With a strong personality and a skillful diplomatic style, Pius XI knew how to regain for the Church its universal primacy.

Newsroom (14/02/2022 08:00, Gaudium Press) Exactly a hundred years ago, when Pius XI was elected Pope, he broke with the customs of his predecessors, going out to the loggia outside St. Peter’s Basilica for the Urbi et Orbi blessing: he traced with his attitude, early on, what was to become his pontificate.

As for the Church, still covered in the dust of the post-war debris, he aspired to recover its spiritual primacy over souls, to influence mentalities, to conduct sound morals, to permeate its authority through the people; he saw in his Shepherd the traits of fortitude necessary to obtain such prerogatives.

With a strong personality, he hid under the veil of vigor the strokes of diplomacy. He chose the successful path of Ercole Consalvi,[1] through the innumerable agreements and Concordats that gave the Church, as a visible organism, admirable fruits.

Among the most important achievements of Pius XI, the “Conciliazione” with the Italian government through the Lateran agreement – a question that for sixty years had weighed upon the activity of the Holy See and its temporal sovereignty – is to his credit.

But with dozens of other nations, year after year, Pius XI’s conquest found no boundaries, even in the face of totalitarian governments, the legacy of the World War.

So Pius XI had the honor of making himself respected; and his figure, in a way, expressed the Church’s attitude toward the new world, because, in the end, her official relations with almost all the states were good.

Thus was the path traced by this man of unshaken faith – in the words of Saint Malachi – who had the fine discernment to fill the firmament of the Church with stars of singular brilliance, canonizing Bernadette Soubirous, John Bosco, Thérèse of Lisieux, John Mary Vianney, in short, those who would be marked as models of life to be followed amidst the rubble of Europe.

Upon this man – biblicist, librarian, mountain climber, apostolic nuncio, and Pope – the mission of leading an entire flock back to the fold of Christ, urbi et orbi, ended.

[1] Cardinal of the Holy Church who, after the fall of Napoleon, represented the Pope at the Congress of Vienna. He was able to convince the victorious powers to restore, almost completely, the Papal States, through successful diplomatic relations.