On July 18, 1931, the Liverpool Weekly Post reported some startling news. It said that owing to “quarrels with Fascists and Mussolini”, Pope Pius XI was considering transferring the Vatican to the Irish Free State.  

“Ireland is still the land of rumours as well as of romance,” the report said. “The latest belief among the peasants in the Southern Free State is that the Pope is coming to live in Ireland in order to get away from Fascist irritations.”  

This article could be dismissed as a journalist’s vivid imagination spurred on by gossip in the Free State and the “London clubs”. But once the international climate of 1931 and Church-state relations in Italy are considered, this seemingly preposterous idea is more understandable.