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“Merely a Palace, Not a State”

The selection of every Pope has meant behind-the-scenes intrigue and heavy politicking. Up until the sixth century, the horse-trading began before the sitting Pope was even dead. And during the Middle Ages, a few aristocratic Italian families got together and ate and drank until they had agreed on a new Pontiff. The gathering after Leo’s death was not marked by any of the fistfights, threats, and bribes that had been a hallmark of some notorious conclaves.1 But it turned out to be the last assembly of cardinals in which Catholic European powers affected the outcome. France, Spain, and Austria had wielded an effective veto power for more than a hundred years. After Leo’s death, Vienna blacklisted the odds-on favorite, the dead Pope’s powerful Secretary of State, Cardinal Rampolla del Tindaro.2 They considered him too cozy with the French. That opened the door to Venetian Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto, whose best quality seemed to be that he was not closely identified with any of Leo’s mostly unpopular policies. After ten ballots, he emerged as the Pope and chose the name Pius X.3

The new Pius had served nearly twenty years as a parish priest before beginning his ascent to the Papacy. He had a well-deserved reputation as ultraconservative, humble, and disciplined. His longtime aides warned others that he was also a great pessimist. Pius’s Papal motto—“to restore all things in Christ”—indicated he considered that religious obligations always trumped secular ones.4 Black Nobles worried that as the first modern Pope from a simple working-class family, he might not appreciate the pomp of the grand Papacy. They were right. He was not inclined to dole out lavish favors and princely gifts to either his friends or those serving in the Papal Court. When one aristocrat suggested he elevate his own sisters to Papal Countesses, he dismissed him. “They are sisters of the Pope, what more can I do for them?”5

Other small changes signaled a populist touch. For the first time, the Pope’s secretaries dined with him. And he permitted lay Catholics to sit in his presence, changing the centuries-old imperative that they kneel. Kissing his slipper was no longer allowed. He claimed that the sedia gestatoria—an ornate, portable ceremonial throne—made him dizzy. The new Pius ended the requirement that everyone applaud whenever he entered St. Peter’s. And he took strolls in the Vatican gardens on his own instead of being surrounded, as had Leo, with a retinue of Noble Guards.6

Besides stripping away some of the gilded obsequiousness attached to the Papacy, he also tried to streamline the chaotic web of the Roman Curia. The Vatican’s bureaucracy had grown over centuries to consist of often redundant congregations, offices, and tribunals, many of them tainted by huge financial waste and nepotism.7 Although the church was international, the Curia was almost entirely Italian. To outsiders it seemed oppressively complex and marked by a lethargic work ethic.8 After the loss of the Papal States, the Curia defied logic by expanding instead of shrinking. Pius ordered it to reduce its thirty-seven departments to nineteen.9 Reforming the Curia however was not as simple as issuing a few directives. Those with entrenched power resented that Pius was one of the first Popes never to have worked in the Curia. They were determined from the outset to undermine any major reorganization. “Popes come and go,” was the unofficial motto inside the Curia, “but we go on forever.”10 Their resistance took the form of pretending to undertake most of the reductions. The career bureaucrats shuffled jobs between various offices and also folded some small departments into larger ones. Only insiders knew that the window dressing belied the fact that little had changed.11

Believing that the Curia was reforming itself, Pius turned his attention elsewhere: how best to stem the growing popularity of a movement of clerics and lay philosophers who challenged traditional Catholic dogma on everything from interpreting the Old Testament to whether the church should embrace democracy. So-called modernists—dubbed that since they collectively wanted the church to adapt itself to the changes of a new world—urged widespread reform and liberalization.12 The modernist movement had gained momentum while Leo was still Pope, but he had rebuffed it by reaffirming the reactionary Syllabus. Now, some modernists appealed to the new Pontiff, hoping he might be more receptive. But those familiar with his tenure as Venice’s cardinal knew it was unlikely. Pius was a conservative pastor, without any formal education. He was not in the least sympathetic to modernism.

“These people expect to be treated with oil, soap and embraces,” Pius said. “What they need—and what they will get—is a good fist.”13 He gave them a “good fist” by releasing an encyclical, Lamentabili Sane (Lamentable Certainly), a rambling condemnation of the liberalization movement.14 Pius followed that by creating a clerical committee in every diocese across Europe to guard against the perversion of the faith. For the first time in its history, the church deployed the equivalent of a secret police, relying on informers to uncover modernists and those who secretly supported them.15 Anonymous denunciations were encouraged. No one was spared. The cardinals of Vienna and Paris as well as the rectors of several top Catholic universities were denounced among the hundreds who were purged (even Archbishop Giacomo Della Chiesa—who would become the next Pope—was investigated for suspicion of “doctrinal deviance”).16 Pius required that all priests take an antimodernist oath (it was in place until Pope Paul VI eliminated it in 1967).17 He lowered to seven from twelve as the age at which children made their first confession and received communion. That would help priests monitor any youngster who might be entertaining modern thoughts.18

Beyond ferreting out suspected sympathizers, the crackdown expanded to net scholars whose work the simple Pius viewed with suspicion. Encouraged by the Pope, the church moved more aggressively than ever to ban books it considered dangerous. The works of acclaimed modernist scholars such as Ernesto Buonaiuti and Alfred Loisy were transferred to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Prohibited Books). Writers who refused to be silenced, like George Tyrell, were excommunicated.I And the Pope stacked the Vatican’s Biblical Commission with regressive prelates who recommended the suspension of the entire theological faculties at leading Swiss and French institutes and universities.20

A Pope with such a backward view of the world did little to modernize how the Vatican’s financial advisors operated.21 He relied on Pacelli, who told him that the church was solvent although money was tight. Yet the Pope’s innate pessimism meant that no matter how many times Pacelli reassured him, he fretted about being short of money. In his first year, he even shuttered the tiny zoo in the Vatican’s gardens as he feared it too great a financial drain.

Pius’s dark mood lifted somewhat when early in his tenure Pacelli informed him that Peter’s Pence contributions had set a record.22 The upsurge in cash was an unintended consequence of the Pope’s unyielding rejection of secularism and his refusal to cooperate with other faiths. It seemed that ordinary Catholics loved when the Pontiff brooked no compromise in those high-profile squabbles. In France, Prime Minister Émile Combes, a lapsed Catholic who had become a Freemason, was instrumental in passing the Law of Separation. It removed Catholicism as the country’s official religion. Pius responded by suspending diplomatic relations with France, which had long been the church’s closest ally.23 When the Portuguese also separated church and state, Pius castigated them. Much to the irritation of Britain, he backed Ireland’s Catholics. He angered Germans by issuing an encyclical praising a saint who had fought against the Protestant Reformation. And Russia was miffed by his aggressive efforts to energize Catholics there.24 He even once refused to grant an audience to Teddy Roosevelt because he thought the ex-President had insulted Catholicism by visiting Methodist and Masonic groups in Rome. The widespread press coverage of his slight to Roosevelt caused contributions to spike again.25

The flood of cash had a liberating effect on the miserly Pontiff. Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, Secretary of State to two Popes, had once said, “The Vatican, even with its gardens, is merely a palace, not a state.”26 Although Pius shared with his predecessors the unrealistic desire to restore the Papal States, he felt that the church had to make the mini-state it called home grander. He was confident he had sufficient resources from the surge in Peter’s Pence. Pius nearly doubled the Vatican’s size by purchasing adjacent properties, including the Italian Mint. A single building to house the new Pontifical Biblical Institute cost a then record 400,000 lire.27 Having given up on streamlining the bureaucracy, Pius added three Roman palaces for more office space for the Curia.28

Physical expansion was only one way the Pope intended to enhance the church’s stature. He spent millions more building churches throughout Italy to accommodate the growing Catholic population.29 And when a major earthquake ravaged some Italian towns in 1908, Pius used the disaster to demonstrate that the church was as effective as the state in helping the victims.30 The faithful rewarded his activism with more than 6 million lire in additional contributions.31

Pius had a tremendous mistrust of secular politicians. Those misgivings were amplified as Italy’s socialists gained popular support. They were a hodgepodge of disparate groups, inspired partly by Karl Marx, and consisting of a loose affiliation of peasant leagues, worker’s cooperatives, trade unions, and political activists. Many were allied with anarchists. Their movement had little room for God and none for organized religion.32 As the cardinal of Venice, Pius had rallied the city’s Catholics to form an alliance with political liberals to oppose the socialists. Now, as Pope, socialism’s surge so alarmed him that it trumped his antiquated opposition to modernity. He lifted the church’s ban on Catholics voting in and running for public office.33 The result was dramatic. Catholics were elected to the Italian parliament in 1904 and 1909. And so many were victorious in 1913 that they blocked a socialist takeover of the Italian legislature.34

Pius also reached an arrangement with Italy to give the church an unrestricted right to buy and sell property.35 Before then Black Nobles helped the Vatican circumvent complicated Italian laws about the acquisition and inheritance of real estate and other assets. Pius now agreed the church would no longer hide its investments through proxies.36

Bankers like Pacelli became ever more important as the laws about the church’s role in business became less restrictive. Besides being the president of the Banco di Roma, Pacelli was also a Roman city councilor and on the board of some of Italy’s most successful companies. And he had forged strong relationships with prelates inside the Curia. Pius trusted him, as did powerful cardinals, such as Merry del Val and Vives y Tuto, the respective Secretaries of State, and the Inquisition.37 Pacelli convinced Pius to invest millions to help the Bank of Rome expand its operations to Egypt, then a British colony.38 By 1913, half of the Vatican’s income came from interest earned on its giant stake in Pacelli’s bank.

The banker diversified the Vatican’s holdings, making small investments in Italian gas and electric companies, French banks, Swiss railways, and even a few stocks in Italy, Germany, and Spain.39 Pacelli was the president of Italy’s only film producer. Although the Pope was suspicious of the new medium and had issued several decrees banning priests from seeing films, no church official complained when Pacelli invested some Vatican money in the new technology.40

But there was a limit to what Pius would do for Pacelli. One of the Bank of Rome’s directors, Marchese Alberto Theodoli, was also a Black Noble. He asked Pius to transfer whatever money the Vatican still had on deposit with the Rothschilds to the Bank of Rome. Pius refused. The Pope told Theodoli and Pacelli that whenever previous Popes had moved the Church’s money away from the safekeeping of Jews to the control of Christians, it turned into a disaster.41 But that was a minor disagreement compared to the quarrel they had about Italy’s invasion to expand its African empire by seizing Libya from Turkey in 1911. The Bank of Rome provided the money for a consortium of Italian companies that hoped to exploit Libya’s rich oil and mineral deposits by converting the country into Italy’s colonial “fourth shore.” The bank financed everything from uniforms to supplies for the army.42 Pacelli also poured money into the country, investments that would only flourish in the wake of an Italian military victory.43 He lobbied Pius to endorse Italy’s fight for the colony as justified. And he did persuade a few cardinals to ratify the campaign as a battle of civilizations between Christianity and Islam. But Pius refused. He told Pacelli that he would not abandon the Vatican’s long-standing policy of neutrality. The church’s strength, Pius argued, was its impartiality. “In ancient times,” Pius lamented, “the Pope with a word might have stopped the slaughter, but now I am powerless.”44

But Pacelli was persistent. He beseeched the Pope for a Vatican endorsement of the Libyan expedition. Since patriotic Italians facing war flooded the Vatican with contributions, Pacelli cited that as evidence of the war’s popularity and that it had unintended benefits for the church.45 Pacelli never shared with the Pontiff that the church was at significant risk should the Bank of Rome stumble in its Libyan venture.46 Eventually, so irritated by Pacelli’s refusal to accept a simple no, the Holy See began distancing itself from him. Pacelli was surprised to discover that he suddenly had to make an appointment through Pius’s private secretary. Next, their weekly meeting was canceled. The harder Pacelli tried recouping his influence, the more Pius pushed him further away. Pacelli’s entrenched foes, jealous of his friendship with the Pope and covetous of his power, began a whisper campaign attacking his character. Leading cardinals who had been his friends did nothing to help him. After twenty years as the chief lay advisor to two Pontiffs, Pacelli was finally without influence. His fall was so great that when Pius was on his deathbed in a couple of years, a Papal chamberlain turned him away.


I. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was active from 1559 until Pope Paul VI eliminated it in 1966. Catholics could be excommunicated for owning or reading the banned books. The Koran and Talmud were prohibited. More than 3,000 authors and 5,200 books were banned over the centuries. The writers ranged from ancient ones such as Aristotle and Plato to philosophers such as Voltaire and Kant to novelists such as Hugo and Balzac. Sometimes, seemingly objectionable books never got listed, such as Charles Darwin’s work about evolution, The Origin of Species, and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.19