Pope Pius XI

About Pope Pius XI

Achille Ratti was born in 1857 near Milan. Before any office of government he was a librarian — at the Ambrosiana in Milan and then at the Vatican Library — and a serious mountaineer, with ascents of Monte Rosa and Mont Blanc behind him. He was fifty-nine when he was sent to Poland as nuncio, and he stayed in Warsaw through the Red Army's advance after the rest of the diplomatic corps had left.

Elected in 1922, he signed the Lateran Treaty in 1929, ending sixty years of deadlock with Italy and creating Vatican City. He instituted the feast of Christ the King in 1925, at a moment when totalitarian movements were demanding absolute loyalty from whole populations — the feast was a direct answer to that.

He founded Vatican Radio with Guglielmo Marconi in 1931 and was the first pope whose voice went out over the air. In 1937 he published an encyclical in German condemning Nazism, read from pulpits across Germany without warning. He died in 1939.

A message from Pius XI is sent to those who love history and for feasts tied to Christ the King.

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