Pope Achille Ambrogio Damiano Ratti aka Pius XI
(6.02.1922 – 10.02.1939)
Achille Ambrogio Damiano Ratti was elected Pope on February 6, 1922.
He took the name “Pius” (Pious) XI, and after his coronation he gave the blessing “Urbi et Orbi” from the loggia of Saint Peter’s Basilica.
As his motto he adopted “Pax Christi in Regno Christi” (The Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ), and he resolved to engage himself in mitigating the effects of war in the world.
One of his first initiatives was the inauguration, on December 23, 1922, of Catholic Action.
On December 11, 1925, Pius XI promulgated the encyclical “Quas primas”, by which he established the Feast of Christ the King with its own Officium and Holy Mass.
At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, he published a series of encyclicals (“Divini illius magistri”, “Casti conubii”, “Quadragesimo anno” and “Nova impendet”), in which he expressed the Church’s position on matters relating to Christian education, the definition of marriage, methods of contraception, and unemployment.
In 1928, he condemned falsely understood ecumenism in the encyclical “Mortalium animos”, where he firmly condemned the unity of the Catholic Church with Christian churches that were not in doctrinal unity with it.
Hitler’s actions and his coming to power in 1933 meant that on March 14, 1937, the Pope issued the encyclical “Mit brennender Sorge”, in which he condemned Hitlerism. In the encyclical “Divini Redemptoris” (March 19, 1937) he condemned atheistic communism. In the same year he also founded the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
He was keenly interested in missionary matters, and he opposed the situation in Mexico and Russia, where Catholics were being persecuted. He took vigorous steps to establish diplomatic relations with many countries. This led to the signing of over 20 agreements.
He helped to develop the idea of the First Fridays of the month as reparation to the Heart of Jesus for the sins of mankind.
In 1931 he introduced the Feast of Mary the Holy Mother of God, celebrated on January 1.
Encyclical “Ad Catholici Sacerdotii” – On the Catholic Priesthood
Jesus Christ at the Last Supper instituted the sacrifice and the priesthood of the New Covenant … at the Last Supper, on the same night in which He was betrayed, in order to leave to His beloved Spouse the Church, a sacrifice which should be visible, which should represent that bloody sacrifice once for all to be accomplished on the cross, which should perpetuate its memory to the end of time, and which should apply its saving power unto the remission of the sins we daily commit, … He offered to God the Father, under the appearances of bread and wine, His Body and Blood, giving them to the Apostles (whom He was then making priests of the New Covenant) to be consumed under the signs of these same things, and commanded the Apostles and their successors in the priesthood to offer them, by the words “Do this in commemoration of Me”.
