On the first day of December 1918, Benedict issued a new encyclical Quam lam Diu in which he welcomed the respite brought to Europe by the Armistice of the previous month, and called upon Catholics to pray that the coming peace conference would bring ‘a just and lasting peace’.1 This was a tall order in a continent ravaged by more than four years of war, where starvation persisted, in part because of the continuation of the Allied blockade, and which would experience economic, social and political breakdown. In the spring and summer of 1919, the statesmen at the Versailles Peace Conference laboured to resolve the momentous and often intractable issues with which they were confronted, in particular to reach a territorial settlement in the wake of the collapse of four empires, the Ottoman, Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Russian. Meanwhile, Europe’s problems got worse. Influenza began to sweep through central Europe, killing more civilians on a world-wide basis than the war itself, rapid demobilization fuelled the rising tide of political violence in many states, and the Bolshevik threat became more and more of a reality.
Benedict and Gasparri were sharply critical of the peace which eventually emerged from Versailles and were afraid that its inadequacies exposed Europe and the Middle East to the continuing threat of war. They were not entirely wrong in this. The fundamental cause of the defects of the Versailles Peace Settlement, in their eyes, was that it was not based on Christian principles. It was easy to criticize the handiwork of the statesmen at Versailles, especially in retrospect, and many did, but as King Albert of the Belgians said, ‘What would you have? They did what they could’.2 Nevertheless, the peace settlement left Benedict and the Roman Catholic Church with many problems, as well as a number of unexpected opportunities.
Probably the greatest defect of the Versailles Peace Conference in Benedict’s eyes was quite simply the fact that he or his representatives were excluded from it, as Sonnino had intended. Though both Benedict and Gasparri had persistently denied that they wanted a place at the conference table for the Holy See,3 it is now clear that those denials were as false as the denials of Sonnino that Article 15 of the Treaty of London excluded that presence. In 1916, an article was published in the prestigious Italian journal Nuova Antologia, written by Umberto Benigni, regarding the eventual Peace Conference and the participants in it. Benedict saw the draft of the article and gave instructions on how it should be modified. In his comments, he observed that the article gave the game away, ‘it makes it too obvious that its [the article’s] principal objective is to encourage the idea of the participation of the Holy See’, and suggested that, as a start, the article should argue that ‘all powers not interested in dividing the spoils should, nevertheless, have a right to participate, then to introduce the question of the admission of the neutral powers, as a matter of principle, not even to mention the Papacy’.4 Curiously, when the article was eventually published, it ignored all of his suggestions and followed a different, more direct tack arguing that if the Kings of England and Prussia and the Czar, who were all heads of their own churches, and the Sultan, Caliph of Islam, were entitled to attend the Peace Conference, then so was the Pope.5 It is doubtful whether Benedict’s subtle modifications to the article would have had much effect anyway, and in 1917 and 1918 the Vatican was obliged to wage a concerted diplomatic campaign in the hope of inducing the Allies to abandon Article 15. Strong representations were made to the British Government to persuade it of the injustice and inappropriateness of Article 15, an attempt which initially at any rate had some chance of success since Foreign Secretary Balfour had shown sympathy for the Vatican’s claims.6 An attempt was also made to persuade Cardinal Gibbons to lead an American Catholic press campaign against papal exclusion from the Peace Conference, but he declined on the grounds that the position of Catholics in the United States was too delicate.7 Gasparri also sought to mobilize the neutral powers, most especially faithful Spain,8 and as a last desperate throw an attempt was made to get Cardinal Mercier added to the Belgian delegation to the Conference in the hope that the outstanding international eminence of the Belgian prelate could be used to raise matters of interest to the Holy See.9 All these efforts failed, but it is indicative of just how seriously the Italian government took them that Sonnino waged an equally vigorous diplomatic counter-offensive.10
Benedict’s comments on the original draft of the Nuova Antologia article demonstrate that he feared that exclusion from the Peace Conference would damage the prestige and authority of the Holy See.11 The Papacy had been represented at the Vienna Peace Congress of 1814–15, and Cardinal Consalvi, the Secretary of State, had succeeded in obtaining entry to the inner circle of powers and in negotiating the restoration of the Papal States for his master, Pope Pius VII.12 Benedict could not seriously have expected that Gasparri could do the same at Versailles, but the exclusion of the Papacy from the Hague Conferences of 1897 and 1899, due to Italian intervention, still rankled and the Vatican’s participation in the Peace Conference would have been a tremendous boost to its international prestige. In the event, exclusion was no great diplomatic defeat because none of the neutral powers, including Spain, Holland and Switzerland – the other neutrals most heavily involved in peace attempts – were admitted to the conference, thus saving the Holy See a major loss of face. When matters that really touched upon the Vatican’s interests came up at the conference, like the future of the German missions, the despatch to Paris of Mgr Cerretti, the new Sostituto, ensured that behind-the-scenes diplomacy obtained for the Holy See what it desired.13 Indeed, Cerretti’s success in protecting the German missions demonstrated that the Holy See was recognized as the sovereign, international Catholic authority by the Great Powers. As for the Roman Question, it is clear that Cerretti made far more progress in his clandestine talks with Orlando (see Chapter 7, pp. 167–9) than could have been secured in open conference; indeed, even to have raised publicly the issue in such circumstances would have set progress back for years by alienating Italy.
Exclusion from the conference almost certainly spared Benedict and Gasparri a lot of other problems. It is hard to see how the Vatican could have maintained its position of impartiality between the powers if it had taken part in the conference when controversial matters of war guilt, disarmament, reparations and, particularly, territorial changes were being discussed and decided: it would have been even more difficult if it had actually signed the peace treaties.14 As we shall see, much of the Vatican’s post-war diplomatic prestige and room for manoeuvre was built precisely upon its distance from the peace settlement. One of the most difficult of issues facing the conference in 1919 was that of Italian claims to parts of the Adriatic coast of the former Habsburg dominions, most especially Fiume (Rijeka), an issue on which Orlando felt compelled to abandon the conference in the summer of 1919. Gasparri was extremely unsympathetic towards the Italian claims. In a conversation with Carlo Monti he argued forcefully that the Italians were unrealistic and that it was better that they ‘give up their claims to a few shoals in the Adriatic and seek ample compensation in Asia Minor, where we could have in abundance those raw materials which we lack and for which we depend on foreign imports’; he also argued that the acquisition of Bolzano, with its German-speaking majority, was a mistake.15 The merest hint of such feelings in public would have had a disastrous effect upon Italo-Vatican relations.
But there were far bigger issues on which the views of Benedict and Gasparri diverged radically from those not only of Italy but also of the other Allied powers. The matter of most important concern was the ‘German question’. In April 1918, Gaparri had expressed his and Benedict’s view that one of the most dangerous consequences of the likely dissolution of the Habsburg Empire was that it would leave Germany more powerful than ever; furthermore, with the gains made in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Russian Bolshevik regime, to the already seventy million Reich Germans would probably be added thirty million Germans in the Baltic States and Austria/Bohemia.16 This perception was very much in line with the traditional policy of Rampolla, of whom, of course, Benedict and Gasparri had both been pupils. In November 1918, Gasparri reiterated his fear that Italy and France would be unable to contain the new German ‘colossus’ and that the ‘successor states’ to the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires would not be able to oppose it either.17 In fact, as a result of Germany’s defeat, in the short term the pendulum swung in favour of French hegemony over Europe, an adjustment to the European balance of power which was equally unacceptable to the Vatican. In particular, L’Osservatore Romano and La Civiltà Cattolica repeatedly stated their objections to the Allied treatment of Germany: according to the Jesuit journal, the Treaty of Versailles ‘humiliated Germany’.18 The Vatican objected in particular to the ‘War Guilt’ clause, the size of reparations and Allied attempts to bring the Kaiser to trial as a ‘war criminal’. Gasparri made strenuous efforts to prevent the latter, using Cerretti to lobby the statesmen at Versailles, with some success.19 He also also argued strongly that the size of the reparations bill imposed upon Germany was too harsh and would threaten a quick return to economic stability in Europe.20 The Vatican was to pursue its efforts to mitigate the effects of reparations throughout the 1920s, and attempted to mediate in the Ruhr crisis of 1923 which was precipitated by the decision of the Germans not to continue payments.21
Another problem for Benedict in the post-war peace settlement was the application of Wilson’s principle of ‘National Self-determination’. In his various appeals for peace during the war, Benedict had demonstrated his unease with the phenomenon of emerging nationalist forces; indeed, on a copy of the Peace Note of August 1917 he wrote: ‘The principle of nationality is good thing when it is free; bad when it is imposed. On the basis of the principle understood in this sense, which means the principle of the aspirations of the peoples, so-called territorial questions should be regulated.’22 The Jesuit journal took this thinking a stage further when, in 1919, it entitled an important article on national self-determination ‘On the Just Aspirations of Peoples’.23 In other words, no national ethnic group had an automatic right to self-determination and the nation state was not necessarily preferable to a multi-ethnic, dynastic state like the Habsburg Empire. Ultimately, the Vatican’s attitude towards emerging nationalities would be determined by essentially pragmatic considerations. Thus, when faced with the force of events – the declarations of independence by the Poles, Czechs and other subject nationalities of the Habsburg Empire – in a public letter to Gasparri in November 1918 Benedict announced that he had told the nuncio in Vienna to establish friendly relations with all ‘the various nationalities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire who constituted themselves into independent states’.24
But at the same time, in private, Gasparri expressed an opinion that was not popular in the Allied countries, that is that the creation of the successor states was not a good thing because they could not be self-sufficient, they would be vulnerable to the Bolshevik menace (a fear that had also prompted worries about too harsh a treatment of Germany), and that they would tend to fight among themselves, which history proved only too painfully to be correct.25 There were bitter disputes over the rights and treatment of minorities, and over boundaries: the most Catholic of the new states, Lithuania and Poland, engaged in repeated armed clashes over the Vilnius Question in 1919 and 1920. Benedict, who had supported Polish claims to nationhood in his Peace Note of August 1917, and made the point to Monti in October 1918 that as a resurrected Poland would serve as a strong bulwark both against the Bolsheviks and Germany,26 he felt obliged to urge moderation in Polish demands after the end of the war.27 Benedict and Gasparri had particular reservations about the emergence of Yugoslavia (the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, as it was originally called). If they did not support extravagant Italian claims in the Adriatic, they were equally unhappy about the domination of two Catholic peoples – the Croats and the Slovenes – by an Orthodox one, the Serbs. In January 1919, Gasparri actually despatched an emissary to Zagreb with the task of impeding this union, but it was too late.28 Benedict went so far as to express the opinion that the Slavs in general were less intelligent but more numerous than other races.29 In fact, despite the deep ethnic tensions in the new state, the treatment of Croatian and Slovene Catholics by the Belgrade government gave few grounds for complaint on the Vatican’s part.30
The most characteristically ‘Wilsonian’ feature of the Versailles Peace Settlement was the creation of the League of Nations: the American President had insisted that the Covenant of the new world body be inserted at the beginning of the Treaty of Versailles. Italy was very anxious about the possibility that the Vatican would seek to join the League and in May 1919, Orlando sent Monti to find out: Benedict gave a very non-committal answer.31 In fact, there is no evidence that the Holy See was invited to join or even sought admission. If their attitude in 1929, when the question of the Holy See joining the League was raised after the establishment of the sovereign, independent State of the Vatican City, is anything to go by, then Britain and France would have opposed its admission in 1920.32 The USA would surely not have supported the idea either: in June 1919, a certain Senator Sherman made a speech claiming that, ‘twenty-four of the forty Christian nations are spiritually dominated by the Vatican, thus the Pope wishes to rule the world through the League’: the speech was dismissed by other senators, but President Wilson would have been too wary of the strong Protestant lobby in the United States to have ever countenanced Vatican involvement in the League.33
The Holy See’s exclusion from the League was one of the reasons for the hostility of the Vatican organs towards it. In June 1920, commenting on Benedict’s encyclical De Pacis, the Jesuit fortnightly, Civiltà Cattolica, strongly attacked the League, claiming that the themes of the encyclical ‘have got nothing in common with that mockery, the so-called “League of Nations” … which is the expression of an atheistic and utilitarian policy, with its harsh exclusions and odious presuppositions, where the Holy Name of God has no place and where the rights of Christ and his Church receive no recognition’.34 The article also condemned ‘the primacy of egoistic and nationalistic [original italics] considerations’ in international politics, and concluded by declaring that, ‘No, the Pope does not approve of either exclusivisms or imperialisms, or of the other excesses of nationalism and patriotism’.35 It was a comprehensive condemnation of the policies followed by the Allied powers since the end of the war. Though Benedict’s encyclical was rather less forceful in its language than this article, calling for nations to ‘unite in one league, or rather a family [of] peoples’, as if the League did not already exist, it cannot be doubted that the Jesuit journal was faithfully expressing Benedict’s deepest feelings.36
In the encyclical Benedict once more appealed for world-wide disarmament and implicitly endorsed the idea of European integration. According to Mizzi, ‘The first, hesitant mention of the possibility of European unification in a pontifical document is to be found in the encyclical Pacem Dei Munus, 1920.’37 But the core of the encyclical was Benedict’s lament that the peace settlement was not built on the Christian principles of justice, and above all, charity.38 Benedict argued that because of the absence of charity – Christian love – latent hostilities between peoples continued and that there could be no real reconciliation and therefore no lasting peace. The chief target of his concern was undoubtedly the relationship between France and Germany, which was to deteriorate badly in 1923 with the Ruhr crisis. Benedict’s reference to charity was more than just an appeal for Christian love among nations, it also encompassed the practical application of that love, i.e. charitable works: ‘stretch the bonds of charity’, he declared, and he went on to remind his readers that: ‘we see immense areas utterly desolate, uncultivated and abandoned; multitudes reduced to want of food, clothing and shelter; innumerable widows and orphans bereft of everything …’.39 Benedict was as active in seeking to relieve this suffering as he had been during the war. He himself gave donations on several occasions,40 and the Vatican raised five million lire alone to relieve the Russian famine in 1921.41 He had a particular concern for children, and issued two separate encyclicals, Paterno Diu lam in 1919 and Annus lam Plenus in 1920, in which he appealed for funds to relieve the distress. Perhaps the most enduring monument to his charity is the Save the Children Fund, to which he gave strong public support after it was established in 1919.42 It was thanks to this support that collections for the children of Eastern Europe were taken up in Catholic, Anglican and other churches on 28 December 1921, the feast of the Holy Innocents.43 On his death in 1922, the founder, Eglantyne Jebb, paid tribute to Benedict’s work: Tope Benedict XV has died before the world has recognised the magnitude of the debt which it owes to him for his championship of the world’s children.’44
Apart from the problem of Russia, which the Allies never settled, its fate being decided in the civil war between the Bolsheviks and the various ‘White’ forces, the most difficult problem which faced them was the fate of the former Ottoman Empire. Their endeavours to settle its future, in the Treaty of Sèvres, failed because of the emergence of Kemal Ataturk, who successfully resisted the attempts of both the Greeks and the Italians to carve up substantial parts of Asia Minor. What the Versailles Peace Conference did settle, however, was the future of the Turkish Middle East where League of Nations mandates to govern were accorded to France for Lebanon and Syria, and to Britain for Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq. But the French were far from satisfied with this division of the spoils, and it was into the cauldron of Franco-British rivalries, and the resulting intrigues around the final settlement of Palestine in particular, that Benedict and Gasparri were drawn in the immediate post-war period. And it has to be said, that the Vatican was not averse to stirring the pot, indeed it added another ingredient by encouraging the Italians to get involved. In 1919 and 1920, three cardinals, one British, one French and one Italian, visited Palestine in turn, each being used to serve the interests of his home country. What was at stake was influence. The French sought to preserve the liturgical honours accorded their representatives in services of the various churches, in virtue of the ‘protectorate’ which they had exercised over the Christians under the Turkish regime: with the latter’s fall, the protectorate, and the honours, lapsed but French governments refused to abandon them, and so the Vatican was dragged in to make a decision, in favour of the French, much to the annoyance of the Italians, who had hoped to acquire some of the former French influence.
Above and beyond striving to avoid being entangled in great power rivalries, the Vatican had two major concerns in Palestine – the administration of the holy places and the future of the Christian, especially the Catholic, minority. The factor which seemed to threaten the Vatican’s interests in both cases was the ‘Balfour Declaration’ of 1917 which, following the British liberation of Jerusalem from the Turks, committed the British government to the setting up of a ‘Jewish Homeland’ in Palestine.45 Very quickly, Benedict and Gasparri became convinced that an augmentation of the Jewish presence in Palestine posed a threat to Catholics’ interests there. A particular fear of the Vatican was that the advent of British rule signified a take-over by the Jews of the administration in Palestine. In fact, there is no evidence that the proportion of Jews in the administration outstripped their presence in the population at large,46 but the fear was not allayed by the appointment of a Jew, Sir Herbert Samuel, to be High Commissioner (governor) of Palestine. In the circumstances, it seems to have been a singularly tactless move on the part of the British, certainly not one likely to inspire confidence in the impartiality of their administration towards the various ethnic and religious groups in the country. Samuel tried to pre-empt Vatican hostility by making a visit to the Pope in July 1920, but the attempt clearly failed. Benedict was not convinced by Samuel’s protestations of impartiality.47 The Vatican had hoped that an international body would be set up to deal specifically with matters relating to the holy places, but the British rejected this idea in favour of continuing the set-up under the Turkish administration whereby representatives of the various religious groups acted in a consultative capacity.48 This was not a satisfactory solution for Benedict. In his allocution of March 1919, he warned that ‘it would be a terrible grief to Us and for all Christian faithful if infidels were placed in a more prominent position: much more if those most holy sanctuaries of the Christian religion were given into the charge of non-Christians’: the reference to ‘infidels’ was clearly aimed at the Jews and Muslims.49 In the end, the Vatican accepted the British proposal, with a proviso that all disputes over rights in the holy places would be ultimately settled by British courts.50
The wave of Jewish migration that followed the establishment of British rule intensified Vatican fears for the future of Palestine as a whole. There was, first, the fear that many of the Jewish immigrants from Europe would bring with them Bolshevik tendencies; after all, were not many of the leading Bolsheviks – Leon Trotsky in Russia, Kurt Eisner in Bavaria and Bela Kun in Hungary – Jews? And in the latter case, the Church had been persecuted under the short-lived Soviet regime.51 The influx of Jews also seemed to threaten an unwelcome modernization in broader terms: in March 1921 Benedict protested against the alleged plans of Jewish businessmen to build ‘leisure complexes’ near sacred sites, such as Mount Carmel and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.52 There were already fears that wealthy Jews, or Jews backed by American finance, would buy out Christian and Muslim landowners.53 It was not only the Jews, however, whom Benedict feared. In his March 1919 allocution, he warned that ‘non-Catholic foreigners, furnished with abundant means … are there spreading their errors’.54 What he was worried about were British and American Protestant groups who appeared to be ‘buying’ converts by offering free education to Catholic and Orthodox Christians. By 1919, the Vatican must have begun to regret the passing of the Turkish administration which had been celebrated by the ringing of Church bells in Rome in December 1917.
The arguments over Palestine demonstrated the strong vein of anti-Semitism in the Italian Church, and especially in the Jesuit order, which came out in La Civiltà Cattolica’s comments on events in the Holy Land, and on the Pope’s pronouncements on them, like the claim in March 1919 that Palestine was ‘falling into the hands of the enemies of Christian civilisation’.55 A year later it was even more blatantly anti-Semitic: The Jews are distributing their money inside the closed circle of the tents of Israel, using it to dominate Christians … The Jews are seeking to accumulate their money by taking it from Christians, regarding it as their legitimate right as chosen people to take possession of the spoils of Egypt.’56 There is no evidence that Benedict attempted to restrain this crude anti-Semitism, but the overall thrust of Vatican policy on Palestine was anti-Zionist rather than anti-Semitic. Benedict’s concern, uttered in his allocution of June 1921, was that the Jews would ‘obtain a position of preponderance and privilege in Palestine’, and that, conversely, ‘the situation of Christians in Palestine has not only not improved but has even become worse’.57 As Sergio Minerbi has recognized, Benedict’s policy boiled down to this: ‘The Great Powers must guarantee the rights of Catholics, although without impairing the rights of Jews and also without giving Jews any privileges’.58 Gasparri’s position was sharper and clearer, presumably because he felt able to speak with more freedom than the Pope. Even before the end of the war, he told the Belgian Ambassador that what he feared was the establishment of a Jewish state, with consequent damage to the rights of other, especially Christian, religious groups.59 The policy which Benedict and Gasparri accordingly adopted towards Zionism was more or less the one which the Vatican followed until very recently, that is until it decided in 1992 that, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, recognition of the State of Israel was the only way to defend those rights.
The Vatican’s policy over Palestine during the pontificate of Benedict XV must have caused a great deal of disappointment for many Jews world-wide because in 1915 and 1916 the Vatican appears to have given its backing to the ‘Deloncle Plan’ for a Jewish ‘homeland’ in Poland, a proposal which received some support among Jews in France and the United States, though not in Britain.60
In May 1917, in a conversation with Carlo Monti, Gasparri made a very revealing statement: ‘The Holy See absolutely cannot afford to get on the wrong side of England which gives the broadest freedom to Catholics: it would be the end of Catholicism in England.’61 He was undoubtedly exaggerating the dangers of such a rupture to British Catholics, but what was true was that the Vatican could not afford poor relations with the British Empire, in whose various dominions, protectorates and colonial territories there were very substantial numbers of Catholics. Moreover, following the United States withdrawal from world affairs in 1920, Britain had become the world superpower, extending its influence further as a result of colonial gains in the Versailles peace settlement. And this was undoubtedly the reason why Benedict and Gasparri found the ‘Irish Question’ to be one of the most troublesome they ever faced and why they handled it with the greatest of care and delicacy.
Given the especially close historical ties between the Papacy and Irish Catholicism – as Bella points out, there was never any major schism or heresy in the history of the Irish church62 – one would have expected a strong degree of support for Irish nationalism in the Vatican. Certainly, there was no lack of supporters of Irish nationalism in Rome and Italy. Apart from the fact that both of the new political movements in Italy in the post-war period, the Catholic Partito Popolare and Mussolini’s Fascio di Combattimento, demonstrated strong sympathies for Irish nationalism,63 the Irish ecclesiastical community in Rome was characterized by a strong element of support, with Mgr Hagan of the Irish College at its head.64 In addition, the Irish diaspora in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, especially some of its leaders, like Archbishop Mannix of Melbourne, also showed strong support for the Irish cause, and lobbied the Vatican accordingly.65 But the position within the Vatican itself was rather different. L’Osservatore Romano was initially quite hostile, which is not surprising. Benedict was not enamoured of the idea of national self-determination per se so the Irish were not treated differently from, say, the Czechs before 1918, nor the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from the Habsburg Empire. It is also clear that the attitude of the Vatican organ was swayed by suspicions that Sinn Fein had Bolshevik leanings.66 On the other hand, though Benedict never seems to have treated Catholic Ireland with the same solicitous concern as Catholic Poland, he and Gasparri were clearly sympathetic to the plight of the Irish,67 and this came out in the pages of La Civiltà Cattolica: in December 1920, the Jesuit journal expressed support for proposals for peace, but urged that the link with the British Crown and the defence of the British Empire had to be guaranteed.68 But other forces were at work to counter them. Within the Curia itself, the influence of Benedict and Gasparri was balanced by that of their old enemies, Merry Del Val and De Lai, on whose side that English super-patriot, Cardinal Gasquet, also played a supporting role. From afar, Cardinal Bourne of Westminster also lobbied the Vatican on Britain’s behalf.69 The Vatican was also aware of the deep divisions between the older and younger clergy in Ireland, thanks to the report by Mgr Cerretti in December 1918.70 And then there was the British envoy, who was continually being urged by the Foreign Office to press the British case, sometimes with scarcely veiled threats that Britain would break off relations if the Vatican did not comply with its wishes.71
The Vatican’s policy towards Ireland seems to have followed that of the Irish episcopate: it was less than enthusiastic about either the Easter Rising of 1916 or the morality of the hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, which led to his death in 1920.72 The Irish bishops were initially divided, but conscription, the summary execution of Irish nationalists after the Rising and the activities of the Black and Tans during the Anglo-Irish War won increasing sympathy among them for the nationalist cause. The Vatican was expected, and of course encouraged, by the British to condemn the Irish nationalist movement, but refrained from doing so: it is unlikely that Benedict and Gasparri ever seriously contemplated such action.73 Instead, in April 1921, Benedict published a letter to the Irish bishops, appealing for peace. The genesis of the letter was a complex one. Following an inconclusive outcome to the debate on the direction of Vatican policy towards Ireland in the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, in which Merry Del Val had asked for a moral condemnation of the violent, terroristic methods of Sinn Fein, without calling for the same for the equally violent methods of the British auxiliaries, the Black and Tans, Benedict and Gasparri commissioned a secret report on the Irish situation which recommended a pacific approach by the Pope.74 Archbishop Mannix also appears to have influenced the Vatican in this direction, though the content of Benedict’s letter to the primate of Ireland, Cardinal Logue, could not have satisfied his partisan instincts.75
In his letter, Benedict followed the policy which he had maintained throughout the First World War, benevolent impartiality, coupled with practical suggestions for a peace process and a call for Catholics to engage in charitable work in relief of the devastation and suffering in Ireland, setting an example by donating 200,000 lire.76 The reasons why he took this stance are obvious: a genuine horror of war and desire for peace, an unwillingness to divide the various Catholic communities of the British Empire by taking sides and a concern not to stir up anti-Catholicism in Britain. The British Empire was the world in microcosm: the Irish conflict a minuscule version of the Great War. The core of his message was his heart-felt statement: ‘We hope, and we implore the parties in conflict to bring to an end the fury of this war as soon as possible so that a stable peace and a sincere determination of the spirits will conquer the great flame of envy.’77 The appeal had a mixed reception in Britain and Ireland: it heartened the majority, without satisfying the extremists on either side, or even the Irish lobby’ in Rome.78 The letter came at a critical moment; opinion in Britain and the British Empire was shifting against government policy because of the atrocities of the Black and Tans. Peace negotiations between representatives of the British government and the Irish Dáil suddenly and unexpectedly led to agreement in December 1921, and one of the last acts of Benedict’s pontificate was the despatch of congratulatory telegrams to both sides on the signing of the Treaty.79 Benedict was lucky to be spared the further horrors of the civil war between Treatyites and anti-Treatyites which broke out shortly after his death.
At the death of Benedict, the diplomatic standing of the Holy See had been transformed. In simple, mathematical terms, whereas at his election in September 1914 the Vatican had relations with only 17 states,80 in January 1922 that number had risen to 27.81 Three of the world’s major powers – Britain, France and Germany – were now represented at the Vatican and a fourth, China, would also have been, but for the intrigues of the French (see p. 202). Three of the new states which had established diplomatic relations in Benedict’s reign had done so during and/or because of the war – Britain, Holland and Switzerland. Most of the rest were creations of the peace – the so-called ‘successor states’. So the Holy See was the beneficiary of developments – the rise of nationalism and collapse of multi-ethnic dynastic states, the Habsburg Empire in particular – which Benedict had deplored and sought to prevent. In fact, Benedict and Gasparri adapted quickly and successfully to the postwar territorial set-up in Europe. By the end of Benedict’s reign the Vatican had established relations with all of the successor states to the Habsburg Empire. Other new states, even predominantly or overwhelmingly Protestant states like Estonia and Finland, hurried to obtain recognition from one of Europe’s oldest powers.82 Even the embattled Bolshevik regime in Russia was anxious to win de facto recognition from the Vatican in 1921 (see p. 200)
On 28 June 1919, the German Reich established diplomatic relations with the Vatican. This abandonment of the old system whereby the states of Prussia and Bavaria were represented in Rome and the Vatican in Munich was one of the clearest signals of the new standing of the Holy See in the post-war world. The fledgling German democracy, the Weimar Republic, needed the support of the Vatican if it was to mitigate, or at least delay, the effects of the territorial losses in West Prussia, Upper Silesia and on the Belgian border, decreed by the Versailles Treaty, and if it was to prevent the temporary transfer of the Saar, under the same Treaty, from being made permanent.83 According to Stewart Stehlin, the Vatican wished to avoid precipitate action in the realignment of diocesan boundaries and its concern for the rights of minorities was crucial to the limited success of German policies.84 Weimar Germany might be said to have enjoyed a ‘special relationship’, the Vatican’s benevolent attitude being determined by the pro-German sentiments of Mgr Pacelli, the nuncio first in Bavaria and then in Berlin, and by Benedict’s sense of justice, by his desire to see the balance of power re-established in Europe, and by his anxiety that Germany should function as a bulwark against communism. The Vatican even tolerated a governmental alliance between the German Catholic Centre Party and the Social Democratic Party. Such an alliance would have been unthinkable and impossible between their Italian counterparts, but was essential in order for Weimar democracy to survive. But Pacelli drove a hard bargain: ‘nothing for nothing’ might have been his motto. The Vatican’s recognition of the Weimar Republic was bought at a cost that would not finally become apparent until after Benedict’s death, a new concordat with Bavaria, which was intended to be the model for the rest of the German Reich, and which extracted maximum advantage for the Church.85
The Vatican’s improving relations with Germany gave the final impetus to the French to re-establish the diplomatic links broken off in 1905. A major obstacle was Clémenceau’s pressing demand for the replacement of the bishops in Alsace-Lorraine, restored to France at the end of the war. As Gasparri pointed out, such demands were not legal: the incumbent bishops had not resigned and the territorial transfer had not been ratified by a peace treaty. He was under no illusions about the nature of the eventual agreement: ‘a return to the concordatory regime with presentation of bishops has assuredly gone for ever’.86 The canonization of Joan of Arc in June 1920 provided a felicitous prelude to a resumption of relations, with French representatives being received in the Vatican. But the path to a normalization of relations had not been easy; in particular, despite the conservative, even Catholic, nature of the ‘Horizon Bleu’ Chamber elected in 1918, there was a lot of resistance to the step in France.87 There was also some ambiguity of attitude in the Vatican as well. As late as January 1920, Gasparri was warning Monti that a resumption of links with France could have its drawbacks: a French Ambassador at the Vatican would continually be demanding things.88 Though Benedict XV, unlike his predecessor, tacitly accepted the operation of the associations cultuelles, the prospects for an end to the separation of Church and State in France and for a definitive solution of the vexed question of the religious orders did not seem good at the end of his reign. Nevertheless, the exchange of envoys, with Cerretti being sent to Paris as proof of the importance in which the Vatican held the posting, was a great achievement of Benedict and Gasparri’s diplomacy, its crowning triumph in the post-war period and a reversal of the mistakes of Pius X and Merry Del Val. It was also a result of the war: the unhesitating and unstinting Catholic support for the patriotic union sacré of all Frenchmen. Thus, it seemed that there was a real chance that Leo XIII’s policy of ralliement, of Catholics accepting the Republic and working inside its institutions, would finally bear fruit under his pupils, Benedict and Gasparri. In broader terms, the resumption of relations with France, and also with Portugal, suggested that at last the great wave of Liberal anti-clericalism unleashed by the French Revolution was, perhaps, at last ebbing. Perhaps, only perhaps, because in Mexico the persecution of the Church by the revolutionary regime seemed to be intensifying.89
But the success of Benedict’s diplomacy should not be calculated solely by the numbers of states with which the Vatican had relations or the importance of those states. After the war, and as a result of that policy, the Vatican had become a new force in international affairs. It is significant in this respect that heads of state and government from the most variegated countries beat a path to Benedict’s door in the years of peace. In 1919 the great President of the United States deigned to honour Benedict with his presence, as did the president-elect of Brazil and the Emir Feysal of Hejzad (now Saudi Arabia).90 The following year saw the visits of the chancellors of Austria and Germany, and 1921 those of the sovereigns of Denmark and the crown prince of Japan; the visit of the Belgian king and queen was prevented by Benedict’s death. And in 1921 the Empress and the Regent of Ethiopia sent a delegation to greet Benedict and present him with gifts: a most extraordinary act of recognition from a lost, far-away land.91
Not everyone in the Vatican approved of the successes which Benedict had achieved in international affairs in the post-war period, and especially of his efforts to ensure a lasting peace. Merry Del Val was particularly critical. Writing to his friend Cardinal O’Connell, Archbishop of Boston, in November 1921, Merry Del Val lamented the
prevalence of too much politics, worldly diplomacy and intrigue that are hardly in keeping with the lofty ideals of our mission, nor profitable to the best interests of God and his Church. Here, alas, we come up against it at every step, all day and every day … We are drifting … Surely at a time when the world has lost its bearings and is anxiously seeking that which we alone are able to provide, we should not drift ourselves, or appear to juggle with principles, but hold up the lesson of light as God gave it to us and refrain from the tactics of human politics.92
No one could seriously claim that Benedict had failed to give a moral lead to the statesmen and peoples of the world, or that he had ‘juggled with principles’. On the contrary, he had repeatedly set before the world the Christian principles on the basis of which alone, he believed, a just and lasting peace was possible. Under Benedict, the Vatican had escaped from the international isolation in which Pius X and Merry Del Val had left it in 1914, and both during and after the war the Vatican had re-asserted its moral and diplomatic influence, forcing powers, great and small, to take notice of it, and obliging some to establish or re-establish relations with it, in furtherance of their most essential national interests. This was one of Benedict XV’s greatest achievements.
1. Carlen (ed.), IV, pp. 161–2.
2. As quoted in Marks, p. 23.
3. Garzia, p. 139.
4. AAES, 1369/1372, memo, undated; comments in Benedict’s hand.
5. Nuova Antologia, 1 March 1916, ‘I1 Papa e il congresso di pace’.
6. Pollard (1990), p. 211.
7. Zivojinovic (1978), p. 140.
8. ASV, SS, Guerra, 1914–18, fasc. 70, 14480, Gasparri to nuncio in Madrid, 15 December 1918.
9. For the Mercier ‘episode’, see Garzia, pp. 198–205.
10. DDI, Quinta Serie, vol. X, doc. 547, Sonnino to ambassadors in Paris and Rome, 23 March 1918 and doc. 730, 22 May 1918, Sonnino to ambassador in Washington.
11. AAES, 1369/1372, Benedict’s memorandum on the Nuova Antologia article.
12. Hales, pp. 81–2.
13. De Marco, pp. 77–8.
14. Diario, II, p. 467, 24 April 1919.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., p. 299, 20 April 1918.
17. Ibid., pp. 395–6, 9 November 1918.
18. La CC, 71, 2 (120), p. 506.
19. Stehlin (1994), p. 6.
20. Ibid., p. 3.
21. See Stehlin (1983), ch. V.
22. Cited in Morozzo Della Rocca (1996), p. 552.
23. La CC, 71, 1 (1919), p. 451.
24. Ibid., 69, 4 (1918), p. 341.
25. Diario, II, pp. 391–2, 5 November 1918.
26. Ibid., p. 390, 27 October 1918.
27. Morozzo Della Rocca (1996), p. 552.
28. Diario, II, p. 432, 28 January 1919.
29. Ibid., p. 438, 13 February 1919.
30. Alexander, pp. 2–6.
31. Diario, II, p. 474, 30 May 1918.
32. Pollard (1985), p. 85.
33. ASV, DAUS, V, p. 97, telegram of 21 June 1919 from Bonzo to Gasparri.
34. La CC, 1920, 2, p. 567, 19 June 1920.
35. Ibid.
36. Carlen (ed.), IV, p. 174.
37. Mizzi, p. vi.
38. Carlen (ed.), IV, pp. 170–1.
39. Ibid., p. 174.
40. Diario, II, p. 567, 26 December 1920.
41. Molony, p. 103.
42. Norton, p. 283.
43. Ibid., p. 281.
44. As quoted in ibid.
45. Minerbi, pp. 117–20.
46. Ibid., p. 150.
47. Diario, II, p. 563, 27 July 1919.
48. Minerbi, pp. 89–90.
49. La CC, 70, 2 (1919), p. 8.
50. Minerbi, p. 89.
51. La CC, 72, 2 (1921), p. 519.
52. Ibid., p. 87.
53. Minerbi, p. 153.
54. La CC, 70, 2 (1919), p. 4.
55. Ibid., p. 12.
56. Ibid., 71, 3 (1920), pp. 42–3.
57. As quoted in Minerbi, p. 44.
58. Minerbi, p. 149.
59. Ibid., p. 19.
60. See ASV, DAUS, V, 82/3, Scatola 67, Deloncle, and AAES, 1335, fasc. 488, especially the memorandum on the ‘Lugano Pact’, no date. Diario, II, p. 88, 10 May 1917.
61. Diario, II, p. 88, 10 May 1917.
62. La Bella, p. 5.
63. Keogh, pp. 34 and 49.
64. Ibid., p. 49.
65. See ASV, DAUS, V, 82/3 for the file of letters about Ireland received by Apostolic Delegate in Washington, Mgr Bonzano.
66. Keogh, p. 40.
67. Ibid., p. 83.
68. La CC, 71,3 (1920), p. 97.
69. Keogh, p. 40.
70. AAES, Stati Ecclesiastici, 1350, Italia 1915–1924, vol. Ill, ‘Missione di Mons. Cerretti a Parigi, Londra, Washington e scambio di corrispondenza’, Cerretti-Gasparri, 9 December 1918.
71. La Bella, pp. 62–3.
72. Ibid., pp. 128–9.
73. Ibid., pp. 174–5.
74. Keogh, pp. 67–70.
75. Ibid., p. 75.
76. Ibid., p. 69.
77. As quoted in La Bella, p. 175.
78. Ibid.
79. Keogh, p. 69.
80. Austria-Hungary, Prussia, Bavaria, Russia, Spain, Monaco, Belgium, Serbia, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic.
81. The Russian envoy disappeared after the Revolution and the Prussian envoy with establishment of relations with the Reich. The Austria-Hungarian envoy was replaced by envoys for the two separate states. Yugoslavia replaced Serbia. Czechoslovakia, Romania, Portugal, Britain, Switzerland, Holland, Poland, Lithuania, Luxembourg and France all established relations after 1914.
82. For example, Estonia; see La CC, 70, 2 (1919), p. 279.
83. Stehlin (1994), p. 9.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid.
86. Diario, II, pp. 337–8, 3 June 1918.
87. Marchese, pp. 319–21 and 351–5.
88. Diario, II, p. 529, 30 January 1920.
89. La CC, 71, 4 (1920), p. 103.
90. Ibid., 70, 2 (1919), p. 265.
91. Ibid., 72, 1 (1921), pp. 175–6.
92. As quoted in Fogarty, p. 219.