Prisoner of the Vatican (43 page)

On October 19, the Paris nuncio told Rampolla of a recent conversation he had had with Emile Flourens, the French foreign minister. The French government, the nuncio reported, would, despite all the dangers, be willing to initiate a joint action of all the Catholic powers on the pope's behalf "if it did not fear that it would not be listened to in Vienna, where the course of action followed by the pontifical representative there does not converge—in the opinion of Signor Flourens—with that of this nunciature."
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Two days later, Flourens summoned a French prelate and told him that he was extremely concerned about Galimberti's attitude, which he said posed "a true international danger."

"Have you not heard it said," Flourens added, "that he favors German interests to the detriment of Catholic interests, for this is what all the reports that I am receiving say."
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Shortly after receiving these materials, Rampolla wrote directly to Galimberti. Crispi's recent meeting with Bismarck and the bolstering of the Triple Alliance, the secretary of state told him, along with Crispi's "insolent language" and his scurrilous attacks on the Holy See that had recently appeared in the liberal press, "show clearly that this alliance serves to consolidate Italian actions against the papacy's rights and independence." As a result of the Alliance, he wrote, "the Holy Father's sorry situation is being prolonged, as he is being cruelly abandoned to the mercy of the sects and the revolution." All this had deeply distressed the pope, who now felt "profound disgust," especially at Austria's betrayal of the cause of the Church. Austria, "a Catholic nation, always viewed with particular benevolence by the Holy See," had now allied itself with Italy, the Church's main persecutor. The pope, Rampolla wrote, feared that "rather than work to assist in the restoration of the Holy See's temporal dominion," Austria "would instead work to impede it." In this lamentable situation, he told Galimberti, it was incumbent on him to make known to the Austrian authorities "the disgust and unfavorable impression" that their alliance with Italy had produced in the Vatican.

Finally, Rampolla turned directly to the reports about Galimberti's own behavior. "The Holy Father has been receiving repeated complaints about your attitude from the cabinet in Paris. Reports from Vienna lead them to believe that you have a hostile attitude toward France. Now it is in our interest, and you must realize this, to have good relations with the French Government, which has recently made satisfactory declarations favorable to the temporal dominion of the Holy See, to the point where they say they are disposed to take the initiative for a diplomatic action by the Catholic powers aimed at Italy as long as they can be sure of receiving support. For this and other reasons the Holy Father wants you to improve ... your personal relations with the French ambassador there and work to remove the sinister prejudices that weigh on Signor Flourens with regard to the hostile sentiments that are being attributed to you." Rampolla ended his letter with a postscript: "Take care not to entrust delicate matters either to the post or to the telegraph service, as the Italian Government is extending its surveillance over us and is watching us from every direction."
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Stung, Galimberti hastened to defend himself. Waiting impatiently for the day when, he hoped, he would be called back to Rome for a cardinal's hat and the job that Rampolla now held, he knew he had to be careful.

The accusation that he harbored hostile attitudes toward France and leaned too heavily toward Austria, he wrote to Rampolla, "was hurled at me other times as well, nor is it difficult to trace its origins." Over the past few years, the pope had assigned him various diplomatic tasks that were not to the French government's liking. "The negotiations with Prussia for religious pacification and my trip to Berlin," Galimberti argued, "were viewed negatively in France, which naturally would have preferred that the dispute between the Holy See and the Berlin Government had worsened, rather than be ended." And how, he asked, could he be blamed for Italy's alliance with Austria and Germany when it had originated well before he took up his post in Vienna?
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Shortly after this exchange, the pope, still fuming about the lavish reception that the Germans had given Crispi a few weeks earlier, called in Austria's envoy to the Holy See for a dressing-down. "Leo XIII," the envoy recalled in a report of the meeting, "immediately wanted to turn the discussion to Mr. Crispi's visit to Berlin and Italy's alliance with the two empires. The Holy Father told me, in a rather excited tone, that this development had produced a very unfavorable impression on him, but that he was particularly saddened by Austria-Hungary's alliance with the Italian Government, which is now in the hands of the pope's enemies and has but one goal, the struggle against the pope and the Church." Trying to placate the pontiff, the Austrian envoy responded that, far from abandoning the pope, Austria was the best friend he had. It was in the pontiff's interest, he said, to have Italy in the Triple Alliance because it would act as a conservative brake on Italy while helping to ensure peace in Europe.

The pope was not convinced. "If the Powers, especially Austria, had first, before entering into such an alliance with Italy, insisted on measures designed to defend the Church's rights and the safety and independence of the Holy See," Leo XIII told him, "it would be another matter! I would have hoped for at least this much from the Powers, even from Bismarck, from whom I had reason to expect much more."

When Count Kalnoky received his envoy's account, he immediately summoned Galimberti and angrily described what he had learned from Rome. Kalnoky's account of the conversation that followed offers an unusual glimpse into the relationship between Galimberti and the Austrian leadership.

"Monsignor Galimberti," Kalnoky recalled, "told me, in the greatest confidence, that during the summer the Holy Father had been erroneously led to hold out the hope that Prince Bismarck would energetically raise the Roman question with Italy and find a solution. He had been counting on being able to host crowds of pilgrims, on the occasion of his Jubilee, in the papacy's restored temporal dominion." The news that Crispi had traveled to Germany and was being feted by Bismarck "had produced bitter disillusionment on the part of the pope, who was now venting his spleen against the two central powers."
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Leo was not the only leader in Rome who was angry at the Austrians. Crispi was upset as well, albeit for the opposite reason. On September 29, three thousand Austrian demonstrators, led by the bishop of Linz, held a rally culminating in a unanimous vote for a resolution calling for the restoration of the Papal States. This was bad enough, but even worse was that three government representatives had taken part in the rally. Crispi directed his ambassador in Vienna to lodge a complaint but received no satisfactory reply. So on November 23 he again wrote to his ambassador.

"You know as well as I," observed Crispi, "that we could never view the Vatican question, raised anew by Leo XIII's and Rampolla's letters, as an international matter and that Italy would never allow any foreign government to interfere in it. It is an entirely domestic affair." He continued: "The rally at Linz and Kalnoky's silence, together with the Emperor's refusal to return the [Italian king's] visit to Vienna with a visit to Rome, are facts that unfortunately lend themselves to equivocations regarding Austria-Hungary's true sentiments toward us." Given all this, Crispi urged, it was crucial for the Austrian government to take action aimed at "dissipating this ambiguity and demonstrating to Italian public opinion that the Imperial and Royal government does not share our enemies' view on this subject."
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Behind the Austrians' action—and their inaction—was their fear of the Vatican's support for France. Such open support would be a disaster on many counts, given how many of the Empire's subjects were Catholic not only in the Austrian heartland, with its overwhelmingly Catholic population, but in many of the more restive regions of the empire, such as the portions of Poland ruled by Austria. While valuing their alliance with Italy, the Austrian leaders were not eager to alienate the Vatican.

This balancing act was on display when Galimberti and Kalnoky met in Vienna on February 16,1888. The Austrian foreign minister began by congratulating him on the large number of pilgrims who had recently gone to the Vatican for the pope's Jubilee. This display, he said, "revealed to the whole world the Vatican's moral superiority over the Quirinal, which was eclipsed by it." Kalnoky went on to reassure Galimberti on another point: the Austrians would never accept the Italian government's position that the pope's status in Rome was simply a domestic, Italian affair. Clearly, it was a matter to be regulated by international agreement.

The foreign minister then came to the French threat. "The Vatican," Kalnoky said, "is unwise to depend on the support of France, which is opposing Italy only out of bitterness and not out of any devotion to the papal cause." Believing that a war with France was not entirely unlikely, Kalnoky asked Galimberti to caution the pope against supporting a French invasion of Rome. Such an occupation, he warned, "would expose the Holy See to the prospect of a republican form of government, which one day soon might well have a member of the radical party as president."
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The death of the German emperor, Wilhelm I, on March 9,1888, just short of his ninety-first birthday, offered the pope a new chance to drive a wedge between Germany and Italy. On receiving the news, the pope sent Galimberti to Berlin on a special mission, carrying his condolences to the new emperor, Friedrich III. The symbolism of such a visit, Leo believed, could be powerful. Yet arranging for this audience would not be easy, for Friedrich III was known to be in bad health. Rampolla explained what was at stake in the instructions he relayed to Galimberti: "If the emperor has granted an audience to some of the representatives of the other Courts and denies it to the Representative of the Holy See, such a refusal would be too humiliating. If, on the other hand, having denied an audience to the others, he were to concede it to the pontifical representative, this distinction would certainly be most satisfying."

But Galimberti was given a second assignment, as important as the first. He was to use the occasion of the funeral to meet privately with Bismarck and discuss two topics: the situation of the Catholic Church in Germany and the Roman question. Galimberti was to tell Bismarck that his meeting a few months earlier with Crispi had "produced a very painful impression on the Holy Father, all the more so given how well known in Rome are Crispi's character, his revolutionary and sectarian intentions, his attitude toward the Vatican as a former wild Garibaldian, his intimate ties with the radicals, and the profound hatred of the papacy that often leads him to the most undignified acts of violence."
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Galimberti arrived in Berlin at midnight on Sunday, March 18, taking up residence at the British Hotel. Two days later, a carriage from the imperial court came to pick him up, carrying him through Berlin's snowy streets—their buildings adorned with black drapes of mourning—to the imperial residence. In the grand room of Charlottenburg Castle, with members of the imperial family in attendance, Galimberti handed the emperor Leo's letter of condolence. The empress, to Galimberti's delight, replied in Italian, asking him to convey their personal thanks to the pope for his kind thoughts. But the papal envoy was shocked to see how ill her husband was. "I fear," Galimberti reported to Rampolla, "that the step from the Charlottenbourg palace to the next Mausoleum will be brief."

Six days later Bismarck received him. "I found the Prince," Galimberti reported, "very tired and very worried. He told me that recent events had made it hard for him to sleep and that he found himself in the sad situation of acting as a nursemaid for the sick." After discussing the Church's situation in Germany, they turned their attention to the Roman question. Galimberti pleaded, on the pope's behalf, for German support.

"Yes," Bismarck responded, "you are right, but you must be patient. Giving Rome back to the Holy See at this time would trigger a revolution in Italy. Such a revolution now would bring with it the fall of the dynasty, and the alliance of a Republican Italy with the French. Such an alliance would end up being useful neither for the Holy See nor for the conservation of order and peace in Europe." As for the pope's displeasure over Germany's alliance with Italy, said Bismarck, he should understand that, given the likely prospect of a French-Russian war against Germany, such a defensive alliance was absolutely necessary.

Should Italy overthrow its monarchy and become a republic, said Bismarck, he would be the first to champion the return of the Papal States, and perhaps too, he added, the restoration of the Kingdom of Naples in the South. But the pope should be patient. "Not only am I not against the temporal dominion of the Holy See," he told Galimberti, "I would not hesitate to take part in its restitution once the victory of conservative forces has assured peace in Europe." And then Bismarck repeated his refrain, "
Il faut savoir attendre
" —be patient.
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Patience was certainly needed, since the new German emperor—in agony from the throat cancer that was sapping his life—was in no position to do much of anything, and for another three months Bismarck had to mark time as nursemaid to yet another dying emperor, all the while believing that a new war with France was becoming increasingly likely. But there is reason to think that Rampolla was not entirely displeased that Galimberti had failed to enlist the Germans' help. Aside from drawing satisfaction from his rival's failure, his own view was that success in restoring the pope to power in Rome depended on weaning the Austrians from the Germans and Italians and creating a strategic realignment of the two Catholic powers—France and Austria—with the Vatican against Italy.
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