The Pope's Last Crusade (3 page)

Masaryk had just returned from 10 Downing Street, where he met with British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and the foreign secretary, Lord Halifax. They had discussed the ongoing negotiations with Britain over Hitler's charge that the Czechs were oppressing Germans living in Sudetenland, a scythe-shaped strip of territory wrapped around Czechoslovakia on its German border. Most of the country's three million ethnic Germans lived in Sudetenland, which had been ceded to the newly formed Czechoslovakian state in 1918 through the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the Great War. Hitler warned that while Germany was a peaceful nation, it would fight to redress the indignities it had suffered ever since the end of the war.

Chamberlain wanted Czechoslovakia to appease Hitler and give in to his demands. The
New York Times
declared: “Britain has written off Czechoslovakia as an independent state.”

Masaryk told LaFarge that Chamberlain and his foreign secretary would not give him a clear answer on whether there was room for further negotiations: “If Great Britain is not going to support us,” he told LaFarge, “then I shall simply pack my valise, take a trip to Berlin and lay all the cards on the table before Hitler. The game will be up, and I shall simply accept what Hitler chooses to leave us.” But the scraps would be nothing. Secretly, Hitler already had drawn up his plan for the conquest of Czechoslovakia.

Masaryk also predicted that Hitler and Stalin would eventually join forces. As bad as Hitler and Nazism might be, Communism was seen as considerably worse by LaFarge, his fellow churchmen, and the Vatican. This was at the heart of the Catholic Church's slow, cautious response to the dangers of Hitler and Mussolini.

Roman Catholics had reasons for thinking that Communism was the great enemy of Christianity. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Catholics were attacked and churches had been shuttered; in Spain, priests and nuns had been massacred. If Nazism and Communism joined forces, many Catholics reasoned, the threat to Catholicism and to the world was multiplied.

LaFarge did not forget Masaryk's despondency, his anger at the British, or his predictions. The meeting with the Czech ambassador brought LaFarge his first experience close to the center of politics and intrigue. He sensed spying eyes all around and worried that Nazi agents might be intercepting his communications. Before he left America, he had devised a rudimentary code system of prayerful phrases just in case security concerns arose. He told his editor, Francis X. Talbot: “If I send a card from Germany or Austria, following will be meaning of greetings at end:

“
Oremus pro invicem
[Let us pray for one another]—things are very bad, worse than you imagine.

“
Pray for me
—About as we heard in the U.S.

“
Say a prayer for me on my travels
—Not so bad, fair show of resistance, etc.

“
Greetings and prayers
—Situation complex and difficult to analyze.”

LaFarge expected to be followed, spied upon, spat upon, even shunned by those “anti-religionists” and Communists, but he still needed to see the impact of Hitler and the Nazis for himself. Events and his travels were about to take him much closer to the heart of the story than he imagined, where a Jesuit might indeed have some impact.

P
OPE PIUS XI
had retreated a week earlier than expected to his summer palace at Castel Gandolfo, about twenty miles southeast of the Vatican. He knew his move would be taken for what it was—a pointed snub. The pope wanted no part of the triumphal celebration in Rome of the growing friendship between Germany and Mussolini's Fascist state.

On May 4, he commented on the presence of the Nazis in Rome for the first time in public. “Sad things appear, very sad things, both from far and near,” he told a general audience. “And among the sad things is this: that it is not found to be out of place or untimely to fly an insignia of another cross that is not the Cross of Christ.”

His words echoed throughout Rome, Italy, and the world. But this wasn't the first time the pope issued condemnations of Nazism and Hitler. The pope had a considerable arsenal of rhetorical weapons to use against Hitler and Mussolini. Even from Castel Gandolfo, he could reach beyond the Vatican as few others might, by radio and the international press. Impulsive by nature, the pope could not be contained.

He convened a meeting of church leaders a few hours before leaving the Vatican. The Great War, as World War I was known, “was to be the last war,” he said in that April 30 meeting. “Men said it was to be the beginning of a reign of peace. Instead of which, behold, it has been the herald and forerunner of an inferno of confusion and contradiction.” If the Vatican language was not direct, the message was clear; Nazi policies were leading to a new world war.

Just after 5
P.M.
on April 30, servants had shuttered the windows of the papal residence at the Vatican and the pope took the elevator to the ground floor. He was dressed in the simple black vestments of a priest so he wouldn't attract attention. The piazza was relatively empty, but a few people gathered and cheered when they saw him emerge at one end of St. Peter's Square. Among his entourage were his private secretary, Monsignor Carlo Confalonieri, several members of the Swiss Guard, and one of his official physicians. He left behind orders that the Vatican museums were to remain closed to visitors from May 3 to May 10, the duration of Hitler's tour of Italy. The Vatican explained publicly that the facilities needed to be “reorganized.” He had also sent a letter to churchmen that reiterated his rejection of Hitler and Mussolini, referring to their totalitarian goals as anathema to religion and declaring that they promoted racism through fake science. He warned members of the curia to avoid all official functions, dinners, or celebrations or receptions honoring Hitler. In addition, the official newspaper,
Osservatore Romano,
the only publication left in Italy that was free of Fascist censorship, was not to report Hitler's visit.

The newspaper reported facetiously that “the Holy Father was not going to Castel Gandolfo ‘for petty diplomatic reasons, but simply because the air at Castel Gandolfo made him feel good, while this air made him ill.'”

Word spread quickly that the pope was on his way to Castel Gandolfo. People began to line the Appian Way as soon as the pope's four-car motorcade left the outskirts of Rome. By the time the procession reached the village of Albano, hundreds had gathered in the main piazza, waving and cheering as the pope rode past. Thousands had gathered in the central piazza of Castel Gandolfo, where an orchestra serenaded him as the motorcade arrived at the front gates of the palace.

The wooden doors opened and Pius XI was shepherded into the inner courtyard. He rode the small elevator to his rooms on the third floor and soon stepped onto the balcony of the palace and gave his blessing. The small crowd cheered and waved flags: the Italian
tri-colore,
green, white, and red, intermingled with the yellow-and-white banner of the Vatican fluttering in the wind. The band played the Italian royal march, the papal hymn, and then, much less pleasing to the pontiff's ears, the Fascist marching song. Such were the times.

The pope waved once more, then turned and retired to his private chapel and quarters on the opposite side of the building from the piazza. From here, the pope could look out toward the Mediterranean in the distance or turn outside to the balcony adjacent to the Vatican Observatory. He also had a commanding view of Lake Albano, a perfectly serene perch from which to contemplate the world beyond. Castel Gandolfo was always a relief from the closed quarters of St. Peter's. From this cloistered place, he could strategize and regroup.

The pope had a remarkable ability to gather the world's attention. He was the leader of about 350 million Catholics, about 16 percent of the world population, and no other religious or moral figure was comparable. His words were translated into dozens of languages, read and displayed on the front pages of newspapers everywhere. He had issued thirty-two encyclicals in his sixteen years on the throne of St. Peter, and each of them carried weight beyond the Catholic faithful. With the dawn of the telegraph and the radio, he had a worldwide audience for his pronouncements on morality and the human condition. This was his weapon against tyranny.

He spoke daily through
Osservatore Romano
and Vatican Radio, both of which issued regular political commentaries about European affairs. He would need to make use of this power judiciously in the coming months. The world was facing the abyss, drawn there by Adolf Hitler. The pope was not alone in thinking that the German führer was insane.

THE WEEKS PRIOR
to the pope's retreat to Castel Gandolfo had been intense. Two weeks earlier, on April 17, Easter Sunday, the pope had delivered his annual
Urbi et Orbi
benediction “to the City of Rome and to the World” before an overflow crowd of one hundred thousand people in St. Peter's Square.

Since Pius was recovering from a variety of illnesses, including angina and perhaps a heart attack, he was confined to waving and issuing his blessing to the crowd from a chair. He also used a wooden contraption that supported him from the back when he felt too weak to stand, similar to Franklin Roosevelt being propped up and made to seem as if he was standing. Those looking up to the pope, the setting framed by Bernini's seventeenth-century sculptures of the Apostles, saw him appearing cheerful and surprisingly well. A
New York Times
reporter said the pope “was rather pale and he had lost considerable weight, but his eyes sparkled behind the thick lenses of his spectacles with the old vivacity, and his gestures as he raised his right hand in blessing had regained their energy.”

That was the image the pope sought and maintained. Pius XI indeed had regained considerable strength since a heart attack late in 1936. Many around him had thought he might not live through that Christmas. But the holiday came and the illness receded. Inevitably, the press speculated about his health and physical appearance. News agencies maintained a constant pope watch, vying to be the first to report the news of his death. It was a macabre business.

A second Christmas had come, and he was still well enough. “Despite his eighty years and his recent grave illness,” the
New York Times
had reported, “the Pope stood the strain of the five-hour ceremony in his heavy pontifical robes very well although at the end he was visibly tired and he went to bed immediately afterward for a long rest.”

Pius XI ruled the Holy See with an imperial style and a withering gaze. He had also been obstinate in resisting the best arguments of those around him. They regularly bothered him with comments about his health. He was irritated and snapped at them when they mentioned his infirmities.

Cardinal Carlo Salotti told him one day, “You have been an example for all men to follow. No man works harder than Your Holiness for God and His Church. But hard labor has need to rest in its time. . . . Why not take a long rest?”

The pope had no time for this. He was annoyed with Salotti for even raising the issue. “The Lord has endowed you with many good qualities, Salotti. But he denied you a clinical eye,” Pius XI said.

Finally, the cardinals convinced the pope to see someone who did have a clinical eye, the chief of the Vatican health service, Doctor Aminta Milani. The pope confessed to Milani that he had been feeling ill. His legs were painful, he had trouble breathing at times, and sleep was difficult. After an examination, Milani said the pope was suffering from circulatory problems and dangerously high blood pressure. Doctors at the time could generally identify cardiac disease and recognized that heart failure was a major cause of death among people over fifty years old. They could also measure high blood pressure and understood the consequences, but they had few remedies. Milani, a respected physician trained in medical pathology at the Royal University of Rome at the turn of the century, prescribed bed rest, occasional injections of stimulants, and bloodletting.

The pope said, however, he had no intention of going to bed and with good reason rejected bloodletting, a process that had progressed little since the Middle Ages. Bloodletting had been questioned in the last hundred years and had been determined as useless by doctors in the United States and much of Europe.

The cardinals warned the pope, however, to follow Milani's treatment or face grave consequences. Pius relented, but he said he would submit to the treatment only under certain conditions. The procedure would be done while he worked in the papal offices, not in bed, and he would not take time from his schedule.

The pope's American personal biographer, Thomas B. Morgan of the United Press, described the operation. On the appointed day, the doctor came to the pope's office and made a small “puncture behind the ear.” It “was performed in his library chair and he withstood it with the fortitude of a martyr,” Morgan wrote later. “When it was over and a pad of gauze placed upon the wound, the Holy Father told the physician that that was enough.” The blood draining basin was removed and the pope ordered the physician to withdraw as well. He then followed through with his schedule of meetings and audiences for the rest of the day. All those who approached the pontiff noticed that he was holding his handkerchief to his ear in obvious discomfort. “He asked no sympathy,” Morgan said, and “resented it when given.” The pope survived the treatment.

Sometime later, the pope asked Milani and the other doctors attending him to tell him plainly and accurately how much longer he would live. They told him that he would survive, but no one could say for how long.

Pope Pius XI realized he had a serious heart ailment that might lead to his death, but he wanted to survive, and as he said, “we cannot look upon youth without a very sincere love, without a certain envy.” He seized whatever time he had to launch the most important campaign of his papacy.