(Published in Il Popolo d'Italia, January 24 1922)
By Benito Mussolini
The death of a pope is an event that interests us and moves us, both as men and as Italians.
The pope is, in reality, an emperor, albeit an elective one. He descends directly from the Empire of Rome. His political and spiritual dominion extends to as many as 400 million men, scattered in every corner of the earth, so that it can be said that the Catholic empire — which has its capital in Rome — is the largest and oldest empire in the world. It has lasted now for twenty centuries.
In this moment, men of all races and continents are looking towards Rome. This fact in itself has its own character of grandeur that cannot be diminished by the pronouncements or silences of the secular world, which has not created and cannot create anything that rises — not even in part — to the enormous spiritual power of Catholicism.
Benedict XV's pontificate did not present us with the aristocratic and humanistic line of Leo XIII, who was a Renaissance pope; nor with he humble Christian line of Pius X, a pope on the heroic eve of faith. Benedict XV was a political pope. He found himself leading the Catholic flock in the hour of blood. In this regard, we cannot forget the phrase he used [to describe the war]: "useless massacre".
From an abstract point of view, this horrible condemnation of the war can be justified; but, interpreted by primitive souls of men exposed to all dangers, it could have led to the defeat and enslavement of the Fatherland.
Let's exclude that those were the pope's intentions; let's just say that the phrase could have had — and, fortunately, only partially had — fatal consequences.
We do not know if and what kind of work Vatican diplomacy carried out to hasten peace. Papal diplomacy works in secret and in silence. Let us limit ourselves to simply noting that all the pope's efforts to hasten peace were in vain.
The Church has not been annihilated by the stormy events of recent years, but it has not managed to dominate them either. To believe that an evangelical pope descending among the belligerents and raising the cross would have succeeded in appeasing the anger and disarming men, means feeding on choreographic romanticism. If such a sensational gesture was not attempted, if the pope kept discreetly and coldly above the fray, it is because he knew that any other attitude would either have been useless, with serious damage to papal prestige, or else would have been extremely dangerous for the existence of the Church.
The great word that was not spoken during the war was not spoken even during the peace negotiations. The new political and territorial order of Europe and the world was completed without papal intervention.
However, despite the fall of the largest Catholic empire (that of the Habsburgs), it can be said that in these very recent times the international situation of the papacy has rather improved. It is enough to remember that republican Germany has sent a diplomatic representative to the Holy See and that France, led by the radical Freemason Briand, has resumed its relations with the Vatican. As for relations with Italy, it can be said that they have not worsened, but they have not improved either. A different evaluation of all the spiritual elements of life emerges in the new Italian generations, therefore also of Catholicism, which is the Latin religion par excellence, and therefore also of the papacy, which is the heart and brain of this religion. But we must not be under any illusions. We have been arguing for some time in these columns and elsewhere that a reconciliation between Church and State in Italy is desirable and possible, but we must realize that the Catholic Church cannot go beyond a certain limit. It cannot be expected to turn itself into a National Church in service of the nation. The strength, the prestige, the millennial and lasting charm of Catholicism lies precisely in the fact that Catholicism is not the religion of a given nation or a particular race, but is the religion of all peoples and all races. The strength of Catholicism — as the word itself says — lies in its universal character. This is why Rome is the only city on earth that can be called "universal".
After all, what tendencies did Benedict XV follow? Did he remain stuck in the mindset of "temporal power"? Or did he accept the now irreversible fact of Italian Unification, hoping to re-examine the relations between Church and State? The manifestations of the Holy See do not allow an exhaustive answer to these questions.
So, for example, we regret not knowing exactly what the pope thought of the Popular political movement [of Don Sturzo], which is rather dangerous for Catholicism.
The death of the pope and the emotion aroused by this event throughout the civilized world allow us to see that the religious elements of life are powerfully resurrecting in the human soul. Scientific secularism and its logical degeneration, represented by charlatan anti-clericalism, are dying. Men still and always will have the spasm and hope of the afterlife; the profound anonymous masses still and always will be tormented by the desire to escape from the temporary land and its many miseries in order to take refuge in the absoluteness of faith.
