Pope Pius XI (Italian: Pio XI; born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, Italian: [amˈbrɔːdʒo daˈmjaːno aˈkille ˈratti]; 31 May 1857 – 10 February 1939) was head of the Catholic Church from 6 February 1922 until his death in February 1939. He was also the first sovereign of Vatican City upon its creation on 11 February 1929.
Pius XI issued numerous encyclicals, including Quadragesimo anno on the 40th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's groundbreaking social encyclical Rerum novarum, highlighting the capitalistic greed of international finance, the dangers of atheistic communism, and social justice issues. He also wrote Quas primas, establishing the feast of Christ the King in response to anti-clericalism. The encyclical Casti connubii promulgated on 31 December 1930 prohibited Catholics from using contraception.
To establish or maintain the position of the Catholic Church, Pius XI concluded a record number of concordats, including the Reichskonkordat with Nazi Germany, and he condemned their betrayals four years later in the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. During his pontificate, the longstanding hostility with the Italian government over the status of the papacy and the Church in Italy was successfully resolved in the Lateran Treaty of 1929.
He canonized Thomas More, Peter Canisius, Bernadette of Lourdes, and Don Bosco. He beatified and canonized Thérèse de Lisieux, for whom he held special reverence, and gave equivalent canonization to Albertus Magnus, naming him a Doctor of the Church. He took a strong interest in fostering the participation of laypeople throughout the Church, especially in the Catholic Action movement. The end of his pontificate was dominated by his speaking out against Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, and defending the Catholic Church from outside interference. Pius XI died on 10 February 1939 in the Apostolic Palace and was buried in the Papal Grotto of Saint Peter's Basilica.
Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti was born in Desio, in the province of Milan, in 1857, the son of the owner of a silk factory. His parents were Francesco Antonio Ratti (1823–1881) and his wife Angela Teresa née Galli-Cova (1832–1918); his siblings were Carlo (1853–1906), Fermo (1854–1929), Edoardo (1855–1896), Camilla (1860–1946), and Cipriano. He was ordained a priest in 1879 and was selected for a life of academic studies within the Church. He obtained three doctorates (in philosophy, canon law, and theology) at the Gregorian University in Rome, and from 1882 to 1888 was a professor at a seminary in Padua. His scholarly speciality was as an expert paleographer, a student of ancient and medieval Church manuscripts. In 1888, he was transferred from seminary teaching to the Ambrosian Library in Milan, where he worked until 1911.
During this time, Ratti edited and published an edition of the Ambrosian Missal (the rite of Mass used in a wide territory in northern Italy, coinciding above all with the diocese of Milan). He also engaged in research and writing on the life and works of the reforming Archbishop of Milan, Charles Borromeo. Ratti became head of the Ambrosian Library in 1907 and undertook a thorough programme of restoration and reclassification of its collections.
Despite his job as a librarian, Ratti was physically active. During his entire time in Milan, he was an avid mountaineer, undertaking over twenty major tours between 1885 and 1913 and climbing, among others, Mont Blanc (the Italian normal route to Mont Blanc now bears his name), the Matterhorn, the Presolana and the Dufourspitze. He climbed the latter in July 1889 on the route via the eastern flank, which had been first climbed in 1872, an extremely challenging route, previously considered unclimbable, and he was part of the first Italian rope team to conquer the 4634 meter high mountain peak. They were also the first to make the traverse from Macugnaga to Zermatt by the Zumsteinjoch. After climbing the Dufourspitze, he spent the night on the summit with his companions. Ratti also wrote a significant number of mountaineering writings. A scholar-athlete pope was not seen again until John Paul II.
In 1911, Ratti was appointed by Pope Pius X Vice-Prefect of the Vatican Library, and in 1914 was promoted to Prefect.
Nuncio to Poland and expulsion
In 1918, Pope Benedict XV (1914–1922) appointed Ratti to what was in effect a diplomatic post, as apostolic visitor (an unofficial papal representative) in Poland. In the aftermath of World War I, a Polish state was restored, though the process was in practice incomplete, since the territory was still under the effective control of Germany and Austria-Hungary. In October 1918, Benedict was the first head of state to congratulate the Polish people on the occasion of the restoration of their independence. In March 1919, he appointed ten new bishops and on 6 June 1919 reappointed Ratti, this time to the rank of papal nuncio and on 3 July appointed him a titular archbishop. Ratti was consecrated as a bishop on 28 October 1919.
According to German theologian Joseph Schmidlin's Papstgeschichte der Neuesten Zeit, Benedict and Ratti repeatedly cautioned Polish authorities against persecuting Lithuanian and Ruthenian clergy. During the Bolshevik advance against Warsaw during the Polish-Soviet War, Benedict asked for worldwide public prayers for Poland, while Ratti was the only foreign diplomat who refused to flee Warsaw when the Red Army was approaching the city in August 1920. On 11 June 1921, Benedict asked Ratti to deliver his message to the Polish episcopate, warning against political misuses of spiritual power, urging peaceful coexistence with neighboring peoples, and saying that "love of country has its limits in justice and obligations".
Ratti intended to work for Poland by building bridges to men of goodwill in the Soviet Union, even to shedding his blood for Russia. But Benedict needed Ratti as a diplomat, not a martyr, and forbade his traveling to the USSR despite his being the official papal delegate for Russia. The nuncio's continued contacts with Russians did not generate much sympathy for him within Poland at the time. After Benedict sent Ratti to Silesia to forestall potential political agitation within the Polish Catholic clergy, Ratti was asked to leave Poland. On 20 November, when German Cardinal Adolf Bertram announced a papal ban on all political activities of clergymen, calls for Ratti's expulsion climaxed. "While he tried honestly to show himself as a friend of Poland, Warsaw forced his departure, after his neutrality in Silesian voting was questioned" by Germans and Poles. Nationalistic Germans objected to the Polish nuncio supervising local elections, and patriotic Poles were upset because he curtailed political action among the clergy.
In the consistory of 3 June 1921, Benedict XV created three new cardinals, including Ratti as Cardinal-Priest of Santi Silvestro e Martino ai Monti, who was appointed Archbishop of Milan simultaneously. Benedict told them, "Well, today I gave you the red hat, but soon it will be white for one of you." After the Vatican celebration, Ratti went to the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino for a retreat to prepare spiritually for his new role. He accompanied Milanese pilgrims to Lourdes in August 1921. Ratti received a tumultuous welcome on a visit to his home town of Desio, and was enthroned in Milan on 8 September. On 22 January 1922, Benedict XV died unexpectedly of pneumonia.
At the conclave to choose a new pope, the longest of the 20th century, the College of Cardinals was divided into two factions, one led by Rafael Merry del Val favouring the policies and style of Pius X and the other favouring those of Benedict XV led by Pietro Gasparri.
Gasparri approached Ratti before voting began on the third day and told him he would urge his supporters to switch their votes to Ratti, who was shocked to hear this. When it became clear that neither Gasparri nor del Val could win, the cardinals approached Ratti, thinking him a compromise candidate not identified with either faction. Cardinal Gaetano de Lai approached Ratti and was believed to have said: "We will vote for Your Eminence if Your Eminence will promise that you will not choose Cardinal Gasparri as your secretary of state". Ratti is said to have responded: "I hope and pray that among so highly deserving cardinals the Holy Spirit selects someone else. If I am chosen, it is indeed Cardinal Gasparri whom I will take to be my secretary of state".