Chigi library donation (1922) . Venturi was the Confessor to Mussolini, whom he befriended before his rise to power.
Benito Mussolini "liked and trusted" Venturi, whom he had known since 1922, during the Fascist
struggle for power. The friendship between the two predated Mussolini's rise to power. Venturi was also the personal
Confessor of Mussolini and an adviser to the Duce on religious matters generally. His political views could generally be classified as a strain of
Clerico-Fascism. In September 1926, Venturi gave Mussolini a pamphlet entitled
Zionism and Catholicism accusing the Jews of wanting "to destroy current society and dominate the world themselves, as their Talmud proscribes".
Lateran Treaties (1927-1929) Venturi was a negotiator of the
Lateran Treaty (1929), which ended the "
Roman Question" (a dispute over the status of the papacy since the
Italian unification) and officially recognized the sovereignty of
Vatican City, which led the Church State to become an actor in
international relations (apart from the Holy See itself, as it had previously been) according to
international law. In May 1928, already internationally known for his role as a negotiator, Venturi survived an attempted assassination by "Signor De Angelis" with a
paper knife, receiving only a neck laceration when he ducked out the way. Two years later, another priest similar to Venturi in appearance was killed. Venturi claimed to have been the victim of an international conspiracy organized by an anti-Fascist group based in Paris led by Gaetano Salvemini, but the police were highly doubtful of his story. It was established during the police investigation that Venturi was a homosexual who had "illicit relations" with young men he picked up on the streets of Rome and took back to his apartment for sex, and the murder attempt was just a lovers' quarrel. The
New York Times described Venturi as the "chief negotiator, who remains in the dark and is almost unknown". Nominally,
Francesco Pacelli (the brother of Eugenio Pacelli, future Pope Pius XII) became the chief negotiator and Venturi his intermediary with Mussolini during the final stages of the negotiation (after the death of State Councilor Domenico Barone). The other negotiators were
Francesco Borgongini Duca, the Vatican's Secretary of Extraordinary Affairs, and Professor Gianinni Barone, the brother of Domenico; however, Venturi himself was the originator of the negotiations. Venturi received the
Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus from the Italian monarchy in 1932 for his role in negotiating the treaty.
Francesco Borgongini Duca, the
nuncio to Italy from 1929 to 1953, supplemented Venturi as the official liaison between Pius XII and Mussolini, but Venturi retained his influence.
Mussolini novel (1929) At the urging of Venturi, Mussolini wrote a second book –
Una Conversione – about his conversion to Catholicism, meant as a sequel to his twenty-year-old novel which was extremely critical of the church: ''Claudia Particella: l'amante del Cardinale
(translated and published in English as The Cardinal's Mistress
). Venturi himself wrote the preface to Una Conversione''. Venturi was granted an unheard of hour-long audience with the pontiff during his summer vacation, and then an additional meeting with Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli. Don
Luigi Sturzo, the founder of the
Partito Popolare Italiano, a Catholic political party in Italy, credits Venturi with ending the dispute. Mussolini allowed the 15,000 youth organizations to reopen, but they were required to affiliate closely with the official Fascist youth organization,
Opera Nazionale Balilla. The terms of the agreement were meant to give the Vatican a role in "Fascist Youth Education" and required that the Catholic organization be devolved to the diocesan level, with no centralized hierarchy, and that
chaplains be attached to the Balilla chapters. Venturi himself sat in on the final meeting between Mussolini and the pope.
Drafting of the Anti-Jewish laws (1938) Venturi was kept informed by Mussolini during the drafting of Italy's
anti-Jewish laws (which deprived
Jews of various civil, political, and economic rights), expressing concerns about the effect of the laws on Catholics, both through
mixed marriages and
Catholic converts from Judaism. Specifically, Venturi sought the lifting of the ban on marriages between "Aryans" and "non-Aryans". ==Role under Pius XII (1939-1956)==