Pope Pius XI

Ambrogio Ratti was born in 1857 and became head of the Catholic Church in February 1922, stepping into a Europe shredding itself between communism and fascism. He issued encyclicals attacking both capitalist greed and atheistic socialism, banned contraception for Catholics, and established the feast of Christ the King as a rebuke to anti-clericalism. In 1929 he resolved decades of papal-Italian hostility by signing the Lateran Treaty, making himself the first sovereign of the newly created Vatican City. He also signed a concordat with Nazi Germany in 1933, then condemned their violations four…