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In an agony of effort, while the others wept, the Pope summoned his strength to make this last, supreme gesture. He lifted his right hand, mumbled a blessing. Falteringly his hand signaled its last apostolic benediction, fell back on the bed. He mumbled something. To some it seemed that he said: "Jesus and Mary. . . . Peace to the world." Others thought they heard him say: "In our last rites . . . Sister Therese of the Infant Jesus . . . art near to us. God is merciful. May His will be done."
But all were agreed that earlier, the Pope's last articulate words had been: "I still have so many things to do."
Dawn was close at hand. In the bedroom, the company of Franciscan friars known as the Penitentiaries of St. Peter's began softly chanting the penitential psalms. Cardinal Pacelli approached the bed, gazed slowly down at the tired, emaciated body. Death, as it must to all men, had come to Pius XI. "The Pope," said Cardinal Pacelli, "is truly dead." With one accord all in the room began the sorrowful prayer, De Profundis. "Out of the depths, 0 Lord, have I cried unto Thee. . . ."
Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti was almost unknown to the Catholics of Italy, let alone Catholics elsewhere, when as a compromise candidate he was elected to the Chair of St. Peter in February 1922.
From, the quiet of the Vatican Library, of which he became Prefect in 1914, he had been sent as Apostolic Visitor (later Papal Nuncio) to war-torn Poland. He had been shepherd of Milan—near which he was born, of peasant stock—for less than a year. He had been appointed Cardinal-Archbishop by Benedict XV over the objections of those who held that Monsignor Ratti was no preacher.
Mountain Climber. Indeed, during the first 30-odd years of his priesthood, in which he was chaplain to a convent, teacher in a seminary, and Prefect of the Ambrosian Library in Milan, Achille Ratti had distinguished himself from the average Italian parroco or parish priest chiefly in being a skilled mountain climber.
But upon his enthronement, Pius XI revealed himself to a hopeful post-War world as a man of vigorous words and deeds, an often-stubborn taker of no man's advice, a good-humored breaker of precedents,* in every sense a great Pope given to the Catholic Church at a time when-she greatly needed one.
Tidier-up. "Everything this Pope touches he tidies up," remarked one old Vatican functionary when Pius XI moved into the Vatican with his modest entourage—including his valet Malvestiti† to dress him, his mother's cook Linda to prepare his frugal meals. As tidier-up of his temporal dominion of the Vatican State, Pius XI was the first Pope to move out of the horse-&-buggy era. He drove over its ten miles of roads in any one of the half-dozen automobiles he had received as gifts. He was the first Pope since 1870 to emerge from the Vatican into Rome—even, it was whispered, tramping its side streets at night in a plain black soutane before he paid the city a public visit. He built (but never used) a railroad station, modernized the Vatican Library with the most up-to-date stacks and indexes, built a new Governor's Palace, a radio station (HVJ), was the first Pontiff ever to broadcast.