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Youth and career in the Curia

Ratti was born in a family from industrialists lombards. It entered in 1867 to the Séminaire of Seveso, then of Monza. In 1874, it entered to the tertiary sectors Franciscain S. the following year, it joined the Great seminar of Milan. In 1879, it integrated the College lombard into Rome. It was ordered priest the December 20th 1879 with the Basilique Midsummer's Day of Lateran. It obtained triple Doctorat of philosophy, canonical Droit and Théologie to the Grégorienne.

Scholar

He joined the Oblat S of saint Charles Borromée shortly after his nomination like “doctor” (i.e. preserving) of the Bibliothèque ambrosienne, in November 1888. He occupied this station until in 1912. Its research was turned towards the life and the work of Charles Borromée, like on the diocese of Milan.

In 1907, he became prefect of Ambrosienne, to replace Antonio Maria Ceriani. He undertook a renovation work and of classification of the antique library, which pointed out it community of the scientists. In 1914, Benoît XV appointed it prefect of the Bibliothèque vaticane, near the Jesuit Franz Ehrle. Ratti preserved nevertheless the conservation of Ambrosienne.

Sportsman

Equipped with a great capacity of work, Ratti was also a large sportsman, known for his taste of the Alpinisme. It thus climbed many tops of the Alps: the Cervin, the Mount Pink (seventh rise, by the slope of Macugnaga), the Mont Blanc, and carried out the first crossing of the collar Zumstein (4452 m), on August 1st, 1889. Several ways bear its name, in particular the current way of the Gray Aiguilles on Mont Blanc, formerly called Route of the Pope . On the other hand, the Ratti ways on the Black Needle of Peuterey or with the torre venezia are due to a homonym, Vittorio Ratti.

The adventure in Poland

It became then, the April 25th 1918, apostolic visitor with Warsaw. When the Polish State was reconstituted, it accepted formally the title of Apostolic nuncio, and was promoted archbishop of Lépante. It brought to a successful conclusion diplomatic negotiations and showed a great personal courage at the time of the head office of Warsaw by the Soviet , in August 1920.

Its mission was completed nevertheless in half-tone: it was named ecclesiastical High-Commissioner in High-Silesia, area still subjected to plebiscite. There, it conformed to the instructions emanating of the cardinal Bertram, archbishop of Breslau, ordering to the Polish priests not to take party in the debate, which supported the German clergy. Consequently, Ratti was severely attacked by the Polish press.

Archbishop of Milan

In May 1921, Benoît XV named it Archevêque Milan then, the June 13rd, cardinal. If its episcopate remained short (less than one year), it deployed a great activity, in particular in the curricular area.

Pope

The conclave

The February 6th 1922, with died of Benoit XV, the Conclave elected with the fourteenth tower the Ratti cardinal. This one was only one outsider: the conservative camp aligned the cardinal Merry del Val, former Secretary of State of Pie X, while the liberal camp was represented by Pietro Gasparri. It accepted the tiara under the name of Pie XI and innovated by blessing the crowd of the loggia external of the Basilique Saint-Pierre.

The role of the Church

Its Encyclical first , Ubi arcano Dei consilio , on December 23rd 1922, constituted a program of its future action.

“It is an obvious fact for all: neither the individuals, neither the company, nor the people have yet, after the catastrophe of such a war World war|1914-1918])], found a true peace; active peace and fertilizes that the world calls is not restored yet. To the external enmities between people come to be added the internal discords which put in danger the company itself.

It is necessary to initially announce this Class struggle which, a such mortal ulcer, developed within the nations, paralyzing industry, the trades, the trade, all the factors finally of prosperity, deprived and public. This wound is made more dangerous still because of greed of the ones to acquire the temporal goods, of the tenacity of the others to preserve them, the ambition common to all to have and order. From there of frequent strikes, volunteers or forced; from there still of popular and repressions by the police force, extremely painful and detrimental risings for all the citizens.

In the field of the policy, the left were almost made a law not seek sincerely the Community property by a mutual emulation and in the variety of their opinions, but be used their own interests for the detriment of the others. What do we see then? The conspiracies multiply: obstacles, armed robberies against the citizens and civils servant public themselves, terrorism and threats, revolts open and other of the same excesses kind.

the task which is essential before very other, it is the pacification of the spirits. There is to wait well little of a peace artificial and external who regulates and orders the reciprocal reports/ratios of the men as would make a code of courtesy; what it is necessary, these is a peace which penetrates the hearts, alleviates them and opens them little by little with reciprocal feelings of fraternal Charité. Such a peace could be only the peace of Christ because it was the first to be said to the men: You all are of the brothers (Matth. XXIII, 8).

the return of Christian peace is impossible out of this reign: the peace of Christ by the reign of Christ. ”

This program is supplemented, from a theological point of view, by the encyclicals Quas preceded (December 11th 1925) instituting the Fête of Christ King and Miserentissimus Redemptor (May 8th 1928), on the worship with the Sacred Heart. It proceeded to many Canonization S, of which that of Bernadette Soubirous, Jean Bosco, Therese de Lisieux, or Jean-Marie Vianney. It also named four new Doctorss of the Church: Pierre Canisius, Jean of the Cross, Robert Bellarmin and Albert Large the. He insisted on the role of the prayer, recommending the exercises of Ignace de Loyola in Mens will nostra (December 20th, 1929) or the Rosaire in Ingravescentibus malis (September 29th, 1937).

It hardly showed interest with the biblical question, and gave a clearly unionistic answer to the oecumenical question: the encyclical Mortalium animos (January 6th 1928) wished the return within the Church of the Christians not roman catholics. From a moral point of view, finally, Casti connubii (December 31st 1930) limited the framework of the marital reports/ratios strictly.

He insisted on the role of the laic ones: “all the faithful ones have to collaborate the apostolate, because all can work in the vine of the Lord”, declared it thus with the Colombian bishops on February 14th, 1934. Concretely, it granted its support to the catholic Action and the institutions of youth like the Christian working Jeunesse, rested by the abbot Joseph Cardijn whom it accepted in audience in March 1925. Conversely, it showed very attentive with the ideology movements and press agencies catholic or comparable. Within this framework, it organized, as of the end of 1925, a campaign against the movement monarchist the French Action, considered to be guilty of irreligion - and which had been however amply before constant by the French clergy. Its consistoriale short speech of December 20th, 1926, closing a series of more or less indirect judgments, explicitly prohibited the participation in the movement just as the reading of its publications. Last nine days later, the writings of Charles Maurras, founder of the movement, were put at the Index just as the newspaper the French Action .

Pie XI wanted to also develop work missionary of the Church: in 1922, it repatriated in Rome the Work of the Propagation of the Faith and organized in the same city, in 1925, an Exposure missionary. Concerned of the indigenisation of the clergy, he crowned in 1926 six Chinese bishops.

The Roman question

Pie XI signed with the Italian State the Accords of Lateran, creating the State of the Vatican City, putting thus fine at the “Roman question” which opposed papacy to Italy since Pie IX.

Confronted with the Nazism

Since 1920, year when monseigneur Pacelli nuncio of Munich was accredited in Berlin to this end, a legal settlement was being negotiated with Germany. The July 20th 1933, the Pope elects this last, then Secretary of State, to sign on its behalf the legal settlement with Germany. The German signature is ensured by Von Papen, vice-chancellor catholic of the government formed by Hitler.

The March 14th 1937, it published the Encyclique MIT brennender Sorge by which it condemned the Nazisme. In May 1938, it went away openly from the Vatican at the time of the visit of Hitler. The September 6th 1938, fascinating position against the legislation Italian anti-semite, it declared with a group of Belgian pilgrims this famous sentence: “, Christian, let us be to Us spiritually Semites. ” It also ordered at the catholic universities to organize a teaching against the Antisémitisme and the Racisme. In May 2007, the files of the Vatican revealed that on February 11th, 1939, at the time of the tenth birthday of the Legal settlement between Italy and the Vatican, Pie XI was to make in the presence of Benito Mussolini a very hard speech against Fascism and the Nazism. In this text, he denounced in particular " a press which acts against nous" and goes until denying any persecution in Allemagne" obstinately;. The Holy Father is deceased in the night of February 10th, before making this speech. The historian Emma Fattorini affirms to have acquired the proof while excavating in the files of the Vatican that its successor, the Pope Pie XII, would have deliberately made disappear this text. Did Eugenio Pacelli, which will be elected to succeed to him under the name of Pie XII, knowingly destroy this speech? The answer to this revêt question an obvious political importance after green light, given on May 8th by the Congregation of the causes of the saints, at the first stage of its beatification (to read the Cross of May 21st). A beatification disputed by those which reproach Pie XII her “silence” vis-a-vis Shoah.Pour the historian Giovanni Maria Vian, who signs in the catholic daily newspaper Avvenire a severe criticism of the book of Emma Fattorini, “this destruction went from oneself” and is not significant. When a pope dies, the Secretary of State loses his station de facto and is thus nothing any more. It is then to the cardinal camerlingue to carry out the last wills of the late one. However Pacelli was at the same time camerlingue and Secretary of State (it is also the case of the secretary of Actual position, the Bertone cardinal). The camerlingue is charged to destroy the tests of all the texts in preparation on which the pope could not affix his signature. “But the speech itself was preserved”, explains Giovanni Maria Vian. Moreover, Jean XXIII will make it public later twenty years, in 1959.

Confronted with Communism

The March 19th 1937, is five days after MIT brennender Sorge , it published the encyclical Divini Redemptoris by which it condemned without call the Communisme, qualified “the intrinsically perverse one”:

One cannot say that such atrocities are of these momentary phenomena which usually accompany all great revolution, of the excesses isolated from aggravation as it is some in all the wars; not, they are the natural fruits of a system which is deprived of any interior brake.

See too

List of the cardinals created by Magpie XI

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