Pope Pius XI (1857-1939)

The pontificate of Pius XI can be understood from one central conviction: true peace, among men as among nations, can arise only from the public recognition of the kingship of Christ. After the First World War, in a ruined and disoriented Europe tempted by mass ideologies, Achille Ratti offered a simple and radical diagnosis: the world was suffering because it had excluded God from public life.^[13][14]

He formulated this diagnosis in his first encyclical, Ubi arcano Dei consilio (23 December 1922), and gave it a liturgical form three years later by instituting the feast of Christ the King. The motto Pax Christi in Regno Christi was therefore not a decorative slogan: it was the key to his entire policy. Reconciling Italy with the Church, reviving the missions, organizing Catholic Action, condemning regimes that divinized the State or race — all of this flowed from the same logic: restoring Christ's place as King in society.

“If men were to recognize the royal authority of Christ in their private life and in their public life, incredible benefits — a just liberty, order and tranquillity, harmony and peace — would infallibly spread throughout the whole of society.” — Quas primas, 11 December 1925 (official French translation)^[15]

This also explains his originality among the popes. Where Benedict XV had been the pope of war and diplomatic efforts for peace, Pius XI was the pope of Catholic reconstruction: he built, organized, signed and founded. Firm and methodical, scholarly with the meticulousness of the old paleographer, he governed the Church as one plans a mountain ascent — without ever losing sight of the summit.^[16] The detail of each encyclical belongs to its own article; what belongs specifically to Pius XI is his will to restore the social reign of Christ in a century turning away from it.

Before becoming pope, Achille Ratti spent more than forty years as a scholarly priest: professor, paleographer, brilliant librarian and then, by a late and unexpected turn, diplomat in reborn Poland. None of his immediate predecessors had followed so unusual a path to the throne of Peter.

A son of Lombard Brianza

Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti was born on 31 May 1857 in Desio, a small town in Brianza, north of Milan, then in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia under Austrian rule.^[17][18] He was the fourth child of Francesco Ratti, manager of a silk mill, and Teresa Galli. His milieu was that of Lombardy's industrious Catholic middle class. A priest-uncle oversaw his early formation, and the gifted, hardworking child entered the seminary early.^[19]

Ordained priest on 20 December 1879, the young Ratti pursued higher studies in Rome, obtaining in 1882 three doctorates: theology at the Pontifical Faculty of the Sapienza (13 March), canon law at the Gregorian University (9 June) and philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas (23 June).^[20][21] This rare triple competence made him from the start more a man of sacred learning than of government.

The scholar and librarian

Back in Lombardy, Ratti taught at the seminary of Milan, then entered the Ambrosian Library in 1888, the great scholarly institute founded by Cardinal Federico Borromeo, cousin of Saint Charles. He proved to be a first-rate paleographer, a specialist in medieval manuscripts and the history of the Ambrosian Church, and an editor of ancient liturgical texts.^[22][23] In 1907, he became prefect — that is, director — of the Ambrosian Library.

His scholarly reputation crossed the Alps and the walls of Milan. In February 1912, Pius X called him to Rome as vice-prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library; he became its prefect on 1 September 1914, after the death of Pius X (20 August 1914).^[24][25] For nearly thirty years, Achille Ratti thus lived among books and manuscripts — a formation in patience, rigor and attention to detail that he would later transpose into the government of the Church.

The mountaineer

Ratti's other passion, more unexpected in a future pope, was the mountains. Between 1885 and 1913 he completed more than twenty major climbs in the Alps, ascending Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn and, in July 1889, the Dufourspitze of Monte Rosa, the highest summit in Switzerland.^[26] First Italian rope team at the summit, first Macugnaga-Zermatt traverse via the Zumstein Pass: the Italian normal route of Mont Blanc now bears his name.^[27]

This mountaineering was not a mere pastime: it revealed a temperament. The man who faced walls and glaciers with method, endurance and composure would govern the Church with the same resolute firmness. Later, this discipline of the summit would be seen as an image of his way of reigning: aim high, calculate every foothold, never retreat once the route has been chosen.

The diplomat in Poland (1918-1921)

The decisive turn came in 1918. Benedict XV sent the scholarly librarian — who had no diplomatic experience — as apostolic visitor to Poland, reborn after more than a century of partitions.^[28][29] Ratti was soon appointed apostolic nuncio (1919), consecrated titular archbishop of Naupactus (ancient Lepanto), and plunged into the upheavals of Central Europe.

The best-known episode was the siege of Warsaw in August 1920, when the Soviet Red Army threatened the Polish capital. While most foreign diplomats evacuated the city, Nuncio Ratti refused to flee and remained at his post — one of the rare foreign diplomats to remain with the government and the besieged faithful.^[30] This personal courage, in direct contact with Soviet Communism in arms, permanently marked his distrust of Bolshevik revolution: he had seen with his own eyes what becomes of a society that seeks to banish God.

Archbishop of Milan and cardinal (1921)

On 13 June 1921, Benedict XV transferred Ratti to the see of Milan — one of Italy's greatest sees, the see of Saint Ambrose and Saint Charles Borromeo — and created him cardinal at the consistory of the same day (red hat at the public consistory of 15 June).^[31][32] Already titular archbishop since his consecration on 28 October 1919, he made his solemn entry into Milan on 8 September 1921.^[33] The librarian turned diplomat was now a prince of the Church. He would govern Milan for only a few months: the sudden death of Benedict XV in January 1922 called him back to Rome for the conclave that would change his life.

The election of Achille Ratti, a cardinal for barely eight months, was the fruit of a deadlocked conclave between two opposing tendencies, in which he appeared as the synthesis.

The death of Benedict XV and the longest conclave of the century

Benedict XV died suddenly of pneumonia on 22 January 1922, aged sixty-seven.^[34][35] The conclave that opened on 2 February gathered about fifty deeply divided cardinals. Two camps opposed each other: the intransigents, heirs of Pius X, grouped around Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, and the moderates of Benedict XV's line, led by the outgoing secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri.^[36]

Neither favorite could obtain the two-thirds majority. The voting stalled: four days and fourteen ballots.^[37] Gradually, attention turned to a man who belonged fully to no faction: the archbishop of Milan, a respected scholar without an encumbering curial past, acceptable to both sides — a compromise candidate.^[38]

The election of 6 February 1922 and the balcony blessing

On 6 February 1922, at the fourteenth ballot, Achille Ratti was elected. Asked what name he chose, he answered that he took the name Pius — “Pius is a name of peace” — out of fidelity to Pius IX, the pope of his youth, and to Pius X, who had called him to Rome.^[39]

His first gesture was a major political symbol. Since the capture of Rome by Italy in 1870, the popes, regarding themselves as “prisoners of the Vatican,” had ceased giving the Urbi et Orbi blessing from the external loggia of Saint Peter's, facing the square and the city. Pius XI appeared on the external balcony and blessed the Roman crowd.^[40][41] The message was clear: the new pope wanted to reconnect with the city and with the Italian State. He was crowned on 12 February 1922 in Saint Peter's Basilica by Cardinal Protodeacon Gaetano Bisleti.^[42]

Ubi arcano and the program “Pax Christi in Regno Christi”

On 23 December 1922, Pius XI published his first encyclical, Ubi arcano Dei consilio, a true manifesto of the pontificate.^[43] He denounced the evils of a world emerging from war — inflamed nationalisms, class struggle, thirst for pleasure, abandonment of God — and proposed the remedy: restore the reign of Christ in souls, families and societies.

His program is summed up in one motto, Pax Christi in Regno Christi — the peace of Christ in the reign of Christ — formulated from his first encyclical, Ubi arcano Dei consilio (23 December 1922).^[44]

The encyclical also laid the foundations for what would become one of the great works of the pontificate: Catholic Action, that is — in the words of Non abbiamo bisogno — the “participation and collaboration of the laity in the hierarchical apostolate” (“partecipazione e collaborazione del laicato all'Apostolato Gerarchico”) of the Church, organized to rechristianize society.^[45]

The greatest political act of the reign — and one of the most debated — was the resolution of the Roman Question, the conflict between the papacy and the Italian State opened by the fall of the Papal States.

Sixty years as “prisoner of the Vatican”

Since the capture of Rome in 1870 and the annexation of the last Papal States by the Kingdom of Italy, the popes had not recognized the fait accompli. Refusing to leave the Vatican, they had declared themselves “prisoners,” and no agreement had been reached for nearly sixty years.^[46][47] The situation left the Holy See in an abnormal juridical position: a universal spiritual authority without its own sovereign territory.

The treaty, the financial settlement and the concordat

Taking advantage of Benito Mussolini's desire, as head of the Fascist government, to win Catholic opinion, Pius XI allowed his secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, to negotiate in secret. On 11 February 1929, in the Lateran Palace, the Lateran Agreements were signed in three parts.^[48][49]

The treaty recognized the full sovereignty of the Holy See over a tiny territory, the Vatican City State (44 hectares), and definitively settled the Roman Question. A financial convention compensated the Holy See for the loss of the Papal States. Finally, a concordat regulated relations between the Church and the Italian State: the Catholic religion was recognized as the religion of the State, religious marriage received civil recognition, and religious instruction was provided in schools.^[50]

“The Holy See declares the ‘Roman Question’ definitively and irrevocably settled, and therefore eliminated.” — Lateran Treaty, article 26, 11 February 1929 (French translation)^[51]

“Giving God back to Italy” — and its ambiguities

Two days later, on 13 February 1929, receiving the professors and students of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Pius XI expressed his joy in a phrase that became famous.

“With it [the Concordat], we believe we have given God back to Italy and Italy back to God.” — Pius XI, allocution Vogliamo anzitutto, 13 February 1929^[52]

In the same allocution, he greeted, without naming him, “a man such as the one Providence” had “made him meet” — an allusion to the head of the Italian government with whom the Concordat had been negotiated.^[53] The phrase would weigh heavily. For the reconciliation of 1929, though it finally gave the Church a sovereign base, also seemed to legitimize a dictatorial regime. Yet Pius XI was not naïve: less than three years later, he would publicly break with Fascism over the education of youth. His position, typical of the whole pontificate, rigorously distinguished the juridical agreement — which secured the Church's freedom — from ideological adherence, which he would always refuse.

During the Holy Year of 1925, Pius XI gave his motto a lasting liturgical expression. By the encyclical Quas primas of 11 December 1925, he instituted throughout the Church the feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King.^[54]

“We institute the feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King. We order that it be celebrated throughout the world, every year, on the last Sunday of October.” — Quas primas, 11 December 1925 (official French translation)^[55]

The issue was doctrinal as much as political. Against secularism, which sought to confine religion to the private sphere, Pius XI affirmed that Christ exercises a real kingship not only over individuals, but over societies, laws and States. The feast, first fixed on the last Sunday of October — before All Saints — and later transferred after the Council to the last Sunday of the liturgical year, remains one of the most visible legacies of the pontificate. The theological detail of Christ's kingship belongs to a separate article; what belongs to Pius XI is that he inscribed Christ the King in the calendar of the universal Church.

Quas primas also orders the yearly renewal, on the day of Christ the King, of the consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart: “ut eo ipso die generis humani Sacratissimo Cordi Iesu dedicatio quotannis renovetur” (“that on that very day the consecration of the human race to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus be renewed each year”).^[56] Three years later, Pius XI published the encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor (8 May 1928) on reparation due to the Sacred Heart.^[57]

Fatima had named Pius XI

The Virgin announced at Fatima, on 13 July 1917, that if men did not cease offending God, “under the pontificate of Pius XI another and worse one will begin” — a war worse than that of 1914-1918 (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, The Message of Fatima, 26 June 2000, from the Third Memoir of Sister Lucia of 31 August 1941).^[58] Pius XI was then still an unknown librarian: the word preceded his election by five years.

Objection: the Second World War broke out only in September 1939, under Pius XII, seven months after Pius XI's death. But the secret itself gives its forerunner sign: “a night illuminated by an unknown light.” Sister Lucia recognized this sign in the exceptional aurora borealis of 25 January 1938, in the midst of Pius XI's pontificate — nineteen months before the invasion of Poland (1 September 1939).^[59]

Pius XI profoundly renewed the Church's missionary impulse, to the point of being called the “pope of the missions.” His conviction was that the Church is fully implanted in a country only when it has a native clergy and its own bishops.

Rerum Ecclesiae and the native clergy

On 28 February 1926, the encyclical Rerum Ecclesiae made the formation of a native clergy the absolute priority of missionary work.^[60][61] Pius XI fought the colonial prejudice according to which evangelized peoples were incapable of providing priests and bishops in the full sense. On the contrary, he required missionaries to form native priests locally, called to govern their own Church.

“Whoever regards these natives as an inferior race and of little intelligence is gravely mistaken.” — Rerum Ecclesiae, 28 February 1926^[62]

The result was measurable: at the beginning of the pontificate, no mission territory was governed by a native bishop; by Pius XI's death, there were about forty, according to the New Catholic Encyclopedia.^[63]

The first six Chinese bishops (1926)

The most striking gesture took place on 28 October 1926 — the anniversary of his own episcopal consecration. In Saint Peter's Basilica, Pius XI consecrated with his own hands six Chinese bishops, the first native bishops of China in the modern era.^[64] The following year, on 30 October 1927, he likewise consecrated in Saint Peter's the first Japanese bishop of the modern era, Januarius Kyunosuke Hayasaka, appointed to Nagasaki.^[65]

This highly symbolic gesture broke centuries of mistrust and inaugurated a truly Catholic, that is, universal Church, in which Asia was no longer merely mission territory but a land of local Churches in their own right. It is one of the most fruitful and prophetic acts of his reign.

Concerned to guarantee juridically the freedom of the Church in a Europe shaken by the fall of empires and the rise of authoritarian States, Pius XI signed an unprecedented series of concordats — treaties regulating relations between the Holy See and States: twelve were concluded or negotiated under his reign (one of them never ratified).^[66]

The Reichskonkordat (1933)

The most consequential was the Reichskonkordat, signed on 20 July 1933 between the Holy See and Germany under Adolf Hitler, who had come to power a few months earlier. It was negotiated and signed, in the name of Pius XI, by Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli — the future Pius XII — and Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen.^[67]

The Holy See's objective was to protect juridically German Catholic institutions — schools, associations, the press — against an already threatening regime. But National Socialism systematically violated the concordat from the moment of its signature. This very renunciation of its commitments would lead Pius XI, four years later, to publicly denounce the Nazi regime in Mit brennender Sorge. The Reichskonkordat illustrates the limit of the concordat strategy: a treaty is worth only the good faith of its signatories.

On 15 May 1931, forty years after Rerum novarum by Leo XIII — hence the title Quadragesimo anno, “in the fortieth year” — Pius XI published the great social encyclical of his pontificate.^[68] In the face of the world economic crisis of 1929, he updated the social doctrine of the Church against financial capitalism and socialism.

Its most lasting contribution was the first magisterial formulation of the principle of subsidiarity: a higher authority must not absorb what lower communities can accomplish by themselves.

“Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do.” — Quadragesimo anno, § 79, 15 May 1931^[69]

The encyclical condemns both unrestrained economic liberalism and socialist collectivism, and calls for a social order founded on justice and charity. It would remain one of the cornerstones of Catholic social doctrine, cited even in the texts of Vatican II and beyond.

On 31 December 1930, in response to the Anglican Lambeth Conference, which that same year had for the first time admitted contraception in certain cases, Pius XI published Casti connubii (“on chaste marriage”).^[70] The encyclical forcefully reaffirmed Catholic doctrine on marriage: its unity, indissolubility and openness to life.

“Any use whatsoever of marriage in the exercise of which, by human malice, the act is deprived of its natural power of procreation, goes against the law of God and of nature.” — Casti connubii, 31 December 1930^[71]

The text also condemns abortion, eugenic sterilization then fashionable in several countries, and divorce. The first major magisterial document to treat modern conjugal morality systematically, Casti connubii foreshadows from afar the teaching of Humanae vitae (1968). The detail of conjugal morality belongs to separate articles; what belongs to Pius XI is that he held the line at the precise moment when the Anglican Communion was leaving it.

This is the terrain on which Pius XI most deeply marked historical memory. Throughout the 1930s, he set the Church against the three totalitarian ideologies that claimed to seize the whole man: Fascism, Communism and Nazism.

Against Fascism: Non abbiamo bisogno (1931)

As early as 1931, conflict broke out with Mussolini over the youth. The Fascist regime wanted to dissolve the associations of Catholic Action and impose a monopoly on the education of the young. On 29 June 1931, Pius XI replied with the encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno — written not in Latin but in Italian, so that the whole people could understand it — and had the text smuggled out of Italy to evade censorship.^[72]

“A true and proper pagan statolatry, in full contradiction both with the natural rights of the family and with the supernatural rights of the Church.” — Non abbiamo bisogno, 29 June 1931^[73]

The pope denounced the State's claim to appropriate whole generations, “from earliest childhood to adulthood.” There he denounced a “pagan statolatry” — idolatry of the State.^[74] This was a clear rupture: less than three years after having greeted Mussolini, Pius XI showed that the Lateran reconciliation did not mean approval of the regime.

Against Communism: Divini Redemptoris (1937)

On 19 March 1937, the encyclical Divini Redemptoris condemned atheistic Communism, which the pope had measured at Warsaw in 1920 and saw at work in religious persecution in the USSR, Mexico and Spain.^[75] The condemnation was categorical.

“Communism is intrinsically perverse, and one may not admit collaboration with it on any terrain by anyone who wishes to save Christian civilization.” — Divini Redemptoris, 19 March 1937^[76]

The pope did not merely condemn: he proposed the social and spiritual remedy — justice, charity, social doctrine and return to God — in continuity with Quadragesimo anno.

Against Nazism: Mit brennender Sorge (1937)

Five days earlier, on 14 March 1937, Pius XI had struck National Socialism. Faced with repeated violations of the Reichskonkordat and the rise of racial neo-paganism, he published Mit brennender Sorge (“with burning concern”), an exceptional encyclical written directly in German.^[77] Prepared with the help of Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich and Secretary of State Pacelli, it was secretly printed, secretly distributed, and read from the pulpit in all Catholic churches of Germany on Palm Sunday, 21 March 1937, taking the regime by surprise.^[78]

“Whoever takes race, or the people, or the State, or the form of State, […] and removes them from their earthly scale of values, making them the supreme norm of all things, including religious values, and divinizing them with idolatrous worship, overturns and falsifies the order of things created and commanded by God.” — Mit brennender Sorge, 14 March 1937^[79]

Without naming Hitler, the text unambiguously condemns the myth of race and blood, the divinization of the State and the falsification of Christianity. The Nazi reaction was violent: seizures, closure of printing houses, intensified persecution. Mit brennender Sorge remains the Holy See's clearest act of doctrinal resistance against the Third Reich.

The Mexico of the Cristeros

Pius XI was also the pope of the Mexican persecution. Under the anticlerical regime of Plutarco Elías Calles, the Church in Mexico suffered a brutal repression that triggered the popular uprising of the Cristeros (1926-1929), whose martyrs fell crying “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the King!”). The pope protested through three encyclicals: Iniquis afflictisque (18 November 1926), Acerba animi (29 September 1932) and Firmissimam constantiam (28 March 1937, on the religious situation in Mexico).^[80][81][82] The cry of the Cristeros thus directly echoes the motto of the pontificate: the kingship of Christ, even unto martyrdom.

The condemnation of Action française (1926)

On his right, finally, Pius XI struck French Catholic nationalism. On 29 December 1926, he condemned the Action française of Charles Maurras, an influential monarchist movement in Catholic circles, whose several writings were placed on the Index in January 1927.^[83] The motive was doctrinal: Maurras, an agnostic, subordinated religion to politics (“politics first”) and used the Church for nationalist ends. By condemning a movement nevertheless close to part of the clergy, Pius XI affirmed the primacy of the spiritual over the political — the same logic that opposed him to Fascism and Nazism. The condemnation would be lifted by Pius XII in 1939.

Beyond the great political acts, the work Pius XI considered dearest to his heart was Catholic Action. Announced already in Ubi arcano (1922), organized and promoted throughout the reign, it designated the organized participation of the laity in the mission of the Church, under the guidance of the hierarchy.^[84][85] Associations of youth, men, women and students: the goal was to rechristianize society from within, in professional, school and family environments.

It was precisely this Catholic Action that totalitarian regimes wanted to destroy, because, against mass regimentation, it set up a network of free consciences formed by the Gospel. The fierce defense of Italian Catholic Action in Non abbiamo bisogno shows the importance Pius XI attached to it: for him, the future of the faith was being decided in the formation of the laity.

A former man of libraries, Pius XI gave the papacy modern instruments of knowledge and communication, and marked his reign with major canonizations.

Vatican Radio, Academy of Sciences, restorations

On 12 February 1931, Pius XI inaugurated Vatican Radio, a station built at his request by Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio, in the new Vatican City State.^[86][87] For the first time, the pope's voice could be heard throughout the world. In 1936, he refounded the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, conceived as a “scientific senate” gathering the greatest scholars, believers or not, around the search for truth.^[88] The new Vatican State also enabled him to modernize administrations, museums and libraries.

Canonizations and jubilees

Pius XI canonized 34 saints and beatified 511 servants of God.^[89] Among the most notable figures were Therese of the Child Jesus (canonized on 17 May 1925), soon patroness of the missions; the Curé of Ars, Jean-Marie Vianney (1925); Bernadette Soubirous, the visionary of Lourdes (canonized on 8 December 1933); John Bosco (canonized at Easter 1934); and the English martyrs Thomas More and John Fisher (canonized in 1935). He also proclaimed Robert Bellarmine a Doctor of the Church (1931), and did the same for Albert the Great, canonized and declared Doctor on 16 December 1931.^[90]

He celebrated two Holy Years: the ordinary Holy Year of 1925, and the extraordinary Jubilee of the Redemption (1933-1934), for the 1900th anniversary of the death and resurrection of Christ.^[91] All these canonizations outline, indirectly, the spiritual program of the reign: concrete holiness, missionary, Marian, social and martyred, as the answer to the ideologies of the century.

An end on the eve of one final battle

Weakened by heart disease and age, Pius XI died in the Apostolic Palace of Vatican City on 10 February 1939, aged eighty-one, carried off by a heart attack.^[92][93] His death occurred on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the Lateran Agreements, which he was to commemorate the next day.

The speech that was never delivered

For the dying pope was preparing a final battle. For 11 February 1939, he had summoned all the bishops of Italy and drafted an unusually firm speech against the drift of Fascism and Nazism, which he had already sent to the Vatican's secret printer.^[94] His death the day before prevented him from delivering it.

According to historian Emma Fattorini, Secretary of State Pacelli — elected pope twenty days later, on 2 March 1939 — is said to have had the printed proofs of the speech collected and destroyed on 15 February.^[95] The order to collect these texts, recorded by Msgr Domenico Tardini on 15 February 1939, also fell within the ordinary duties of the camerlengo during the vacancy of the see. The text of the speech has moreover been preserved: the official biography of Pius XI on vatican.va notes that it was made public by Pope John XXIII on 6 February 1959 (“reso noto dal Papa Giovanni XXIII il 6 febbraio 1959”).^[96]

The hidden encyclical Humani generis unitas

Pius XI also left unfinished an encyclical of prophetic content. In June 1938, alarmed by antisemitism and racial laws, he secretly commissioned three Jesuits, around the American John LaFarge, to draft an encyclical against racism and antisemitism, entitled Humani generis unitas (“the unity of the human race”).^[97] The text, about one hundred pages long, reached the Vatican in autumn 1938, but the pope, already ill, did not promulgate it before his death. Pius XII chose not to publish it as such, but took up passages from the draft in his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, on 20 October 1939. This “hidden encyclical” remains one of the great “what ifs” of twentieth-century Church history.

The verdict of history

How should Pius XI be judged? History remembers a builder and fighter pope. Institutionally, he gave the Church a sovereign territory, twelve concordats (concluded or negotiated between 1922 and 1935)^[98], a worldwide radio station and an organized Catholic Action. Missionarily, he helped bring local Churches in Asia to birth by consecrating their first bishops. Doctrinally, he instituted the feast of Christ the King, developed social doctrine and defended Christian marriage.

But it is his courage before totalitarianism that most compels admiration. In turn, he set the moral authority of the Church against Fascism, Communism and Nazism, without ever confusing diplomatic prudence with complacency. Where he has been criticized for the ambiguities of the Lateran settlement, one must also recognize the lucidity of Non abbiamo bisogno, Mit brennender Sorge and the speech interrupted by death.

“But antisemitism is inadmissible. We are spiritually Semites.” — Words of 6 September 1938, spoken in private audience to the three heads of Belgian Catholic Radio, charged with repeating them to the 120 Belgian pilgrims (reported words, not an official act)^[99]

This phrase, uttered only a few months before his death at the height of antisemitic persecution, sums up the man: firm, direct, free. Between Benedict XV, pope of the war, and Pius XII, pope of the Second World War, Pius XI remains the pope of the interwar period — the one who wanted, against the century, to make “the peace of Christ in the reign of Christ” prevail.

• Pope Benedict XV — his predecessor, the pope of the First World War, who sent him on mission to Poland and made him a cardinal.
• Pope Pius XII — his secretary of state and successor, negotiator of the Reichskonkordat, who inherited the Second World War.
• Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903) — the author of Rerum novarum, whose social doctrine Quadragesimo anno extended forty years later.
• Pope Saint Pius X — who called Achille Ratti to the Vatican Library and whose name he took up.
• Blessed Pius IX — the pope of the loss of Rome (1870) and of the Roman Question that Pius XI resolved in 1929.
• Pope Leo XII (1760-1829) — who condemned secret societies through Quo graviora (1825), in the same line of doctrinal firmness.