Prisoner of the Vatican (41 page)

The papal envoy arrived at his first destination on Friday morning, July 22, and presented the archbishop of Florence, Monsignor Lecconi, with a letter from Rampolla. "When I mentioned the need for the Episcopacy to show itself more united with the pope than ever," Delia Chiesa later reported, "he observed that this was indeed even more necessary now that the liberal newspapers seem to want to divide the bishops into two parties, praising those whom they suppose are more devoted and loyal to the Savoyard dynasty, and holding in contempt those who avoided having contacts with the Italian Sovereigns."

Delia Chiesa replied, "The pope declares authoritatively that the reconciliation of the papacy with Italy is not possible except on the sole basis of the restitution of the temporal dominion and of Rome to the Holy Pontiff."

"I'm pleased to hear it," said Monsignor Lecconi, saying that these views accorded fully with his own. He added that he had been disturbed by the way the press had twisted the pope's May 23 comments to the Sacred College to suggest that he was willing to renounce his claim to temporal power.

The papal envoy then tried to turn the archbishop's attention to a plan of action, asking what help the pope could expect to come from Florence. Might, for example, local lay organizations be mobilized? Monsignor Lecconi's militancy quickly cooled.

"I'm afraid that we are not in good shape there," he said. "There is a Catholic club, but it is made up of young people—good certainly, indeed of an intransigent bent—but still youngsters who don't actually accomplish anything. They make big speeches, they vote many motions, but they don't do anything in practice."

The archbishop assured the papal emissary that he would talk privately with local aristocrats to see what kind of support he could muster. But, he added, there were problems with this group as well. "Unfortunately here in Florence there are many who say: 'The situation is harmful for both sides. Oh! Why doesn't the pope realize it?' It is a bit difficult to reason with such people and persuade them that there is only one just solution."

Delia Chiesa pressed on. The pope, he said, wanted the archbishop to arrange to have "a person of prestige and literary ability" write a booklet to support his position. But again the archbishop demurred.

"Whom am I supposed to ask? In fact, I have few Catholic writers or journalists here. As for the clergy, I would divide them into the old and the new. The old still feel the effects of a hundred years of the Leopoldine legislation [of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, in effect until 1859], and they are inclined to think that the clergy depend ecclesiastically on the civil authority as well as on the religious. They read the liberal press and are no lovers of ecclesiastical discipline. Indeed, rather than being a help to me, they are a heavy burden. I don't say the same about the younger clergy, but they too exhibit the laziness that is so much a part of the Tuscan character."

Frustrated, Delia Chiesa asked the archbishop if he couldn't at least find a loyal lay Catholic to write such a booklet. After all, it might even be better if it were written by a prominent noncleric.

Well, replied Monsignor Lecconi, there is one prestigious Catholic who wrote with great literary flair. But he would certainly not write such a piece, for he too was "enamored with Italy" and thought that the pope should be making peace with the Italian state.

Finished in Florence, Delia Chiesa took the train to Bologna, where he arrived that same evening. Learning that the archbishop, Cardinal Battaglini, was visiting a small parish three hours away, Delia Chiesa set off the next day to find him. When they met, Battaglini told the papal envoy how pleased he was that the pope's commitment to temporal power was finally being made clear. There had recently been a great deal of confusion, he said. Some had argued that the pope would be satisfied by regaining control of Rome alone, while others had even claimed that he would be willing to settle for just part of Rome. Delia Chiesa assured the archbishop that such rumors were merely misinformation being spread by the Church's enemies to sow confusion in the Catholic ranks.

Yet when the envoy raised the issue of taking action, he found the Bologna archbishop's reaction remarkably similar to that of his colleague in Florence. Hard-line militancy instantly dissolved in a stream of excuses and equivocations. Asked to organize a campaign to stamp out opposition to the papal line among the Catholic faithful, the cardinal replied, "Frankly, I would prefer to keep to the general, partially because it might make a bad impression on some people for me to say baldly: 'There is no other path than that of the restitution of temporal dominion.'"

From Bologna the envoy made his way to Venice, where he met with the city's patriarch on July 24. Two days later he was in Genoa, meeting with the archbishop, Monsignor Magnasco. There he received a bit more encouragement.

"No sooner had he understood the subject of the meeting," recalled Delia Chiesa, "than Monsignor Magnasco said that he was fed up with the topic of conciliation because he did not believe that any conciliation was possible other than on the basis of Italy's complete submission to the Holy See." The archbishop went on to complain about the Vatican's timidity in making its position clear. Delia Chiesa hastened to say that this was the exact purpose of his visit.

It was difficult for Delia Chiesa to speak without being interrupted by the agitated archbishop, as he recalled: "Monsignor Magnasco reiterated with great vehemence that everything would be possible if only one spoke clearly, that neither he nor the people of Genoa liked statements that, albeit against the wishes of their author, could, due to the way in which they were written, be interpreted in two different ways."

"If the pope were to clearly say 'Do not hope for Italy to reconcile itself with the papacy unless it restores its temporal power,'" the archbishop told him, "I promise you that the Catholic clubs in Genoa would show their strong support for the Pope!"

The envoy's last stop was in the old capital of the Savoyard monarchy, where, on the morning of July 28, he met the archbishop of Turin, Monsignor Alimonia. Delia Chiesa undoubtedly knew that the pope's message would not be popular with Turin's elites, who were traditionally closely tied to the king.

When told of the pope's wishes, Monsignor Alimonia grew uncomfortable, mumbling something about there being some confusion about exactly how large a portion of the old Papal States had to be restored to the pope.

When asked how much popular support could be drummed up for the pope's campaign, the archbishop again became uneasy. He said, Delia Chiesa reported, "that he could not hide the fact that in Turin the majority of the good people consisted of moderates who were extremely devoted to the monarchy and the house of Savoy." For this reason, the envoy wrote, "the cardinal fears that there is little hope for a demonstration of religious-political loyalty to the pope in Turin."
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Delia Chiesa's mission was now over, having produced modest results at best, but before the pope could move to the next phase of his plan, he was confronted with an important change in the Italian government. Agostino Depretis, the central architect of the left's victory in 1876 and eight-time prime minister since then, died on July 29. On August 7, the king named the strong-willed Francesco Crispi, a man viewed with great suspicion by the Vatican, as the new prime minister.

Crispi was unusual in coming from a Sicilian family of Greek-Albanian origin, his paternal grandfather a Greek Orthodox priest and he himself baptized in the Greek Orthodox church. Crispi's personal credentials were not improved by the scandal that erupted in early 1878 when, while serving as minister of internal affairs, he got married. "Bigamy!" screamed the newspapers, for they pointed out that twenty years earlier he had married a woman in Malta, that he had lived with her as man and wife for many years, and that she was still alive (legal divorce would not be possible in Italy for another century). The case went to court, and although Crispi was acquitted, the reasons did nothing to help his reputation. The court ruled that at the time of his recent wedding he was free to marry, for the marriage he had celebrated in Malta had itself not been valid because he had then been married to yet another woman. Because his first wife had, in the meantime, died, there was now no legal impediment to his recent marriage, for he was legally a widower. The outrage the case provoked forced Crispi to resign, a disgrace he would never forget.
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Sixty-eight years old at the time of his selection as prime minister, with white hair and a bushy mustache, Crispi looked a bit like Bismarck, a similarity much noted in the press. As a French journalist, three years later, described him: "his mouth is large, his face is long, his jowls fleshy and closely shaven, his nose strong, dominating his face above his short white, bristly mustache. His forehead is balding, as is his head, revealing his tendency to blush as soon as he gets irritated. His gaze is piercing, intelligent, changeable, different, the eyes of a very strong man, very crafty, very cunning. But something is missing! Monsieur Crispi has no eyebrows ... He resembles Monsieur Bismarck without the eyebrows ... Very shrewd, very intelligent, very Italian, very much a lawyer, he has no need for the eyebrows that give the other [Bismarck] the air of a man who is very strong, very brutal, very German, and very military! Monsieur Crispi gives all the appearance of wanting to charm his visitors; Monsieur Bismarck would like to terrorize them."
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In fact, Crispi was extremely sensitive about his appearance, spending two hours on his toilet each morning, and dressed with great care. Although he could be courteous and cordial in private, he had a reputation for impatience, bellicosity as an orator, and ruthlessness in seeing that he got his way, using outbursts of anger and indignation—pounding his fist on the table—to intimidate people. An old republican and revolutionary, Garibaldi's man in Sicily during the fateful year of 1860, Crispi had come to support the monarchy as the best way to unify Italy. But he would never have much regard for the royal family. He was not bashful about haranguing the king, and he bowed to the king and queen as little as possible. Nor was he known for his good manners. When King Umberto and Queen Margherita were receiving Queen Victoria at their villa in Florence in 1888, Crispi came barging into the room, unannounced and unbidden, and to the discomfort of both the British and Italian queens, did not take the hint to leave. Victoria later wrote that, after Crispi had finally gone, Umberto and Margherita "were most kind & amiable, making many excuses for Crispi's behaviour ... the King saying that he was a very clever man, but had no manners."
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Crispi's ascent to power only increased the sense of urgency in the Vatican. Everything possible had to be done to drum up Italian Catholic support for the pope's hard line. On August 9, two days after Crispi began his first four years as prime minister, Rampolla wrote to the archbishop of Palermo, telling him to ensure that all of Sicily's clergy and laity conformed to the stance against conciliation. The archbishop was instructed to have ten to twelve thousand copies of the pope's letter to Rampolla printed and distributed throughout the island by parish priests. Funds would be provided for this purpose. "The press, the Catholic associations, and, in certain places, the town governments," Rampolla wrote, "ought to take part as well."

On the twenty-first, the archbishop reported on his progress. Four thousand copies of the papal letter against reconciliation had already been distributed to the priests on the island, and more were being printed. In addition, the Catholic press throughout Sicily had reprinted the letter. But, the archbishop acknowledged, the interest in the pope's cause that they had hoped to generate had so far been lacking, a fact he blamed on the cholera epidemic then sweeping the island, and absorbing everyone's attention. The archbishop also told Rampolla that he would not willingly follow his request that he have all of his bishops write pastoral letters to their flock calling for the return of the pope's temporal power. Should they issue such letters, he argued, they might well be arrested and charged with "wanting to excite hatred of the state institutions." Instead, he suggested, he could ask the bishops to sign a public letter of generic support addressed to the pope. Yet even this milder measure would be opposed by quite a few of the island's bishops. They were especially worried that municipal governments would pounce on any sign of their lack of patriotism in order "to fan the flames so that they could sequester the bishops' revenues in order to fatten their own administrations' coffers."
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Facing such foot-dragging, in late September, the pope organized another secret mission. Although his envoy is not specifically named in the archives, it was almost certainly still Giacomo Delia Chiesa, for the emissary is referred to as having recently returned from a papal diplomatic position in Spain. Delia Chiesa was charged with visiting a dozen archbishops and bishops from Bologna in the North down to Naples and Bari in the South, between late September and early November. At each stop, he began by handing the local prelate a letter expressing the pope's views. It painted a grim picture: "The religious situation in Italy becomes worse every day. Due to a sad series of circumstances, the revolution has obtained its goal, and the sects who are its principal instrument, after having devastated the Church and destroyed the civil rule of the Roman Pontiff, have taken over all public life." The ultimate aim of these ferocious attacks on the Holy See's temporal power was no longer a mystery: it was "the destruction of [the Church's] spiritual power ... the suppression of Christianity."

The prelates were told that the Church could prevail only if they faithfully followed the pope's wishes and ensured that their flocks did so as well. Many Catholics had resigned themselves to the current situation, which could be attributed only "to the lack of understanding that many have of the question of the temporal dominion of the Holy See. It is almost as if this were a matter that was extraneous to the defense of religion and perhaps even damaging to the prosperity of the Italian nation ... Everyone, each in his own sphere," the bishops were told, "must, under the Holy See's guidance, take action that, while prudent and within the bounds of legality, is energetic, assiduous, and efficient." They were to ensure that the priests under them followed these instructions, they were to activate Catholic lay organizations and parish committees, and they were to have the local Catholic press spread the word.
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