Religion: Interesting Particulars

“This State is no larger than a good-sized eighteen-hole golf course. . . . [It] is the most heavily telephoned State in the world. … It can provide a telephone for every inhabitant. . . . Although the Pontiff has his own telephone and although it is listed in the telephone directory of Vatican City as number 101, no one can call him. The apparatus is so constructed that when the number is dialed, the Pope’s telephone does not ring. . . . The Pope has surrendered to the use of the fountain pen for signing all his documents, although he unfailingly dips the pen into the inkwell before applying it to the paper. . . . No one ever thinks of filling the pen but the inkwell is always filled. . . . In the Papal State the projection of films is prohibited. The Pope never sees even the most innocuous news reel. . . . Although there is no crime in Vatican City there is a jail. . . . No sentence has yet been passed on any penal case. . . . No better conditions exist for workers than those prevailing in the service of the Pope. . . . They have enough to spend on simple amusements. They are secure and happy in the highest sense of social reform. . . . There can never be a breath of scandal. Family and social probity are an obligatory minimum. . . . The Pope is air-minded, permits the cardinals to fly, and has even projected a fleet of helicopters.”

Typical are the above quotes from A Reporter At The Papal Court by Thomas B. Morgan (Longmans, Green, $3) published last week. As might be guessed, fact is that no other correspondent has ever combined such a keen American nose for newsy Papal intimacies with such a respectful Roman nose for bowing reverence to the Holy Apostolic Roman Catholic Church. It is a credit to the intelligence of the Holy See that Mr. Morgan was granted in 1929 what was then the first and is still the only exclusive interview ever given to a journalist by Pius XI.

When the late Pope Benedict XV died, Correspondent Morgan had entered the death chamber by permission and kissed the slippered foot of the late Pontiff even before the fact of Death, ascertained by physicians, was officially certified by Cardinal Gasparri and made known with the words “Vere papa mortuus est.” With his inquisitive yet reverent eyes. Observer Morgan noted that the Cardinal did not observe the quaint Papal ceremony for determining Death once used but since fallen into disuse: “The ceremony consisted in tapping the Pope on the forehead with a small silver hammer and calling him by his first name three times.”

The private life of a Swiss Guard, the yearning to communicate with other planets of the Pope’s chief radio technician, and the number of bars in the Papal State (four) are all as familiar to Correspondent Morgan as the first names by which he called servants of the Holy Father during 18 years in Rome representing Associated Press, then United Press (TIME, Nov. n, 1935). He tells why voyaging midshipmen from the U. S. Naval Academy, when in Rome, invariably salute His Holiness with “nine ‘NAVYS’ and three ‘HOLY FATHER’S.’ ”

After the first such youthful cheer some years ago Pius XI was all smiles and calmly turned to the cheerleader. ”Do it again. That is worth an encore,” he commanded.

Observer Morgan in his chapter Behind the Ceremonies, points out that the canonization of a Catholic saint, although it is at least as elaborate as the British Coronation, is never rehearsed. Canonizations “being purely religious exercises the idea of rehearsal is repugnant. . . . These grandiose functions are held at such in frequent intervals that the performers, except the Pope, the Pontifical Court and the College of Cardinals are never the same. [Yet] they must appear spontaneously perfect, as if each single participant had known his part for a lifetime and acted from inherent impulse. . . . One interesting particular is that gifts of candles, bread, wine, water, turtle doves and birds in elaborate cages are offered to the Pope.”

To extant body of testimony of those who knew Pius-before-the-Vatican, Reporter Morgan adds many a revealing detail. He has twice visited Desio, the Pope’s birthplace where he is still referred to as “Pope Ratti,” “Cardinal Ratti” or even plain “Achille Ratti.” Said a contemporary of Pius XI: “He was in every boyish prank. … He always liked to jump. … In a fight with my cousin, he got a bloody nose. He never forgot that. It took him a year but he gave his milk brother [son of Achille Ratti’s wet-nurse] something to remember in a black eye.”

Of the Pope’s present state of health, Reporter Morgan tells how Pius XI has instituted “almost to the point of dogma,” the dictum that the Pope must not be ill. When Cardinal Salotti dared to suggest, last year, that the Pope take a rest, “The Pontiff stirred. His face was grave with resentment. . . . ‘The Lord has endowed you with many good qualities, Salotti,’ decreed the Holy Father in acid and peremptory terms, ‘but he denied you a clinical eye.’ ” Likewise, to a monk who made bold to admonish Pius XI to spare his legs: “Do not be so engrossed about my lameness. . . . God and myself take that responsibility.”