The Pope's Last Crusade (27 page)

Reaction from Jewish leaders reflected a broad understanding of what Pius XI had sought to do. Rabbi Edward L. Israel of Baltimore, a rising voice in American Jewry, expressed the significance of the pope's actions. Pius XI was “the first of all Christian voices in Europe to be raised against the general anti-Semitic policy of Nazism in all of its ramifications. . . . The hope and prayer of the entire world . . . is that the College of Cardinals by divine guidance, may be led to place upon the papal throne one who through his love of peace and justice and brotherhood may become a worthy successor to the lamented Pius XI.”

Francis Talbot spoke for
America
magazine when asked about the death of the pope. Interviewed by the
New York Times,
he focused on the pontiff's special role in world politics and praised Pius XI's “continuing enunciation of tyranny which endeavored to destroy natural political and religious rights of men in countries hurt by Fascism and Communism.”

LAFARGE WROTE
to Gundlach on February 16, asking if there was any news about the encyclical, but he and Gundlach knew that now they had to wait for a new pope to be elected and see if he felt the same way Pius did about these issues. Gundlach said in his reply that he thought there was a chance the pope's successor would follow through in the aftermath of Pius's death and issue the encyclical against racism.

But Ledóchowski was still vacillating on the question of whether Nazism or Communism was the most dangerous. He seemed to change his political perspective depending on the audience. Sometimes, “he proclaims to anyone who will listen that National Socialism is at least as dangerous as Communism.” The next moment, Gundlach wrote, Ledóchowski changes his tune—when someone hears reports from the United States about a Communist threat there. When such “reports about Communism come in from America,” Ledóchowski says, “Communism is once again the sole true enemy!”

LaFarge still remembered Ledóchowski's odd reaction when they listened to Hitler's speech on the radio in September 1938. And Gundlach was once more questioning Ledóchowski's reliability concerning the encyclical. The final decision would come from the new pope.

Cardinals from around the world began arriving at the Vatican throughout the mourning period for Pius XI. Pacelli declared that the conclave to choose the new pope would begin on March 1. Speculation was rife, and Vatican sources fed the rumors that any of the sixty-two cardinals had a chance, even the twenty-seven who were not Italian. The question seemed to be: Would the new pope be a “political or spiritual pope”? A political pope would match Pius XI's confrontations with Hitler and Mussolini. A spiritual pope would be circumspect and impartial and tend to his mission as the Holy Father of the Roman Catholic Church.

Sources at the Vatican did not discourage talk that a liberal cardinal from the United States or a Frenchman such as Tisserant could be viable candidates. The British and French governments immediately favored Pacelli. They thought he had been groomed by years of diplomatic service in Germany and as secretary of state. They said he had been a faithful subordinate to Pius XI, whose forthright rejection of the Nazis had been attractive. And finally, Germany and Italy had publicly made negative comments about Pacelli's candidacy, which British officials said was a point in Pacelli's favor. If the Italians and the Germans didn't want Pacelli, he must be a perfect choice.

It also was possible that a counterpropaganda campaign had been under way all the while. Publicly, via Nazi and Fascist newspapers, Germany and Italy did signal that the Pacelli's election would mean the Vatican was still taking a political, confrontational approach. Pacelli had been Pius's enforcer and had repeatedly criticized their governments. Ciano in particular was reported to be lobbying against Pacelli with Italian cardinals.

But behind the scenes some German and Italian officials said something different. Ciano had already had successful contacts with Pacelli early on that signaled a difference in Vatican relations with the Fascist state and had also sent word that the pope's troublesome final speech had been erased.

The German ambassador to the Vatican, Diego von Bergen, reported to Berlin that he thought Pacelli would be a good choice because he was a Germanophile who spoke German and had spent a long time in the country as a diplomat.

U.S. diplomats, meanwhile, concluded that Pacelli could not be a serious candidate. Rarely in history had a Vatican secretary of state been named pope. Ambassador Phillips apparently did not have an inside line from Monsignor Hurley, whose role at the Vatican was certain to change with the death of Pius XI, his protector. Phillips reported to Washington that while a number of candidates had been mentioned, the information about candidates was “purely speculative.”

Caroline Phillips had actually spent more time speaking with Pacelli than her husband had, and she might not have discarded his candidacy so easily. She was not only insightful, she also spoke fluent Italian. She found Pacelli to be charming and at the same time a great diplomat.

The French ambassador, François Charles-Roux, made the rounds among diplomats in Rome in support of Pacelli. Charles-Roux urged Phillips to speak with the American cardinals about papal candidates. Phillips refused, saying that lobbying in favor of any candidate was improper for a diplomat.

Charles-Roux, nevertheless, did lobby the French cardinals in favor of Pacelli; only one was inexorably and vehemently opposed to Pacelli: Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, who said he would not even consider the possibility, though he would not say exactly who he would vote for.

As the day of the conclave approached, Italian police and military monitored all arrivals in Rome, searching for weapons, bombs, or anyone they considered suspicious. There had been no specific warning of trouble, just a general suspicion because, over history, conclaves had sometimes been accompanied by violence. Mussolini pretended to be disinterested, but privately he pressed for inside information once more. He ordered his intelligence apparatus to track the proceedings as a top priority and issued an order to intelligence agents commanding that they pursue “penetration of and contact with the Vatican authorities, work which needed maximum delicacy.”

By March 1, the Italian government had gathered firsthand information from high levels at the Vatican. Italian agents were tracking all correspondence and all communications and had planted middle-level operatives inside the Vatican. Some were priests, bishops, or higher and in reality were spying for the Fascist government.

Charles-Roux made an eleventh-hour attempt to change Tisserant's mind about Pacelli. He was committed to the importance of the conclave and lobbied hard. He argued that “this is the election which could best maintain the Papacy on the high moral level to which Pius XI had raised it.” The French cardinal agreed with that and the argument appeared to steel him even more against Pacelli, whom he would never vote for. Tisserant's position was so odd in Charles-Roux's view that he thought something else must have been at play. “It is influenced by a personal antipathy towards the former Secretary of State,” the French ambassador wrote in a memoir, “an antipathy probably born of the relations during their careers.”

Tisserant remained suspicious about the pope's death and developed two theories. Tisserant had told his friend Monsignor George Roche that he believed Pius XI was murdered. He concluded that the evidence had been hidden during the interval between his death and the phone call Tisserant received. “They killed him and we know who did it,” the cardinal told Roche. Tisserant told Roche, according to newspaper reports, that the pope's face “showed bluish marks unusual in cases of death by natural causes.”

Roche said Tisserant blamed Doctor Francesco Saverio Petacci for accelerating Pius's death, even though the pope was gravely ill. Tisserant contended that the lag between the phone call and the tolling of the church bells had given someone with access the opportunity to hide evidence that the pope had been murdered. When Tisserant's suspicions were made known in 1972, a Vatican spokesman told reporters the idea was too “fantastic” to consider serious. The Vatican also said Petacci could not have been involved in such a thing because he had no access to the pope before or after his death.

Although Doctor Petacci was the second-ranking physician at the Vatican, accounts of the pope's final hours did not mention him at the pope's bedside. The Vatican not only denied Petacci was present but also said he had no access. One question could have been asked: Why wasn't he at the pope's bedside? There were five doctors on the Vatican medical staff, each listed in order in the Vatican yearbook. Milani was the boss, and Petacci was listed number two. Why would the number two physician at the Vatican not be present or have access when the pontiff was gravely ill? Instead, after Milani became ill with the flu, the physician with least seniority attended the pope in his final days. Why would the Vatican say Petacci had no access to the pope?

Petacci was the father of Clara Petacci, Mussolini's mistress and a well-known subject of scandals and gossip around Rome. She recorded pillow talk with Il Duce in her diary and Mussolini had often complained about the pope. At the height of the pope's attacks on Italian anti-Semitic laws, Clara recorded one such outburst: “You have no idea of the bad this Pope is doing toward the Church,” Mussolini had said. “Never has there been such an ill-omened Pope towards religion. There are committed Catholics who detest him. He has lost virtually everyone. Germany completely. He doesn't know how to keep them and he has made mistakes in everything.”

Doctor Petacci had a long history with the Vatican. A relative, perhaps his father, Giuseppe, had been Pope Pius X's personal doctor at the Vatican from 1906 to 1912. The Petaccis were a middle-class family who had acquired influence and power by their proximity to Mussolini. Various stories said Mussolini, married and fifty years old, met Clara in 1933. She was barely twenty-one years old and Mussolini, various stories said, met her at a party or perhaps spotted her on the road one day while she was driving with her fiancé, an Italian Air Force officer. In either case, Mussolini was smitten and telephoned the Petacci house. Clara's mother answered the call and was happy to arrange their first romantic tryst. Less than a year after that, an affair blossomed. Clara married the air force officer for propriety's sake, and it was a major social event. One of those who attended was Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli. Not long after the wedding, the air force officer was shipped off as a military attaché to Tokyo, and Clara moved to her own private suite in Mussolini's Palazzo Venezia.

Two of Doctor Petacci's other children benefited from their proximity to power and were considered corrupt power brokers in Rome those years. A son, Marcello, also became a doctor, and it was said that he had passed his medical exams with a “recommendation” from Il Duce. Marcello frequently traveled with his sister on Mussolini's official visits as a way of lending a veneer of propriety to the proceedings. A daughter, Maria, became an actress, changed her name to Miriam Day, and married into nobility.

Decades later, when Tisserant's charge was publicized, one of the surviving members of the Petacci family, Marcello Petacci's son, Ferdinando Petacci, said his grandfather Francesco was being slandered by such charges. He rejected Petacci's involvement in any such plot and said the doctor had admired Pope Pius XI. “My grandfather was an exceptionally capable, humble doctor who had high moral values . . . incapable of even hurting a fly,” he said. In addition, he said, Doctor Petacci had opposed his daughter's liaison with Mussolini. “Personally, I do not think that Pope Pius XI was killed. He was an old man and he was very sick.”

Doctor Petacci died in 1970 at the age of eighty-three. He had outlived two of his children. Clara and her brother Marcello were executed by Communist partisans in northern Italy along with Mussolini on April 29, 1945.

There were other scenarios in which Pius XI could have met an untimely death. Doctors Milani and Rocchi, who attended the pope in his last hours, practiced techniques that were common in the day that might have been damaging without them realizing it. They were alternately giving the pope injections of camphor oil and adrenaline, compounds to stimulate the heart and increase the pulse rate. Camphor had been used as a traditional medicine for some time, but there had been published reports of fatal camphor poisoning.

The timing of the pope's death did add to the suspicion of foul play. Mussolini was worried to the point of obsession about the February 11 speech. Even if Mussolini's informants hadn't seen the document, they knew how much emphasis the pope was placing on his speech.

It was also feasible that someone could have substituted, contaminated, or otherwise altered a medicine prepared for the pope. The Vatican categorically said the story from Tisserant was false, based on “statements and insinuations already amply denied on the basis of irrefutable testimony.” It did “concede that Cardinal Tisserant may have recorded it, together with other hearsay and gossip, in his diaries,” the
New York Times
reported in 1972.

Others who had seen the pope in his last days were also suspicious. Bianca Penco, the student leader of the anti-Fascist Catholic youth organization FUCI, was probably the last surviving person to have met and spoken to Pius XI. At the age of ninety-three in 2011, she held to her impression of a meeting with the pope on January 31, 1939. She said in the 2008 interview published in
Il Secolo XIX
that she and her fellow student leaders were shocked when they heard the pope had died just a few days after their audience.

“Especially because of the atmosphere surrounding the speech and the pope's attitude in the meeting,” she said. “We had the agonizing thought that his death was not an accident. To our insistent inquiries for explanations and clarifications about the document that [the pope had spoken about], [the church] replied that no such thing had been written. It is a question that has never been resolved.”