On 17 February 1908, Giacomo Della Chiesa arrived in Bologna. Six days later he was enthroned in the metropolitan cathedral church of St Peter and took possession of his diocese. Given the great regional and local diversity of Italy at this time, its great dioceses were equally different one from another, Milan from neighbouring Brescia and Bergamo, Padua from Venice, and Bologna from the other great episcopal sees of the Emilian plain – Parma and Modena – each with its own peculiarities. In Bologna’s case that includes the fact that until 1918 all children born in the city had to be baptized in the cathedral and that though the episcopal chair of St Petronius was in the cathedral, the latter was outstripped in size and magnificence by St Petronius’ own church.
Bologna la grassa (‘Bologna the fat’), that is how Della Chiesa’s archiepiscopal city has traditionally been known in Italy, and at the time of writing, after fifty years of left-wing rule, like other cities of the Emilian plain, it boasts a standard of living and a quality of life among the highest in Europe. With its excellent, rich cuisine and its beautiful streets, its famous colonnades (porticati) and towers, and its integrated transport system, it is undoubtedly one of the better places to live in Europe. The region of which Bologna is the capital, Emilia-Romagna, has also been dubbed ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’, by one of Della Chiesa’s successors, John Paul II, for its unchecked materialism and hedonism.1 In 1907, there was already as much shade as light in the life of Bologna as there is now, as far as the city’s Catholics were concerned.
Until 1859, Bologna had been the second city of the Papal States, with a cardinal legate as governor, and its administrative and legal institutions, its ancient university and its charitable institutions had been firmly under clerical control. But the liberal revolution’ of the Risorgimento period and in particular the victory of both the pro-Piedmontese forces inside the city, and Victor Emmanuel II’s army outside ensured that by the spring of I860, Bologna had become one of the first provinces of the new, united Italian state. The ruling class of the new state, the agrarian-mercantile block, quickly took possession of Bologna’s various institutions and effectively secularized them, according to Renato Zangheri, historian and former Communist mayor of the city.2 Throughout the 1870s, however, some obstinate Catholic opposition remained, and that this also had a popular base is testified by the grist tax riots of the middle of that decade when there were shouts of ‘Long live Pius IX’.3 But the anti-clerical forces had definitively triumphed, and in 1880 with the defeat of the Right, their influence increased, buttressed by the power of a network of masonic lodges. The University was also strongly anti-clerical in tone, thanks in part to the influence of Italy’s greatest living poet Giosuè Carducci, who had written ‘a poem in praise and defence of Judas Iscariot, and an adulatory hymn to Satan’4 and who also had a following among the poor of the city. After the turn of the century, the politics of the city continued to drift Leftwards; the Radicals and Republicans gained a foothold in the city council, thanks partly to the persistence of a kind of ‘Garibaldinian socialism’ (i.e. non-Marxian) among the artisan class.5 Neighbouring Romagna was, after all, the Republican stronghold par excellence in Italy, after a long, turbulent history of opposition to papal rule which was chronicled in the Risorgimento moderate Liberal leader Massimo D’Azeglio’s pamphlet, Degli ultimi casi della Romagna.6 And republicanism in the Romagna retained a following among both urban and rural poor until the middle of the next century. But conflict between the monarchist Liberal-Conservatives and the Republicans in the city brought no relief to the Catholics for republicanism was as virulent a carrier of anti-clericalism as either mainstream liberalism or socialism.7
Owing to the lack of industrialization, Bologna itself remained an essentially agrarian, administrative and university city: Cardoza describes it as the ‘acknowledged, if unofficial, agricultural capital of Italy … a hub of commercial, administrative, and political activity between the regions of northern and central Italy’, thanks especially to the rich cultivations – hemp and grains – on the plains of the province.8 Without industrialization, however, there was as yet no very large industrial, urban proletariat. As a result, the city of Bologna lacked the presence of strong working-class organizations. It would not be until after the First World War, following limited industrialization, that Bologna would emerge as the ‘red city’, Bologna la rossa, the indisputable capital of the ‘red belt’ of central Italy. Paradoxically, the working-class movement developed most strongly in the countryside of Bologna and neighbouring provinces. The peculiar social structure of this area with large numbers of landless labourers (braccianti), and miserably poor sharecroppers (mezzadri), proved an ideal breeding ground for agrarian socialism. A similiar pattern was recognizable in the adjacent provinces of Ravenna, Ferrara and Modena.9 Furthermore, according to Cardoza, ‘Rapid growth of socialist labour came partially at the expense of the Catholic professional unions which entered into crisis in 1904 as a result of pressures from the leagues and internal conflict between clerical conservatives and Christian Democrats.’10 Within Bologna province itself, Budrio and to a lesser extent Imola were the epicentres of bitter agrarian disputes from 1883 onwards, and consequently in the 1920s witnessed the awful violence of the reaction against a triumphant agrarian socialism-agrarian Fascism. As Leo XIII had already recognized, the Marxist-orientated working-class movement with its vigorous agrarian wing would ultimately prove to be the Church’s strongest rival for the souls of the Italian people. Not surprisingly, Della Chiesa had his baptism of fire in this regard precisely during his stay in Emilia-Romagna: it was here, according to Veneruso, that ‘he learnt to recognise and evaluate the power and nature of socialism’.11
The emerging ‘red threat’ brought about a partial reconciliation between Catholics and Liberal-Conservatives in the late 1880s: under the patronage of Cardinal Archbishop Svampa, clerico-moderate electoral alliances kept the Bologna city council out of the hands of the extremists between 1886 and 1902. Thereafter, it was the Catholics who were isolated from power. It was in this extremely unpropitious situation that Della Chiesa arrived to take up his pastoral ministry in January 1908 and it is not surprising therefore that the Royal Procurator of the city should inform his superiors in Rome in that month that, ‘the appointment of Msgr Della Chiesa as Archbishop of Bologna has created a good impression in the clerical camp, while the other section of the citizenry has remained perfectly indifferent’.12
On 10 February 1908, in advance of his arrival in the diocese, Della Chiesa sent his first pastoral letter, entitled ‘What is the office of bishop?’, to his flock. In it, he defined the office of a bishop as that of ‘superintendant’ (a definition, therefore, with which most Anglican and Lutheran authorities at that time would also have agreed), as the good father of a family and as a ‘Good Shepherd of his sheep’, a fairly traditional, conventional conception of his role. Equally conventional was his conception of the duty of the ‘sheep’ – to obey.13 Della Chiesa also stressed the teaching role of bishops, and his subsequent annual pastoral letters dealt with the various aspects of the Christian life: 1910, ‘The Spirit of Obedience’; 1911, ‘The Spirit of Humility’; 1912, ‘The Spirit of Prayer’; 1913, ‘The Spirit of Charity’ and 1914, ‘The Spirit of Mortification’.14 Thus Della Chiesa’s was a ministry dedicated, as he had made clear at the beginning of his first pastoral letter, to the salvation of souls. To this end, he set about re-organizing the diocesan administration. As first vicar-general, he appointed the auxiliary bishop, Vincenzo Bacchi.15 His second vicar-general was Mgr Ersilio Menzani, archdeacon (dean) of the cathedral, whom he clearly trusted and relied upon. According to Albertazzi, ‘Ersilio Menzani (1872–1961) was Giacomo Della Chiesa’s protégé, and Benedict XV wanted him first as director of the diocesan bulletin and then vicar-general’; furthermore, during the long periods that he was away on parochial visitations, he gave Menzani full delegated powers in such matters as appointments.16 The other major appointment was that of Giuseppe Migone, the son of a friend, as his secretary: the Archbishop of Genoa was persuaded to release him from service at the Genoese church in Rome. Della Chiesa’s household was completed by a small ‘community’ of priests who worked in the diocesan curia (administration) and shared his life in the archiepiscopal palace.
After his arrival in Bologna, he quickly established a demanding daily schedule for himself. He rose at 5 a.m., and after saying his morning prayers, Breviary, Mass, meditation and thanksgiving he would breakfast at 7 a.m. Between breakfast and lunch at 1.30 p.m., he would deal with correspondence and appointments. This would be followed by a visit to the Exposed Sacrament in one of Bologna’s churches, and by more Breviary interspersed with further business. Shortly after the recitation of the Rosary and supper at 8.30 p.m., followed by a period of conversation with his household, he retired to his study for yet more reading and more writing: this routine he also followed after being elected Pope.17 Peters says that Della Chiesa was perfectly capable of working all the way through the night.18
Despite the problems created for him as Archbishop by the continuing Roman persecution of Modernists and Christian Democrats, most of Della Chiesa’s time was taken up with more routine matters, and most of his problems were mundane. In a letter in 1909 to a friend, Mgr Vincenzo Sardi, Apostolic Delegate at Constantinople, he wrote:
So far I can honestly say that I have not had very serious difficulties: the majority are caused by the odd priest who finds the vow of celibacy hard to bear. Here it is not really a question of modernists or marxists, largely because the level of ecclesiastical studies is very low, and priestly spirituality is lacking: I find the latter perplexing because the Seminary is run by a good rector yet as soon as the young priests leave the seminary they forget how to meditate!19
His first priority, from the beginning of his ministry in Bologna, was the need to carry out a complete pastoral visitation of his diocese. It was by no means unusual for a new diocesan to inaugurate a complete visitation of his parishes, the example having been set by the great Counter-Reformation bishop, St Charles Borromeo of Milan, in the sixteenth century. But Bologna was a big diocese, the fourth largest in Italy, with a population of roughly six hundred and seventy thousand souls, so it was bound to be a very big undertaking and it must therefore have taken up a very large part of his time. It was made physically arduous by the fact that whereas the northern portion of the diocese consisted of plain, the southern portion was composed of the foothills and mountains of the Apennines; thus in a letter of 3 March 1909, Della Chiesa claimed that he had already visited 65 parishes, with 400 to go, 100 of which could only be reached on horseback.20 Finally, on 13 December 1913, a solemn Te Deum was held in the cathedral to celebrate completion of 392 visitations.21
As well as physically inspecting the fabric, fittings, equipment and records, on a visitation the Bishop usually celebrated Mass, gave Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and delivered an appropriate homily in the parish being visited. Where appropriate, he also visited hospitals, prisons and religious houses. According to Molinari, ‘Benedict XV made his pastoral visits leaving behind a memory of his very limited oratorical skill but also his very warm and friendly approach’.22 This seems to be a rather harsh judgement. While the file of material on the visitations preserved in the Della Chiesa Family Archive does not suggest that they were terribly exciting spiritually or theologically, it has to be remembered that he was very often speaking to a usually uneducated, and often illiterate, audience and that he must have written hundreds of them.23 They are, inevitably, very didactic, with a great use of rhetorical question and various biblical texts to exhort his hearers to charity. Apart from a few Latin texts, the language is plain, simple and clear. On a visit to the city parish of St Martin, he recalled the fact that he had been there the year before, during the procession for Our Lady of Carmel, that it was the second city church to be visited and he added a typically personal touch, pointing out that he knew that the parish priest had served for twenty-five years.24 He expressed himself pleased with the state of the church and especially with the fact that special efforts had been made so that ‘the poorer children had been provided with the proper garments for the common feast’, and he concluded by saying that the pastoral visit was ‘a gift which the Lord made to enrich them spiritually. “If you keep my commandments”’.25
The outcome of the Archbishop’s visits was not always so satisfactory. The diary of the pastoral visits, compiled by Della Chiesa’s chaplain and travelling companion, demonstrates that in several places his superior was not impressed by the way in which the church or other ecclesiastical buildings were maintained, and said so. At Vimignano the chaplain wrote, ‘Oh! The visit to the parish certainly did not give the Bishop that satisfaction which he ought to expect – there was a lot of disorder and much neglect’26 and at Serravalle Della Chiesa was profoundly displeased: ‘the Archbishop remarked that the church … is in great need of repair and of order. He was astonished by the fact that not even the imminence of a pastoral visit had had the effect of prompting some effort to render the house of the Lord a little more decorous’.27 According to the diary, Della Chiesa’s next step in these cases was to send in the local rural dean who was set to work to bring about improvement, and Della Chiesa did not brook disobedience of his orders.28
From his visitations it quickly became clear that one of the major problems facing the Bologna diocese was a lack of religious instruction; indeed, the inadequacy of the religious knowledge of the children of a parish, which Della Chiesa insisted on testing himself, is a recurring theme in the accounts of the visitations. At its root, the problem was essentially political. In Italy in this period, the school became a major battleground between Catholics and Socialists and the prize was the soul of Italian children. In the decades immediately following unification, the battle had been between Catholics and the anti-clerical Liberal ruling élite, supported by Radical and Republican elements, and in 1870 they secured a victory of a kind through the passage of legislation which made the teaching of the catechism optional in primary schools.29 But since the day-to-day administration of schools was the responsibility of local authorities, the effects of the law were patchy. In the 1880s and 1890s the Socialists waged a powerful campaign to win control of local authorities and a key goal was the abolition of teaching the catechism. At this point, in the face of a threatened Socialist take-over, Catholics and Liberals banded together in clerico-moderate alliances. The defeat of that alliance in Bologna in 1902, therefore, meant the virtual eradication of the catechism from Bologna’s schools, and a similar situation was to be found in other parts of the province where the councils had been taken over by the Left. Della Chiesa very quickly set to work to find a remedy to the situation. At the diocesan eucharistic congress in November 1909, he announced the establishment of local congregations of Christian doctrine’, whose job would be to organize the teaching of the catechism in the various deaneries.30 In the Bollettino Diocesano (the Diocesan newsletter), which he himself founded in the following year, a plan of campaign was mapped out: priests were instructed to ensure that all the children in the parish were brought to catechism and asked to check the lists of those receiving instruction against the registers of the primary schools, the result of which was that out of a total population in the diocese of 670,000, 100,000 children were discovered not to be attending the classes; a stress was made on children’s attendance at Sunday mass, regardless of their age; the involvement of fathers and mothers was strongly encouraged and the need to use the most modern aids – including films and slides – was underlined.31 Della Chiesa did not hesitate to employ the much-criticized Don Ravaglia (see pp. 43–4) to write the official diocesan catechism.32 Della Chiesa’s organizational skills, and above all his eye for detail, are very clearly evident in his plan of campaign for the ‘catechetical offensive’, and it resulted in the creation of a catechism centre near every state primary school in the diocese.33
Another problem of an essentially political origin which faced Della Chiesa when he arrived in Bologna was that of civil marriage. According to Kertzer, ‘The battle over civil and church marriage was still being fought in Bologna in 1907.’34 The difficulty for Catholics was the secular State’s insistence on the precedence of a civil over a religious wedding, which was not acceptable in canon law.35 As a result of the dogged opposition of many parochial clergy, and also quite simply the shortage of money to pay the fees twice, there was strong resistance to civil marriage in Emilia-Romagna generally; thus as far as the State was concerned many children were illegitimate – 17.5 per cent in the region in this period.36 Della Chiesa’s response to the problem was predictably sensible; in the Bollettino Diocesano he enjoined upon the parochial clergy the need to preach about marriage once a year and in doing so to urge upon the faithful the unfortunate necessity of contracting both kinds, civil and religious, for their own benefit, especially in order to preserve their legal rights of inheritance.37
As indicated by the quotation from the letter on p. 34, Della Chiesa was blessed with a good, well-run seminary, a luxury as far as many of his fellow bishops were concerned. But over the years the seminary did give him a lot of trouble, which largely stemmed from Pius X’s new legislation on the education and training of priests.38 This was to form the basis of seminary studies until Vatican II. It is undoubtedly true that the Pope’s concern about the training of the young Italian clergy was largely motivated by fear of ‘Modernism’. Certainly, the seminaries, and the soundness of the teaching in them, were a major target of his apostolic visitors, as we have seen, and injunctions about the need to shelter the young seminarian from heretical and simply secular influences were frequently made: Della Chiesa, for example, carried out his instructions in this matter by banning seminarians from reading newspapers and periodicals.39 But Pius X was aiming at a broader objective, the improvement of what was very patchy provision for clergy training, especially in the south of Italy.40 His strategy involved not only a reform of the curriculum, but a concentration of clergy-training in larger seminaries, which had the added benefit of bringing them more directly under Vatican control.41 The consequence for Della Chiesa was that he was forced, very reluctantly, to agree to Cardinal De Lai’s suggestion that a new regional seminary be created to replace the diocesan one.42 In fact, he would have preferred to concentrate the convitti (private hostels for seminarians), into the diocesan seminary, but was forced to amalgamate them and the senior and junior seminary into the regional one.43 A new seminary required a new building, and therefore new land and more funding. In consequence there were long-drawn-out arguments with the State bureaucracy over the purchase of land vacated by the military44 and over the investment of monies from the sale of the old seminary,45 with the result that the new building was not opened until 1915, after Della Chiesa had been elected Pope.
This experience must have brought home even more keenly to Della Chiesa the unsatisfactory nature of Church—State relations in Italy under the Liberal regime. He had given advice to Valfré di Bonzo on how to comport himself with the Italian civil authorities, but he himself had had virtually no dealings with them prior to his appointment to Bologna. Now, suddenly, he came up against them in nearly every aspect of his episcopal ministry. In general terms, the Church in Italy was always under the threat of the introduction of further anti-Church legislation; on the other hand, it remained an ‘established’ Church in legal terms, thus the local State authorities were able to control many of the financial affairs of the Church,46 hence the difficulties over the new seminary. Relations with those government departments which dealt with the Church were the bane of any Italian bishop’s life. In fact, Della Chiesa had had difficulties with the State authorities in financial matters from the start. The revenues of the diocese (the mensa), were in the hands of the Economato Generale, the local office of the Justice Ministry responsible for dealing with Church property and clergy payments. With an eye to the inevitable expense of entering into office, Della Chiesa had asked for an extra five million lire to cover special costs from the outset, and his sharp legal mind saw a justification for this claim in all the money that had gone to the State during the vacancies in the see between I860 and 1908. But the head of the Economato would not wear this, seeing in Della Chiesa’s claim a dangerous precedent for the future which would cause enormous difficulties to his budget. He offered, instead, a loan of three million lire, to be repaid over six years.47 In his reply, Della Chiesa argued that in any case his mensa was not sufficient for the normal running costs of a diocese which was the fourth largest in Italy.48 Unfortunately, we do not know the final outcome of this battle, but given his training in both civil and as well as canon law, we can be sure that Della Chiesa gave the authorities a run for their money.
Carrying out instructions from Rome was an increasingly essential part of the episcopal routine for the new archbishop. In the Bollettino Diocesano of January 1911, he announced the liturgical reforms which Pius X had recently introduced and in particular the most important of them, the exhortation to the laity to take daily Communion issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Consistory.49 Della Chiesa would undoubtedly have had no difficulty with that decree, but Pius X’s strictures on the use of ‘secular’ music in church, and his demand for the universal re-introduction of Gregorian plainchant must have posed a personal problem for a man who was notoriously tone deaf. Nevertheless, he sought faithfully to implement the Holy See’s instructions. This reform was long overdue in the Bologna diocese. The British architectural historian and traveller, T. Francis Bumpus, wrote this of the music played at High Mass in Bologna cathedral on his visit in 1907: ‘Between each Kyrie and sentence of the Gloria in Excelsis, Credo etc., the organist played a few bars of trivial music … [which] was feeble in the extreme, and quite beneath the dignity of a church which contains the cathedra of a Cardinal Archbishop.’50 It may well be that, like many another bishop, in this as in other matters, he found that his episcopal authority had limits when cathedral canons were concerned. In a letter to Menzani, his former vicar-general, written in 1915, he complained about the Bologna cathedral clergy, who wanted to change the constitutions of the cathedral and become mitred canons.51
While Della Chiesa immersed himself in the normal work of a diocesan ordinary, he could not avoid the problems which followed him from Rome, in particular, the persecutions of Modernists and Christian Democrats. With his departure, and that of his friend Gasparri, the power of the integristes in the Roman Curia had been strengthened and they were extending their campaigns to all the major Italian sees. In this regard, Della Chiesa inherited a very difficult situation when he took over in Bologna. His predecessor, Cardinal Svampa had left behind an uncertain legacy. Svampa was regarded in many circles as pro-Modernist because of his interest in much new biblical and theological scholarship, his hostility to the notorious Scotton brothers, two agents of Benigni operating an integriste journal out of Vicenza, and his sympathies with political position of the Christian Democratic leader Don Romolo Murri, who hailed from the Romagna. According to the ecclesiastical historian Penco, Svampa ‘nurtured strong sympathies for the most avantgarde element in religious culture and action in Italy, especially in the field of biblical studies’.52 All this got him into trouble at Rome and according to Lorenzo Bedeschi, Svampa
emerged from his struggle with Merry Del Val with the certainty that the Secretary of State considered him to be a democrat, and a modernist of a Loisyan stamp. Even worse, he had paid homage to the King [of Italy]. This leads one to suspect that Bologna constituted in these critical years a real preoccupation for the Roman curia … But a cardinal is always a cardinal, and as long as Svampa lived an inspection from Rome would have caused a scandal.53
On the other hand, apostolic visitations had been made to the Milan diocese without regard to the feelings of its Archbishop, Cardinal Ferrari,54 and in the interregnum between Svampa’s death and the arrival of Della Chiesa, Boggiani, the Vatican’s anti-Modernist investigator in central Italy, visited Bologna, albeit unofficially and discreetly, on two occasions. His caution may have been due to the knowledge of Della Chiesa’s appointment and a consequent fear of upsetting such a powerful Vatican figure.
There is strong evidence to suggest that in fact it was Della Chiesa who was intended to ‘cleanse the augean stables’ at Bologna, being sent there precisely for this purpose, even though Merry Del Val may equally well have hoped, and perhaps even expected, that he would fail in this task. The Liberal-Conservative newspaper II Giornale d’Italia believed that Della Chiesa had been sent to clear out the ‘nests of heresy’55 and this was confirmed by Cardinal Pizzardo in his deposition for the beatification of Merry Del Val.56 Della Chiesa was a papal loyalist, who would never have dreamt of refusing direct orders from the Pope or the Roman Curia, however distasteful. Moreover, he spelt out the need for direct obedience to the Pope in the Bollettino Diocesano. He made the subject of his Lenten pastoral for 1910 ‘The Spirit of Obedience’, stressing the need to obey all the Pope’s decisions57 and in December of the same year, he warned that, ‘When the faithful hear new doctrines, not in conformity with those approved by the Pope, they should not allow themselves to deceived … the Pope has spoken. That is enough.’58 But in his first pastoral he had also laid down a very sensible, reasonable and predictable approach to the Modernist controversy:
It is far from my intention to condemn every new form of doctrine, indeed I applaud scientific/scholarly progress wherever it is found … but I believe that it is increasingly necessary to test every new theory against ‘the sense of the Church’, in order to have a secure criterion of acceptability. In the field of the religious sciences there are very often controversies which should not be condemned a priori, because they can lead to a further discovery or to the shedding of greater light on a certain truth. It may happen that the supreme ecclesiastical authority has not yet made a definitive pronouncement on the subject, but even so it may already be obvious that some opinions on that subject are not in conformity with the age-long tradition of the faithful. Vice versa, the Church may not have given a definitive response but does not regard them unfavourably.59
This was a remarkably enlightened and progressive viewpoint, and it could not have won him any plaudits in Rome.
The suppression of Modernism clearly was a part of his brief, like that of any other bishop, but the new archbishop was slow and reluctant to execute it, in particular to dismiss people. He told Cardinal De Lai that he was afraid of dividing the clergy into two camps, though this may have been an excuse, a rather bare covering for his continued disagreement with Vatican policy.60 The first major battle with De Lai was over the diocesan seminary, following the inspection by the apostolic visitor De Lucci, but in the end Della Chiesa was unable to prevent the removal of its rector, Mgr Lodi.61 And despite the support of Della Chiesa, who had been ordered to keep an eye on the teaching staff, the work of Manaresi, professor of ecclesiastical history, was put on the Index.62 Another victim of the anti-Modernist purge in Bologna was Don Alessandro Cantono who was strongly influenced by the new ideas of the Germans, the Belgians, the French and the English. In particular, he was ‘an open supporter of the application of modern criticism to religious history and of the ideas of Loisy and Lagrange’.63 A very dangerous man indeed. In another age he might have been burnt at the stake. Not surprisingly, there was little Della Chiesa could do to protect him. Occasionally, Della Chiesa was able to get his own back in his struggles with the integristes in the Roman Curia. In September 1911, he wrote to De Lai agreeing to the latter’s instructions to ban Duchesne’s History of the Church, which had fallen under suspicion of ‘modernism’, but he did not let the opportunity pass without taking a swipe at the inefficient workings of the Curia:
You will permit me to add the hope that the Sacred Congregation of the Consistory should never again have to prohibit a work that has already received the imprimatur of the Master of the Sacred Palaces, not only in the original text, but also in the Italian version. We poor bishops have to work very hard to persuade our priests and people of the utility of maintaining an institution whose head, not once but several times, has demonstrated himself incapable of guaranteeing the integrity of doctrine …64
Ironically, Della Chiesa had more success in his efforts to defend the clergy of the neighbouring dioceses of his suffragans from the wrath of Rome. With his knowledge of canon law, and the procedures of the ecclesiastical courts, Della Chiesa was particularly effective in defending Don Ravaglia, whom Boggiani had been instrumental in removing from the seminary at Cesena in 1907. In 1909, Ravaglia was accused of semi-heretical opinions on ‘evolution and the human science of Jesus’, but Della Chiesa agreed with him that he was being judged on opinions he had expressed before the Church had made a definitive judgement on the matter. According to Bedeschi, ‘Della Chiesa absolved him with the greatest of equanimity from the sin of heresy for having expressed those opinions’.65 And when Ravaglia’s bishop, Mgr Cazzani, stood his ground in the campaign being conducted against him, and refused to admit the inspection by another apostolic visitor, Della Chiesa supported him, to the extent that when Ravaglia’s opponent, Ghino, took his case against him to Rome, Della Chiesa used powerful friends in the Holy Office, presumably Rampolla, to find out if there was a file on Ravaglia there.66
On 19 October 1907, the editor of La Fiaccola, a local Catholic weekly, had written of the newly appointed Archbishop: ‘His appointment has given rise to the most diverse opinions: some papers have called him a “Modernist-eater” while others have described him as [a] very able and prudent man.’67 ‘The others’ were, of course, right. In a letter the next day, Della Chiesa wrote to the editor, thanking him for his ‘sincere, reverent and affectionate’ welcome, and assuring him that he ‘had not come to Bologna as a “Modernist-eater” but with the hope of helping all his future spiritual children to save their souls’.68 That he sincerely and stubbornly tried to do so is evidenced by the fact that on the eve of the outbreak of the First World War, along with Cardinals Maffi of Pisa, Richelmy of Turin and Ferrari of Milan, he was regarded in Rome as being ‘soft’ on Modernism.69 As a result, he came under attack from the integristes. According to Peters, after his election, Della Chiesa actually found a denunciation of himself for Modernism in the papers of his deceased predecessor.70 In their zeal to root out Modernist heresy and protect the faithful from its poison, the integristes turned their guns on Italy’s growing, lay-controlled Catholic newspapers. In particular, they attacked the Catholic newspapers in Turin, Milan, Genoa and Bologna, and had the audacity to criticize the archbishops of those cities for failing to condemn them. Della Chiesa hit back very hard in a cogent and sensible letter.71 As the American historian, Webster, points out: ‘they [the integristes] made the one serious mistake of attacking a cardinal who was eminently papabile. When Pius X died suddenly in 1914 Cardinal Giacomo Della Chiesa of Bologna, a constant target of integriste enmity, was elected to succeed him as Benedict XV; the integristes never recovered.’72
The bitter battles over Modernism were not the only problem to follow Della Chiesa from Rome to Bologna. Democratic tendencies were the other great bugbear of the Roman Curia during the pontificate of Pius X and they tended to be seen as going hand in hand with Modernism. In some cases this was actually true, most notably in that of Don Romolo Murri, with the result that the movement he led, Christian Democracy, was regarded as tainted with the Modernist ‘heresy’ even though other leaders like Don Luigi Sturzo were innocent of such offence. In 1904, Pius X and his collaborators in the Roman Curia decided to kill three birds with one stone. They dissolved the Opera dei Congressi, the umbrella for the various organizations of the Catholic social and political movement in Italy, thus putting an end to the squabbles between the two conflicting wings of the Italian Catholic lay movement – Christian Democracy and the clerico-moderates. They also effectively isolated Murri and the Christian Democrats, and brought the Catholic movement under closer Vatican and episcopal oversight. The problems which this caused for the bishops, especially those in the Romagna, were enormous, for that region was the very stronghold of the Christian Democratic movement.
Della Chiesa’s attitude towards the Christian Democrats prior to the outbreak of the First World War is difficult to ascertain. He may well have regarded the social reformism of the movement as too radical, and in a letter to Menzani, regarding a mutual acquaintance in 1920, he wrote: ‘As far as the socialists are concerned, I would like to whisper in Don Corinto’s ear that there was a time when he was close to the dens of the Christian Democrats, step-brothers of the socialists.’73 And according to Molinari, Della Chiesa was appointed to Bologna to ‘hammer the newly-born Democrazia Cristiana’ movement.74 This is entirely plausible, but other evidence suggests that in fact the new Archbishop was by no means hostile towards the movement and its leader. Gabriele De Rosa, the doyen of historians of the Catholic movement in Italy, for instance, says that Della Chiesa ‘had strong sympathies for Murri, the orthodox Murri, that is … the points of conflict with the Murriani were their fierce independence [of the ecclesiastical hierarchy], their ardent Interventionism [i.e. support for Italy’s intervention in the First World War in 1915, author’s note} and the philo-socialism of Murri himself’.75 Della Chiesa’s actual involvement in battles over the Christian Democrats were few in number. One, the classic example of a man condemned twice – once for Modernism and a second time for advanced Christian Democratic ideas – is that of Don Ravaglia, who as well as teaching in the seminary was the parish priest of the cathedral in Cesena and involved in the Christian Democratic journal, Il Savio. This was criticized by Rome’s apostolic visitor as ‘motivated by a socialist spirit as far as economic and social questions are concerned’.76 Della Chiesa did not agree with the severity of Bishop Cazzani’s attitude to Il Savio – the latter regarded it as a mortal sin to read the newspaper – or his hostile attitude towards the Christian Democratic organization, the Lega Democratica Nazionale. According to Bedeschi, ‘Mgr Della Chiesa, on the other hand, with a typically spirited pun [on the name of the newspaper}, in order to avoid having to make a judgement called him [Ravaglia} “poco savio” [not very wise]’.77
As Zangheri explains, even though the leading Christian Democratic journal was published in Bologna:
Christian Democracy never developed very strongly in the capital of Emilia-Romagna. Rather, Bologna, of all the cities of Emilia-Romagna, turned a deaf ear to the movement, despite the fact that a number of priests and young laymen, like Giuseppe Bertini, had conducted a veritable campaign of cultural renewal … for the supporters of Murri in 1907 Bologna remained a predominantly conservative city.78
That was a major part of the problem that presented itself to Della Chiesa when he arrived in Bologna. The conflict between on the one hand, the Christian Democratic supporters of La Fiaccola, which condemned the Liberal-Conservative bourgeoisie (and blamed their government for all the strikes in Italy), and on the other the conservative Catholics represented by the daily newspaper L’Avvenire d’Italia, was so bitter and open that it constituted a veritable scandal to the Catholic cause. When the integristes turned the screw on Catholic newspapers not entirely in conformity with their high standards of orthodoxy, Della Chiesa even came under pressure to sack the editor of L’Avvenire, Rocco D’Adria. D’Adria eventually left, and it is not clear whether he resigned voluntarily or whether he was forced to do so by Della Chiesa. This action, and the passage of the newspaper into the ownership of the Trust, a big newspaper company controlled by the clerico-moderate notable Count Grosoli and his friends in the Catholic Banco di Roma, still did not solve the problem. Writing to De Lai in 1912, Della Chiesa told the Secretary to the Congregation of the Council that he had not been happy with the editorial policy of L’Avvenire and had told them so. They promised to change. Everyone in Bologna knew this. But he could not suddenly switch his support to the ultra-conservative, integriste mouthpiece L’Unità Cattolica of Florence.79
Leaving aside the problems with Christian Democracy, it was difficult for Italian bishops in the early twentieth century to avoid being involved in some way or another in politics, and Della Chiesa was no exception. Under the dominating personality of Giovanni Giolitti, Italian politics in this period was one of relative stability after the tempests of the previous ‘End of Century Crisis’; indeed, 1903 to 1914 was dubbed ‘the Giolittian era’, thanks to the political skill of the Piedmontese statesman. It was also a period of increasing collaboration between Catholics and the Liberal-Conservative ruling élite of which Giolitti was the leading figure. After 1904, the clerico-moderate alliances which had became so widespread at a local level in various parts of northern Italy, also became a feature of national politics. From the 1904 general elections onwards, Pius X made relaxations of the non expedit decree, which allowed increasing numbers of Catholics not only to vote in parliamentary elections but also to stand as candidates. The process was carefully controlled through the Church-sponsored Unione Elettorale, and in 1913 not only were thirty Catholics elected to Parliament but following the introduction of universal adult male suffrage, and thanks to the so-called ‘pact’ between Giolitti and the leader of the Unione, Count Gentiloni, hundreds of thousands of Catholic votes saved the Liberal-Conservative majority from an upsurge in support for the Socialists.80
Despite his intransigent misgivings, Della Chiesa was obliged to condone the increasing closeness between local Catholic politicians and their Liberal-Conservative counterparts: according to Zangheri, ‘From the political point of view, the clerico-moderate strategy of Della Chiesa was unequivocal.’81 In fact, he had very little choice in the matter: both the Vatican and his own laity pushed him in that direction. On the other hand, he did not always accept the Liberal candidates endorsed by the Unione Elettorale. In 1913, for example, he refused to give his support to Alberto Bergamini, the editor of the Giornale d’Italia, with the result that the revolutionary socialist Enrico Ferri was elected in the suburban San Giovanni in Persiceto constituency.82 Again according to Zangheri, under the leadership of the Catholic newspaper L’Avvenire, now owned by Grosoli’s Trust, ‘opposition to Socialism became the chief, if not the exclusive, orientation of the Catholic laity of Bologna’.83
But the concern about Socialism was also genuinely Della Chiesa’s concern and that of his clergy. In the period leading to the outbreak of the First World War, the Marxist-orientated Italian Socialist Party, and the allied network of trade unions, peasant leagues and co-operatives, was extending its influence in Emilia-Romagna as elsewhere in Italy; and as it did so, it sought to build a comprehensive counter-culture to that of the Church, using the case del popolo and the circoli operai (social centres for workers and their families), to provide a whole range of facilities, including theatrical and musical associations, crèches and cheap restaurants, to serve the worker and his family in competition with the Catholic parish.84 In its definitive form, this culture was characterized by all manner of secular events and heroes to contest the public demonstrations of Catholic piety and loyalty, particularly the celebration of local saints.85
As bishops and local clergy in different parts of Italy pointed out at this time, these practical expressions of militant anti-clericalism were a crucial factor in the decline in religious observance and loyalty to the Church.86 Closer to home, at the Bologna diocesan Catechetical Congress, Don Armando Nascetti denounced the work of the Socialists:
Is it not clear what this widespread anti-clerical campaign is aiming at? Its chief aim is to draw away children, parents and the people from Christian Teaching. Dear brothers, you know better than me that the recent violent agitations [of the Socialists] is a perfect example. You know only too well that at Parma [a notorious Socialist stronghold] a few weeks ago the national congress of Socialist Youth agreed to undertake an incessant anti-clerical and anti-religious propaganda campaign, establishing reading rooms, and distributing newspapers and books in order to rob God, the Church and the priest of young people, and with their revolutionary spirit, also to destroy the social order.87
In fact, the Socialist penetration of Emilia-Romagna had already borne its bitter fruits for the Church: according to Albertazzi, in 1906, ‘Mgr Trebbioli was appointed bishop of Imola to halt the abandonment of traditional religion’.88 Agrarian socialism was widespread and well-organized in Imola (part of Bologna province).
There were also serious problems in Della Chiesa’s own diocese. According to Sauro Onofri: ‘The agricultural area of the plains was almost completely “red”. The success (of the Socialists) in the hill area was modest, while in the high Appenines, the Bolognese “Vendee”, Socialism was almost unknown.’89 The record of the pastoral visitations conducted by Della Chiesa confirms the accuracy of this picture. In the diary entries for the parishes of the plain, we repeatedly find such reports as ‘a small number of faithful present, few communicants’,90 ‘lots of women, few men’91 and ‘only a few WOMEN were present in church’.92 This classic pattern of ‘dechristianization’ was, however, largely confined to the parishes of the plain, where agrarian socialism had taken strongest root. Typical of the situation which he encountered here was this entry in the diary for the visit to the parish of San Giorgio in Panigale: ‘Returned to Bologna … with a painful impression of the religious conditions in this populous village, which has demonstrated itself not so much hostile to the Archbishop, as indifferent.’93 Only very rarely was the chaplain able to record the following: ‘One hundred and forty-two faithful communicated, a large number considering that in this place, as unfortunately in others, Socialist theories have dechristianized so many families.’94 Working people were not only deserting regular Mass and Communion, they sometimes abandoned the ‘rites of passage’ too. In the Romagna, as in France, there was a veritable cult of the ‘secular funeral’. As a result, tensions between the working-class movement and the Church could very easily surface at funerals. In Bologna, in 1905, the police reported the case of a young member of the bricklayers’ union, killed in a accident, who was given a religious funeral: when the priest arrived at the funeral parlour the man’s Socialist comrades abandoned the procession and one of them delivered an oration outside the church in which he declared that ‘the presence of the priests and members of the Catholic associations had defiled the body of the worker’.95
Della Chiesa and his clergy refused to be intimidated: in a letter to his vicar-general in 1913, he referred to ‘the great number of socialists in the parish of Zappoluni, whose parish priest set to work with clenched teeth’.96 Della Chiesa also used the Bollettino Diocesano to condemn the concept and practice of class struggle, a coded way of attacking Socialism, but perhaps also the more militant Christian Democrats.97 On the ‘social question’, he continued to take a fairly conventional, traditional stand. Thus in his Lenten pastoral letter of 1909, he addressed himself to ‘servants’: ‘You servants must recognise in your masters over and beyond the human qualities which they have in common with you, the providence of God. Thus, you must accept willingly the decrees of Divine providence which has established distinctions between masters and servants, rich and poor, nobles and plebians.’98 This paternalistic attitude was common to even the most ‘social’ of Italian bishops at the time, including Cardinal Ferrari of Milan.99 Taking this stand, however, did not mean that he was necessarily out of sympathy with the demands of the lower classes. In his 1913 pastoral letter, for example, he laid much stress upon the equal origins of rich and poor.100 And during his first year in office, that is 1908, he joined with his fellow bishops in a ‘collective letter’ specifically addressed to the problem of the agrarian struggles that had erupted in Emilia-Romagna at that time. In this letter, the bishops declared themselves to be above and beyond ‘the struggles between the various classes by nature of their ministry’, but they omitted the usual, indiscriminate condemnation of socialism and recognized the legitimacy of the right of class organization, a courageous stand in view of the threatened denunciation of all, even Catholic trade unions, by the Vatican under Pius X.101
During ‘Red Week’ in June 1914, there was spontaneous and widespread rioting, with churches and landowners’ houses attacked, in Emilia-Romagna and neighbouring regions following a so-called ‘proletarian massacre’ (i.e. a police shooting of working-class demonstrators), which was a clear sign of Giolitti’s failure to reconcile the working-class movement with the Italian State. The situation in Bologna was especially tense. Following earlier trade union demonstrations, attended by some violence, supporters of the working-class movement were eventually hounded through the streets and beaten: even L’Avvenire protested at this ‘white’ reaction.102 It was to this still unsettled situation that Della Chiesa returned after his investiture as a Cardinal in Rome. In his sermon in the welcoming ceremony at the cathedral on 14 June, only a couple of days after the worst incidents, the new Cardinal prayed that, ‘the Lord will never again allow in our Bologna the anxieties and the sorrows of recent days …’103
Along with seven other Italian archbishoprics – Turin, Florence, Rome (the Pope’s vicar), Palermo, Naples, Venice and Milan – Bologna was traditionally a ‘cardinalatial’ see, that is its head was almost invariably awarded the red hat. But it was almost seven years before Della Chiesa received his. While it is true that Archbishop Mistrangelo of Florence had to wait even longer,104 the failure to promote Della Chiesa is inexplicable except in terms of a powerful blocking lobby in the Roman Curia. The same reasons which had motivated the desire of Merry Del Val, De Lai and others to remove Della Chiesa from the Vatican almost certainly also played a part in the delay in awarding the title of cardinal. An added worry for his enemies in the Vatican might have been the fear that, following his entry into the Sacred College of Cardinals, Della Chiesa would have ‘ganged’ up with Rampolla and constituted the core of an influential bloc working against the policies of the integristes. Even Peters admits: ‘That Merry Del Val and Della Chiesa disagreed sharply on integralism, was no secret to their contemporaries.’105
MacNutt suggests that the issue had become a public scandal by 1914, with Bolognese citizens making their views heard in no uncertain way in Rome.106 Finally, Della Chiesa’s vicar-general took the matter into his hands: ‘On 8 November 1913 Menzani was received in audience by Pope Pius X and explained with insistent frankness the widely felt aspiration of the Bolognesi that their Archbishop should be honoured with the cardinalatial purple. Pius X is alleged to have commented, “This Vicar General is truly terrible!”.’107 In the Consistory of May Pius X announced the name of Della Chiesa among a list of new cardinals, though Shane Leslie insists that even at this late stage the Pope had been obliged to insert the Archbishop of Bologna’s name in pencil, such was the opposition of his Cardinal Secretary of State.108
Just how general the feeling was that Della Chiesa had for too long, and unjustly, been deprived of the red hat is demonstrated in this letter of congratulation which Cardinal Gasparri sent to his friend upon his elevation to the Sacred College:
Monsignore, dear friend,
A million congratulations. I am so happy to have you finally [his italics] as a colleague. I already knew after the last Consistory, but the Holy Father swore me to secrecy, a difficult secret to keep because I would have been so happy to assure our friends who were awaiting the event with impatience. How delighted poor Cardinal Rampolla, who loved you so much, would have been!
Affectionate greetings and I hope to embrace you soon in Rome,
Pietro Card. Gasparri.109
Merry Del Val, despite his persistent opposition to Della Chiesa’s elevation, in the official announcement which he sent as Secretary of State on behalf of the Pope wrote this to Della Chiesa in his own, exquisite hand: ‘To this very happy announcement, which I communicate to you on behalf of His Holiness, I add my own satisfaction and my warmest congratulations and wishes, with which I greet your imminent entry into the Sacred College.’110 Whatever feelings this letter aroused in Della Chiesa, on 28 May he was clothed with the insignia of his new status and two days later he was installed as the titular of the ancient church of i Santi Quattro Coronati. To all this joy must have been added some sadness: his friend and benefactor, Cardinal Rampolla, had died six months before. He had not had the satisfaction of seeing his protégé receive his long-overdue reward.
By the time Della Chiesa left Bologna to attend the conclave, his ministry there had been characterized by two major traits, charity and firmness. According to Mgr Comastri, parrocco of the city parish of S. Isaia: ‘Oh, the heart-felt generosity of that man! It is impossible to calculate the help which he gave to the poor, to needy families and to charitable institutions.’111 The generosity towards ‘his’ Bolognesi, lay and clerical, was to continue during his pontificate, even when he was faced by much larger, more global calls on his purse.112 His firm government was equally well known. According to Veneruso: ‘His lack of previous pastoral experience did not prevent him from presiding over the complex world of Emilia-Romagna with tact and firmess.’113 But perhaps the most impressive tribute to Della Chiesa’s achievements at Bologna comes from an unexpected source, the Liberal-Conservative La Stampa newspaper of Turin:
He was neither a political intriguer, nor a small or great elector. He was not only respectful of the political authorities but also of the House of Savoy, with whom he occasionally came into contact, but he was also devoted, like any other citizen, to the civil authorities, even those who were contrary to his opinions. Della Chiesa showed energy, firmness, infinite charity and passion in doing good, opportune changes of policy, courage in healing evil. In University circles, where the Jacobin flame of Giosuè Carducci still glowed, and in a city which rises not very far from the revolutionary and anti-papal Romagna, Della Chiesa enjoyed the respect of all and love of many …’114
Bologna was another formative experience for Della Chiesa. It was his first experience of sole authority and, accordingly, sole responsibility. The place and the job made the man. In particular, it gave him an unparalleled opportunity to manage men, in large numbers. Also, his notorious modesty and shyness began to fade. He acquired, indeed he was obliged to acquire, real confidence and assurance, especially in crowds. The pastoral visitations must have seen to that. The photographs of him just before and after his elevation to cardinal still do not do him justice; the one which L’Avvenire printed of him after his election as Pope was probably the worst. But by 1914 he was a very different man from the one who had entered Bologna less than seven years earlier.
1. The European, 22–24 March 1991.
2. Zangheri, p. 66.
3. Rhodes (1983), p. 12; Zangheri, p. 76.
4. Rhodes (1983), p. 75.
5. Zangheri, p. 91.
6. D’Azeglio.
7. Pollard (1997), p. 165.
8. Cardoza, p. 12.
9. Ibid., p. 97.
10. Ibid.
11. Veneruso (1982), p. 33.
12. ACS, MI, DG Affari di Culto, ‘Placet et Exequatur’, Bologna, Procura del Re, 4 January 1908.
13. AFDC, Lettere e Scritti Vari, pastorale del 10 January 1908.
14. AFDC, Lettere e Scritti Vari, pastorali.
15. Peters, p. 59.
16. Albertazzi, p. 984.
17. Peters, p. 59; this is confirmed by Monti, in Diario, II, 3 July 1918, p. 348.
18. Peters, ibid.
19. AFDC, Lettere e Scritti Vari, letter to Mgr Vincenzo Sardi, 11 January 1909.
20. Peters, p. 61.
21. Molinari, p. 412.
22. Ibid.
23. AFDC, Discorsi per le visite pastorali.
24. Ibid., discorso per la visita alla parocchia di S. Martino (no date).
25. Ibid.
26. Archivio Arcivescovile di Bologna (henceforth AAB), ‘Diario delle Visite Pastorali di S.E.R. Mons. Giacomo Della Chiesa, Arcivescovo’ (henceforth diary), p. 186.
27. Ibid., p. 98.
28. Ibid., p. 186.
29. Pollard (1997), p. 167.
30. AFDC, Lettere e Scritti Vari, ‘Atti del Congresso Eucharistico Diocesano’, 16–18 November 1909, p. 30.
31. Bollettino Diocesano (henceforth BD), Anno 1, no. 3, December 1910.
32. Ravaglia.
33. Vistalli, p. 124, where he quotes Mgr Comastri, incumbent of the Bologna parish of S. Isaia.
34. Kertzer, p. 186.
35. Binchy, pp. 389–92.
36. Ibid., p. 186.
37. BD, Anno 1, no. 3, December 1910, p. 97.
38. The decrees Pieni L’animo of 1906, the Programma generale di studi of 1907, and the Norme per l’ordinamento educativo e disciplinare of 1908; Falconi, p. 24.
39. BD, Anno 1, no. 3, December 1910, pp. 97–8.
40. Pollard (1997), p. 164.
41. Guasco, p. 689.
42. Bedeschi (1967), p. 222.
43. For an account of this episode, see ibid., pp. 337–42.
44. ACS, MI, DG Affari di Culto, ‘Placet et Exequatur’, letter to the Procura del Re, 17 October 1911.
45. Ibid., letter of 27 March 1914 and also Pollard (1997), pp. 160 & 162.
46. ACS, DG Affari di Culto, ‘Placet et Exequatur’, Bologna, 24 February 1908.
47. Ibid., letter of 29 March 1908.
48. BD, Anno 2, no. 4, January 1911.
49. Peters, p. 61.
50. Bumpus, p. 202.
51. Molinari, letter of 3 May 1915.
52. Penco, p. 493.
53. Bedeschi (1967), p. 214.
54. Falconi, p. 105.
55. La Stampa, 7 October 1907.
56. Falconi, p. 40, where he cites page 344 of the papers.
57. BD, Anno 1, no. 3, December 1910, p. 109.
58. AFDC, Lettere e Scritti Vari, pastorale per la quaresima, 1910.
59. Ibid., 10 February 1908.
60. Bedeschi (1966), pp. 337–42.
61. Ibid., p. 216.
62. Ibid., p. 221.
63. Ibid., p. 224.
64. Bedeschi (1968), p. 371.
65. Bedeschi (1967), pp. 206–7. After his election to the papal throne, Della Chiesa had Cazzani translated to Cremona, a much bigger diocese than Cesena.
66. Ibid., p. 174.
67. AFDC, Lettere e Scritti Vari, memorandum of 19 October 1907.
68. Ibid.
69. Molinari, p. 135.
70. Peters, p. 25.
71. Ibid., p. 50.
72. Webster, p. 21.
73. Molinari, p. 433.
74. Ibid.
75. De Rosa (1977), p. 475.
76. Bedeschi (1967), p. 77.
77. Ibid., p. 182.
78. Zangheri, p. 85.
79. Bedeschi (1967), p. 104.
80. Clark, pp. 157–8.
81. Zangheri, p. 98: Sauro Onofri, p. 131, says that the Mayor of Bologna, Zanardi, refused to commemorate the election of Della Chiesa as Pope in 1914 because, ‘the new Pope was one of the chief founders of the anti-Socialist campaign’.
82. Diario, II, pp. 192–3, n. 277.
83. Zangheri, p. 98.
84. Pollard (1997), p. 167.
85. Howard Bell, p. 47.
86. Pollard (1997), p. 165, where the cases of Milan and Turin are cited.
87. BD, Anno 1, no. 3, 1910, pp. 64–5.
88. Albertazzi, p. 890.
89. Sauro Onofri, p. 131.
90. AAB, diary, p. 483, Buda and p. 560, Bagno di Piano.
91. Ibid., p. 582, Vedrara.
92. Ibid., p. 34, Molinella.
93. Ibid., p. 345, San Giorgio in Panigale.
94. Ibid., p. 295, Calderara di Reno.
95. ACS, MI, DG Pubblica Sicurezza, fasc. 11, Bologna, report of 30 September 1905.
96. Molinari, letter of 13 August 1913.
97. BD, Anno 1, no. 3, 1910, p. 109.
98. AFDC, Lettere e Scritti Vari, pastorale, ‘Spirito di Fede’, quaresima, 1909.
99. Pollard (1997), p. 169.
100. AFDC, Lettere e Scritti Vari, pastorale, ‘Spirito di Carità’, quaresima, 1913.
101. As quoted in Albertazzi, p. 158.
102. Sauro Onofri, p. 33.
103. BD, IV, 1 July 1914, 7, p. 397.
104. Scattigno (1977), p. 213.
105. Peters, p. 67; MacNutt, p. 313.
106. MacNutt, p. 313.
107. Molinari, p. 413.
108. Leslie, p. 94.
109. AFDC, Lettere inviate a S.E. Cardinale Giacomo Della Chiesa (no date).
110. Ibid. This file also contains a letter of congratulations from Emperor Franz Josef.
111. As quoted in Vistalli, p. 19.
112. Molinari, pp. 421–2.
113. Veneruso (1982), p. 33. See also Falconi, p. 110, for an evaluation of Della Chiesa’s ministry in Bologna.
114. La Stampa, 4 September 1914.