VATICAN: Bishop’s Move?

In London last week Chicago Daily Newsman W. H. Stoneman reported:

“Russia, through Ambassador M. A. Kostylev in Rome, has submitted proposals to the Vatican for coordinated action between Moscow and the Holy See in the solution of Eastern Europe’s postwar social and religious problems. . . . The proposals are understood to have been in a memorandum which Kostylev forwarded to the Pope through Palmiro Togliatti, [Italian] Communist (see above) and Alcide de Gaspari, [Italian] Christian Democrat leader.”

Promptly the Vatican, which rarely affirms or denies, issued a statement which neither affirmed nor denied: “Nothing is known about the reports . . . of coordinated action between Moscow and the Vatican.” Ideological and spiritual differences were irreconcilable, but “it is not impossible to imagine from the practical standpoint that Stalin might at any moment take up a surprise position before which the Vatican must be prepared.”

At week’s end the Vatican’s Osservatore Romano took a sharper stand: it denied the Stoneman “rumor.” Further, it openly berated the Russians for not aiding the Warsaw Underground (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS). Said the London Observer: “Recent Russian overtures for Vatican friendship have found favor with certain church princes who still dream about Catholic expansion in Russia. The Pope, however, seems for the time being to have decided against reconciliation with Russia, and the fate of Catholic Poland provided his overriding motives.”

In Moscow a Soviet official remarked that the Kremlin would gladly cooperate with the Vatican in solving a problem that fills Stalin with concern—”the moral bankruptcy of Europeans.”