6 - THE CRISIS OF 1931

Summary

The public harmony between the Vatican and the Regime, which had been re-established by Turati's visit to the Pope in February 1930, lasted for little over a year; in mid-March 1931 the tensions which had been accumulating below the surface broke out in a succession of public disputes, culminating in Mussolini's dissolution of the youth organisations of Catholic Action on 30 May, and the resulting suspension for all practical purposes of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Italy. The Vatican's intransigent response to the dissolution, and in particular Pius XI's hard-hitting encyclical Non Abbiamo Bisogno, prolonged the crisis for a further two months until its resolution by the Accordi per I' Azione Cattolica of 2 September 1931. Why did things reach so serious a pass? Why did the press polemics not exhaust themselves, as they had done several times in 1929 and 1930, and why were relations not patched up earlier at a personal or diplomatic level?

The answer lies in the fact that the background to the crisis of 1931 was different in several fundamentally important respects from that prevailing in 1929 and 1930. By the Spring of 1931, the last vestiges of the honeymoon atmosphere of 1929 had evaporated; two years of living under the Concordatory ‘system’ had hardened attitudes on both sides and made them resistant to the shock of public disputes.