Anglo-Vatican Relations, 1914-1939: Confidential Annual Reports of the British Ministers to the Holy See 0816109915, 9780816109913

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ANGLO-VATICAN RELATIONS, 1914-1939:

CONFIDENTIAL ANNUAL REPORTS OF THE BRITISH MINISTERS TO THE HOLY SEE Her Majesty’s Stationery Office London, England Greo/t

L e fortnight had elapsed since Pius X had died. A popular figure in some respects, his simplicity and modest origin appealing to the sympathies of many, his reign of eleven years could claim little real success. His very election had been indirectly due to outside interference with the conclave, to an incident, which had done grave injury to the prestige due to the ability of Leo XIII. This blow, deeply resented in Rome, had been followed by the rupture of relations with France and by the gradual estrangement of the Vatican from the political life of Europe. Nor were the religious reforms of his reign of a nature to interest the outside world, unconcerned with changes in the Breviary, in the administration of the Sacraments, with the codification of the Canon Law, and on the whole inclined to be hostile to the attitude adopted by the Pope and his advisers towards the Modernists. The political situation of the Papacy, so high in the preceding century, had dropped again to nothing; this was the cheerless prospect which confronted Benedict XV after his hasty and almost unceremonious coronation in the semi-privacy of the Sistine Chapel on the 6tb September, 1914, the third day after his election. What steps, if any, his predecessor had taken with regard to the outbreak of war we do not know. There are circumstantial stories of a remonstrance urging the Emperor of Austria to abstain from war. whatever the wrong he might have suffered, but the Vatican have published nothing and are inclined to keep their correspondence to themselves. From the very first the new Pope might seem to have made up his mind as to a line of policy to which he steadily adhered to the day of his death. Two days after his coronation appeared a solemn exhortation, prescribing to the faithful prayeTS for the termination of the scourge of war and urging rulers to put a stop to bloodshed and make peace—properent taitvr pads inire consilia et dextras miscere. The first Encyclical Ad beatissimi,t not published till the 1st November, followed the same theme; “ We beseech princes and rulers that .... they delay not to bring back to • To Foreign Office, No. 97 of August 80, 1918. t “ Ad beatissimi Apoatolorum principle ..." diei 1 Novembria, 1914.

Anglo-Vatican Relations, 1914-1939

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their peoples the life-giving blessings of peace. ... If their rights have been violated, they can certainly find other ways and other means of obtaining a remedy.” The allocution to the cardinals of the following January* still further defines the attitude already decided on. If it is not to be given to him, the Pope declared, to hasten the end of so much evil, it may at least be possible for him to mitigate the woes which result from it. It is not committed to him to do more than this at the present moment. It belongs chiefly to the Pope to proclaim that nobody may, on any plea whatever, offend justice and every injustice, by whatever side it may be committed, is condemned, but to involve the Pontifical authority in the contentions of the belli¬ gerents is neither appropriate nor useful; the Holy‘See must remain impartial. In a letter of the following June 1915. the Cardinal Secretary of State! declared that the invasion of Belgium is directly included in the words used in this allocution. A fresh exhortation appeared on the 28th July, 1915,} at the end of the first year of the war. As before, the subject is peace, the need to put a stop to the carnage, but for the first time there is a slight indication of peace terms. The rights and lawful aspirations of peoples should be weighed ; nations do not die. The allocution of December 1916, § while following the same line as the former ones, contained obvious allusions to the proceedings of the Russians in Galicia and to the deportations carried out in Belgium bv the Germans, but it was not until August 1917 that the Pope brought forward his peace proposals; these have been treated at some length in a separate section. The foregoing is. of>ou£se. but a brief notice of the principal utterances of the Pope with regard to his jjolicy; it could, of course, be amplified considerably. The Vatican claimed l| that it was in these acts that the ideas of the Pope were to be sought and not in publications by private persons, such, I gather, as stories repro¬ duced in the “ Revue de Paris,’ which attributed pro-German sentiments to two Roman priests. Angelucci and Lucantonio, neither connected with the Vatican, and to a Benedetto Governa, never identified. There was also a pamphlet by a certain Henri Bafile, “ La formola della pace,” a copy of which was given to me by one of the French (M. Gonse), with an assurance that it was inspired by the Vatican. It was another Frenchman (Mgr. Le Flochjf who pointed out the absence of any ground for the supposition ; the pamphlet itself contained no reference to religion or moral considerations: neither God nor even the Pope was mentioned. Much greater trouble was raised by a French journalist, M. Latapie, who, contrary to usual practice, was allowed an interview' and published an account of it, which was contradicted. Here we have a conflict as to what passed, the Pope on one side and M. Latapie on the other. • " These pronouncements of the Holy See are practically all outside Gjf personal experience which dates only from the very end of 1916. By that time the Pope’s policy had been repeatedly affirmed and defined. The peace proposals of the following August were in a measure^but the logical development and consequence of it. This was the situation with which, as far as I am concerned, the mission was called upon to deal. 1 Strict impartiality was therefore the declared attitude of the Pope towards the belligerents; the neutral position thus assumed was to be turned to account in efforts to alleviate the sufferings caused by the war, an intention first indicated in the * t J I |

AUocotio habit* in Consistorio diei 22 Januarii, 1915. Cardinal Gasparri to M. Tan den Beuvel, Jane 1915. Apostolica Exhortatio ad populos belligetantes eorumque rectmes (July 28, 1915). AUocntio .... die 4 decern I iris, 191