Pope Pius XI

Pope Pius XI was born Achille Ratti on 31 May 1857 at Desio near Milan in Italy. A scholar and former librarian of the Ambrosian and Vatican libraries, and briefly a papal diplomat in Poland, he was elected pope in 1922. His pontificate spanned the rise of the totalitarian ideologies that would convulse the twentieth century, and he confronted them with growing firmness.

In 1929 he settled the long "Roman Question" through the Lateran Treaty with Italy, which recognized the sovereign independence of the Vatican City State. He championed the cause of Christ's kingship over all society, instituting the feast of Christ the King in 1925, and promoted Catholic Action and the lay apostolate. In his later years he issued forceful encyclicals against the errors of the age: against atheistic communism, against the racism and neo-paganism of Nazism in the German-language Mit brennender Sorge of 1937, and against unbridled capitalism. He died in Rome on 10 February 1939.