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The Complicated Relations of the Vatican with the Fascist Powers in Italy and Germany

By Ian Nutter

John Stewart Mill once said ³War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The

decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war

is much worse´.

There have been accusations laid against the Vatican, that it, the authority for roughly one

billion people in the world today, is guilty of the indolence that this quotation describes. These

aforementioned accusations are not new; critics have been descrying the church for roughly

eighty years. The basis for these accusations? Papal weakness in the face of fascism. Though

there are obviously many different opinions present in the enormous Catholic Church, the main

subject of this analysis will be that of the Vatican¶s headed by the respective papal

administration.

Though only one pope reigned during the war years of 1939 to 1945, he only took power

in 1939. During the formative years for the fascist parties in Europe there was Pope Pius XI in

charge of the Vatican. Pius XI saw the rise of radical powers all over Europe, even in his home

country of Italy. Russia had already seen its government be taken over by Communists in 1922

following the violent revolution of 1917. The Soviet Union actively worked to eliminate religion

among its adherents, striving for atheism. To make matters worse, the global economic crisis

was continuing to feed the radicalization of political beliefs. This was a frightening time to be a

pope. This was a frightening time to be anyone. It was during this period, that the Vatican made

its famous Concordat with Germany and Lateran Treaty with Italy.
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After centuries of undisputed power of the Catholic Church, the modern Italian State

came to exist in 1861, taking away what were before papal lands by the end of the decade. In

this modern State, the popes viewed themselves as ³prisoners of the Vatican´ because they

refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the new unified state of Italy, thus they refused to leave

Vatican grounds between the years 1870 and 1929 as a sign of protest. Obviously, this was not a

good system for either the Vatican or for Italy, so after 59 years, Pope Pius XI and Benito

Mussolini signed the Lateran Treaty in 1929. The Treaty formed the new fully independent

micro-state of the Vatican City, established Catholicism as the official religion of Italy, and gave

the Vatican financial reimbursement for the loss of papal lands from over fifty years prior. Very

importantly for Mussolini however, was that the Vatican was forced to swear complete neutrality

in international affairs unless requested to do otherwise by all parties involved. This was

obviously important for Mussolini as he needed to be able to operate without sanction from the

Church during his time as Prime Minister to make sure he could act more independently.

However, Mussolini was forced invariably to line himself up with Catholic wishes in order to

maintain public support in such a staunchly Catholic country, going as far as to have a Catholic

wedding with his already wife Rachele, supporting the ban on divorce, ban public swearing, and

by encouraging women to stay at home.1 This is not to say that the fascist government and the

Vatican did not clash, as it became clear over the issue of education and youth organizations.

The Vatican believed that the Church should be in charge of education, while Mussolini wanted

the state to be in control. Through the Lateran Treaty and its containing Concordat, the Church

did force the government to at least include religious education in public schools. In the year

1931 however, the Vatican wrote a famous encyclical about the ban of Catholic Action and


1
³Mussolini and the Roman Catholic Church´ , History Learning Site, 18.05.2011,
< http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/mussolini_roman_catholic.htm>
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¬outh organizations, titled ³Non Abbiamo Bisogno´ which directly translates into ³we do not

need´. This encyclical criticized the government heavily for these actions and named the State

as ³anti-Catholic´. 2 However, the Catholic Church disputed more strongly the racial laws of

1938 which regulated marriage of Jews to non Jews as well as professions they could maintain

and membership to the Fascist Party, despite many being involved since its inception in 1922.

The Church partly clashed with these laws, not simply because they viewed them as wrong, but

also on the grounds of jurisdiction. Under the Lateran Treaty, all issues involving marriage were

to be left to the church.3

The Vatican was able to exert more of an influence over Italy, due to its location and its

hugely strong following within that country. It did not enjoy the same status of influence in its

northern neighbor of Germany. Historically, Germany was the home of Martin Luther, known

worldwide for being one of the fathers of the Reformation and the Protestant movement.

Therefore, the Catholic Church only remained more influential in that of the more southern

Provinces such as Bavaria. Adolf Hitler enjoyed this, as unlike Mussolini, he was not forced into

the stance of appeasement, but rather, the Church had to appease him. The Church had initially

hoped to return to a prominence in Germany that had not been seen since the Pre-Reformation

days and had thus been pushing for a concordat since the fall of the German Empire following

World War I. However, through careful maneuvering by Hitler and the Nazi Party before signing

any Concordat, Hitler was able to gain some bargaining chips when he was deciding what the

contents would be. He did this through measures such as restricting the outflow of cash to

Catholic institutions abroad. The Reichskonkordat was signed on the 20th of July, 1933, and

2
³Non Abbiamo Bisogno´, Vatican, 18.05.2011,
< http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-
xi_enc_29061931_non-abbiamo-bisogno_en.html>
3
³Lateran Treaty´, Wikipedia, 18.05.2011, < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateran_Treaty>
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provided these conditions: freedom to the Catholic religion, upholding previous concordats with

several Bundesländer, unrestricted correspondence between the Holy See and the German

Catholics, allowing the Church to collect tax, oaths of allegiance from clergy to uphold the laws

of civic government, only with mutual consent can the state services to the church be abolished,

Catholicism is to be taught in school and only teachers approved by the bishop can teach,

Catholic organizations were to be protected, and clergy could not be involved in politics

whatsoever.4

There has been much speculation as to why the Church would make deals such as this

with the Third Reich and from the very beginning the Vatican has maintained that the purpose

was simply to maintain somewhat of a role in the German nation. Cardinal Faulhaber is quoted

with saying that ËWith the concordat we are hanged, without the concordat we are hanged, drawn

and quartered.´5 Though it was not Cardinal Pacelli who was yet Pope, Pius XI once said it was

all through Pacelli that the resistance was carried out. In 1937, Pacelli wrote an encyclical called

³Mit brennender Sorge´ which in English means ³With burning concern´, which in many ways

denounced the Nazi state as a whole. It condemned the racist policies of the Reich, as well as the

growing pagan beliefs. This document was distributed to all parishes within Germany to be read

on Palm Sunday, without any prior notification priests and was written in German to ensure the

understanding of all Germans. As a result, the Nazi state did everything within its power to

discredit the clergy as nothing but mere criminals, by proclaiming that they were ³corrupting the

youth´. However, Pacelli was not finished. After Pacelli was elected pope and became Pius

XII, he begged foreign nations to open their borders to allow incoming racially discriminated


4
³Reichskonkordat´, Wikipedia, 19.05.2011, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskonkordat>
5
³Pope Pius XII's resistance of Hitler´, Catholic Apologetics, 19.05.2011,
<http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/judaism/popepius.htm>
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against people, namely the Jews, contacted the British in order to help German officers

assassinate Hitler, and constantly denounced the praise of a State and the persecution of a people

based on race. In October of 1943, the Pius XII ordered all Jews to be admitted to Church

buildings as a refuge from the Nazi attacks, and eighty-five percent of Roman Jews are spared

the terrible fate they would suffer under the Nazi rule.

However, the criticisms still remain. According to the Jesuit historian Gerald Fogarty of

the University of Virginia, Pius was never strong enough in opposition because he was always

too focused on being a diplomat.6 He substantiates this primarily in learning that the Pope was

constantly receiving intelligence of the atrocities occurring within Nazi Europe, while still

attempting to maintain ³fruitless diplomacy with the Reich´. The criticism also arises out of the

lack of repudiation of the American Reverend Charles Coughlin, who had actively supported the

Reich, supposedly because he had been worried about the diplomatic implications. Rabbi

Riccardo Di Segni is quoted saying that ³human silence« doesn¶t escape judgment´.7

The atrocities committed during the Second World War were so heinous, that there will

be always people searching for answers and thus looking for people to blame for why they

happened. It is hugely important though to recognize the position the Catholic Church was in.

Nazi Germany clearly wanted to eradicate all competing power structures within its territories

and the Church in particular, as they had a radically different ideology. Therefore, it is not out of

lack of passion that they were not more aggressive, but rather, it was important to continue to

maintain an influence and thus the Vatican had to tread lightly. To say that the Vatican did


6
³Insights into Vatican's diplomacy before World War II emerge from archives´, USA Today, 19.05.2011,
<http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2006-10-13-war-insights_x.htm>
7
³Pope Defends Pius against Jewish Critics´ 17.01.2010, The Free Republic, 19.05.2011,
<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2430621/posts>
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nothing is not fair at all. The Vatican did what it could, risking everything with encyclicals such

as ³Mit brennende Sorge´ to continue true Catholic teaching to Germans who constantly saw

propaganda completely contradictory.