Verso la conciliazione. il ruolo del pontificato di Benedetto XV

The pontificate of Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922) has long been underestimat-ed by scholars. However, it must be considered a key pontificate in the recent history of the Catholic Church. Above all, it constituted a preparatory and influ-ential moment for the Lateran Treaty of 1929. Indeed, Benedict XV came one step closer to being the protagonist of the historic conciliation between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy. The Pope who, after the decades of bitter conflict between the ‘two Romes’ following the events of Italian unification, had played a decisive role in resolving the Roman Question, guaranteeing the Holy See the return of government over a territory, albeit a small one (and, consequently, the right to be recognized in its international identity, i.e. as a subject endowed with independence and freedom iure proprio), also allowing Catholics to fully inte-grate into Italian society after decades of forced marginalization from public life. As we know, history tells a different truth. Yet, by reconstructing and criti-cally re-examining the pontificate of Benedict XV on the basis of new evidence and the different possible interpretations deriving from existing information, it is possible to offer a partially different reading of the events of that period, which, without altering the ‘official history’, nonetheless allows us to re-evaluate these events, recognizing the rightful merit of Benedict XV’s contribution with respect to the settlement of the Roman question. Through an imaginary game of sliding doors, the essay examines the events of the years of Benedict XV’s pontificate, reconstructing the Pope’s efforts to reach an ‘acceptable solution’ to the Roman question during and at the end of the First World War, already a decade before the Lateran Treaty of 1929.