Early Life of Pope Pius XII - Family Background

Family Background

Eugenio was born into a family which, for most of the 19th century, was in service to the Holy See. The Pacelli family had a long tradition of legal training. His grandfather, Marcantonio Pacelli, had been minister of finance for Pope Gregory XVI and deputy minister of interior under Pope Pius IX from 1851 to 1870. He founded the L’Osservatore Romano on July 20, 1860. His father Filippo Pacelli, was as solicitor (lawyer) in the Congregation of the Sacred Rota. His brother, Francesco Pacelli, a Vatican lawyer as well, was dean of the lawyers of the Rota He was also the legal advisor to Pius XI, in which role he negotiated the Lateran Treaty in 1929, bringing an end to the Roman Question. It established the independence of the Papacy with the formation of Vatican City as a sovereign entity. Francesco Pacelli described in his Diario della Conciliazione details and difficulties of these negotiations from a Vatican perspective.

The family's parish church in Rome was the Chiesa Nuova where the body of St. Philip Neri was under the altar in a silver casket. The saint, with his unending sense of humor and love for education, music and culture, was one of the great heroes of young Eugenio Pacelli. Eugenio served as an altar boy at Chiesa Nuova, and, after his ordination as a priest, took weekly confessions there. Eugenio was the third of four children, the second son. Two days after his birth, he was baptized at the Church of Saints Celso and Giuliano by his uncle, Monsignor Giuseppe Pacelli. His godparents were his maternal uncle Filippo Graziosi and paternal aunt Teresa Pacelli. In the apartment where he grew up, there was a shrine of the Madonna with a prie-dieu Pacelli would frequently pray. He attended a kindergarten and elementary school conducted by the Sisters of Divine Providence at the age of four. In 1939, a bust of Pius XII was unveiled at the school.