The Pope's Last Crusade

by Peter Eisner

  Gustav Gundlach, a German Jesuit, was LaFarge’s main collaborator on the encyclical. Gundlach wrote to LaFarge in October 1938 that Ledóchowski refused to see him or discuss the document and suspected that as the pope grew ill, Ledóchowski was purposely withholding and delaying publication of the anti-Hitler declaration.

  Charles Coughlin, the Radio Priest, undated. The Catholic priest’s weekly national broadcasts in the 1930s became increasingly right-wing and anti-Semitic. He took an anti-Roosevelt, extremist political stance in defiance of the Vatican, gathering an audience of millions. He was eventually silenced amid FBI investigations of his contacts with Germans and of his sources of funding.

  John LaFarge, circa 1954. LaFarge became editor of America magazine in 1944 and continued to speak out against anti-Semitism during World War II. In his 1954 memoir, The Manner Is Ordinary, LaFarge did not reveal the story of his time working with the pope. He promoted human rights for the rest of his life, wrote a series of books, and won a number of media and human rights awards. (Courtesy of Georgetown University Library.)

  LaFarge joined Martin Luther King Jr. at the march on Washington in August 1963, optimistic about the course of civil rights. The issue, he said, “concerns the fundamental rights of all of us . . . are all involved in this question of right and wrong.” (Courtesy of AP Images.)

  Bishop Joseph Hurley and Pope Paul VI at the Vatican, circa 1964. Hurley was banished from the Vatican by Pope Pius XII after speaking out strongly against Hitler and Nazism in 1940. He was named bishop of St. Augustine, Florida, where he served for twenty-seven years. (Courtesy of the Archives of the Diocese of St. Augustine, Florida.)

  CHAPTER TEN

  A New Year and an End to Appeasement

  The Vatican, Christmas 1938

  DESPITE THE POPE’S amazing recovery, Pacelli took the incident as an opportunity to take over more responsibilities at the Vatican than ever before. The pope was attentive and authoritarian about the issues that mattered most to him, but he could not do everything.

  On December 18, a cold, rainy day three weeks after his health crisis, the pope went out to the Vatican gardens to deliver a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Science. He addressed a pet theme, the relationship between religion and science, and had invited several Jewish scientists, now banned by Mussolini from working at Italian universities, to become members of the academy. Diplomats and prominent scientists attended the event, including Alexis Carrel, a French-born Nobel Prize–winning physician and pioneer in vascular surgery. Carrel, based at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, had been working on methods involving open-heart surgery and had been collaborating with the great aviator Charles Lindbergh on the development of a pump foreseen as something that others thought to be impossible—an artificial heart. Carrel and Lindbergh had been featured on the cover of Time magazine in June 1938.

  After a forty-five-minute address, the pope returned to the Vatican and spent the next day in bed. Dr. Milani, the head of the Vatican health office, came to visit but denied rumors the pope was ill once more. Carrel, who in later years became a good friend of John LaFarge, apparently was not called in for a consultation with the pope.

  Days following, the pope often suffered from night pains, coughing attacks, and insomnia. Some mornings he fell asleep while almost sitting up in bed so he could breathe better. He often woke up before dawn, tossed and turned, and then slept some more. Nevertheless, he was up every morning for breakfast. After that, he went to his office at 8 A.M. and met with Pacelli for an hour starting at 9:30 A.M. He took long rests in the afternoon and was given occasional injections of camphor oil as prescribed by Milani, who came to see him several times a day.

  GUNDLACH HAD BEGUN to hear from his sources at the Vatican that the pope had requested information more than once about the encyclical. But it is not known if he ever confronted Ledóchowski and demanded immediate delivery. Vatican reporters were told the pope was still working on an encyclical dealing with “world problems.” That report was transmitted by news services and published in the United States. A report in the New York World Telegram on November 28 said the pope “would soon issue an encyclical . . . It was believed . . . that he was anxious to reaffirm his position on various world problems such as his condemnation of armed conflicts and Communism and his plea to leading statesmen to cooperate for peace.” The Associated Press added “there were reports, which were without confirmation, that the Pontiff might issue a Christmas Encyclical on world affairs, inspired by Nazi and Fascist racial policies.” However, the report said that the papal document “might have been delayed indefinitely by his illness.”

  Gundlach noted Pacelli’s ascendant role in the wake of Pius’s recent medical crisis. As Gundlach told LaFarge: “Things seem to be proceeding in such a way that he [the pope] gets only what others want him to get; he is supposed still to be in good psychological condition, to be sure, but not able to do very much on his own.”

  The Italian government’s sources at the Vatican were passing along word about the pope’s precarious health. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini had forgiven the pope’s intransigence and repeated harping against the racial policies. Il Duce told Ciano that he hoped the pope “will die very soon.” Mussolini fumed, but backed off each time from doing what he wished he could do, rallying a popular revolt against the Vatican and putting padlocks on all the churches in Italy. But he told Ciano it was better “to not provoke a crisis with the Vatican at the present time.”

  During the pope’s annual Christmas greeting to the College of Cardinals, he again said that Italy’s laws about racial purity and attacks on Jews violated the Lateran agreement between the Vatican and the Mussolini government. The pope said he had negotiated the document with the king of Italy, and “his incomparable Minister”—Mussolini. Without mentioning Il Duce’s name, he mocked Mussolini as if he were subordinate of the king. The Fascist press dealt with the pope’s criticism by rewriting and censoring the negative connotation.

  The pope continued his speech and referred once again to his “crooked cross” speech during Hitler’s visit to Rome in May: “the recent apotheosis in this very city of a cross which is the enemy of the cross of Christ” in pushing cold-blooded laws on racism. “We at least hoped our white hair would be respected. Instead they rudely went ahead.”

  Germany reacted within days of the pope’s Christmas speech, suggesting once again that the pope himself was Jewish or wanted to be. The Nazi newspaper Angriff attacked the pope, saying the Vatican was “occupying itself solely with the Jewish question to the extent of giving an impression of complete solidarity between Jewry and the largest Christian church.”

  Osservatore Romano, meanwhile, closed the year with a commentary that stated emphatically the pope’s position on why Germany is a greater enemy than the Soviet Union. “While Russia simply has atheism without a substitute for religion, things are different in National-Socialist Germany. In the National-Socialist world the negation of Christianity, no less obstinate, is transformed into a neo-pagan and pantheist mysticism which pretends to protest against atheism and even stands as a defender of faith and religion . . . This work of religious destruction is all the more dangerous because it leads to error and is more deceitful than openly proclaimed and attempted atheism.”

  New York, December 29, 1938

  LaFarge had still not heard anything about the encyclical. As he waited, he started raising his profile as someone who spoke out about race and anti-Semitism.

  “This past year belonged to a great turning point in history,” he had written in America on December 21, summarizing his European tour. He said world leaders had not sufficiently recognized the threat of Hitler’s armies, and Hitler’s speech at the Sportpalast, followed by Chamberlain’s capitulation at Munich, “acquainted the world with a mixture of method and madness.”

  The task ahead was to avert war while defending freedom at all cost. “Our problem is to keep the torch of democracy and true liber
ty alight in the world,” he wrote.

  The next week, LaFarge spoke to an audience that extended far beyond his magazine’s readership. He took the stage at Town Hall on West Forty-third Street in New York City at 9:30 P.M. on Thursday evening, December 29, 1938. The event was part of a nationally broadcast radio program called America’s Town Meeting on the Air, which had become a major forum for public affairs nationwide. The program drew an estimated audience of two million, who sat around their radio consoles as the celebrated announcer, Milton Cross, signed on:

  “Welcome to historic Town Hall in New York City for another free and open discussion of one of the great problems facing civilization today.” The subject tonight: “How should religion deal with totalitarianism?”

  This was LaFarge’s opportunity to present the themes he had written about for the pope and to define the role of the church.

  “There is, I believe, comparatively little that religion can directly accomplish to check the course of totalitarianism in other countries than our own,” LaFarge said. “The dictators, unfortunately, do not appear beneath the pulpits of New York or Philadelphia, and they pay little attention to long distance communications. I am sufficient [sic] of an interventionist to agree to the use of force where it is the last and sole means of liberating people in another country from acute injustice.” The time would come to apply armed force, he said, “if or when a totalitarian power might see fit to launch a physical attack upon our shores.”

  He also called on his audience to uphold the “dignity of all human persons—Jew, Negro, Catholic, or Indian . . . Let us denounce persecutions abroad, by all means, whether they are persecutions on a religious or national basis . . . let us prevent persecution by any means in our power.”

  Also on the program was Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, and a member of the executive committee of the National Conference of Jews and Christians. Lazaron said the Nazis were in the process of challenging all religions and all freedoms. “Today it is hatred of the Communist or radical; tomorrow the Jew; the next day the Mason, the Catholic or the Protestant. Make no mistake about this: destroy the liberty of the least among us and you destroy the principle that guarantees liberty to all.”

  During the question and answer period, a member of the audience in Town Hall asked LaFarge whether and how Father Coughlin could be silenced. LaFarge remained cautious and said only that Coughlin’s direct superiors had the ability to discipline him. Unfortunately, Coughlin enjoyed the same freedom of speech enjoyed by all Americans. Coughlin’s superiors “in the end will give a fair and equitable judgment which will satisfy every reasonable man. That is our tradition and you can be perfectly sure it will be carried out in this or any other instance.”

  The rabbi added a point on Coughlin: “No responsible Jewish leadership will take the position that there should be censorship of the ether waves and that Father Coughlin should be ruled off the air. That would not be the way to fight what he is doing.”

  When the hour was up, Cross signed off the air followed by the three-toned chimes of NBC.

  BY THE START of 1939, it had become clear that two world leaders had been most outspoken in condemning the dangers of Nazism. One was the pope; the other was Franklin Roosevelt, who listed freedom of religion in his State of the Union Message on January 4, 1939, atop three values threatened in the world. “All about us rage undeclared wars—military and economic,” the president said. “Storms from abroad directly challenge three institutions indispensable to Americans, now as always. The first is religion. It is the source of the other two—democracy and international good faith.

  “Religion, by teaching man his relationship to God, gives the individual a sense of his own dignity and teaches him to respect himself by respecting his neighbors.

  “Where freedom of religion has been attacked, the attack has come from sources opposed to democracy. Where democracy has been overthrown, the spirit of free worship has disappeared. And where religion and democracy have vanished, good faith and reason in international affairs have given way to strident ambition and brute force.”

  Religious and political leaders praised both Roosevelt and the pope for taking their prominent stance against Nazism. “If pessimism is the dominant mood at the close of the year 1938,” said Rabbi Israel Goldstein, a key Jewish leader in New York, a founder of Brandeis University, and later the head of the New York Board of Rabbis, “the valiant espousal of human rights by President Roosevelt and Pope Pius is the brightest page among the few bright pages in the doleful volume of the year.”

  LAFARGE RECEIVED bad news from Rome some time during the second week of January 1939. Zacheus Maher, Ledóchowski’s American secretary, sent word that said publication of the encyclical “is for the moment ‘in suspense,’ and so we cannot look for immediate publication.”

  For the first time LaFarge had a real reason to doubt that the papal message would ever be published. John Killeen, who was returning to the United States, had just turned the matter over to Maher. Killeen had briefed Maher before leaving Rome and said he had no information of his own. “I have not had the opportunity of speaking about it to His Paternity [Ledóchowski].” However, Maher had met with Gundlach, who kept pressuring for information about the papal document. According to Maher, Gundlach “was relieved to know that the German, the French and the English version are in my [Maher’s] care.”

  LaFarge could easily see that the pope still did not have the encyclical.

  Even more ominous was Maher’s warning that LaFarge not try to contact the pope. Maher said he knew Gundlach had urged LaFarge to reach out to the pope. But, Maher wrote, “May I say that I do not think it would be well under present circumstances to so write.”

  Maher was obviously out of the loop. He also said LaFarge had given the encyclical to Gundlach for delivery, which was not true. Maher was obviously not in the inner circle at the Vatican. This was possibly good news because Maher and Ledóchowski apparently did not know LaFarge had already written to the pope. But that could possibly mean that the pope had not gotten the letter.

  Finally, Maher said, “You may rest fully at ease in what you have done so far and be sure that all will be properly cared for. All you have done is greatly and gratefully appreciated.” Maher was telling LaFarge that the matter was no longer his affair. But LaFarge was not comfortable with that order and awaited further word from Gundlach.

  Rome, January 13, 1939

  Caroline Phillips recognized the need to behave appropriately and with diplomatic grace in her role as wife of the U.S. ambassador to Italy. Sometimes, however, she was summoned to step outside those limited duties. On the evening of January 13, she and her husband arrived around 10:30 P.M.—fashionably late—at the British embassy for a reception with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the British foreign minister, Lord Halifax. The avenue outside the embassy was a jumble, “cars running into each other from all directions and dozens of hapless policemen all issuing unrelated directions,” she remembered.

  No one knew exactly why Chamberlain and Halifax had come to Rome or what they hoped to achieve. Perhaps Chamberlain hoped to establish more of a relationship with Benito Mussolini, whom he hadn’t had the opportunity to spend time with during the Munich accord process.

  When Caroline and her husband entered the receiving room, she easily spotted the guests of honor across the room. Lord Halifax was “the most interesting and attractive looking, very tall and distinguished, with the face of an intellectual.” Caroline, an astute analyst of politics and personality, was much more impressed by Halifax than Chamberlain; she thought Chamberlain appeared to be “more of the practical middle class man of business and morals.”

  She knew that proponents of appeasement continued to applaud Chamberlain’s peace efforts. Commenting on Chamberlain’s visit to Rome, the Times of London explained that “Great Britain has to live side by side with these countries and means to do so on a basis of equality and cooperation.” If Cha
mberlain’s talks with Mussolini “have a successful outcome,” the British newspaper said, “they will undoubtedly not be of benefit to Great Britain and Italy alone.”

  Even Chamberlain knew by this point that the Munich Agreement had collapsed and he had failed. His foreign minister, Lord Halifax, told Roosevelt secretly in a meeting in the United States that “as early as November 1938, there were indications which gradually become more definite that Hitler was planning a further foreign adventure for the spring of 1939.”

  If Chamberlain had hoped to sway Mussolini from his support of Hitler after several hours of meetings, that didn’t happen. A New York Times reporter was blunt: “Put in plainer language than diplomacy’s jargon adopts, this means that this much heralded conference has closed . . . without changing anything whatever. In the United States it might be termed a washout.”

  Caroline, in personal terms, deemed the evening diplomatic reception for Chamberlain disastrous and close to appalling. Her husband, William, took her arm and asked her to accompany him to chat with Mussolini. After all, she spoke fluent Italian—it would be a rewarding effort. “I followed him a couple of steps as far as Ciano, to whom I said good evening,” she wrote in her diary that night.

  By this time, Mussolini was looking in Caroline’s general direction as he chatted with the wife of German ambassador Baron Konstantin von Neurath. Caroline took a few steps more, but simply could not follow through. She turned away quickly, trying not to attract attention. “I could not bring myself to break into that alien atmosphere of Jew-baiting, bombastic, odious ‘superiority complex,’” she said. “And what could I talk to him about? I yielded to my instinct of flight, much to William’s horror.”

  Earlier in the day, Chamberlain and Halifax had met with the pope, who stood to greet them, smiled and welcomed them for a chat. Joseph Hurley was their interpreter. Halifax was pleased to see Hurley; they had known each other a decade earlier when both were posted to India—Hurley for the Vatican secretariat of state and Halifax as the British viceroy. The pope generally had been limiting the length of his audiences, but Chamberlain had been briefed ahead of time to expect a longer visit.