginalize Italian Protestants and Jews, until Pius grew ill and it was too late to change course. Kertzer is unflinching and relentless in his exposure of the Vatican's shocking actions.

      COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      December 15, 2013
      Two leaders came to power in 1922 in Rome, Achille Ratti was elevated to the papacy as Pius XI, and Benito Mussolini was appointed Italian prime minister. How relations between them developed until the pope's 1939 demise occupies this original history, which rests on Kertzer's thorough research of available Vatican archives and other sources. His main line of inquiry, the degree of support Pius XI accorded to Mussolini, guides Kertzer's narrative, which begins with Mussolini's opportunistic about-face from anticlerical socialist to Catholic-tolerating nationalist. Papal approval during the 1920s, when Mussolini's regime survived political crises, received its reward in 1929 with the Lateran Accords that reestablished the Vatican as an independent state. Although he finds points of conflict between Pius XI and Mussolini, Kertzer underscores affinities between the Catholic Church and the fascist state, which may arouse controversy. Was the church as acquiescent to Mussolini's persecutions of Jews as Kertzer portrays? In any event, he adduces evidence that Pius XI seems to have regretted his tacit alliance with Mussolini. An important work of history, Kertzer's adroit profiles of Pius and Mussolini will broaden its audience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

    • Library Journal

      September 15, 2013

      A National Book Award finalist for The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara--being adapted for film by Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner and for Broadway by Alfred Uhry--Kertzer argues that contrary to popular opinion Pope Pius XI facilitated Mussolini's rule. Based on seven years' worth of research in the Vatican archives; bigger than the 25,000-copy first printing suggests.

      Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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