The new Pope's coronation was unprecedented in its grandeur. For it was the first coronation of a Pope since the Lateran Treaty and therefore the first in the open air for nearly a century, and the first which combined a ceremony in the open with the ability to travel easily from all parts of the world. The King of England had a representative in the Duke of Norfolk. For the first time, the President of the United States sent a representative, its ambassador in London Joseph Kennedy, who was a Catholic. The prime minister of Eire, Eamonn De Valera, came in person, France sent the poet Claudel, Italy its Crown Prince Umberto and its Foreign Secretary Count Ciano. Germany was content with its ambassador in the Vatican, von Bergen. Ciano was alleged to have made a scene when he found that he was placed below the Duke of Norfolk. After the coronation was an enormous reception at the Palazzo Colonna where Osborne introduced the Duke of Norfolk to Cardinal Maglione and other members of the Curia.

Pius XI's conflict with Hitler and Mussolini left a Papacy more popular in Britain than at any time since the Reformation, and more popular in France than at any time since the fall of Louis Napoleon.

On 13 March 1939, only a few days after the Pope's election, Hitler drove into Prague and dismembered Czechoslovakia.