Roman Question

ROMAN QUESTION. - This is the name that has become established to indicate the intricate and bitter politico-religious dispute that opened, in the national and international sphere, between the Papacy and the new Kingdom of Italy, with the proclamation of Rome as capital of the unified Peninsula (1861) and with the military occupation of the city itself on 20 Sept. 1870.

Having installed itself in Rome, the Italian government took care to reassure the Catholic powers about the future fate reserved for the Supreme Pontiff. The Law of Guarantees (v.) assured the pope spiritual independence (arts. 9 and 12) and the freedom to maintain nuncios with foreign nations (art. 11). The diplomatic agents accredited to the Holy See were to enjoy the immunity and privileges provided for by international law (art. 11). The pope retained only the usufruct of the Apostolic Palaces, Vatican and Lateran, as well as of the villa of Castel Gandolfo "with all its appurtenances and dependencies" (art. 5). In compensation, moreover, for the deprivation of his States, he was to enjoy an annual income of 3,225,000 lire, exempt from taxes (art. 4). As for relations between Church and State, they were established arbitrarily: the exequatur (v.) and the royal placet continued to subsist, on a provisional basis until a new law should intervene, with regard to the destination of ecclesiastical property and the collation of major and minor benefices, except those of the city of Rome and the suburbicarian sees (cf. F. Scaduto, Guarentigie pontificie e relazioni fra Stato e Chiesa. Storia, esposizione, critica, documenti, bibliografia, 2nd ed., Turin 1889, pp. 240-45).

Unilateral as it was, the Law of Guarantees was solemnly declared unacceptable by Pius IX on 15 May 1871 (Archives diplomatiques. Recueil de diplomatie et d'histoire, II, Paris 1874, p. 231). The Pope voluntarily constituted himself a prisoner in the Vatican, refused the endowment granted, and avoided every act that might be susceptible of implying any assent whatsoever to the spoliation of his States. Leo XIII and his successors maintained the same attitude of clear intransigence.

The Q. R., far from having been resolved by the Italian Parliament, became more inextricable. The prohibition imposed on Catholics against taking part in elections of any kind (v. NON EXPEDIT) placed the Italian government at the mercy of the elements of the left. Furthermore, the aggressive hostility flaunted against Catholicism by certain ministers, especially by F. Crispi, whether sincere or feigned, with the aim of bending the Holy See to an accommodation, produced a deplorable effect abroad and provoked the remonstrances, albeit in a friendly tone, of the English and Austrian chancelleries. But instead of harming the Holy See, all the intrigues of the Italian ministers, the deplorable incidents that occurred in 1881 over the transfer of the ashes of Pius IX to St. Lawrence outside the Walls, the insults hurled in the same year by the mob against Leo XIII, the publication in 1888 of the Zanardelli code and the improper demonstrations of 17 June, produced no other effect than to win it universal sympathies.

So that, all things considered, the loss of temporal power led to an almost paradoxical result, namely the development of the centralization and international power of the Roman Church. So true was this that a man of genius such as Leo XIII was soon able to bring ecclesiastical policy back personally and for many years onto a world plane, decisively raising the fortunes of the papacy and of Christendom, and his prestige became so high that Bismarck accepted his arbitration in 1885 in the conflict with Spain over the Caroline and Palau islands.

Although Leo XIII, from 1878 to 1889, protested officially as many as sixty-two times against the deprivation of his "civil principality," it must nevertheless be said that he desired a conciliation. Thus he removed the prohibition against participating in provincial and municipal elections (30 May 1878), and in the address delivered for the Consistory of 23 May 1887 he expressed the wish that "the minds of all Italians may attain security and tranquillity and that the baneful dispute with the Roman Pontiff may finally be removed, but always saving the claims of justice and the dignity of the Holy See" (Leonis XIII Acta, VII, Rome 1888, p. 115). Attempts at approaches took place in 1887 through the Cassinese abbot L. Tosti (La conciliazione. Dialogo fra due vescovi, Rome 1887), in 1889 through Card. G. A. Hohenlohe, and in 1894 on the occasion of the exequatur for Msgr. G. Sarto, preconized patriarch of Venice. But nothing came of it. The pamphlet of the bishop of Cremona, G. Bonomelli (Roma, l'Italia e la realtà delle cose, Florence 1889), which suggested acceptance of the accomplished fact and the creation of a "miniature State," which would communicate with the sea through a small strip of land and would impose "neither public offices nor garrisons," aroused scandal and was placed on the Index on 13 Apr. 1889. Opinion was not yet mature enough to make the idea of a conciliation acceptable, especially in Belgium, Spain and France, whose sons had nonetheless fallen together with so many Italian Catholic volunteers on the battlefields of Castelfidardo, of Mentana and along the walls of Rome.

The rupture of diplomatic relations with the French Republic (29 July 1904), the abrogation of the Concordat and the proclamation of the law of separation between Church and State (9 Dec. 1904) induced Pius X to a certain rapprochement with the Quirinal. Personages of the royal court, parliamentarians, public officials appeared at pontifical audiences contrary to the custom maintained until then. An even more significant fact: the Pope, uneasy at the increase in the number of deputies of the extreme left, authorized (11 June 1905) the legislative vote of Italian Catholics, but only in particular cases, when the strict necessity for it was recognized for the good of souls and for the supreme interests of individual dioceses (encycl. Il fermo proposito, in Pii X Acta, II, Rome 1907, pp. 112-32).

Nevertheless, the formation of a Catholic party was not yet permitted. The conclusion of the Gentiloni pact (v.) won Giolitti, thanks to the contribution of Catholic votes and candidates, an electoral triumph in 1913 and brought with it important consequences. At the Social Week held in Milan from 30 Nov. to 6 Dec. 1913, the archbishop of Udine, A. Rossi, in the opening address asked whether "the present condition of society, having become atheistic and pagan, could still permit a civil principality of the popes, which Providence had established as a guarantee of the freedom of the Church." And having noted how that situation was altogether inadequate to the mission of the Holy See, he did not fail to maintain that it was still necessary that the freedom of the pope should not be precarious but stable and intangible, "supported at least by a guarantee or pledge of an international character, this freedom being of interest to the Catholics of all nations." In the closing address Count Giuseppe Dalla Torre expressed the wish that the q. r. might be resolved "by means of the constitutional will of the country, on the part of the State," but without compromising the principle of the sovereignty of the Holy See.

The Osservatore Romano of 20 Dec. raised no objection against these words, and although it gave notice that these were studies, it let the discussion about the manner of the guarantee run its course. Pius X, it was foreseen, would not have shown himself intransigent, except on the question of principle. In the meantime the world war of 1914 broke out.

The inadequacy of the Law on Guarantees became evident when Italy joined the Allies (24 May 1915). The presence in Rome of the ambassadors of the Central Empires presented serious drawbacks. The diplomats moved to Lugano; Benedict XV therefore found himself in serious difficulties in his relations with the Catholic world. Nevertheless he did not accept the hospitality kindly offered him by the King of Spain, hoping that the conclusion of the peace treaty, which would inevitably have closed the period of war, would have provided him with the occasion to settle the Roman Question with the sanction of Europe. The press campaign, incautiously tendentious, that immediately opened in Germany, in Austria, and in Bavaria in favor of the restoration of the temporal power, came close to compromising the Holy See. Benedict XV had to intervene through his Secretary of State, Card. Gasparri, who in an interview of June 28, 1915 declared that the Holy See awaited "the suitable settlement of its situation not from foreign arms, but from the triumph of those sentiments of justice which it hopes will spread ever more widely among the Italian people in conformity with their true interest" (Corriere d'Italia, June 28, 1915). This does not detract from the fact that a cardinalatial commission charged with studying the solution of so complex a problem unanimously recognized the absolute necessity of a definitive international sanction (Mercure de France, Dec. 1, 1923, pp. 394-406). Now, precisely at Italy's request, art. 15 of the secret Treaty signed in London by the Allies on Apr. 26, 1915 excluded the Pope from future peace negotiations (Nouvelles religieuses, March 15, 1918, pp. 168-71; June 15, 1918, pp. 375-58; Apr. 1, 1920, p. 153).

Italy, however, had no reason to complain of the Holy See. Had not Filippo Meda, leader of the "Catholic deputies," accepted the portfolio of Finance in a ministry of national concentration formed by Paolo Roselli on June 19, 1916? And was it not Meda himself who had taken possession, in the name of the Italian government, of the Palazzo Venezia, seat of the Austrian embassy to the Vatican — a taking of possession that provoked a pontifical protest, as further proof of the untenable condition imposed on the Holy See by the Law of Guarantees, a protest, however, that was immediately noted to be singularly mild? And had not the Sacred Penitentiary also abrogated the famous Non expedit? Don Luigi Sturzo had moreover founded in 1919, with the tacit assent of the Holy See, the Popular Party. On May 23, 1920 appeared the encyclical Pacem Dei munus, which permitted the visits of Catholic sovereigns to Rome because this would contribute to the brotherhood of peoples. This document of capital importance nevertheless abrogated nothing of the protests issued by the predecessors of Benedict XV regarding the loss of the temporal power (AAS, 12 [1920], p. 215).

But on the other side too, once the war was over, governmental manifestations attesting to an imminent and radical change of climate were not lacking. The liquidation of the goods of the German Catholic missions provided the opportunity for Msgr. B. Cerretti, secretary of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, to approach in Paris various representatives of the great Powers, to converse amicably with them and to make himself liked. There then took place the well-known contacts with President Orlando (May 1919) and his serious examination of a project very well elaborated by Card. Gasparri for the solution of the Roman Question. This project attributed the character of a State, with independence and international sovereignty, to the Vatican enclosure, and alluded to a consequent Concordat aimed at regulating with the kingdom the relations of ecclesiastical law. The resignation of the Orlando cabinet (June 1919) caused the significant unofficial negotiation to fall through. Meanwhile, however, the Catholics Nava and Rodinò entered the successive ministerial combinations. In the autumn of that same year Card. Filippo Giustini, pontifical legate to Jerusalem, went there, embarking on the cruiser Quarto with royal honors. In the spring of 1921 there was so much talk of Conciliation that the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a special summary of the relevant press debates.

In truth, even the return of France to regular diplomatic relations with the Holy See (May 16, 1921), by accentuating among the numerous diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican the absence, and therefore the sense of isolation, of Italy there where the highest spiritual affairs of the world were being treated, contributed to imposing the unpostponable necessity of a final and equitable settlement, to which the most responsible and sound part of public opinion itself was most favorable, grateful to the Holy See and to Catholics for the noble line of conduct maintained also with regard to the country during the conflict. Thus the minister Rocco expressed in full Parliament (June 21, 1921) his sentiment in terms that were approved by a crowd of Italians: "It does not seem to me impossible to find a point of agreement that reconciles the demands of the Holy See for a situation of full independence with the internal and international necessities of the Italian State" (E. Devoghel, La question romaine sous Pie XI et Mussolini, Paris n.d., p. 32).

So that the very official mourning decreed, for the first time in similar cases, by the Italian government (Bonomi cabinet) on the occasion of the death of Benedict XV (Jan. 22, 1922), demonstrates how by now the times were more than ripe for the attainment of the long-awaited and hoped-for Conciliation (v. PATTI LATERANENSI).

Guglielmo Mollat