The Pope's Last Crusade (9 page)

“Listen all people; lend your ear all you who inhabit the globe, united toward the same end. Both the rich and the poor. Hear, oh islands, and listen, oh distant peoples.”

When he was done, Monsignor Francis Spellman interpreted the pope's words in English. In the course of his speech, the pope praised Marconi “for this new invention,” the wireless, which the pope described as “the last word in technicality and science.” Marconi, he said, “had promised us one of the most modern of inventions. This promise he has fulfilled so magnificently that he may ask what yet remains to constitute the latest development in radio.”

Care in transmitting the pope's words was unprecedented. The sounds were modulated and converted into a series of radio waves. Engineers around the world received and amplified the shortwave signal, then transmitted via a network of global relay stations. At each step, operators adjusted the signal and bounced it along the way. Locally, the signal was transferred to the AM radio bands for direct transmission.

“Listeners in the United States reported hearing a ‘waxing and waning howl' intermingled at times with the Pope's words,” the
New York Times
reported. “Otherwise the program was remarkably clear and free from fading.”

Radio operators in London found it easier to grab the signal back from a station in the United States, but that didn't work. The static was too great to understand the Italian-accented Latin or Spellman's translation. Nevertheless, this was a giant step for the Vatican.

Broadcast by wireless, which people in some countries were also referring to as radio, had existed already for a generation, but the novelty was such that the pope was almost redefining the meaning and use of radio: his voice gave new power to radio broadcasting. The occasion of the pope's inaugural speech on Vatican Radio was declared a miracle itself as a redefinition of what humankind might accomplish. The pope could not only preach to the faithful, but could also counsel the faithless and provide instant order and a unified front among his legions of priests around the world. There would be no doubt or delay in interpreting what the Holy See might think or might judge of the world—here was the supreme leader of the Roman Catholic Church speaking with all immediacy.

He began to do so with regularity, with general declarations and focused commentaries. He often ranged increasingly into the realm of politics and pleas for peace. “Few events in the history of the world can compare with the profound impact the Head of the Holy Roman See had during his address direct to the entire planet,” said an editorial in the
New York Herald.
“Such a thing could not have been foreseen by any preceding pope. This is a miracle of science, and no less a miracle of faith,” the editorial said.

Perhaps it was a triumph of science if not a miracle, but Vatican Radio served to provide Pius XI a world audience. Now, seven years later, in 1938, the pope's voice and the translation of his word would extend beyond the faithful; he could now exert an editorial, political, even moral force in these years of challenging the Nazis, and increasingly stood alone. Vatican Radio now broadcast in Italian, English, German, and French, an alternative and a moral compass in Europe and beyond. There was no other comparable voice worldwide that could generate impact and controversy and sway emotions like the pope, using his electronic pulpit and his Vatican printing press that produced the
Osservatore Romano
.

The pope knew the radio provided a moral leader with an opportunity to reach beyond the confines of space in real time. The power of technology was an obvious new opportunity. All other media, radio, and newspapers in Italy were controlled by Mussolini's Fascists, who lashed out against the pope for “peevish” silence on Hitler's visit to Rome.

During Hitler's visit to Rome, the
Times
of London reported criticism by an Italian Fascist newspaper, representing Mussolini's point of view, blasting the pope and the Vatican for being “the only newspaper in the world which has ignored the Führer's presence in Rome. It is certainly far from edifying to see an old, austere journal like that of the Vatican City lose its reason and sense of proportion.”

P
RESIDENT ROOSEVELT WAS
keenly interested in developments in Rome during the spring and summer of 1938 and received frequent personal and direct reports from the U.S. ambassador to Italy, William Phillips. Roosevelt had chosen Phillips for the post in 1936, an interesting and important choice. He graduated from Harvard University in 1900, three years ahead of Roosevelt and a year before LaFarge. Phillips stayed on at Cambridge for three more years attending Harvard Law School. There was no indication that LaFarge and Phillips knew each other. If Phillips and Roosevelt weren't friends at Harvard, they became close in 1910 when Phillips married Roosevelt's second cousin, Caroline Astor Drayton, an heir to the Astor fortune. Phillips and his wife were close to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (she was of course also a relative of Caroline and the two had played together as children) and recalled spending private evenings at the White House whenever schedules permitted. Phillips was a Republican, but the difference of parties was no barrier. Aside from his kinship with the president, Roosevelt thought Phillips would be a good intermediary with Mussolini—as a member of the Republican opposition, the Italians might see Phillips as being independent minded and approachable. Phillips's immediate previous assignment as undersecretary of state, second ranking at the State Department to Cordell Hull, also had been arranged by Roosevelt. Like so many others at the State Department in the 1930s, Phillips had been slow to recognize the danger presented by Hitler and the Nazi Party. Diplomats in Germany, notably the U.S. ambassador to Berlin, William E. Dodd, warned early on about Hitler's arms buildup and the treatment of Jews, but the State Department paid little attention. Orders were to deal with Germany, as always, in accord with the niceties of bland diplomacy.

In two years in Italy, Phillips had realized quickly that Dodd's warning from Germany had been accurate. Roosevelt had now charged him with a general task—to develop good relations with the Italian government and to use every possible means to dissuade Mussolini from tightening his alliance with Hitler. Roosevelt had encouraged Phillips to bypass protocol and, in addition to routine mission reports back to the State Department, he expected his ambassador-relative-friend to send frequent personal updates on the state of affairs. When he faltered, Roosevelt chided him to keep up the correspondence.

Thanks to Ambassador Phillips's letters, the president was not surprised to hear that Pope Pius XI was being so confrontational with Hitler. Pius was clearly opposed to the Nazis, even though his top aides didn't appear to be in full agreement with him. In 1936, Roosevelt had met with Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the highest-ranking Roman Catholic leader ever to visit the United States. The president was rightly ebullient, having just won reelection with a surprising landslide. Two days later, he was relaxed, even amused when Pacelli arrived at Hyde Park for a luncheon chat.

News media had been calling Pacelli “The Flying Cardinal,” because of his unprecedented, weeklong, coast-to-coast U.S. airplane tour. People bowed before him when he laid a wreath at George Washington's home in Mount Vernon, visited the Empire State Building, gazed at the Boulder Dam and the Grand Canyon, and blessed Niagara Falls and the Golden Gate Bridge. His public pronouncements had been mild statements in favor of peace and calls for adherence to Christian teachings.

Some speculated that the visit was an attempt to establish diplomatic relations between the United States and the Holy See, which had been broken off following the dissolution of the Papal States in 1867. Officials in the United States and Britain, secular governments with majority Protestant populations, questioned the value of securing this relationship with the Vatican, but Roosevelt recognized the political advantage it could give him with Catholic constituencies in key states. The pope may have wanted to link the Vatican's worldview with that of the United States—total opposition to Nazism.

Joseph P. Kennedy, FDR's wealthy backer and chairman of the U.S. Maritime Commission, was accompanying the Vatican emissary. So was the Most Reverend Francis Spellman, who had been sent home from the Vatican and was now the auxiliary bishop of Boston. Spellman and Kennedy were important American Catholics, both destined for bigger things.

The cardinal and his entourage had taken a morning train from New York City, riding in a private car. Bright autumn sun shimmered off the majestic Hudson River as the train wove out of the city, past Sing Sing Prison, and close to the riverbank, where seagulls and ducks were feeding in the Tappan Zee and where residents feared a proposed bridge would damage the wetlands. The Vatican mission arrived at Poughkeepsie, a few miles south of Hyde Park just after noon.

Pacelli had declined a change of clothes offered by Spellman, who like the other accompanying Catholic clergy was dressed in a simple black suit and Roman collar. Pacelli stood out, regaled in his cape, crimson-appointed robes, and large metal crucifix. Roosevelt had sent a White House reception party to the station to pick them up.

The White House reported that the president and the cardinal “discussed American social affairs and their mutual observations of trends in the United States.” But in fact, the conversation was far more specific and would have ended badly had Roosevelt not maintained his good humor. He discovered quickly that Pacelli was fixated on Communism.

The president recalled the meeting during a dinner conversation six years later. He described the encounter as a “mental sparring contest,” according to Florence Kerr, an administration official who was one of the dinner guests. FDR said he and Pacelli “chewed on that for three days. He [Pacelli] went back to Rome saying that the great danger in America is that it will go communist. I told him it wouldn't . . . I said, I think they are just as apt to go Fascist as they are to go communist.” The back-and-forth continued: the president scoffed and the cardinal insisted.

“The greatest danger in America is that it will go Communist,” Pacelli repeated more than once.

“The great danger in America is that it will go Fascist,” FDR replied.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No!” Pacelli repeated more forcefully. “Mr. President, you simply do not understand the terrible importance of the Communist movement.”

“You just don't understand the American people,” the president replied.

The conversation ended at an impasse, apparently civilly so. By midafternoon, the cardinal was on his train car headed back to New York.

Two days later, after being greeted by thousands of Catholic schoolchildren outside St. Patrick's Cathedral, Pacelli rode to Pier 59 and boarded the Italian liner
Conte di Savoia
for his return trip to Italy.

IN 1937
, Pope Pius released
With Deep Anxiety,
his first great assault on Nazism, a papal encyclical that confronted Hitler and his Gestapo. The American and British governments took note. Suddenly, Pope Pius XI appeared to be on the same wavelength as Roosevelt. Officials in Washington and London thought the pope could be engaged in the fight against Hitler, and in particular against Hitler's growing courtship of Mussolini. Even if “the Pope could not push Hitler,” one British analyst said, “he could certainly push at Mussolini. He might even be able to push Mussolini away from Hitler.”

By 1937, onetime critics, including diplomats and Jewish leaders, praised Pius XI as a leading voice for peace and liberty. The Nazis tried to spread rumors that the pope, born into a traditional Italian family in northern Italy, was actually a Communist and secretly Jewish; they spouted similar nonsense about Roosevelt.

The pope's growing criticism of Hitler may have sparked interest in Washington, but it produced great anxiety in the Vatican, particularly for Cardinal Pacelli. Beyond being considered second to the throne, Pacelli had been groomed all his life to be
papabile
—a future candidate to be pope.

Eugenio was born in 1876, one of four children. His father, Fillippo, a prominent canonical lawyer, eventually became dean of the Vatican Sacra Rota Romana, the Holy See's high court of appeals. His mother, Virginia, had twelve brothers and sisters; two had entered the priesthood and two were nuns. Pacelli clung to his mother, who made sure his upbringing was centered around the church. He spent his childhood in several well-off but modest apartments in central Rome, never more than half an hour's walk from the Vatican. He had served as an altar boy and sometimes put on clerical robes to play-act the role of a priest celebrating Mass. He was sent to Catholic elementary schools and then to a public nonreligious school, where he was an excellent student. He was also a music lover who enjoyed the classics; he played violin and piano in accompaniment of his two sisters.

When he was thirteen, he wrote a straightforward, lighthearted autobiographical profile that described his appearance: “I am of average height. My figure is slender, my face rather pale, my hair chestnut and soft, my eyes black, my nose rather aquiline. I will not say much of my chest, which to be honest, is not robust. Finally, I have a pair of legs that are long and thin, with feet that are hardly small.”

He began his religious studies at the Gregorian University, close to the family house, but left the university after a few months for undefined health reasons. His sister later said the ailment involved problems with eating seminary food. After he recovered, he received extraordinary permission to study for the priesthood at home without ever having lived in a seminary. His ordination in 1899 was attended by bishops and even cardinals. It was unusual for a novice to draw such attention, but it shows that even at age twenty-three, he was already on track as a potential
papabile.