The Patriotic Priest Father Reginaldo Giuliani

During most of the history of the Kingdom of Italy, the so-called “Roman Question” proved a source of division and heartache for the Italian people. The Roman Catholic Church, to which the vast majority of Italians belonged, refused to recognize the Kingdom of Italy, a united, Italian nation-state, due primarily to the loss, to such state, of the temporal territory of the Papacy. This stand-off was not ended until the signing of the Lateran Accords by Pope Pius XI and the government of Benito Mussolini in 1929. However, long before that, from the very beginning in fact of the creation of the Kingdom of Italy, there were those within the Catholic Church who maintained that one could be in obedience to the Roman Pontiff as well as a patriotic Italian and that to be a devout Catholic and to be a patriotic Italian who supported his country were not mutually exclusive concepts. One such individual, and certainly one of the most famous, was Father Reginaldo Giuliani, a Dominican friar who endeavored to serve God while also having very explicit political views about the Italian nation.

Father Giuliani was born in Turin on August 28, 1887 and first came to public attention during World War I. Not only did he join the Italian Royal Army as a field chaplain when Italy entered the First World War but he went even further and joined the Arditi, the elite assault troops who served as trench raiding parties and the spearhead of major offensives. These were the troops who were given especially rigorous training, to use a variety of weapons and for hand-to-hand combat as well as to have, because their mission was such an especially dangerous one, to have an utter fearlessness that engendered a total, almost mocking, contempt for death. Father Giuliani was right alongside his comrades as they stormed enemy trenches, fought in the most fierce battles and under the most strenuous conditions. He did not shirk his duties and during the course of the Great War gained notice for his bravery and gallantry, earning two bronze medals and two silver medals for military valor. He was devoted to his country, his comrades and what they all felt they were fighting for in those dark days. As such, like many other war veterans, he shared their view that when the time came for the peace settlement at the end of the war, that Italy had been cheated of all that the other Allies had promised to induce Italy to join the war in the stressful days of 1915.

Many of these war veterans tried to take it upon themselves to redress this injustice on their own by seizing on a particular port city and, by taking it, hopefully forcing the Italian government to take action in favor of their cause. This was the famous seizure of Fiume or ‘Fiume Exploit’, on the Dalmatian coast, led by the poet and war veteran Gabriele d’Annunzio. This was an historically Italian city (a long-time outpost of Venice) that had been part of Austria-Hungary during the war but which afterward was to be handed over to the newly contrived Kingdom of Yugoslavia rather than the Kingdom of Italy. Father Giuliani was part of this effort with what was called the “Catholic Legionnaires”. These men and the other legionnaires declared an Italian regency over the port which the international community tried to side-step by declaring it a “free city” that would belong to neither Italy nor Yugoslavia. The Italian Royal Navy moved in to end the regency by force in 1920, however, the enterprise made such an impression that several years later Fiume was finally annexed to the Kingdom of Italy.

In the immediate aftermath, however, many of the supporters of Gabriele d’Annunzio and more broadly of a dynamic sort of nationalism fused with a new social-economic model known as corporatism found a home in the emerging Fascist movement of Benito Mussolini. Once again, yes, Father Giuliani was alongside many of his fellow Arditi war veterans in the Fascist black-shirt squads. In 1921 when Mussolini made his bid for power with the Fascist “March on Rome”, Father Giuliani was a participant, black shirt, war medals and crucifix together. This culminated with the failure of the liberal political establishment and King Vittorio Emanuele III inviting Mussolini to form a government. This the Duce of Fascism duly did and after an election gave him a large popular mandate, the old liberal political system was replaced by Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship. Father Giuliani, during these years, took the time to write an account of his harrowing experiences in the First World War with the Italian Third Army assault troops, producing a book called simply, “The Arditi” in 1926.

Over the next ten years, Father Giuliani did not have so high a profile. The Fascist regime busied itself with domestic issues dealing with the economy, industrial production, agricultural production, improvement of the national infrastructure and so on while Father Giuliani, of course, had his religious duties to attend to. However, he came back to prominence again with the outbreak of war with Ethiopia. Father Giuliani was an outspoken supporter of the war feeling that it was not only justified by the Ethiopian attack but hailing it as a Catholic crusade against heretics (presumably referring to the Copts) and heathens (presumably referring to the animists) to spread Roman civilization in eastern Africa. Once again, Father Giuliani rushed to the colors to enlist with the Royal Army as a field chaplain. He was assigned to the Eritrean Corps with the MVSN division of General Filippo Diamanti. Father Giuliani had lost none of his tenacity or courage and was persistently at the front with the troops. Finally, however, he paid the price when he was killed in action at the Battle of Warieu Pass (or Second Battle of Tembien). Father Giuliani was cut down by Ethiopian warriors while trying to come to the aid of wounded Italian soldiers. For his heroism and self-sacrifice he was posthumously awarded the gold medal for military valor.

Father Reginaldo Giuliani, already something of a hero in Italy, became a national martyr with his death in Africa. The following year, his letters from the front were collected and put into a book titled “The Cross and Sword”. This was likely a reference to the citation for his gold medal which read, “A blow of a scimitar, brandished by a barbarian hand, cut short his terrestrial existence: ending the life of an apostle and beginning that of a martyr”. More than a dozen Italian towns and cities have squares or some monument in his honor and in 1939 a Liuzzi-class submarine of the Royal Navy was named after him. The famous Italian war film, “The Man with a Cross” by Roberto Rossellini about an Italian chaplain on the Russian front was based on his example. At the time of his death, and in the immediate aftermath, Father Giuliani was held up as the epitome of the pious patriot, the ideal Catholic Italian cleric. Under other circumstances, someone with so high a profile with such a life would likely have a cause for their canonization underway but, given the political views of Father Giuliani, that would be unthinkable these days.

The Tiburtine Sybil and Imperial Prophecy

In the old days of Christendom, one could mention the Tiburtine Sybil and the prophecies regarding the Roman emperors and many people, certainly educated people, would know immediately what was being talked about. Today that is certainly not the case and so some background information must be provided as, aside from experts in this particular field or, perhaps, art history aficionados, no average person will know what this is all about. First of all, we have the figure of the Sybil. The sybils were women who acted as oracles, usually associated with a particular holy site in pagan times. The custom originated in ancient Greece but soon spread to Italy, Asia Minor and other areas. The Oracle of Delphi is probably the most well known example of a sybil. These women were often sought out for prophecy and divine guidance as it were by powerful people. In the time of the Roman Empire one of the most prominent was the Tiburtine Sybil, known as such because she resided at the town of Tibur, an old Etruscan town, which is today the Italian city of Tivoli. Many stories grew out of this particular sybil later on among Christians concerning the Roman emperors.

One thing to clarify at the outset was that the sybils were, obviously, not Christian religious figures but were associated with paganism. However, once upon a time, this did not cause Christians to discount stories about their prophecies. They knew from their Bible stories that the pagan priests of Pharaoh were able to perform seemingly miraculous deeds or that the witch of Endor had been able to summon up the spirit of Samuel for King Saul, for example. It was taken for granted that people who were not worshippers of the Christian God could still possess amazing gifts and that God could use such people for His own purposes. Later examples of such things might include the Native American shamans who, according to various stories, made prophecies about the coming of the Spanish or had visions of the Blessed Virgin to prepare them to receive the Gospel when Christian missionaries later arrived. There was also, it must be said, an effort by the Christians of the “Ages of Faith” to look back at classical history and to incorporate it into their new, Christian, world view. The story of Pope St Gregory the Great, momentarily resurrecting the Roman Emperor Trajan in order to baptize him, is an example of this. Virtually everyone discounts this story now but it reflects the wish of people to see so great a man, such a revered emperor, saved from eternal damnation for not having been a Christian.

The first recorded instance of the Tiburtine Sybil crossing paths with a Roman emperor came in the time of Augustus Caesar. The story goes that Emperor Augustus approached the Tiburtine Sybil, Albunea, at the Temple of Vesta to ask if he should be worshipped as a god. This meeting was once a very common thing to see depicted in art. An Archbishop, Jacobus de Voragine, later recorded this story, stating that it had been handed down to him by Pope Innocent III, that Augustus met the Sybil and that the Sybil revealed to him one who would come after him, greater than he, and showed him a vision of the birth of Christ, referring to the Blessed Virgin as “the Altar of Heaven” where a church was later built and dedicated as such. According to Virgil, the Cumaean Sibyl also made such a prophecy about the birth of Christ and stories such as these, which became widespread, explain why the sybils were included in Renaissance works of art, such as by Michelangelo, alongside Old Testament prophets in foretelling the coming of the Christian era. These would also coincide with other stories, once popular, about the early Roman emperors taking a “hands off” approach to Christ. Stories circulated, for example, that Emperor Tiberius, who did not exactly have a reputation for kindness, ordered that Christians not be persecuted or accused and even talked of including Jesus Christ in the pantheon of Roman gods.

If such stories were true, the prophecies of the Tiburtine Sybil to Emperor Augustus might help explain why such an attitude was taken or why someone like St Paul would prefer to put his fate in the hands of the Emperor Nero rather than his own Jewish countrymen of the Sanhedrin. There were actually a great many such accounts of miraculous events and Christian prophecies concerning the pagan Roman emperors before the more famous events after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and the baptism of Emperor Constantine the Great. There was the story of Pope St Clement I being a cousin of the Emperor Diocletian (in all likelihood he was a freedman who had been in his employ), Emperor Antoninus Pius condemning any illegal attacks on the Christian community, the dramatic story of Emperor Marcus Aurelius and the “Thundering Legion” or his son Emperor Commodus having a Christian mistress which is often pointed to as a reason for this fairly irascible Caesar refraining from persecuting Christians. She is also credited with influencing Emperor Commodus to release Pope St Calixtus I from prison. A revelation, passed down the imperial line, originating in a pagan source that they would not question, would be a possible explanation for such behavior.

However, other than foretelling Emperor Augustus of the birth of Christ, the most famous prophecy of this sort from the Tiburtine Sybil concerning an apocalyptic vision about a certain Emperor Constans. This prophecy foretold of a Greek king who would rise to become “king of the Romans and the Greeks” or, in other words, the Roman Emperor of East and West alike again, who would be very tall, very handsome, very wealthy, will destroy the enemies of Christianity, end all pagan worship, convert the Jews and defeat the massive, mysterious powers of Gog and Magog, after which he will retire to the Holy City of Jerusalem, abdicate his throne and hand the empire over to God. At that point, the Sybil describes what we would recognize as the rise of the Anti-Christ, coming from the tribe of Dan, who will win the people over by miraculous acts, who will destroy the Roman Empire and only then reveal himself as the agent of evil from the Temple of Jerusalem. This, of course, is very similar to other prophecies concerning “the Final Emperor” or the “Great Catholic Monarch” who will lead a last revival of Christian power before the end of the world.

An interesting point in the prophecy of the Tiburtine Sybil is that this monarch is named as Emperor Constans and that the prophecy was made, as near as we can tell, around the year 380 AD, a few decades after Rome had already had the reign of the historic Emperor Constans, the son of the Christian Emperor Constantine the Great, who came to the throne in 337 and ruled until he was assassinated in 350. If we were to be skeptical and presume that the Sibyl was trying to tailor her message for the audience, or that the story was invented later to appeal to Christian sensibilities, naming this future Christian hero after Emperor Constans would not make much sense. He was not known for being a terribly nice man or a terribly good emperor, though he too was part of a prophecy of his own concerning his grandmother, the Christian Empress St Helena. The prophecy said he would die in the arms of his grandmother and when he was assassinated it was after being cornered in a military post named Fort Helena.

So, what is the point of all this? I will be the first to admit it is largely just an act of indulgence on my part since I am interested in this sort of stuff. As with anything of this nature, some people will be inclined to believe and others will be inclined to disbelieve it and there really isn’t anything that anyone can say to prove either side right or wrong. I will say, at the very least, the existence of these stories and that they were passed on for so long reveals something to us about the people and the faith of Christendom. Sources of revelation were not rejected for being pagan, the people of the time recognizing that God can use anyone to participate in His plan. It shows also the centrality of the Roman Empire and the Roman emperors in the hearts of minds of Christian people and how central that Roman imperial tradition was to Christendom itself. The Christians of the late Roman Empire, even with all that was going on around them, did not cease to believe that their ‘realm’ on earth was something special, that Christianity had sprang up in that empire was no accident and that the Roman Empire was something that others would strive to bring back, that they hoped ultimately would come back, with all Christian, European peoples united under one divinely ordained Caesar.

The Lateran Treaty - 83 Years

It was on this day in 1929 that the Lateran Treaty was signed between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy which finally ended the stand-off known as the “Roman Question” that existed since the forces of the Kingdom of Italy occupied and annexed the city of Rome in 1870 at which point the Pope withdrew inside the walls of Vatican City, refusing to recognize the united Italy in a self-imposed “exile” of sorts which lasted from that time until the Lateran Accords were signed. During that time the Popes refused to set foot outside the Vatican, banned (or attempted to ban) Catholic participation in Italian politics and refused to recognize the legal existence of the Kingdom of Italy. This split the Roman nobility into two rival camps; the “White Nobility” around the King and the “Black Nobility” around the Pope. Ordinary Italians, the vast majority of whom were solidly Catholic, mostly accepted the new political realities whether they welcomed them or not. Even Catholic clergy had to walk a thin line, remaining loyal to the Pope in keeping with their vow of obedience but also continuing to administer the sacraments even amidst the most difficult of circumstances. For example, since 1870 the Holy See had withdrawn Catholic chaplains from the Royal Italian Army yet in World War I many Catholic clerics volunteered to serve, many quite heroically, even accompanying the troops as they charged into enemy machinegun fire to administer the last rites and attend to soldiers who were wounded.

Bl. Pius IX and Vittorio Emanuele II

The Vatican policy of officially ignoring the Kingdom of Italy for such a great period of time was ultimately harmful to both parties concerned. The Kingdom of Italy was deprived of the blessing of the Church and was harmed by the division of loyalties caused by the rift. Yet, the Church was also harmed as well. Most Catholics participated in politics by voting despite the papal ban but there was basically no one to officially argue the cause of the Church in the political arena. Those Italian politicians who did try to argue for the rights of the Church faced condemnation from both sides. The anti-clerical leftists naturally opposed them but the Vatican opposed them as well simply for being loyal to the King of Italy. It also prevented the Church from playing as great a role as it might have in the crucial peace process after World War I because the Italian government feared that the Vatican (which was seen to favor the Austrians) would use the proceedings to redress their own grievances and call for the dissolution of the Kingdom of Italy. Whether the Church would have actually done that we can never know but the standoff undoubtedly prevented the Church from doing as much good as she could have done during such a crisis. This is not surprising as refusing to deal at all with an unfavorable situation usually allows the other side to win by default. As Catholic author Harry Crocker wrote in his book “Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church”, “The pope, in his own words, became a prisoner of the Vatican. He refused any formal acknowledgement that the princely realms of the Vicar of Christ had been reduced to a few -albeit magnificent- buildings, and demanded that Italian Catholics refrain from politics and voting, which was a self-defeating ordinance indeed”.

The Popes, of course, were standing on principle and protesting against the seizure of the Papal States over which they had long ruled as the local monarchs. However, the Italian occupation of Rome was not as detrimental to the Church as many feared and, indeed, ultimately proved beneficial in some ways. The fear of a loss of independence on the part of the Pope was real and well founded. The Pope had to have freedom of action and not be under the control of or subject to any sort of pressure by any foreign power. Yet, in truth, the Papal States had never had that sort of independence which would have required the Pope to have sufficient land and people to match any of the major powers of Europe. Even when the Papal States existed the Popes were constantly shifting in political alliances between (usually) France and Austria to try to prevent any one power from dominating the Italian peninsula and thus threatening Rome. Pope Leo X, for example, joined in a league with the German Emperor and King of England against France when France and Venice looked to be dominating northern Italy. Later, when the Emperor (also King of Spain) looked to be too powerful, the Pope sided with France and his hesitancy in dealing with the outbreak of the Protestant movement is often attributed to his political fear of the German Emperor.

Papal Rome had, of course, been occupied many times by invading forces and probably none were so humane and respectful toward the Church as the Italian Royal Army. In 1083 the Holy Roman (German) Emperor Henry IV besieged Rome and the Pope called on the Normans for help. When they arrived the following year they cleared out the Germans but then sacked the city of Rome themselves. In 1527 German and Spanish troops of Emperor Charles V ransacked the city, butchered the Swiss Guard and besieged Pope Clement VII in Castel Sant Angelo. In 1798 French revolutionaries seized and looted Rome, took Pope Pius VI prisoner and sent him to France, declaring the city a French allied-republic. After Napoleon came to power he annexed Rome and the Papal States as part of the French Empire and Pope Pius VII signed a concordat with him and presided at his coronation. Later he too was arrested by the French for his opposition to the policies of Napoleon. The Congress of Vienna restored the Papal States but in 1849 republican revolutionaries took over, forced the Pope to flee the city and it took a French army sent by Napoleon III to restore the Pope to his proper throne. On the other hand, when the army of the Kingdom of Italy captured Rome, order was maintained, property was protected and the Pope was not hindered or harmed in any way. In fact, the initial offering the King of Italy made to the Pope was far more generous, in terms of the territory to be left under papal control, than in the Lateran Accords the Holy See ended up agreeing to many decades later.

Originally, King Vittorio Emanuele II offered all of Rome within the Leonine wall to the Pope as his exclusive domain (this included all of Vatican City as well). He was to be treated as a sovereign monarch, immune from criticism, above the law and his person legally sacrosanct and inviolable. He was also to have exclusive use to all papal properties on Italian soil. This was hardly 1527 or 1798. However, standing on principle, the Pope refused and so the “Roman Question” festered for decades until 1929 when Pope Pius XI and King Vittorio Emanuele III at long last made peace. It had taken three years of negotiation but finally was accomplished, as it should have been long before. According to the agreement, the Vatican City State was recognized by the King of Italy as a sovereign, independent, neutral state. The Pope recognized the Kingdom of Italy and renounced all claims to the former territories of the Papal States in exchange for which the Kingdom of Italy paid to the Pope compensation of 750,000,000 lire and 1 million lire in Italian bonds for the loss of these lands as well as an indemnity of 3,250,000 lire a year. The amount paid to the Pope as compensation for the loss of his territory was likewise less than what the King of Italy had originally offered in 1871. However, what was most significant was recognition of the Italian nation by the Church and the creation of the Vatican City State as an independent sovereign entity, protected by law. The Roman Catholic Church also became the official state religion of the Kingdom of Italy, religious instruction became a part of all Italian schools (with a crucifix in every classroom) and religious marriages became government approved.

Pope Pius XI and Benito Mussolini

It was a happy day without question. The only problem was that this agreement had come about during the Fascist era with considerable pushing on the part of Benito Mussolini himself who wanted absolutely no division of loyalties among the people and just as he had swallowed his ardent republicanism toward that end so too did he suppress his lifelong anti-clericalism, even going through a show of being baptized and declaring the Catholic Church a part of Italian life. He eagerly accepted the praise heaped on him as “the man who had given God back to Italy and Italy back to God”. Of course, he had ulterior motives and both Mussolini and the Pope wasted no time in basically breaking the agreement they had just signed. Mussolini had vowed to respect Catholic institutions but, of course, quickly determined to bring them all under state control. The Pope had promised to stay out of Italian politics but when Mussolini stepped over the line he wasted no time in condemning Fascist totalitarianism as the “pagan worship of the state”. Things could have been so much better if the two sides could have reconciled sooner to make the Kingdom of Italy a more perfectly Catholic country.

Pope Pius XII visits the Quirinale

This should have been the effort from day one, once it was clear that the era of a ‘political papacy’ had gone. Indeed, it is hard to see what real good was accomplished by the long standoff. Of course, that is not to say things would have worked out entirely for the better if the Pope had accepted the original offer laid out in the Law of Guarantees. It rested on the power of the Italian Parliament and, as history shows, what Parliaments give other Parliaments can later take away. The spiritual prestige and popularity of the Pope grew significantly in the aftermath of his self-imposed home-exile but the Church and the Kingdom of Italy both suffered as a result of being deprived of a strong Catholic influence in the new government. The Church could have been of enormous help in combating the spread of radical leftist republican sentiments and this was realized in 1946 when the Church strongly favored the preservation of the monarchy but it all came too late. The republican government that succeeded the monarchy started out in friendly hands but soon came back to amend the Lateran Treaty again and again and again. The most significant change came in 1984 under the socialist Prime Minister Bettino Craxi who abolished Catholicism as the Italian state religion (and as an aside also ran up the national debt until it was greater than Italian GNP).

There was nothing more historically natural than for the Catholic Church and the Kingdom of Italy to be reconciled. A united Italy under one monarchy had been in peace and accord with the Catholic Church from the reign of Emperor Constantine the Great until the fall of the Roman Empire in the west. The House of Savoy had a long history of being staunch defenders of Christendom. The family ranks included the likes of crusaders and clerics of Blessed Umberto III and Blessed Amedeo IX, the Savoy were the guardians of the Holy Shroud of Turin and the Kings of Piedmont-Sardinia had been ardent supporters of a strong Church and a strong monarchy and viscerally opposed the principles of the so-called “Enlightenment” and the subsequent French Revolution. Today, the loyal faithful should strive equally for the restoration of the Kingdom of Italy as a truly and officially Catholic monarchy and to strive to put back the Lateran Treaty to the original status it had when it was first signed 83 years ago today. A Catholic Kingdom of Italy is still the answer.