Religion: The Roads to Rome

The Pope’s creation of 32 new cardinals (TIME, Dec. 31) was a tremendous gesture of spiritual empire. The new cardinalates, in 19 countries, scattered over six continents, showed, as no Protestant gesture could, the worldwide character of the Roman Catholic Church. The action was also one of the most sweeping adaptations to circumstance in the Church’s long history.

The Pope slashed the ratio of Italian members in the College of Cardinals from 63% to 40%. For the first time since the Papacy’s 14th-Century “Babylonian captivity” in France, Italians were in the minority. For the first time, every continent had a cardinal. The next Pope might well be non-Italian—which has not happened since the 1522 conclave chose short-reigned Hadrian VI of Utrecht.*

Next day, the Pope made his first major speech since the war’s end, laid down his program for the peace. Of all the world’s leaders, Pius was certainly one of those who had thought long, hard and deep about the underlying requisites of peace. The result was not sensational, but it was basic. It would be preached to the world’s 331,000,000 Catholics in many tongues. It could not be ignored, even in the Kremlin.

Taken together, the Pope’s two acts, on successive days, staked out for the Church its biggest religious and political role in world affairs since the Crusades. If all roads no longer led to Rome, Pius was yet eager that the roads that did lead there be used to the fullest.

New Peace. The Church, said the Pope, “must be now more than ever supranational.” At the same time, it cannot be “in an inaccessible and intangible isolation,” but must be in the very midst of mankind. The Pope’s moral essentials for a true and lasting peace:

¶ “Collaboration, good will, reciprocal confidence in all peoples.”

¶ Do-as-you-would-be-done-by approval for war trials like Nürnberg’s: “Anyone, then, who exacts the expiation of crime through the just punishment of criminals because of their misdeeds should take good care not to do himself what he denounces in others as misdeeds or crime.”

¶ Rights for the vanquished: “One who seeks reparations should base his claim on moral principles, respect for those inviolable natural rights which remain valid even for those who have surrendered unconditionally. . . .”

¶ Due protection for the individual and the family “against the pretensions of every policy of brute force, against the arbitrary totalitarianism of the powerful state.”

¶ Freedom of press and thought, with no “arbitrary censorship, one-sided judgments and false assertions of a so-called public opinion which sways the ideas and will of the electorate like reeds shaken by the wind.”

¶ Need to end undiluted national sovereignty: “Within the confines of each particular nation, as much as in the whole family of peoples, state totalitarianism is incompatible with a true and healthy democracy. Like a dangerous germ it infects the community of nations and renders it incapable of guaranteeing the security of individual peoples. It constitutes a continual menace of war.”

¶ On outlawing aggression: “If this is to be something more than a … gesture, all oppression and all arbitrary action from within and without must be banned.”

The redistribution of cardinals was not quite as revolutionary as it looked at first. Of the 70 princes of the church (28 Italian, 42 others), 51 were still in Europe. The New World went up from three to 14. The five remaining hats dotted the vastnesses of Africa, Asia Minor, Asia and Australia. But everywhere cardinals were carefully placed for maximum spiritual and political effect.

New Continents. Africa and Asia are Catholicism’s open spaces. There the Pope’s appointments exemplified his policy. The choice of Archbishop Teodosio de Gouveia of Portugal’s colonial Lourengo Marques not only gave Africa its first modern cardinal but emphasized colonial peoples’ right to effective representation in world affairs. The Vatican piously added: “The Sacred College must set the example.”

In Asia Minor, Rome’s age-old desire to gather in the Eastern Orthodox Church was reflected in the selection of red-turbaned Patriarch Gregory Peter XV of the Armenian Catholics. He joined Cardinal Ignatius Tappouni of Syria, elevated in 1935, as the second red hat from the Eastern Rite since 1472. With Russia now claiming the rest of Armenia from Turkey, the Pope’s promotion of the Russian-born Patriarch had added significance.

Still more significant was the appointment of China’s first cardinal, Bishop Thomas Tien of Tsingtao. Born 55 years ago, of Catholic parents, Cardinal-designate Tien was consecrated bishop by the Pope himself in 1939. China’s Catholics have risen from one to five million in the last 20 years.

New World. North and South America’s record-breaking 14 cardinals were dotted on the map with the same sense of worldwide polity. Cuba, Chile and Peru got their first cardinals, while Brazil and Argentina were upped to two apiece. Most notable Latin choice: tall, taciturn, efficient Bishop Antonio Caggiano of Rosario, builder of Argentina’s Catholic Action movement, who has often shown hatred of Fascism and antiSemitism.

Canada’s new place as a leading “middle power” was duly recognized by the selection of her first English-speaking cardinal, Toronto’s balding, blue-eyed Archbishop James Charles McGuigan (rhymes with McTwiggan), to balance French-speaking Quebec’s Rodrigue Cardinal Villeneuve. When Cardinal-designate McGuigan was five years old he decided to become a priest, told his mother: “When I get big I shall preach big.” He has made a notable record in largely Protestant Toronto.

Pius XII is the only Pope who has ever set foot in the U.S. He has learned to lean on it in many ways, from cash to idealism. He showed both his knowledge and his dependence in selecting the four new American cardinals.

New Europe. The Pope consciously showed that his church was above the war by choosing three cardinals each from victorious France, defeated Germany and neutral, totalitarian Spain. But once more he was practical as well as spiritual: in France and Germany he took care to pick shining lights of the resistance. Outstanding selections: small, half-paralyzed Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliege of Toulouse, who during France’s occupation openly attacked German treatment of Jews and conscription of Frenchmen; massive, blue-blooded Bishop Clemens August von Galen of Munster, whose anti-Nazi sermons and pastorals nearly cost him his life; benign, bald Bishop Konrad von Preysing of Berlin, who, when the Nazis came into power, said publicly: “We have fallen into the hands of criminals and fools.” Typical Spanish appointment: small, bespectacled Archbishop Enrique Pla y Deniel of Toledo, who was the first prelate appointed in Spain after Franco signed his agreement with the Vatican in 1941, and whose palace at Salamanca Franco used as headquarters during part of the civil war.

In selecting two red hats for the Red-dominated part of Europe, Pius showed again that he knew exactly what he was doing. Poland’s courageous, 78-year-old Archbishop Adam S. Sapieha had shared his people’s sufferings and welcomed the Red Army. Hungary’s new Primate, Archbishop Joseph Mindszenthy, had been imprisoned by the Nazis.

Nor did the Pope neglect the traditionally Protestant part of Europe. Britain’s stocky, genial Bernard Griffin, 46, was the youngest cardinal appointed; Archbishop Johannes de Jong of Utrecht was the first Dutch diocesan to receive the red hat since the Reformation.

New Clothes. As further innovation, the Vatican last week said that the Pope had decided to abandon the usual custom of holding the consistory in private. To show that world brotherhood was both necessary and attainable, the ceremony would be held in St. Peter’s. Thus on Feb. 18 spectators would see cardinals from the 19 nations—including French and German—publicly embrace in accordance with ritual and exchange the “kiss of peace.”

Unhappiest man in Rome the day the list came out was Signor Gammarelli, the thin, clear-eyed tailor who has the arduous task of supplying cardinals with all the paraphernalia of a prince of the church. Even in the best of times a cardinal’s wardrobe costs about $4,000, from his moire silk skullcap to his red silk socks and red morocco, silver-buckled shoes. Since one complete costume (a cardinal usually has a half-dozen or more) takes up to 30 yards of material, and Italy’s weavers are still short of supplies, Gammarelli feared there would not be enough for all the cardinals “unless they ruthlessly cut down their wardrobe.” First to place his order was Palermo’s Archbishop Ernesto Ruffini, who knocked at the tailor’s door the very morning he heard the happy news. Said Gammarelli last week: “I would want to satisfy them all but they will have to be patient and make do a bit.”

?*There has never been, a Hadrian VII—except in “Baron Corvo’s” brilliant, perverse novel about an English Pope who chose that title.