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CHAPTER III BENEDICT XV, THE PRO-GERMAN POPE

THE new Pontiff tries to help the Austro-Germans: his intrigues to prevent Italy and the United States from joining the Allies. The French Catholics call him the “Boche Pope”. — He no longer speaks of German war crimes. — His attempts in favour of a separate peace, then of a”stalemate”peace in 1917 to save Germany and Austria-Hungary from defeat. — The grave accusation of a Catholic, Louis Canet. — Mgr. Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, sent as Nuncio to Munich, meets William II and takes an active part in the intrigues of the”Boche Pope”. — The Holy See excluded from the Peace Conference at Versailles, at the request of Italy. This inadequate sanction does not prevent the Vatican from preparing its revenge.

ON 20 August 1914, Pope Pius X died, and it certainly was notdespite what his biographers say—from sorrow at seeing the outbreak of a conflict which he had ardently desired. Roger Peyrefitte, in his Les cles de Saint-Pierre is rather of the opinion that he died of joy. It may also be supposed that England’s entry into the war on 4 August, by enabling him to foresee the defeat of his champions, caused him an emotional shock that was to prove fatal. However that may be, he entered into the”peace of the Saviour” soon after having dealt his decisive blow to that of the earth. At that time, Mgr. Pacelli, the future Pope Plus XII, was beginning as a Vatican diplomat under the eminent guidance of Mgr. Merry del Val, the very Germanophile and very bellicose Secretary of State. The memory of these wonderful years Pope Pius XII must surely have had in mind when, forty years later, he was occupying the throne of St. Peter—how, we shall soon see—and, when during the second world war, he made a point of canonizing his great predecessor, who had done everything to set the first slaughter in motion.

But let us leave these two good apostles of the Fax Christi, and concern ourselves with the immediate successor of Pius X, Pope Benedict XV.

As Adrien Dansette writes:

“Out of Catholic Austria-Hungary, a Germany which was Protestant, but had nevertheless a highly organized Catholic minority, and in a way embodied the notions of authority and hierarchy, France (shortly Italy as well). Catholic but both “bad parishioners” as Mgr. Duchesne used to say, Protestant England, and schismatic Russia—all of which except the last, were fighting in the name of liberalism—how could the Holy See have failed to prefer the first group?”

Indeed, this preference manifested itself in an obvious and even scandalous way, right from the early days of the war, as Father Brugerette points out:

“Benedict XV’s silence on Germany’s tremendous ambition and the vain pan-German doctrine which broke all the universally accepted rules of international morality, is astonishing. And it was therein, it was said, that the origin of the present war was to be found.

“On 10 January 1915, a decree signed by Cardinal Gasparri, Secretary of State to Benedict XV, prescribed a day of prayer to hasten the return of peace. . . . One of the obligatory exercises of piety was the recitation of a prayer that Benedict XV had been good enough to write himself … the sense of guilt emerging from its terms roused French feelings to such a degree that, to calm them down, the Government seized the pontifical document. . . . Indeed, the prayer for peace was taken as a pernicious propaganda designed to weaken the efforts of the French, just when the German hordes were feeling that irresistible pressure which was to drive them from French soil, and when the Kaiser was beginning to see the terrible consequences of his unpardonable crimes.

“Yesterday I saw in ‘La Croix’, wrote a fervent Catholic lady to her priest, that the Holy Father orders prayers for peace. Peace, at present, is desired only by Germany. To pray for peace is to pray for Germany. This is more than I can do. Would you kindly let me know just how far our conscience is bound by those prescriptions of the Holy See which concern neither faith nor morality. . . .

“And in certain circles there were vehement protests against the pontifical measure because it coincided with the most ardent wishes of the Central European Empires . . . it was the result of a secret agreement between Berlin and the Vatican.

And Father Brugerette concludes that “The Pope does not like France, and, in a word, the Pope is ‘Boche’!”

Let us listen once again to Charles Ledre, on the subject of the pontifical note of 1 August 1917.”The Pope, whose Nuncio at Munich, Mgr. Pacelli, had had conversations with the Chancellor of the Reich, Emperor William II and Emperor Charles of Austria, was pressing the belligerent states to start negotiations for peace. This was received in France with a chorus of recriminations, some sad and some vehement. ‘Most Holy Father’, exclaimed Father Sertillanges, from the pulpit of the Madeleine, twe cannot, for the moment, heed your appeals for peace. . . . We are sons who sometimes say:”No!”like the seeming rebel of the Scriptures’. The eloquent Dominican was to pay for the”impropriety”of such a lesson, taught where it was and to the head of the Christian world, with a long and uncomfortable retirement. . . .

“The Holy See, by trying to persuade Italy and, later, the United States not to enter the war, was, according to Father Brugerette, ‘acting against our own”interests”and serving those of our enemies’.

. . . The Germanic influence was extremely active in pontifical circles. . . .

“Benedict XV has been reproached with not having officially taken to task those responsible for the war … the serious violations of Right and the horrors of which Germany was many a time guilty.”

The desperate position of the Central European Empires

The Holy Father appeared all the more insistent in his interventions as the Austro-Germans, at that time, could sense the approach of their final defeat. In 1934, l’Illustration published a particularly well documented study on the subject:

“In the extracts which follow we quote Count Poldzer-Hoditz, who for twenty years was friend and adviser to Charles, Emperor of Habsburg:

‘On 14 February 1917, Emperor Charles said to me:”We are going to lose the war; we are bound to lose the war if America comes in. It is unfair to encourage our people with hopes of victory. What should we do?”I replied that it was surely not desirable that our enemies should know the seriousness of our position, but the Emperor replied:”We certainly do not have to say that we are at the end of our tether! But if the nation is constantly hearing about our brilliant position, it will never understand why concessions must be made in order to obtain peace!””

France and the pontifical note of 1 August 1917

“October 1916 was the critical month for the Central European Powers . . .”, asserts Father Brugerette,”then appeared this new note of 1 August 1917 wherein Benedict XV urged the belligerents to start negotiating for peace. . . .

“It was not until four years later, through the declarations of Mr. Erzberger, published in ‘Germania’ of 22 April 1921, that the peace proposal launched by the Pope in August 1917 was known to have been preceded by a secret agreement between the Holy See and Germany. . . . The Holy See, he had added, had strongly endeavoured to bring Germany and England nearer on the question of Belgium, which would have resulted in the isolation of France and would have encouraged Germany to keep Alsace and Lorraine. . . .”

The courageous Father Brugerette continues:”It must be remembered what a Germanophile spirit dominated the entourage of the Holy See at that time. . . . Whether professors or ecclesiastics, they would stop at nothing to inculcate into the Italian clergy and the Catholic world of Rome respect and admiration for the German army, and disdain and hatred of France. . . . It was the right thing to wager on the victory of the Central European Empires. Even TOsservatore Romano’, the Holy See’s official organ, was considered Germanophile.

“On 2 August 1916, the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci blew up in the Gulf of Taranto: 21 officers and 221 men were drowned. Investigations, directed towards German espionage, led to Mgr. von Geriach, who, warned of his imminent arrest, took flight. This case against him was resumed in 1919. Von Geriach failed to appear and was condemned to 20 years’ hard labour”.

The Vatican has in its ranks the Von Geriachs it deserves. Moreover, it took good care not to stigmatize the criminal act of its chamberlain. A similar piece of sabotage was being carried out in the United States through the good offices of the Privy Chamberlain, Franz von Papen.

To the mass of evidence emanating from Catholic writers which we have just read, we shall add another item, and a very important one: extracts from an excellent study published in 1918 and mentioned by Father Brugerette7 in the following terms:

“It was soon known that the two articles published by the Revue de Paris— articles which were remarkable for the prodigious luxury of their documentation, came from a Catholic pen. The author was Louis Canet, former pupil at the French School of Rome, a disciple of Mgr. Duchesne and friend of Father Laberthonniere, his spiritual brother. The author no doubt obtained most of his information from the political services to which he was attached during the war. His wide culture and the gallican tendencies of his mind later enabled Louis Canet to become Director of Ecclesiastical Affairs at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs”.

These articles constitute such vitally important material that they warrant reproduction here of the following, somewhat lengthy, extracts:

Irrefutable Accusations

“Benedict XV”, writes Louis Canet,” does not belong to our party. There was no point in saying this, so long as no one in France was trying to lead French Catholics away from French politics, and it was charitable to say nothing so as not to grieve those good people who are pleased to believe, and who were doing their utmost to show that the Pope, for love of justice, had declared himself for the Entente. But this is no longer so today. Not only are we told that the Pope is with us, we are told that we should be with the Pope; this is admitting that he is not one of us, and undertaking to leave our camp for his. . . .

The interests of the Holy See and the two coalitions

“Thus a distinction must be made between the two functions that history has united under the majesty of the Tiara. The Pope is the Sovereign Pontiff, absolute master of the Catholic Church, supreme judge of faith and morality. But he is also heir to the political power which, today as in earlier days, is still subject to the same influences as are all human affairs, influences for evil, prone to error. . . .

“It is said, and rightly said, that for the first time since the birth of Christianity, the entire world, believers and unbelievers, turned towards the pulpit of Peter in order to hear the word of Justice for which it was hungering and thirsting; and Peter’s successor did not satisfy it. So bitter was the disappointment that, it is to be feared, the remembrance of it will never fade. But surely everyone will understand how cruel was the alternative. A choice had to be made between two dangers: either to sacrifice without a word not only (and not for the first time) the dignity of the Apostolic See, but the honour of Catholicism itself; or by speaking out to break the fragile link that holds the Church together, and to see the seamless garment torn even more than it is already — and, indeed, torn to pieces. . . .

“If the shepherd was able to hesitate between the two coalitions, the same was no longer true of the judge or the sovereign; but whereas the judge was obliged to condemn the Austro-German crime, the sovereign was almost inevitably obliged to make common cause with the criminal powers, not only because of political doctrine and historic tradition, but also because of personal and pressing interests. . . . Thus it was that Mgr. Szeptycky, Rutherian Archbishop of Lemberg and Metropolitan of Galicia, who, it is believed, had been given full powers in order to enable him to bring back Russia to the Roman fold—had begun, well before the war, to engineer the separation of the Ukraine; that half the Catholics of Rumania were placed under the authority of a German archbishop ; and that the Magyars of Transylvania were withdrawn from that of the Roman ordinaries. At the same time Benedictines from Beuron were installed in the Greek pontifical college of Saint Athanasius (in 1913) and at the primate’s abbey of Saint Anselm, on the Aventino. From the reign of Leo XIII, dom Boniface Krug went to the important abbey of Mount Cassin, and Mgr. Dabbing to the very gates of Rome, at the episcopal see of Sutri. While others were giving their money, their love, their lives, Germany was giving the whole strength of her organization—which was far more important.

“Germany may be wrong on some counts; she might even be wrong on all; but she has strength on her side, and this is a quality which atones for many sins. . . .

“The Holy See having its own interests, is naturally free to have its own policy, but on condition that it does not claim to cover it with the cloak of religious authority and impose it as a matter of conscience upon Catholics the world over. But popes are not in the habit of making such subtle distinctions; unlike the French, they do not consider their apostolic responsibility in the abstract, without taking human contingencies into account. Their strength lies in fusing everything, politics with religion, the interests of the Holy See with those of the Church, and the interests of the Church with those of people at large, so as to turn general policy to further the end of their own particular policy and to use to that end the dominating influence which they acquire by virtue of their religions role. That is what Benedict XV did. . . . Now what we are trying to do here is precisely to bring out, with irrefutable proof and fully authenticated evidence, the character and tendencies of pontifical policy. Thus we hope to show without any possibility of contradiction:

1.—That Benedict XV, because he wanted to consider the war as a vulgar conflict of ambitions, refused to recognize the violation of Belgian neutrality as an unforgivable crime; refused to admit that the Entente had more respect for justice than the imperial powers, and that Germany’s way of making war was far worse than that of her adversaries.

2.—That consequently, because he considered the ambitions of France more dangerous and more inflexible, he thought it reasonable to exhort the United States to refuse to export amis and munitions of war; to take steps to dissuade the neutral Powers from supporting us; and finally to try to split the Entente and so reduce the London pact to empty words.

The sources

His apologists will protest that none of this is apparent from the public and official acts of the Holy See, and that it is only fair, as the Pope himself asked in a letter dated 11 July 1915 to the Archbishop of Paris, that one should not look for his real thoughts anywhere else. They would be right if the records were clear and conformed to the truth. . . . But, in order to decipher this wizard’s book of speUs one must be in a position to give each document its proper value and to know the validity of every source of information.

“The ‘Osservatore Romand’, as everyone knows is the unofficial organ of the Holy See; yet it has been accused, on the pretence that it is now nothing but a poor reflection of the Wolff Agency’s opinions, of following its personal whims in defiance of the Pope’s wishes. If the accusers knew what instruments were given to the Director of the paper by Benedict XV immediately upon his accession and what part the State Secretariat and Cardinal Gasparri himself took in the drafting of the articles, they would be more careful. So much so, that without going into this mystery, one need do no more than read a letter dated 22 November, from the Secretary of State to the Archbishop of Lyons: ‘Your Eminence is not unaware of the fact that, at the outbreak of the present war, the Holy See, equally solicitous for the shepherds and flock of the universal Church, thought fit to observe, and has ever since maintained, the strictest and most absolute impartiality towards the different belligerent nations, and that it peremptorily recommended the Catholic press (in particular the Roman press) to do the same. I can assure you that the Holy See’s directives and advice have been faithfully followed by the Osservatore Romano, which is under its direct authority, as well as by the Corriere d ‘Italia, the principal organ of the publishing house’.

“This could not be expressed more clearly: the Holy See assumes full responsibility for what these two papers publish. … If after that they do not strike the same note, it does not follow that they should be set one against the other; it should merely be concluded that each is playing in the concert the part assigned to it. Moreover they do not comprise the entire orchestra. . . .

The pontifical sentence

“There are two opposing theories about the present war:

“The Entente accuses Germany of having wilfully provoked the war in order to bring the whole world under her domination; of having started it by the execrable violation of Belgian neutrality; and of deliberately continuing it with methods peculiar to herself, methods which are condemned by established rights and human conscience alike. Germany protests that she did not want the the conflict, and that it is her enemies who, by compelling her to take up arms to save her life, have reduced her to the necessity of disregarding all law.

“It is important to know which of these two theories the Holy See accepts; for if, from being, as we are now, both victims and judges, we are to be degraded to the level of mere rivals, we have at the same time become the adversary’s equals before good and evil, deprived of the moral resilience which was sustaining our courage and renewing our strength. This being so, we are entitled to complain and to appeal against the wrong that is being done to us; to accuse those who are not with us of being against us and those who are not against Germany of being her accomplices, whatever may happen.

I.—Violation of Belgian neutrality

“Belgium was, by virtue of the treaty of 19 April 1839, a permanently neutral state.

Summoned on 2 August 1914 to allow the passage of the German troops, Belgium, believing that ‘no nation, however weak, should ignore its duty, and sacrifice its honour by yielding to force’, was faithful to its word. Never yet had a nation preferred death to dishonour, and for the first time in history a government sacrificed an entire nation to martyrdom out of respect for a piece of paper. The Holy See was silent. But its representatives spoke, and declared that Belgium was to blame for not having resigned itself to the inevitable, and for having gone into the battle at the side of atheist France when a mere show of resistance would have been enough to save its face, and, finally, for the sake of misconceived honour and a lack of Christian prudence, for having brought misfortune upon herself. Fine arguments, but not of juridical validity. The issue was really one of rights: Germany confessed through her Chancellor that she had acted against them, and the supreme guardian of moral law remained dumb before the confession. . . .

11.—The re-establishment of justice

The terrible indictment against Germany being thus brushed aside, what does the Pope have to say? ‘Public scourges’, said Benedict XV, ‘are there for the expiation of the sins which have made public authorities and nations stray from God. . . .

“. . . Reference must now be made to the work that don Lucantonnio has just dedicated to Cardinal Gasparri, La Supranationalite du Saint-Siege; Benedict XV having supervised the planning of the book, insisted on revising the proofs himself, and it is there that one must seek the true expression of his innermost thoughts. It teaches that the calamities which are ravaging the earth today have their real origin in ‘doctrinal liberalism’: states claimed that they could break away from the tutelage of the popes and forcibly separate civil power from religious power; the present conflict is a kind of epilogue to all the anger, all the fury and all the hatred which, having smouldered in the hearts of different nations and burst into tumults and domestic upheavals, could only result in a general outbreak of barbarous and pitiless war, in which human brotherhood has been drowned in an ocean of blood. Thus, ‘the facts speak with terrifying eloquence; the Papacy, so much attacked, is vindicated by events’; and ‘any people which is not climbing towards the summits of the faith, is little by little going down to the depths of a shameful slavery, whose chains it will have forged with its own hands.’

III. — War methods

“After a criticism of the purpose comes a criticism of the means. Let us for a moment adopt the hypothesis that the ambitions of the Entente do not differ in kind from those of the Central European Empires; we might still hope that a distinction could be made between our war methods and theirs. This is sheer illusion: every accusation made by the Allies against the Imperial Powers is made by the Imperial Powers against the Allies with as much justification if not more, and ‘war is war’, says Benedetto Governa philosophically. By these two arguments the balance of right and wrong is once more restored.

IV. — Protection of the favoured

“To the dreaded question: ‘Do you remain neutral before this crime? ‘ Benedict XV replied ‘There has been no crime. . . .

‘. . . In the eyes of Benedict XV, therefore, the situation is the exact opposite of what it seems to us to be: it is Germany that is pacific, and the Entente that is bellicose; it is therefore the Entente that must be forced to give way. …

“Everyone who frequented the most highly placed prelates as well as humbler folk at the Vatican during the years 1915 and 1916. was told in confidence that the French were mad to trust the English, and to believe that they would ever willingly abandon the Channei coast and the port of Rouen. Italy herself—who would ever have thought it?—was not free from danger; really not, for the British Cabinet had expressed a wish to take a lease on Sicily.

There was only one way of replying to this insolence, and that was to lay claim to Malta. But Baron Sonnino was strangely weak.

. . . This was more or less the argument of the Austrian diplomats who, m the spring of 1915, were promising wonders to Italy, as a price for her neutrality. The pontifical press was pleased by these intrigues; and in the spring of this year 1918, the Civitta Cattolica was still surprised that the Royal Government should have laid claim to some of the provinces under Austria without also asserting her rights to Malta, Corsica and the Cote d’Azur.

Then there was Russia. It was no use inciting the French against the English and the Italians against both, unless it was possible at the same time to break the Franco-Russiaa alliance. . . .

And what was worse, was that there were suggestions for a separate peace. That Germany had more than once tried to negotiate separately with Belgium, is a matter of history. . . . From 2 to 10 January 1916, a Catholic German mission, including among others BeLzer, Herold, Irl, Welstein, Meyer, Neuhaus and Kuckhof, went to Belgium to preach, in the Pope’s name, as they said, the doctrine of the separate peace. The Belgian bishops protested that it was not true that the Pope was behind them, but the Nuncio kept quiet and the Pope was dumb. .. .

The Holy See was then thinking of a Franco-Austrian rapprochement, whereby it flattered itself it could lead France either to sign a separate peace, or to urge her allies towards a general peace. . . . The Pope, at the Consistory of December 1916, raised three of our bishops to the rank of cardinal, paid homage to the land of Clovis, Saint Louis and Joan of Arc, and expressed the wish that France should once more become the agent of the divine will. A few weeks later, on 31 March 1917, Prince Sixte de Bourbon gave Emperor Charles’s famous letter to the President of the Republic.

“The manoeuvre having failed on this side of the Alps, it had to be repeated elsewhere, in England, in America, and above all in Italy. Ever since the spring of 1917 the Holy See had shown the keenest solicitude for Italy and had spared no pains to make her believe that only the throne of Saint Peter had the power to rescue her from danger. … If this ingenious doctrine should gain credence it would result in complete confusion. . . .

“To shatter the material strength of the Entente in order to get the better of its offensive fervour, and to ruin its moral prestige in order to soften its courage and bring it to reason—this was the whole policy of Benedict XV, and the purpose of his neutrality has always been, and still is entirely designed to hamstring us. . . .

“So it is true that in this war, in which we believe that on our victory depends the salvation of the Christian heritage, the Pope has worked against us as an enemy….”

So, as it seems to us, the attitude of Benedict XV during the first world war is clearly demonstrated. Under the orders of the man who has been christened the”Boche Pope”, Mgr. Pacelli, his best diplomat, was sent as Nuncio to Munich, to establish contact with William II to try to negotiate with France a separate peace which could have saved the Central European Empires. For him this was the beginning of a long diplomatic career entirely devoted to promating German hegemony in Europe, a career that he was to pursue under Pius XI before assuming himself the tiara. But no matter how Germanophile his predecessors might have appeared, it can be said that the student surpassed his masters.

The scheme failed, thanks to Clemenceau’s obstinacy. The Treaty of Versailles, in July 1919, put the finishing touch to the defeat of His Holiness’s champions.

The Pope had in fact nothing to do with working out plans for the new Europe—a circumstance which is not difficult to understand; but—and this is significant—this ban was primarily due to Italy, the most fervent Catholic of all the allied Powers. Three people well-known at the Vatican, among others, bear witness to this:

“During the first world war, Benedict XV had had to overcome Italian distrust of any unwarrantable interference on the part of the Vatican in international questions. An article of the secret treaty signed in London in 1915 limited the Papacy’s right to direct participation in the peace conferences: England, France and Russia undertook to support Italy, should she see fit to oppose the possible participation of a representative of the Holy See in the preliminary negotiations for the settling of the problems raised by the present conflict.”

“In 1919, a peace conference was to open in Paris and to build a new Europe. It was a conference that was to decide the world’s fate for many a long year. But the Papacy did not participate in this conference. In pursuance of article XV of the London pact (26 April 1915), which defined the conditions on which Italy would take part in the war. Baron Sonnino had obtained from the other Allies a promise that they would oppose any intervention on the part of the Papacy in the peace negotiations.”

“The Holy See was excluded from Versailles. Italy was the first to rejoice over this. It would almost seem that she went to war solely in order that article XV should be included in the London pact—the article in pursuance of which the Allies solemnly undertook to keep the Vatican out of the peace conference. . . .”

It is clear that the Holy See’s nearest neighbours were also the most distrustful.

Unfortunately, this ban was the only measure taken by the Allies against their most implacable enemy. Who, after all, would ask for sanctions to be taken against the Vatican? This weakness was to be paid for dearly by Europe and the whole world. Pius XI, succeeding Benedict XV, was to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor. He was to stir up Fascism, then Nazism, and, with Mgr. Pacelli, to prepare the 1939-1945 war of revenge.

Meanwhile, the Vatican, through its influence with the Allies, was doing all it could to save its German friends and proteges from their well-deserved punishment as war criminals. Irrefutable proof of this is to be found in the report which Count de Salis, H.M. Minister on special mission to the Holy See,12 addressed to Ear1 Curzon, Foreign Secretary.

Indeed, Minister Sails wrote from Rome on 26 January 1920 that he had had a long conversation with Cardinal Gasparri on the subject of legal proceedings against the Emperor William and the superior ofBcers of the German army:

“The Holy See, the Cardinal said, had always thought desirable that for two reasons the proceedings against the Kaiser should be abandoned”.

The two reasons are then given: to avoid the continuance of national hatreds and to prevent the shaking of the thrones of all the monarchical States!

Cardinal Gasparri, after enlarging upon these and other farfetched and puerile reasons, which to his idea were strongly against a trial of the superior officers, had added,”The Holy See trusted that the British Government . . . would not insist on these proceedings; they hoped as much from the French Government to whom these remarks had been transmitted.”