Birth Name:  Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti
Born: May 31, 1857 at Desio, Italy
Died:  February 10, 1931 at the Vatican (Age 81)
Elected: February 6, 1922, the 259th Roman Pontiff
Pontificate:  Famously signed the Lateran Treaty which recognized Italy's seizing of the Papal States while also recognizing the sovereignty of the Church in Vatican City;  Also signed the Concordat with Germany in 1933, ostensibly to guarantee protection of the Church under the brand new Chancellor, Adolf Hitler (the Concordat was broken immediately by the Nazis, who began persecuting the Church, instead);  Commissioned development of "Syllabus Against Racism", condemning any promotion of Naziism or other racist ideologies promulgated in Catholic universities; Issued encyclical Casti connubii, condemning artificial contraception, while reinforcing the unitive good of intercourse in the marriages of those unable to conceive; First pope to embrace modern papal communication, creating Vatican Radio in 1931;  Founded the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
Motto:  Opus Iustitiae Pax (The Peace of Christ in the Realm of Christ)

                           
                                 

Excerpts from Casti Connubii (On Christian Marriage)

6.  ...each individual marriage, inasmuch as it is a conjugal union of a particular man and woman, arises only from the free consent of each of the spouses; and this free act of the will, by which each party hands over and accepts those rights proper to the state of marriage, is so necessary to constitute true marriage that it cannot be supplied by any human power.  This freedom, however, regards only the question whether the contracting parties really wish to enter upon matrimony or to marry this particular person; but the nature of matrimony is entirely independent of the free will of man, so that if one has once contracted matrimony he is thereby subject to its divinely made laws and its essential properties.

7.  By matrimony, therefore, the souls of the contracting parties are joined and knit together more directly and more intimately than are their bodies, and that not by any passing affection of sense of spirit, but by a deliberate and firm act of the will; and from this union of souls by God’s decree, a sacred and inviolable bond arises. Hence the nature of this contract, which is proper and peculiar to it alone, makes it entirely different both from the union of animals entered into by the blind instinct of nature alone in which neither reason nor free will plays a part, and also from the haphazard unions of men, which are far removed from all true and honorable unions of will and enjoy none of the rights of family life.

13. But Christian parents must also understand that they are destined not only to propagate and preserve the human race on earth, indeed not only to educate any kind of worshippers of the true God, but children who are to become members of the Church of Christ, to raise up fellow-citizens of the Saints, and members of God’s household, that the worshippers of God and Our Savior may daily increase.

14. ...it is theirs to offer their offspring to the Church in order that by this most fruitful Mother of the children of God they may be regenerated through the laver of Baptism unto supernatural justice and finally be made living members of Christ, partakers of immortal life, and heirs of that eternal glory to which we all aspire from our inmost heart.

20. Wherefore, conjugal faith, or honor, demands in the first place the complete unity of matrimony which the Creator Himself laid down in the beginning when He wished it to be not otherwise than between one man and one woman. And although afterwards this primeval law was relaxed to some extent by God, the Supreme Legislator, there is no doubt that the law of the Gospel fully restored that original and perfect unity, and abrogated all dispensations as the words of Christ and the constant teaching and action of the Church show plainly.

34. And this inviolable stability, although not in the same perfect measure in every case, belongs to every true marriage, for the word of the Lord: “What God hath joined together let no man put asunder,” must of necessity include all true marriages without exception, since it was spoken of the marriage of our first parents, the prototype of every future marriage. Therefore although before Christ the sublimeness and the severity of the primeval law was so tempered that Moses permitted to the chosen people of God on account of the hardness of their hearts that a bill of divorce might be given in certain circumstances, nevertheless, Christ, by virtue of His supreme legislative power, recalled this concession of greater liberty and restored the primeval law in its integrity by those words which must never be forgotten, “What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.”

54.  Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose (through contraception - ed.) sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.

55.  ...As St. Augustine notes, “Intercourse even with one’s legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented. Onan, the son of Juda, did this and the Lord killed him for it.”

69.  ...the family is more sacred than the State and...men are begotten not for the earth and for time, but for Heaven and eternity.

71.  Furthermore, Christian doctrine establishes, and the light of human reason makes it most clear, that private individuals have no other power over the members of their bodies than that which pertains to their natural ends; and they are not free to destroy or mutilate their members, or in any other way render themselves unfit for their natural functions, except when no other provision can be made for the good of the whole body.
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