The Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936. However, the Vatican did not recognize Franco's government until two years later. Why this considerable delay? Relations between the rebels and the Church were not always as harmonious as it might seem at first sight.
Contrary to what we might believe, the fact is that the complaints of the rebels against Rome were constant. This is how the historian and monk from Montserrat Hilari Raguer explained it in La pólvora y el incienso (Península, 2017). The so-called "nationals" lamented that L'Osservatore Romano, the unofficial newspaper of the Holy See, gave too much prominence to news that was unfavorable to them, while the favorable ones received little space. Actually, behind this criticism there was more victimhood than anything else.
One of the rebel generals, Miguel Cabanellas, wrote to Cardinal Pacelli, head of Vatican foreign policy (and future Pius XII), to explain that the rebels wanted to establish informal relations with the Vatican. That would be a first step towards establishing a fully normal diplomatic link.
According to Cabanellas, the "National Movement" had both "a religious crusade and the rescue of the Homeland against the tyranny of Moscow." With the reference to the Soviet Union, the soldier was referring to the imaginary communist plot that had served to justify the coup attempt on July 18.
Pius XI received a group of about five hundred Spanish exiles who had left the peninsula to escape the war atrocities. They were Catholics, headed by the bishops of La Seu d'Urgell, Vic, Tortosa and Cartagena. The pontiff, in his speech, condemned communism. So far, that was exactly what the insurgents wanted. His intervention, however, went further. Instead of aligning himself with one side, he lamented that the Spaniards were torn apart in an internal discord: "The Civil War, the war between the children of the same people, of the same mother country."
The pontiff blessed those who, in Spain, had defended the rights of religion. What Franco's supporters already liked least is that he specified that, in this defense, selfish interests could easily be mixed. They also did not like that the Holy Father exhorted them to love their enemies, to pray for them and to practice mercy.
The “nationals” sent the Marquis de Magaz to Rome as their representative, an extreme right-wing Catalan who was soon to demonstrate his lack of tact and no sense of timing. As Raguer said, his arrogance was the fundamental reason for the failure of his diplomatic mission.
In an audience, for example, the pope protested because in national Spain priests were also shot. He was referring to the repression against priests sympathetic to Basque nationalism. Upon hearing this accusation, Magaz reacted with inappropriate words to win sympathy: “Your Holiness, I have only one thing to tell you. That his words and his attitude, as a Spaniard and as a Catholic, cause me deep sorrow.
The diplomat complained that the Holy See did not recognize his government. That position, in his opinion, constituted a comparative offense with what happened in 1931, when Rome had taken just six days to recognize the Republic. In view of this lack of success, Magaz wrote to Pacelli to tell him that his mission in Rome was meaningless, since he had achieved absolutely nothing. For that reason, he did not intend to bother him anymore.
Pacelli, with a cool head, replied that he would have no problem receiving him and taking his letters into consideration, as long as they were "written objectively and calmly." If until then he had not responded, the reason was none other than the "truly unusual tone" with which he allowed himself to launch unfounded accusations against the Holy See.
Instead of being more conciliatory, Magaz kept throwing reproaches. He seemed bent on self-sabotaging his work. With little diplomatic sense, he told the future Pius XII that the recognition of the Vatican was no longer so important, since the "nationals" already had that of Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. The one in the Vatican, in his opinion, would have had the courage to be the first. He forgot, as Vicente Cárcel Ortí tells us in 1936. The Vatican and Spain (Ediciones San Román, 2016), that the Vatican, as a rule, was never the first to recognize a new State.
Why these reluctances of the Church? It was obvious that the Holy See sympathized more with the Franco side than with its opponent. Between a regime that returned their privileges to Catholics and another anticlerical, the choice offered no doubt, as Pacelli himself took care to make clear.
Rome, however, had to attend to other types of considerations. She feared that a gesture in favor of the rebels would have dire consequences, in the form of reprisals, for the Catholics who lived in the Republican zone. On the other hand, the Vatican did not wish to antagonize countries that sympathized with the Second Republic.
The Church, moreover, wanted to avoid the impression of being subservient to certain political regimes. Pacelli, in a meeting of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, referred to "the need for the Holy See to prevent the impression that it is at the service of fascism from forming, or rather confirming in the world."
In 1937, when Pius XI published the encyclical Divini Redemptoris, about the dangers of communism, Magaz returned to the charge and once again requested recognition from the Burgos government. Rome was still not seeing things clearly, worried about the dominance of the Falange, a party that seemed to oppose Catholic interests along the lines of what Hitler was doing in Germany. In short, the exaggerated tendency to exalt the power of the State and its leader was worrying.
Franco's representative, faced with this reluctance, explained to Pacelli that nothing in the Falangist program justified the slightest fear on the part of the Church.
On the side of the rebels, criticism continued for the ambiguous attitude of the pope, who did not openly pronounce himself in favor of Franco. Although he believed that the recognition of the rebel government was still untimely, Cardinal Tedeschini thought that all these complaints could not be more unfounded. Tedeschini was a weighty figure, as a former nuncio in republican Madrid. To his mind, it was obvious whose side the Holy See was on.
“If there are truly people who maintain that it is not clear that the Holy See is against the Government of Valencia, [...] after the encyclical Divini Redemptoris, after the pastorals of several bishops, [...] after the Holy See does not have in fact any relationship with the Government of Valencia and has it, on the other hand, daily with that of Burgos, then it will have to be said that the Holy See will never know how to express itself”.
Finally, on May 4, 1938, Rome put aside its reservations and recognized Franco's government as the only legitimate one in Spain. What triggered the change? The fact that the military situation on the peninsula was favorable to the rebels at that time ended up dispelling any doubts.
This opened a period of identification between the Church and the State, although, in reality, the friction was going to continue to exist. The Franco regime called itself Catholic, but never hesitated to repress any hint of dissent that came from within the religious ranks.
