Pope Pius XI (6 févr. 1922 – 10 févr. 1939)

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Pope Pius XI remarked to the German envoys how pleased he was that “the German Government now had at its head a man uncompromisingly opposed to Communism,” and on July 20, 1933, at an elaborate ceremony in the Vatican, Cardinal Pacelli (who was soon to become Pope Pius XII) signed the concordat.*

German cardinal Faulhaber, attributing the following words to Pius XI, gives insight into the pope’s thinking about Hitler: “I am pleased; he is the first statesman to have spoken out against Bolshevism.” Faulhaber later noted: “My journey to Rome confirmed what I might have suspected for a long time. In Rome, National Socialism and Fascism are considered the only deliverance from Communism and Bolshevism.”

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Again, in 1927, the Catholic Church received an invitation to take part in the First World Conference on Faith and Order, held in Lausanne, Switzerland. Delegates from several Protestant and Orthodox churches met to discuss obstacles to unity, but Pope Pius XI refused to allow any Catholic participation.

In its article on Pope Pius XI, the New Catholic Encyclopedia says: “The Holy See took a negative attitude toward the ecumenical movement of non-Catholic Christendom.” This negative attitude evolved into open hostility when, in 1928, the pope issued his encyclical letter Mortalium animos. In it he condemned the ecumenical movement and forbade Catholics to give any support to ecumenism.

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