Editing Pope Pius XII (section)

====Democracy and monarchy====
Pius XII taught that the masses were a threat to true democracy. In such a democracy, liberty is the individual's moral duty and equality is the right of all people to honorably live in the place and station that God has assigned them.<ref name=Pius1944/>

On 1 June 1946, one day before the [[1946 Italian institutional referendum]] on whether to abolish or keep the Italian monarchy, Pius XII delivered a sermon on [[St. Peter's Square]]. While he did not directly mention monarchy or republicanism, given the context, his speech was nonetheless widely seen as endorsing [[Umberto II]] in the referendum, with it being difficult to misunderstand his plea.<ref>{{cite book|author=White, Steven F.|title=Modern Italy's Founding Fathers: The Making of a Postwar Republic|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|year=2020|pages=108–109}}</ref>

Pius stated:

<blockquote>The problem is whether one or the other of those nations, of those two Latin sisters [elections were taking place in France on the same day] with several thousands of years of civilization will continue to learn against the solid rock of Christianity,...or on the contrary do they want to hand over the fate of their future to the impossible omnipotence of a material state without extraterrestrial ideals, without religion, and without God. One of these two alternatives shall occur according to whether the names of the champions or the destroyers of Christian civilization emerge victorious from the urns.<ref name="Giuseppe Mammarealla p. 114">Giuseppe Mammarealla ''Italy After Fascism A Political History 1943–1965'', Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966 p. 114</ref></blockquote>

After the referendum was successful and the Italian monarchy was abolished, Pius privately agreed with his envoy [[Myron Taylor]] "...that it would have been far preferable for Italy to remain a monarchy, but he also noted that what was done was done".<ref>{{cite book|author=Bracaglia, Giorgio|title=The Italian Monarchy, The State, The Church and the Holy Shroud|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350061222}}</ref>