Religion: Pulse Taker

(See front cover) In Castel Gandolfo last month His Holiness Pope Pius XI, much refreshed by a summer in the cool Alban Hills, summoned to his side for an hour’s conference His Eminence Eugenic Cardinal Pacelli, Secretary of State to His Holiness, Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, Archpriest of the Vatican Basilica. What the 79-year-old Holy Father said to the austere, slim-fingered 60-year-old Prince of the Church who is his most trusted associate, no outsider knew. Next day, amid villagers’ cheers and band music, the Pope returned from Castel Gandolfo to Vatican City ten days ahead of schedule.

And the day after that Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli quietly entrained for Naples, boarded the Conte di Savoia, tacitly acknowledged that he was bound for the U. S.

Although in years past Cardinal Pacelli has spent a quiet month’s vacation in Switzerland or at Montecatini, Vatican officials blandly informed newshawks that his decision to cross the Atlantic at one of its stormiest seasons was “inspired by his love of the sea.” Tersely, the Vatican let it be known that the Cardinal Secretary of State was traveling incognito, accompanied only by his gentleman-in-waiting, Count Enrico Galeazzo, Vatican City engineer and representative of the Knights of Columbus in Rome; that the Cardinal wished no elaborate welcome in Manhattan; that his headquarters during his stay would be the great and peaceful Long Island estate of a great Catholic lady, Mrs. Nicholas Frederic Brady, devout and gracious widow of the Manhattan utilities tycoon who left her $9,700,000 at his death six years ago.

To the U. S. Press these explanations of the advent of the most potent Catholic prelate ever to take ship for New York were decidedly inadequate. Only a visit from His Holiness himself could be of greater import to U. S. Catholics. To make sense of Cardinal Pacelli’s trip, secular gossips worked overtime, evolved several theories: The Cardinal, perhaps, was being dispatched to Washington to negotiate a resumption of diplomatic relations between the U. S. and the Vatican, breached in 1867 when Congress, foreseeing the end of the Papal State’s temporal power, stopped appropriating money to maintain a minister at the Vatican. Or, he intended to invite the collaboration of the U. S. Government in the Church’s battle to the death against Communism. Again, he was going to do something about Mother Church’s No. 1 demagog, Radiorator Charles Edward Coughlin. The— loudest Catholic voice in the land had continued to belabor the U. S. President in spite of the quietus which Vatican Voices supposedly had attempted to clap on him through his easy-going superior, Detroit’s Bishop Gallagher, at Rome last summer (TIME, Aug. 17 et seq.).

Those who held the theory that the Roman Cardinal was on his way to bring the Royal Oak, Mich, priest to heel saw the deepest significance in a series of occurrences which began the day His Eminence got off the boat. Replying to charges, brought by Father Coughlin and others, that Franklin Roosevelt was a dangerous radical, Monsignor John Augustine Ryan, professor of moral theology and industrial ethics at the Catholic University of America, declared by radio from Washington: “The charge of Communism directed at President Roosevelt is the silliest, falsest, most cruel and most unjust accusation ever made against a President in all the years of American history. . . . Moreover, Father Coughlin’s monetary theories and proposals find no support in the encyclicals of either Pope Leo XIII or Pope Pius XI I think I know something about these encyclicals myself. … In this critical hour, I urge you to use every effort at your command among your relatives, friends and acquaintances in support of Franklin D.

Roosevelt.” Surprisingly, Father Coughlin issued no intemperate counterblast at his priestly colleague, merely called him “the right reverend New Dealer,” observed, “it’s up to me to prove [President Roosevelt] Communistic or else get out of thepicture.” Moreover, Father Coughlin bewildered his followers by declaring: “Roosevelt has done many things that are comendable. … If Lemke weren’t in the field, I’d tell you to vote for Roosevelt.” Observed the New York World-Tele gram: “In the face of these facts it is hard to withhold credit from the visiting Cardinal. His Eminence is a fast worker.

It is regrettable he didn’t arrive sooner.” If World-Telegram readers were thus led to believe that a fine Italian hand was at work and that more politico-ecclesiastical miracles were to follow speedily, they were disappointed. No disappointment, however, was the graceful little handout which the Cardinal had ready for ship-news reporters when they clambered aboard the Conte di Savoia.

“On this my first visit to the United States,” it read, “there is no need of a lengthy statement to have you understand my desire, cherished for a long time, to see with my own eyes this country and to feel the pulsations of its life and of its labor. . . . Despite the private character of my visit I know well that I am expected to make my little contribution to the representatives of the press as a sort of ‘journalistic tax of entry’ into the United States. Accordingly, I am happy to be able to say that the Holy Father, in the midst of the heavy burdens of His apostolic office, with youthful energy and untiring devotion ever labors by every means in His power to extend to all peoples and all nations in their present difficulties the incomparable aid and encouragement found only in the teachings of Christ. . . .

“I am indeed happy to find myself within the territory of a great people who know how to unite so beautifully and nobly a sense of discipline with the exercise of a just, legitimate and well ordered liberty. May all the sons and daughters of this North American continent, in spite of present difficulties, enjoy a condition of noble and decent human existence which is the prerequisite of a true and lasting peace in society.” The Cardinal was then officiallywelcomed to Manhattan by energetic, 80-year-old Vicar General Monsignor Michael J. Lavelle of the New York Archdiocese, whisked uptown to St. Patrick’s Cathedral to be greeted by His Eminence Patrick Cardinal Hayes, with whom two days later he received that indefatigable cultivator of the great, Columbia’s Nicholas Murray Butler, then went out to look at local churches. Between these duties at Inisfada, Mrs. Brady’s estate, Cardinal Pacelli chatted, supped with his blue-eyed hostess, born Genevieve Garvan, now a papal Duchess and board chairman of the Girl Scouts of America. Also at Inisfada the Cardinal celebrated daily Mass in devout and generous Mrs. Brady’s private chapel.

Meantime, a great lack of information obtained as to whether and when the papal Secretary of State would see any or all of the other U. S. Church princes, the Cardinals of Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia.

Even the date of his departure for Washington, where he would be received at the White House when Franklin Roosevelt returned from campaigning, was left diplomatically unspecified.

Oldest and deepest in the world is the diplomacy of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, whose policy today is based upon a system of concordats— agreements as between sovereign powers— which testify everywhere to the principle of Catholic freedom of action, even though in countries like Germany such freedom is not a fact. As a Catholic Diplomat Eugenio Pacelli rose swiftly. Born into an old Roman family which had furnished the Church many a functionary, this solemn, devout young man became a priest at 23, was summoned to the Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs at 25. Monsignor Pietro Gasparri, who later became Cardinal and Secretary of State, took an interest in young Pacelli’s career, made him a protégé. Pacelli became a minutante or copyist, then undersecretary of the Congregation, then pro-secretary, finally, under Pope Benedict XV, Gasparri’s successor.

During the War Monsignor Pacelli was appointed Nuncio at Munich. That nunciature was the channel through which many, an important diplomatic negotiation was carried on between the warring nations. Nuncio Pacelli was entrusted with Benedict XV’s famed peace proposals which German liberal politicians seriously considered. Later, in the first of Germany’s numerous small putsches, Pacelli was nearly assassinated in the streets of Munich. With the founding of the Weimar Republic he established a nunciature at Berlin, arrangedconcordats between the Vatican and Bavaria and Prussia before returning to Rome in 1929 to accept a Cardinal’s red hat. Two months later Cardinal Pacelli succeeded aging Cardinal Gasparri as the Pope’s Secretary of State.

Providence has dumped upon the narrow shoulders of Cardinal Pacelli the problems of dealing with a Godless Russia, a restless France, a bloody Spain, a paganized Germany. As Secretary of State his achievements have been less spectacular than those of such predecessors as Cardinal Consalvi who wangled a concordat from Napoleon for Pope Pius VII or even Cardinal Gasparri, who concluded the Lateran treaties with Benito Mussolini. Nevertheless, zealous Cardinal Pacelli, when the present Pope sent him as legate to Lourdes where the Holy Year closing ceremonies were held last year (TiME, May 6, 1935), was given anendorsement so warm as to impress even the college of Cardinals which will meet at Pius XI’s death to select his successor.

Said the Holy Father: “We have en trusted to you, our beloved son, who so eagerly serves the cause of the Church in our daily activity to the extent that you may be called our closest collaborator, with this most honored mission. . . . Also because you are a prince of the Church and because of the sublime outstanding achievements you have accomplished for the good of the soul, and for your special eloquence.” That eloquence Pius XI found occasion to praise again last fortnight, because Cardinal Pacelli had performed the feat of addressing a group ot journalists at the Vatican for an hour in Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, English and Latin, his accent in each impeccable. And last week observers in Rome and Vatican City still judged that Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli —despite the fact that Secretaries of State have seldom attained that office—was an outstanding candidate for the papacy.

Nowhere can the nation’s “pulsations” be more readily taken than in the nation’s Capital. In Washington Cardinal Pacell will stay at the handsome Apostolic Delegation, where no woman is ever invited to dinner or tea. The function of the small Apostolic Delegate, Most Rev. Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, is not that of a diplomat but rather of an ecclesiastical observer. Round-faced Delegate Cicognani whose 14 years as specialist in U. S. affairs in the Vatican’s Consistorial Congregation earned him the post in 1933, has little occasion to wield the Church’s authority is more in demand as a figure at pompous celebrations. From the Apostolic Delegation Cardinal Pacelli will proceed some time this week or next to the White House there to converse with President Roosevelt in French, at which both are adept. (Eng ish sometimes fails the Secretary of State when he has not rehearsed his remarks.) What Secretary and President would talk about remained, last week, their exclusive Business.