Pius

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  • pious
  • pius: (Latin) dutiful, conscienntious
  • Pius: the name of 12 Roman Catholic popes, 11 in Joyce's time. Pope Pius XI (1857 – 1939) was pope at the writing of Finnegan's Wake, elevated in 1922. He resisted the anti-Semitism of Hitler's and Mussolini's governments. Pius XI commissioned an encyclical Humani Generis Unitas (The Unity of the Human Race) to denounce racism in the USA, Europe and elsewhere, antisemitism, colonialism and violent German nationalism, though it was not publiched before his death.