The Pope's Last Crusade (22 page)

Invitation to LaFarge's speech before a group of intellectuals and politicians in Paris on May 17, 1938. LaFarge, who spoke about U.S. politics and issues of democracy, often found himself questioned about U.S. policy toward Europe and whether the United States would fight alongside France and Britain against the Nazis.
(Courtesy of Georgetown University Library.)

LaFarge in New York in 1938 after returning from Europe. LaFarge kept secret his work on the pope's encyclical. He delivered the draft encyclical to Superior General Ledóchowski in Rome, who said he would deliver it to the pope. On his return from Europe, LaFarge spoke out about themes of war and anti-Semitism.
(Courtesy of Georgetown University Library.)

British prime minister Neville Chamberlain; Benito Mussolini; Lord Halifax, the British foreign minister; and his Italian counterpart, Count Galeazzo Ciano, left to right. Chamberlain and Halifax visited Rome in January 1939 but had no success in improving relations with Italy. They also met with the pope, who reiterated his strong rejection of Hitler and Mussolini.

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.)

D
ESPITE 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.