Pius XI

(1857–1939)

   Achille Ratti was elected pope in 1922. A strong advocate of the separation of electoral politics and cultural activities, Pius XI was a believer in the binding force of written documents, best exemplified by the 18 concordat signed during his papacy, which included those agreed to with fascist Italy in 1929 and Nazi Germany in 1933.

   When the German government violated the provision of the concordat that promised that they would respect the integrity of Catholic schools in Germany, Pius XI issued the encyclical “With Burning Concern” (Mit Brennender Sorge), which attacked Adolf Hitler’s nonobservance of the concordat. The logic of the pope’s attack on the Hitler dictatorship soon led him to address the issue of the Nazi persecution of the Jews. The Nazis responded by spreading the falsehood that Ratti himself was half-Jewish. Instead of denying the accusation, the pope, speaking before a group of Belgian pilgrims in 1938, stated that “we are the spiritual offspring of Abraham. . . . We are spiritually Semites.” Before his death in 1939, Pius XI had authorized the draft of “The Unity of the Human Race” (Humani Generis Unitas), an encyclical that would have attacked Nazi racism and anti-Semitism. The encyclical was never completed and was buried in the Vatican archives until its discovery in 1972 and its publication in 1997.

   See also Christianity.