Excerpt from The Pope and Mussolini by David I. Kertzer, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Ratti was born in 1857 in the small town of Desio, in the deeply Catholic Brianza region just north of Milan, where his father managed a silk factory. His mother, a devout Catholic, was the kind of organized and intimidating woman who seemed born to run something much bigger than a household. In later years Ratti often spoke of her with deep affection and respect, but he never talked about his father. At the time of his birth, Desio and Milan were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Ratti's earliest memory was of his father telling him at age two that French and Savoyard forces were battling the Austrian army nearby. Within weeks the patchwork of duchies and kingdoms that had long composed the Italian peninsula dissolved, and a new unified Italian nation took shape.

There being no school in Desio, at age ten Achille was sent to live with his uncle, a parish priest in the tiny town of Asso, near Lake Como. The frequent presence of neighboring priests, a gregarious lot, warmed his uncle's household. Achille decided that he too wanted to be a priest and soon went off to a seminary. He returned each summer, not to his parents but to his uncle. The seminary enforced a ferocious discipline. Priests were to be obeyed without question, and rules were to be followed to the letter. None of this bothered the studious boy. His classmates called him "the little old man," for Achille would rather be left alone to his meditations than play with the other children.

In 1875 Ratti entered Milan's seminary to prepare for the priesthood. He read voraciously, not only the Italian classics such as Dante, but also English and American literature. He expressed such concern for the challenges faced by Mark Twain's Jim, Huckleberry Finn's enslaved sidekick, that his classmates dubbed him l'africano. Although the nickname would not stick, Achille pronounced himself pleased with it, telling his classmates he would one day serve as a missionary in Africa. Ratti's favorite author was the great Milanese writer Alessandro Manzoni. One day many years later, when he was pope, his master of ceremonies entered his study and, as was the custom, got on his knees to await instructions. The pope was pacing the room, absorbed in reading aloud a passage from Manzoni's novel The Betrothed. Twenty minutes passed before he stopped and took note of the kneeling cleric. The pope apologized for the delay but added with a smile: "These are pages that are worth listening to on one's knees, Monsignor!"

After four years in Milan, Ratti moved to Rome to continue his studies at the recently opened Lombard College. Rome had been ruled by popes for over a millennium, but nine years earlier it had been conquered and was now the capital of the newly unified Italian nation.

Excerpted from The Pope and Mussolini by David I. Kertzer. Copyright © 2014 by David I. Kertzer. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.