19 The Vatican, Latin America, Japan, and China

The importance of the close friendship between the Vatican and the White House is greatly magnified when one turns one’s eyes southwards, to Central and South America. There, in contrast to the case of the United States of America, the Catholic Church does not set out to conquer, at it has already converted Central and South American countries into a solid Catholic bloc, the lives of individuals as well as of the various States conforming to the, ethics and practice of Catholicism.

But, apart from the fact that in Central and South America the Catholic Church is the supreme force around which life revolves, these areas are important in the eyes of the Vatican as instruments which strengthen its bargaining power in the international field of politics. This became especially true with regard to the Vatican and the United States of America before and during the Second World War. In the years before the war one of the most cherished external policies of President Roosevelt was the creation of a compact Pan-American bloc, comprising the North, Central, and South American peoples. This would present a common front to non-American Powers agreed on a continental policy directed towards safeguarding the general security of all the American nations.

Such a policy may have been pursued merely because it to a great extent guaranteed the security of the United States of America; but whether Roosevelt set himself the task of strengthening the moral position of the United States of America as leader of the Americas, or whether he was motivated by a genuine desire to unite the American nations for their common benefit, is immaterial to the relationship between the Vatican and the Americas. The fact remains that, in carrying out this policy, President Roosevelt realized that the friendship of the Vatican was essential if he was to rally the Central and South American countries to his project.

The success of his “Good Neighbor” policy depended upon the amount of support he could get from the Pope. This was thoroughly discussed when the Papal Representative, Cardinal Pacelli, visited Roosevelt in 1936, for, besides the other issues we have already mentioned, both the President and the Cardinal wanted to determine how far they could co-operate in the international sphere. As the Vatican at that time was pursuing a policy of establishing Authoritarianism. wherever it could, especially in countries where the majority of the population was Catholic, this policy not only covered Europe, but extended to the American Continent and included Central and South America.

It was no mere coincidence that before the war in Spain broke out, the Vatican sent Cardinal Pacelli in 1934 on a triumphant tour of South America. After his departure from these countries the immediate effect was a visible strengthening of Authoritarianism. Catholic Fascist movements based on the Italian model emerged, and Catholic religious and lay advocates of the Corporate State became vociferous. A more intensive campaign was launched against the common enemy of civil and religious power-the Socialist ideology in its various degrees.

These were the heydays of the joint promotion of Fascist-Catholic Authoritarianism which seemed destined to characterize the century.

The White House, although in disagreement with the Catholic Church’s support of this tendency in Latin America, closed an eye to it, provided it could obtain the Vatican’s co-operation in persuading Latin America to favor the United States of America’s “Good Neighbor” policy. In return the United States of America would comply with the Vatican’s wish to deprive the Spanish Republic of necessary armaments (as already seen). Further, as the Vatican had influenced the Catholic vote in the Presidential election and would eventually advise the American Hierarchy to support Roosevelt’s administration, the United States of America would do everything possible to re-establish diplomatic relations with Rome.

The Vatican kept the influence it could exercise in Latin America in the balance when dealing with Roosevelt, not only before, but also during, the war. Before the United States of America’s entry into the conflict, and while the Vatican was counting on a Fascist victory, the most vociferous elements in the whole American Continent in their hostility towards any move to help the democracies were the Catholics. They were amongst the most obdurate Isolationists, and after Russia was attacked (June 1941) they became the bitterest enemies of Roosevelt’s policy owing to their (and naturally the Vatican’s) hatred of the Atheistic Soviets.

When, however, success no longer followed the Fascist dictatorships, and it became evident who the victors would be, Latin America, although still bitter about the Anglo-American partnership with Russia, fell quickly into line with Roosevelt’s policy. This compliance was shown by the forming of a united Western hemisphere, by declaring war on the Axis, and by sending help in food, money, and men to the Allies. Not only the natural desire to side with the victor, but also pressure from the Vatican, persuaded the Latin nations to take such a step. This increased the bargaining power of the Vatican with the United States, which the Pope wanted to influence to follow a given course with the other Western democracies in their policy towards Soviet Russia and the settlement of a postwar social and political order in Europe.

Latin America, seen from this point of view, was, and still is, a great instrument in the global policy of the Vatican―an instrument which has been employed for definite political reasons, not only on the occasion just mentioned, but also in numerous earlier instances, such as the one already given, when during the Abyssinian War the Vatican greatly influenced the Latin-American Republics, at the League of Nations, to vote for measures which would not impede Mussolini from prosecuting his attack on Ethiopia, or when, during the Spanish Civil War, Rome exerted all its influence to paralyse the Spanish Republic.

The extent to which the Vatican can influence Latin America, at first seeming impossible, is the logical sequence of the repercussions which an overpowering spiritual authority can exercise on ethical, social, and political matters. We have seen this process at work in practically all the events which we have so far examined in this book. We have witnessed it in several countries of Europe where only a minority of the population are active Catholics and where Governments were openly hostile to the Catholic Church.

If, in spite of hostility, the Catholic Church, for good or for evil, can influence the internal and external policies of these countries, how much easier it must be for it to wield political power where it has ruled and continues to rule practically unchallenged! For it must be remembered that Latin America is pervaded from top to bottom with the spirit and ethics of the Catholic Church. Except for a small minority, the whole population of a Latin-American Republic is born, is nurtured, and dies, in an atmosphere of Catholicism. Even those who do not practise the religion cannot escape the effects of a society in which the Catholic Church permeates all strata, from the economic to the cultural, from the social to the political.

Whether the widespread illiteracy which still pervades Latin America is due mainly to the Catholic Church or to other causes, we cannot tell. The fact remains, however, that in South America there is more illiteracy than in any other region inhabited by a white race.

To quote only a few figures: At the outbreak of the Second World War (1939) Europe and the U. S. S. R., which still had enormous backward areas, bad about 8 per cent illiteracy. Japan, which less than a century before had been one of the most illiterate countries, by 1935 had the lowest percentage of illiteracy in the whole world-namely, 1 per cent. In contrast to this, their neighbors, where Catholicism had been prominent for centuries-namely, the Philippines-still had 35 per cent illiteracy, while Mexico, one of the most progressive Latin-American countries, bad to cope with 45 per cent illiteracy, in spite of the enormous efforts of her Government. Brazil, the largest South American country, in 1939 had more than 60 per cent, coming third in illiteracy to the Netherlands East Indies, with 97 per cent, and British India with 90 per cent.

In this state of affairs the Church ‘is allied with those elements of a social and economic nature whose interest it is to maintain the status quo as long as possible―or at least with as little change as possible. An illiterate populace gives tremendous force to Catholicism, enabling it to dominate the internal and external conduct Of Latin America as a whole.

Although Latin America is completely under the spell of the Catholic Church, this does not mean that there are no forces which work against its spiritual dominion. On the contrary, more than one explosion has taken place in which the hostile forces involved gave, no quarter to their enemies. The leading country against the dominion of the Catholic Church in Latin America has been, and till is, Mexico. There the Church, which for centuries exercised a stranglehold on all forms of life, was compelled, in the decades between the two world wars, to take a less prominent part and to confine its activities to the purely religious field. Its monopoly in education and culture, and its enormous wealth, were forcibly taken from it. The Mexican progressive forces, in fact, did exactly what the Spanish Republic did a few years later. As in the case of Spain, the Catholic Church reacted by starting a most destructive Civil War, which tore the country for several years, marking the third decade of this century (1920-30) with risings, mutinies, and assassinations, engineered by Catholic generals, priests, and laymen against the legal Governments, some members of religious Orders going so far as to incite lay Catholics to kill the head of the Republic, an incitement which bore fruit when a most devout member of the Church, after direct instigation by the Mother Superior of a Convent, murdered the Mexican President, General Alvaro Obregon (July 17, 1928); while in the foreign field the Church did not hesitate to invoke the intervention of the United States of America.

[The new President had been elected on July 1, 1928. He was murdered the day following his declaration that the Church had to be blamed, for the Civil War. Ex-President Calles himself went to question the murderer, who declared that he was made to take the President’s life by “Christ our Lord, in order that religion may prevail in Mexico.” To numerous American press men the murderer stated: “I killed General Obregon because he was the instigator of the persecution of the Catholic Church.” At his trial he confessed that the Mother Superior of the Convent of Espirito Santo had “inspired” his crime. ]

The influence of the American Hierarchy and the pressure of the American oil companies expropriated by the Mexican Government together were so strong that at one moment the United States of “‘America seriously considered intervening, under the pretext of annual maneuvers at the Mexican border, and war correspondents were warned to he in readiness. The alliance of the Catholic Church and the North American oil concerns, both of whom had great wealth to defend in Mexican territory, almost succeeded. This campaign continued, although with less virulence and good luck, until the first term of President Roosevelt.

The Vatican’s attempts to enlist foreign secular help to crush the Mexican Secular Government were in vain, as Roosevelt was convinced that he could not interfere in the internal affairs of Mexico without alarming the already suspicious Latin-American countries and thus imperilling his “Good Neighbor” policy. Accordingly the Vatican, on the return of Cardinal Pacelli from his American tour in 1936, resorted to the only means left-the initiation of a Catholic authoritarian political movement in Mexico.

The movement came into the open in 1937, under the name of La Union Nacional Sinarquista, later called Sinarquism. It was a mixture of Catholic dictatorship on the model of Franco’s, of Fascism, Nazism, and the Ku- Klux-Klan. It had a sixteen-point program. It openly declared war on democracy and all. other enemies of the Catholic Church, and had as its main object the restoration of the Catholic Church to its former power.

Its members were mostly devout Catholics, amongst whom were priests and even bishops, and it was soon recognized as “the most dangerous Fascist movement in Latin America”―so much so that even Catholic papers declared that “if Sinarquism succeeded in its purpose of increasing its numbers considerably, there is real danger of civil war” (The Commonweal and Catholic Herald, August 4, 1944). By 1943-4 it was reckoned that it had between a million and. one and a half million members.

The movement, it should be noted, sprang up at the same time as Father Coughlin was preparing the ground for a similar movement, in the United States of America. Simultaneously, in practically all the other Latin- American countries, Fascist and semi-Fascist movement s were being created in imitation of their European counterparts; and the Civil War in Spain was proceeding on its fat course.

This Totalitarianism, unlike that which had previously characterized Latin- American political life, had taken definite shape and ideological formula with startling abruptness. The sudden wave Catholic-Fascist Authoritarianism sweeping Latin America from South to North was no mere coincidence; it was but the extension of the policy which the Vatican had been pursuing in Europe.

This system of Catholic Totalitarianism, extending from the Argentine to the United States of America, was to render great service to the Vatican’s world policy before, and above all during, the Second World War. For all these countries, being under the same central spiritual direction, had to support a given policy-namely, that promulgated by the Vatican. Thus, as before the war, the policy of Catholic American Authoritarianism was one of sympathy with the Fascist countries of Europe, so with the outbreak of the war their affinity with Fascism increased. Their help did not remain only theoretical, but passed into the field of practical politics.

The Catholic Church, during the first two years of the Second World War, supported Fascism and thus directly and indirectly saw to it that forces outside Europe―in this case in the Americas―did not impede the establishment of an authoritarian Europe. To achieve this purpose it managed in such a way that those American elements which wanted to help the Western democracies should not fulfill their aims.

An Isolationist campaign was started throughout the Western hemisphere, the main purpose of which was to let Europe solve its own problems. It was believed that, as Nazism and Fascism had the upper hand, they would win the war. This American Isolationism, which was to a certain extent natural enough, was advocated by various sections of Latin and North American society very little concerned with religion, and was enormously strengthened by the weight of the Catholic Church.

In fact, the case for American Isolationism was expounded by Catholics-this not only in Latin America, but significantly enough in the United States of America as well. Catholicism became the very backbone of Isolationism. Suffice it to give a few examples.

The Jesuit magazine America, on July 19, 1940, amongst other things, declared:

Is it the fixed purpose of the President to bring this country into an undeclared war against Germany and Italy? As the Archbishop of Cincinnati has said, we have no moral justification for making war against nations…. It is no part of our duty to prepare armaments to be used in England’s aid.

The center of Catholic Isolationism was Father Coughlin, who, talking about Nazi Germany, said:

Perhaps, nothing is greater proof of the rottenness of the “empire-system” than that one single unified, clean-living people, fired by an ideal to liberate the world once and for all from an orientalist gold-debt slave system of finance, can march tireless over nation after nation, and bring two great empires to their knees.

He went even farther, and in Social justice declared:

Great Britain is doomed and should be doomed. There is no danger of Hitler threatening the United States. We should build armaments for the purpose of crushing Soviet Russia, in co-operation with the Christian Totalitarian States: Italy, Germany, Spain, and Portugal (quoted by League of Human Rights Bulletin, Cleveland, Ohio).

This, in a nutshell, was the main purpose of American Isolationism whether of the North or South American brand―as supported by Catholic extremists. The American Hierarchy, at a time when Hitler was marching from one military success to another, raised the slogan “Leave Europe to God, ” and several dignitaries, including Monsignor Duffy, of Buffalo, went so far as to declare that if the United States of America should ever become an ally of Soviet Russia they would publicly ask Catholic soldiers to refuse to fight.

In the United States of America this sort of Isolationism was silenced by Pearl Harbor in December 1941, but in Latin America it persisted until almost the very end of the war. It diminished only after the Vatican had openly sided with the Western Powers and when the United States of America brought pressure to bear upon the South American States, which by the end of 1944, or spring of 1945, hastened to declare war on the Axis.

With the defeat of Fascism in Europe, Catholic Authoritarianism in the Americas, although not so blatant as in the heyday of Mussolini and Hitler, was, nevertheless, as active as ever. This especially with regard to Latin America, where the various Fascist and semi-Fascist movements, subdued for only a short while, openly resumed their activities, in unison with the last citadel of Catholic Fascism in Europe-namely, Franco’s Spain.

We have already mentioned the plan for the creation of a Latin bloc under the aegis of Hitler’s New Order. The heir of such a plan during the last years of the Second World War automatically became Spanish Fascism, which, incidentally, had entertained similar ideas since its very creation. This scheme was mainly directed to Latin America, and in the dawn of peace it once more became active. The impetus it received was not drawn from native sources alone, but from the great idea of a Spanish-Latin bloc, linked and directed by the Iberian Fascism of Franco.

The chief plan of this surviving Fascism in Latin America was that of merging all Nazi-Fascist-Falangist movements throughout Central and South America. This activity was carried out mainly through Franco’s Falange Exterior and the various other diplomatic and cultural organizations in America, whose task became that of linking the Spanish Falange, the Portuguese Legiao in the Iberian Peninsula, and the Latin Fascist movements in America. The Falange in Cuba, for instance, was linked up with Mexican Sinarquismo and with the coups d’etat which in Argentina, and then in Brazil, followed the end of the Second World War.

In the last-named country President Vargas was thrown out of office by General Goes Monteiro, who, during the war, was so openly pro-Nazi Germany and so keen a supporter of Fascism that when Brazil finally joined the Allies he had to “resign” from the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Brazilian Army.

To show how the Vatican was behind this trend in Brazil, suffice it to say that it went so far as to excommunicate a Catholic bishop:

I was excommunicated [said the Bishop] for my exposure of the Hispanidad movement in the Brazilian See and in other American countries. Hispanidad is the Falange in action.

In the organization were representatives of the Spanish and Portuguese Fascist Parties, the Legigo and the Falange. The leader of the organization in Brazil was Ramon Cuesta, the Spanish Ambassador, who directed all Falangist activities in South America from Rio de Janeiro. Cuesta maintained contact with the whole of America, organizing a movement aimed at the creation of Franco’s Iberian “Empire.” Political Imperialism is trying to survive in, the Americas under the leadership of the Vatican and Franco. (Mgr. C. Duarte Costa, Rio de Janeiro, July 1945.) SpanishCatholic- South American Fascism had the control of a string of seven important and a dozen minor newspapers in Havana, Bogota, Quito, Mexico City, Santiago, Caracas, and Panama City.

By October 1945 the “Latin bloc” had started to move as a well-organized Catholic Fascist movement, closely linking continent with continent. In the years following the Second World War the Catholicity of Latin America was stressed more energetically than before both by the Church and by the various Governments, with result that the Vatican’s influence continued to grow rapidly. This caused Catholic social doctrines supporting Authoritarianism to embodied in the legislation of the countries concerned. The following examples are typical: The Brazilian Parliament decreed that a speech delivered in Rio de Janeiro in 1934 by Pius XII, when Papal de gate, should be written on a bronze plaque and affixed to the wall of the Chamber (September, 1946).

The new Constitution of Bra officially made Catholicism the State religion, at the same time prohibiting divorce and making it compulsory that the name of Go be invoked in the preamble of the Constitution (August September 1946). The new President of Colombia, immediately after his election, hastened to express his “determination” to govern only according to the principles of the Papal encyclicals (August 1946)― the same principles, the reader should remember, as had been adopted by Mussolini, Franco, Salazar, and other Fascist dictators.

What was the intention of all this plotting to unite Catholic Spain, Portugal, and all the Central and South American countries into a racial, religious, and linguistic authoritarian unit? Was it meant as a reaction to the predominance of Protestant United States of America in the Western hemisphere, of England and, above an, Soviet Russia in Europe? Or was it but the first step in the post-Second-World-War period leading to the resurrection of a pugnacious Fascism? Only the future will tell. The fact that it existed and that it became so active immediately after Fascism was defeated in Europe shows that the real motive behind it all was that the Vatican had resumed in earnest its great plan of organizing Catholic Authoritarianism in the Western hemisphere to counterbalance, in due time, a revolutionary Europe.

It is evident, therefore, that the Catholic Church, by directing a given political trend towards an international issue―e. g., the Abyssinian War, Spanish Civil War, and Second World War―can influence the course of events on a continental, indeed on a global, scale and exert pressure on great countries which consider it useful to align the Church’s friendship on their side.

In this case the Vatican had at its disposal, for use as an instrument in world and domestic policy Within more than one country, all the Catholic Churches on the American Continent. These it employed to bargain with Roosevelt in the attempt to keep the United States of America and Latin America out of the war and to make the Allies check Soviet Russia and Communism in Europe. In short, the Vatican steered American Catholicism on a set path in order to strengthen its policy in Europe against Soviet Russia, and against the spreading of the Socialist ideology while at the same time supporting Right-wing Authoritarianism wherever possible.

South and Central America, however, would lose much of their importance as Catholic countries and, above all, as bargaining weight used by the Vatican in the field of international politics if they were not guided by the leading country of the American Continent, the United States of America. For the United States of America has all the appearances of maintaining its position as one of the most powerful countries―if not of becoming the most powerful country―of the world.

As economic and financial strength automatically import political strength, it is easy to see that the dominating Church in the United States of America would greatly benefit abroad by the immense prestige of an all-powerful nation. This, in turn, would make it easier for that Church to further its spiritual interest. The Vatican designs to conquer the United States of America, not only as such, but also as the leader of the Americas and the potential leader of American Catholicism.

When contemplating the strides being made by the Catholic Church in the United States of America, and keeping in mind this scheme embracing the whole Continent, it is easy to see the important place of Latin America. Latin America will simply reinforce the dynamism of United States of America Catholicism. This, in turn, will impart vitality to the rather easygoing Catholicism of South America by introducing not merely a North American Catholic policy, but a Continental American Catholic policy to confront interContinental issues. That is the real pivot on which the Vatican’s policy towards the United States of America revolves.

By creating a powerful Catholicism within the United States of America aiming eventually to conquer the country, the Catholic Church is attempting to align the whole American Continent in a powerful Catholic bloc, to counter-oppose not only a semi-Atheist and revolutionary Europe, but also a fermenting and restless Asia. For it is there that the two great forces, economic and ideological, ultimately will clash. These forces, represented in the eyes of the Catholic Church by Soviet Russia and Communism on the one hand, and by the Western Powers, led by the United States of America, on ‘the other hand, had already begun an unofficial war decades before the outbreak of the two world wars.

The conflict in the years to come will assume a more acute form, and as the Vatican has great interests in Asia, it follows that it will befriend any Power hostile to Russia and Communism. This long range policy has been slowly unfolding itself, especially since the beginning of the post-Second World War, and has been based On friendship with an expanding United States of America.

The Vatican’s policy in Asia, although based on the furtherance of Catholicism, was strongly influenced, in the period between the two world wars, by the general policy of the Catholic Church in Europe. It favored any individual, movement, or nation ready to make an alliance with it and to grant it privileges and help in fighting the common enemy ― Bolshevism.

This policy was initiated in Asia in the years following the First World War, when the Catholic Church, which previously had merely tried to expand, looked for non-religious Allies to cope with the Red bogy it had already encountered in Europe. For the geographical proximity of Soviet Russia to such huge human conglomerations as Japan, China, and India, and the awakening of the Asiatic people to the spreading Bolshevik ideology, had begun to alarm the various elements whose interests lay in the checking of such a danger.

The nation which above all others could become a useful partner to the Catholic Church was Japan. This owing to the following factors. First, Japan was an independent country, capable of an independent domestic and foreign policy. Secondly, it was clear that Japan intended to expand over China, where the Vatican had interests to protect. Thirdly, Japan was the natural enemy of Russia, especially since the Red Revolution.

This last factor was of paramount importance to the creation of good relations between the Vatican and Japan, for it meant that both, dreading the same enemy-the one for racial, economic, and political, the other for ideological and religious, reasons ― had common ground on which to collaborate in Asia.

Such collaboration began when, following Japan’s first aggression in Manchuria in 1931, the Vatican noticed with pleasure that the Japanese in the newly occupied territories were making it their chief task ruthlessly to stamp out Bolshevism. This was of the greatest importance from the Vatican’s viewpoint, for the existence of Chinese Communist bands roaming about chaotic China had meanwhile brought the Bolshevik menace in Asia nearer than ever.

From that time onwards the Vatican’s intercourse with Japan which officially dated back as far as 1919, when an Apostolic Delegation was first created in Tokyo-became more and more cordial, especially since the Japanese territorial expansion and the consolidation of that peculiar brand of Japanese Authoritarianism at home.

It may have been coincidence, but it should be noted that the relationship between the Vatican and Japan became closer at the beginning of the fourth decade of the century, when Fascism and Nazism were consolidating themselves in Europe and the Pope had begun his first great campaign against Bolshevism, and Japan set about liquidating the Liberal and democratic forces in Japan itself, while committing its first aggression against Manchuria.

This friendship continued to improve, especially when a full-scale war began, in 1936, between Japan and China and the Japanese gained control of vast regions in its neighbor’s country. It was strengthened when Nazi Germany and Japan drew up an intercontinental plan and signed the Anti- Comintern Pact (1936), thanks to which the arch-enemy of both-namely, Soviet Russia-was closed in from the East and the West by these two formidable countries.

In the eyes of the Catholic Church, Japan was to be the Germany of the East, the destroyer of Bolshevism in Asia and the mortal enemy of Soviet Russia.

Japan was not slow in realizing the usefulness of the Catholic Church, and when she overran vast Chinese territories she gave promises to respect Catholic missions and even grant them privileges ‘when possible.

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, to ingratiate herself with the Japanese overlords, went very far, even in matters of religious and moral principles. Such an attitude was most remarkable, especially when the Japanese rulers, to enhance the Authoritarianism of a country ready to declare war on the West, passed a law declaring that all Japanese subjects had to pay homage to the Mikado. This naturally affected the 120,000 Catholics in Japan, and the Vatican at first objected to it, stating that is was contrary to the doctrines of Catholicism. But its protests were short-lived and it soon consented, having forgotten the early Christians who died just because they refused to obey laws such as this one.

When the Second World War broke out the Vatican and Japan drew still closer, for the Catholic Church was hoping that the policy of the Anti- Comintern Pact would at last yield results. But when Hitler struck against Russia the joy of the Vatican was only half what it might have been; for Japan, instead of attacking from the East, as had been hoped, followed a plan of her own and hit at Pearl Harbor, thus drawing the United States of America into the war.

The Vatican, however, making the best of the situation, was soon consoled by the incredible advances of Japan in the East. It seemed as if, after all, the partners of the Anti-Comintern Pact would win the war. By 1942 Hitler was at the gates of Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, while Japan had occupied Singapore, Hong Kong, and overrun immense territories.

It was at this moment, when Nazi Germany and Japan seemed victorious, Russia prostrated, and the Western Powers on the brink of defeat, that the Vatican established diplomatic relations with Tokyo (March 1942).”The establishment of friendly relations and of direct contact between Japan and the Vatican assumes a particular significance, ” declared, at that time, the Japanese Foreign Minister. The “particular significance” was duly noticed in Washington and Moscow. On representations from President Roosevelt the Vatican pointed out that the Catholic Church had its spiritual interests to consider. Many Catholic soldiers had fallen prisoners, numerous Catholic missions were in territories occupied by the Japanese, and the Philippines were more than 9 per cent Catholic. Above all, the Vatican was neutral; therefore its duty was to improve the already excellent relationship which had existed during the previous ten years (that is, since the first Japanese attack on Manchuria, 1931).

One of the main reasons for the continual scurrying of Myron Taylor to the Vatican was the intimate friendship between Rome and Tokyo, and more than once the otherwise cordial relationship of Pius XII and Roosevelt was marred by this fact. Such was the case, for instance, when Portugal was on the brink of declaring war on Japan because the latter had refused to evacuate Timor (October 1943), and the Vatican exercised its influence on Catholic Salazar and persuaded him to remain neutral.

This impeded the plans of the Allies, who anxiously awaited Portuguese participation because of the naval bases which her entry would have put at their disposal for fighting the serious menace of the “U”-boats. As a compromise, Salazar leased the Azores to the Western Powers, after Roosevelt had brought pressure to bear upon Portugal through the Vatican.

Japan, as promised, treated the Catholic Church with special consideration as regards its missions. To quote a typical instance, while Protestants were interned or imprisoned, Catholic priests and nuns were left free and even helped. In 1944, in the Philippines alone, there were 528 Protestant missionaries interned, 130 in China, and 10 in Japan (Presbyterian Church Times, October 28, 1944), while, to quote the magazine America, of January 8, 1944: “Eighty per cent to 90 per cent of our priests, nuns, and brothers (Catholics) in the Orient have remained at their posts. Their number is about 7, 500. The remaining 10 per cent, most of them American, were allowed to return home in safety.”

But the eventual defeat in the West spelled defeat in the East. Nazi Germany’s capitulation meant Japan’s capitulation. Left alone, battered by the power of the United States of America, shattered by the first atomic bomb which pulverized Hiroshima, then attacked by Soviet Russia (August 9, 1945), she finally sued for peace.

The bastion against Bolshevism and Soviet Russia, which the Vatican had hoped would save Asia, had crumbled in the East as the bastion of Nazi Germany had fallen a few months before in the West. The failure of a policy on two continents completed the failure of the Vatican’s world policy. So far as the rather strained relationship between the Vatican and China is concerned, ironically enough it became more cordial after Rome had established diplomatic relations with Japan, this chiefly due to the fact that the Chinese Government, as soon as the Vatican-Tokyo exchange of diplomats was effected, took steps to see that regular diplomatic contacts should likewise be established between her and Rome.

The Vatican put forward endless objections, which, however, were overruled when the American Hierarchy, and, above all, Washington, pointed out that it would be in the general interests of the Catholic Church in China and in the United States of America to incur the momentary displeasure of Japan by exchanging representatives with Chunking. It was thus that in June 1942 the first Chinese Minister was appointed to the Vatican. Although this was done more to appease the United States of America than for anything else (China, in the eyes of the Vatican, being merely a part of the great policy it was conducting with regard to Germany in Europe and Japan in Asia), the possibility of a German-Japanese defeat played no mean part in the Vatican’s decision to take such a step. For the Catholic Church had to consider the interests of well over 3,000,000 Catholics scattered in Chinese regions and of a comparatively flourishing young Church which, by the end of the Second World War, comprised 4,000 priests, 12,000 sisters and brothers, and a lay staff of about 100,000, made up mainly of teachers, doctors, and catechists.

Moreover, the Vatican, after the First World War, had begun a drive to establish a native hierarchy, and by the end of the Second World War had succeeded in assigning to various Chinese dioceses more native bishops than there were in any other non-Western country. Such a policy, which it had adopted with regard to its missions in Africa and Asia-namely, the creation of native hierarchies and priesthoods ― assumed particular meaning in China. It was thought that thereby not only could the brand of “foreign” as applied to the Catholic Church be overcome, but the spreading of the Bolshevik ideology amongst the Chinese masses, and even Chinese Christians, could best be combated. This was one of the common grounds on which the Vatican and Chiang-Kai-shek reached an early understanding, although considerations of a more far-reaching policy in Asia prevented a closer relationship between the Catholic Church and the Chinese Government.

With the turning tide of war, however, the Vatican and Chiang. Kai-shek cooperated even more closely, and the former-once it was certain that there was no hope of a Japanese victory-began ostensibly to court the Chinese Generalissimo. This, not only to safe… guard the Church’s interests in China, but, above all, because, with the disappearance of the anti-Communist Japanese Army, the only instrument left in Asia for checking Bolshevism was the Chinese Army under Chiang-Kai-shek. [These friendly relations were consolidated by the Pope’s official appointment of a Papal nuncio China (July 1946). ]

It was thus that with the final defeat of Japan the Catholic Church found itself on friendly terms with the Chinese Government, which, long before the Japanese armies in China had officially surrendered,, began a grand- scale campaign, against the Chinese Communist armies in the north.

Such was the policy which, in addition to fitting in harmoniously with the general plan of the Vatican and running parallel with that of the United States of America, linked, in a bond of common interest of national, economic, and religious character, the Chinese Government of Chiang-Kaishek, the United States of America, with her great commercial interests in Asia, and the Catholic Church, bent on safeguarding its spiritual conquests; all three being united in checking, and eventually attempting to destroy, the menace of an ideology inimical to their interests.