APPENDIX

THE DEATH OF PIUS XII

As this book (French edition) was going to press, the death of His Holiness Pius XII, on 9 October 1958, was bringing to a close the most tragic pontificate of all times. And it may be said that the pomp of the funeral was equal to such a fate.

Moreover, this”great pope”who was so keenly aware of the power of modern publicity could not pass away without a powerfully orchestrated concert of hyperbolic praises. The fact that the Vatican controls”a thousand papers and reviews”in France made the event even less likely to be overlooked.

It is well known just how excessive was this “popolatry” during his lifetime. In 1954, when the Holy Father was seriously ill, V Express published a letter from a Catholic lady who was shocked by the “exhibitionist nature of certain demonstrations”, and Father Avril wrote on the subject:

“The authors of these dithyrambs do not realize that the effect produced is exactly contrary to what they intended. The chief complaint against them is that, because they do not always evade the ridiculous, they expose the very person they claim to glorify to the ridicule of ill-intentioned minds. . . . My colleague. Father Demon . . . remarked in this connexion . . .: ‘The Pope would do well to spurn this type of homage’. I have often since been reminded of those words.”

Among the more enlightened, many a Catholic shared this feeling, without being able to overlook that the object of this “popolatry” was also its promoter. How is it possible to explain such an insatiable craving for adulation on the part of a man whose finesse no-one ever contested? Did it not respond to a profound need—a need to drown beneath an uninterrupted flow of praise the most tragic souvenir of his entire pontificate, and even of his entire career? It would seem that this constant burning of incense in his honour was meant not only to dull the memory of his flock, but also—and before all, perhaps—to daze himself.

It is charitable at least to think that this Inquisitor’s soul sometimes knew remorse. Thus the following passage of his will should be understood as more than a mere “set phrase”:

“I humbly pray for the forgiveness of those whom I might have offended, those whom I might have harmed, whom I have shocked with my words or with my deeds.”

However that may be, his descent into the tomb was hailed with the very same dithyrambs and toadyisms that had unfailingly exalted him during his reign. Certain newspapers—of no less than Vatican obedience, of course—in an attempt to sanctify his memory, were even displaying a zeal which was, to say the least, unexpected. This was equally true of certain ethnic groups. . . .

So much for the world’s play-acting. But from among the innumerable orisons, there shone one which had the sparkle of a pure gem:

“Pius XII, the Pope of Peace!”All honour to the man who made this discovery, which has been widely reproduced, in fact! We can only confess ourselves beaten by this master of antiphrasis. There is another curious passage in La Croix. It deals with a certain article by don Sturzo, in which”the old pioneer of Italian Christian Democracy”draws a parallel between the funeral of Pius IX and that of Pius XII:

“He recalls the dramatic night when Pius IX’s remains were transferred to San Lorenzo Fuori Ie Mura, to the insults of the populace who tried to throw the Pontiff’s body into the Tiber . . . what a difference between 1878 and 1958.. . .”

A great difference, indeed, but does not the editor seem surprised by this? In spite of ecclesiastical anointment they are not always light-handed at La Croix, and as this flower is thrown on the coffin— undoubtedly with the purest of intentions—we are reminded of the saying, ‘save me from my friends!’

To be sure, His Holiness Pius XII received imposing funeral honours. For eight days, the vast public was informed of the whole business. Moreover, was it not necessary, in order to stifle certain discordant notes which arose here and there. . . . For some there were, eloquent though discreet.

Thus, Jean d’Hospital wrote in Le Monde:

“There is an uneasiness weighing upon the memory of Pius XII. Let us first cleaily put a question that many people, of every nation and even within the walls of the Vatican City, have for more than ten years been noting in their secret diaries: did he know of certain horrors of the war willed and conducted by Hitler?

“Is it possible that he, who at all times and in all places had at his disposal the periodic reports of the bishops, who gather information from the priests of their diocese, who in turn hear confessions, was it possible that he was unaware of—precisely that which the big German military chiefs themselves claim not to have known — the tragedy of the concentration camps full of deported civilians, the coldly performed massacres of imprisoned enemy soldiers, the terryifing gas chambers where the Jews were exterminated by administrative ovensful? And, if he knew, why, as guardian and first precentor of the Gospel, did he not come out into the market place, in his white cassock, and with arms outstretched, to shout NO? …

“He did not plainly, strongly and definitely condemn Hitlerism, the religion of blood. It is useless to unearth phrases from the grand array of pontifical interventions. It is no good looking there for what we would hope to find: the red iron. It is not there.”

We should also quote, among the “many readers’ letters” received by Le Monde, that of Mr. Andre Barnaud, a minister of the Reformed Church:

“In Le Monde of Sunday 12 and Monday 13 October you devoted a short article to the reUgious persecutions that took place during the pontificate of Pius XII, quoting the list, supplied by the Vatican, of the countries in which these persecutions were carried out: “We Protestants feel a profound sympathy for our sorrowing Catholic brothers, and I would have much preferred that during these days of mourning mention had not been made of persecutions. “But, since the Vatican has drawn up the list, I owe it to Truth to point out that this Ust, alas! is incomplete. The Vatican has overlooked a certain number of items. Here are a few brief indications, without going into the details, which are in many cases particularly cruel:

“1. Spain’s twenty thousand Protestants, constantly victimized, if not persecuted, by the Catholic Church;

“2. The bloody persecution, a few years ago, of Protestants in Columbia, South America, by the Catholic clergy and masses;

“3. The massacre by the Catholic Ustashis of thousands of Serbian Orthodox Christians in Croatia, during the last war.

“To my knowledge no official voice has been raised from the bosom of the Sister Church to regret, condemn and end such horrors. Of the many ‘silences’ reproached against the late Pope, this to us is particularly burdensome and difficult to understand.

“Shall this voice never be heard? . . .”

So far as we are concerned, we are quite certain that it never will be, and our reasons have been given throughout this book.

The”uneasiness”that weighs upon the memory of Plus XII—to revert to the very moderate expression of Jean d’Hospital—was to show itself very clearly even before the deceased Pope had reached his last resting place and was buried, with due rites:

This colour, in the circumstances, assumed the character of a tragic reminder.

Undoubtedly, as we have often been reminded, the Roman Church never stops. This time, however, not only did the perpetual motion of the ecclesiastical machinery not slow down, it gathered momentum in the most spectacular way. There was widespread pandemonium at the Vatican. It seemed as if the Holy College, after more than nineteen years in harness, wished to lose no time in effacing every trace of a pontificate, which, according to the thurifers,’ had been so “glorious”. Rarely has the broom been so cheerfully handled.

A periodical, l’ Express, has very aptly summarized the matter: “If outward appearances showed the palace of the Vatican to be as calm as usual last week, the inside might be described as having been ‘swept by a tidal wave’, as a prelate put it. Nineteen years is a long reign for a pope, especially when he is as authoritarian as Pius XII. Once he had gone, profound upheavals were inevitable.

“For centuries the Church had not had such an autocratic pope as Pius XII. He had nearly all the administrative powers of the Vatican in his own hands; he refused to appoint a Secretary of State -the most cherished of all posts—and governed through a small number of relatives and trusted men. These included:

-Mgr. Tardini, the Pope’s most influential political adviser, who acted as Secretary of State.

-Prince Carlo Pacelli, the Pope’s nephew, first legal adviser to the Congregation of the Vatican (which manages the Holy See’s property) and to the pontifical commission in charge of administering the Vatican City. Pacelli’s two brothers, Giulio and Marcantonio, were equally powerful figures in Vatican circles. All three are extremely rich.

—Doctor Galeazzi-Lisi, the Pope’s personal physician; his brother, Count Pietro Galeazzi, the Vatican architect, and a certain number of foreign doctors placed under the supervision of the Swiss specialist, Paul Niehans, who is the inventor of a rejuvenating treatment based on extracts of animal glands.

—A group of Jesuits including the Pope’s personal confessor and chaplain (both German), as well as the Reverend Lombardo, the leading ‘mind’ of the Vatican radio.

—Finally, Sister Pasqualina, a German nun and the Pope’s housekeeper for thirty years. Her personal influence has often been contested, but it is possible that she influenced the Pope’s thinking on questions concerning the Virgin Mary. Her interventions in requests for an audience were always successful.

“These few people—less than a dozen in all—had, since the end of the war, constituted the virtual government of the Roman Catholic Church. Although the fourteen cardinals who reside permanently in the Curia and whose power was considerable in the olden days, should have continued to take part in the committees and congregations of the Vatican (Cardinal Canali, for instance, belonged to seven of them), they were deprived by Plus XII of any influence they might have had on the elaboration of the Church’s doctrine and foreign policy.

“At a certain moment it even seemed that Plus XII was deliverately seeking to prevent the College of Cardinals from playing its traditional role. The reluctance with which he filled the seats that became vacant (there were sixteen left when he died), his refusal to nominate a Secretary of State, his numerous delegations of power to young prelates with no official post used to exasperate the high dignitaries of the Curia. . . . The more senior bishops were often refused private audiences. . . .

“So, no sooner had Doctor Galeazzi-Lisi signed the Pope’s death certificate, than the cardinals went into action. . . . Their first move was to invite Sister Pasqualina to pack her cases and to take the train back to her convent in Bavaria. Within three days, the two German Jesuits were following her.

“It looked as if Doctor Galeazzi-Lisi might be more difficult to eliminate, for the Pope had named him head of the Vatican medical services. To the great relief of the cardinals, he condemned himself by committing two errors: 1) he sold an account of the Pope’s ilhiess to a group of foreign newspapers (for more than twenty million lire, it is said); 2) his embalmment of the corpse was a failure. Three days later. Dr. Galeazzi-Lisi was dismissed from the six posts that he had occupied and forbidden to stay on the territory of the Vatican State.

“The elimination of the Pacelli brothers will no doubt prove more delicate, but Roman society, who regards them as vulgar parvenus, is awaiting their fall with obvious pleasure. . . .”

Cardinal Canali, the all-powerful “treasurer” of the Vatican, found himself in a fairly unpleasant position, it is said.

These are but a few glimpses of an extremely confused succession, as seen by qualified observers—and certain passages of the speech which Mgr. Bacci,”Secretary of Letters to the Prince”, delivered to the cardinals before they went into conclave, were unanimously understood to contain a “discreet criticism” of the pontificate which had just ended.

Without entering into the Daedalian labyrinth of Vatican factions and intrigues, it is possible, by reading the press of that time, to obtain an idea of just how daring was La Croix’s assertion that”the main cause of the Holy See’s growing prestige resides in the attitude, as firm as it was nuance, which the Pope had adopted ever since 1939.”

In short—even without recalling the famous saying: “Some dead people have to be killed”—it may be said that the majority of the College of Cardinals wished to make it clear that they were breaking away from the deeds of the deceased.

Nevertheless, the shade of the departed autocrat seemed still to be casting upon the conclave a kind of maleficent aura. First, the American Cardinal Edward Mooney was struck by heart failure, they say, before the doors of the Sixtine had closed upon the voters. Then Cardinal Canali’s condition gave rise to much anxiety, whilst six other prelates were more or less overcome by a strange”Roman “flu”. As for Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York—who apparently does not appreciate Italian cooking—he was eating nothing but tinned food.

Finally, the election of the patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Roncalli, to the Supreme Pontificate, at the end of three days, came to liberate the conclavists and to remove them from the danger of mal’aria.

The new Pope took the name of John XXIII. At first, this choice would seem strange, for the Roman Church has already known a John XXIII, in the person of an antipope who, in the fifteenth century, for many years opposed Martin V. Deposed in 1415 by the Council of Constance, he abdicated in 1419, and then received the title of”Dean of the Cardinals”. A strange personage, in fact, this former Napolitan privateer, acceding to the tiara thanks to the immense wealth of his”hauls”. But one wonders why the new Pope has, by the choice of his name, made a point of evoking this truculent figure. Is it because, in the list of popes established according to the prophecy of Saint Malachi, his place is graced with the motto Pastor el Nauta (pope and mariner)? In this case the new Pontiff will not have usurped the reputation of humour that has been attributed to him.

What kind of pontificate will his be? It would be quite useless to venture to prognosticate on the subject. All that can be said with certainty, is that the Holy See’s policy will not be profoundly affected by it, since its objectives will remain unchanged. Also, it would be naive to credit the”discreet criticism”that the Holy College ventured to make on the Pastor Angehcus with more meaning than it contains.

It was politic to bring some measure of appeasement to all the fits of anger and bitterness which the bearer of that edifying title had awakened in the world, and to let it be known that they were imputable solely to the autocrat and not to the entire Roman Curia. He alone was responsible for having made the Church the nurse of the dictators and fomenter of the stupendous drama that transformed Europe into a field of ruins and slaughter. His alone, the diabolical perseverance with which he pursued a senseless dream, when a precarious peace had followed upon the defeat of his champions.

Such is truly the meaning of the manoeuvre; “In all that”, the proporati and monsignori seem to say,”they have nothing against us; we had no voice in the chapter”.

It was an opportune gesture, with which we have been familiar ever since the days of Pontius Pilate, but which cannot clear the high clergy of the reproach of having servilely executed the orders of their chief. In this respect, it is much more of a confession than an excuse. Certainly a superfluous confession, but one which is well worth recording.

Thus have the prelates themselves denounced the profound vice of a system which, from one day to another, can turn a man who is subject to error into the possessor of an absolute power to which everything—even the most natural revolt of conscience—must give way.

On no account do we wish to venture into the field of dogma. But how is it possible to avoid drawing the logical conclusions which follow from the principle of absolutism? How is it possible not to see the contradiction of the prelate’s facile excuse?

If the Pope really is the Church’s infallible navigator, no criticism. even discreet, can be made against him. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, his decisions can only be excellent, even if they do not appear so, and if he means to govern alone, without recourse to the opinion of his”brothers”the cardinals, it is because God has willed it so.

If this is so, it is difficult to understand the speech made by Mgr. Bacci at the opening of the conclave. Speaking in the name of the entire Holy College, he said of the Pope-to-be:

“He will be ready to welcome his collaborators in the government of the Church”.

This clearly condemned the quite contrary conduct of the deceased Pontiff—but at the same time, it censured Him who had inspired it, and was a warning that such an error should not be repeated.

While this call to order was undoubtedly given at a most opportune moment, at the Mass of the Holy Spirit, it would appear none the less off-hand for all that. Before Heaven can inspire the members of the conclave, is it in need of being inspired itself? This seems to be the inevitable conclusion one must draw from this type of warning.

However this mystery may be, the cardinals'”discreet criticism” cannot make us forget the docility with which the prelates of the whole of Europe executed their chief’s orders, without any compunction of national—or even moral—feeling, when he thought fit to promote the dictators and to assure them of the Roman Church’s full support. It would be easy to count on the fingers of a single hand those who in occupied France, for example, dared to resist the will of the Holy Father.

“A thin pope is followed by a fat pope”, say the Italians. A combative pope is succeeded by another, more benevolent. This balancing game is skilful, no doubt; yet, we must not be deceived, it is merely disguising the terrible appetite for domination of a power that is after universality in the widest sense of the term.

Under what name or whatever slogan the pontiffs may appear, this unbounded ambition constitutes their common heritage, the “end”that is ever before their eyes. But is it not that of the entire Roman Curia, from which they emanate? It would therefore be quite useless to expect the College of Cardinals, or indeed any of the princes of the Church, to confine their fatal vocation in any way. In the future, as in the past, she will inexorably move towards the end she has set herself, without the slightest thought for the ruins and the catastrophes that her unwearying pursuit might be causing.”The end justifies the means”.

“No political event or circumstance can be evaluated without the knowledge of the Vatican’s part in it. And no significant world situation exists in which the Vatican does not play an important explicit or implicit role.”