Pius XI

The Lateran Treaty of 11 February 1929 was made in his name: by it the Holy See declared the Roman question settled and Italy recognised the State of Vatican City under the pope’s sovereignty (Lateran Pacts (1929), Treaty, preamble and art. 26). Speaking that day, on the eve of the seventh anniversary of his coronation, he said that he had wanted the concordat joined to the treaty from the first (Pius XI, Address of 11 February 1929), and two days later that he believed he had given God back to Italy and Italy to God (Pius XI, Address of 13 February 1929). He remarked in the same address that the task had perhaps needed a pope who was a mountaineer and a librarian (Pius XI, Address of 13 February 1929).

In Mit brennender Sorge (14 March 1937) he wrote that he had consented to the concordat with the German Reich in 1933 despite grave misgivings, protested that it was being violated, and condemned the raising of race, people or state to an idol (Pius XI, Mit brennender Sorge 3–8). Five days later, in Divini Redemptoris, he condemned atheistic communism (Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris 58 and date). See the Lateran Treaty Creates Vatican City and Mit brennender Sorge: Pius XI on the Church in the German Reich.