20th of July, 1933.
The signing of the agreement.
Pacelli is at the center of the table, surrounded by Monsignor Cahars,
former president of the Centrum, von Papen, and by Monsignors Pizzardo,
Ottaviani and Montini.
This tight hand with the Pope constitutes a fact of immense and beneficial meaning.
May God keep the Chancellor of the Reich to our people.
Hitler now stands firm.
Why such a hurry in the agreements with Hitler?
Behind this sort of concordatory anxiety, there is the urgency for the Church of
Rome to also find a role, a centrality in international politics.
Piazza San Pietro is no longer one of the crossroads of the world.
Pacelli has understood this and becomes the first great traveler of the modern
Church.
He marches to Genoa on what they call the floating cathedral.
On the walkway, two sunny and well-framed sailors greet him romantically.
In Argentina, he is welcomed as a head of state or as a king.
He is the first interpreter of what they will call the 14th planetarium.
He
has lunch with President Roosevelt in his house.
He is a requisitor against the idolatry of the state.
Even humanity, the communist daily, applauds those words.
Goebbels attacks him personally.
He makes agreements with the French socialists, he accuses.
But Pacelli has only anticipated the public conviction of the pontiff.
March 14, 1937, Pio XI promulgates the encyclical...
The Encyclical denounces the German rulers because, it is read, with repugnant pride,
they stubbornly represent Christian unity as a disguise and masculinity.
This is the...
Among the extensors, there is also Eugenio Pacelli.
The times of the Concordato seem very far away.
But only four years have passed.
The reaction is violent.
Goebbels announces on the radio.
7,000 religious people are under trial for sexual crimes.
The clash is still rising.
The Vatican recalls those prelates too indulgent with the regime.
March 12, 1938, the Reich annuls Austria.
The Archbishop Theodor Innitzer proclaims.
The priests and the faithful must support the Führer without reservation.
His fight against Bolshevism responds to the signs of Providence.
Pacelli summons Innitzer to Rome and gives him an official note of harsh blasphemy.
The relations between the Holy See and the Third Reich are perhaps at their lowest
point.
May 3-8, 1938, Hitler is in Rome, capital of the Empire.
On May 2, the Roman observer writes.
The Pope has left for Castel Gandolfo.
He adds, not without irony.
The air of the Roman castles is very good for his health.
Not only that.
The newspaper does not make the slightest mention of the visit of the head of the
Reich.
As if more than one-tenth of an order were not enough.
The Vatican museums must remain closed.
For everyone, it is specified in the note.
From Castel Gandolfo he accuses.
In Rome, the sign of another cross has been inaugurated, which is certainly not
the cross of Christ.
The German Catholics are not allowed to participate in the Eucharistic Congress,
which is held in Budapest on the same days.
The flying cardinal, Eugenio Pacelli, is present.
Still a crowd of people.