Who Strikes at the Pope

Fascist Italy's minute minority of 48,000 Jews were fearful last month that their luck might be running out (TIME, July 18). Last week they learned officially that it was running out indeed. On the heels of a manifesto drawn up by ten Fascist savants, declaring that Italians are "Aryan, Nordic and heroic" and that "Jews do not belong to the Italian race," came announcement from Fascist Party Secretary Achille Starace that the Government had prepared a series of laws to "defend the race against all contamination."

Until last fortnight only the semi-official Papal newspaper, Osservatore Romano, had dealt with Italy's burgeoning racism. Twice thereafter, however, Pope Pius XI himself spoke publicly against it. Last week the aging Holy Father, in a speech to Catholic seminarians visiting him at Castel Gandolfo, summed it up in the most vigorous words he has uttered for years. Pounding home his recently-repeated point that "Catholic means universal," the Pope said: "We regard racism and exaggerated nationalism as barriers raised between man and man, between people and people, between nation and nation. ... All men are, above all, members of the same great kind. They all belong to the single great family of the living. Humankind is therefore a single, universal catholic race." Added Pius XI: "One wonders why Italy should have needed to imitate Germany so unfortunately."

Besides outlining a new area of friction between Italy and the Church, the Pope made reference to an old one. Catholic Action--organized activity of Catholic laymen under the guidance of their bishops--was the cause of frequent rows between Church and State in 1931. Lately Roberto Farinacci, Fascist firebrand, urged that members of Catholic Action groups be excluded from the Fascist Party. Exclaimed the Pope last week: "The Pope therefore says 'Beware!' I advise you not to strike at the Catholic Action associations. I advise and beseech you not to do so, for your own good, because whoever strikes at the Catholic Action associations strikes at the Pope, and whoever strikes at the Pope dies. This is truth and history proves it."*

Next day II Duce took a prompt shot at the Pope, told Fascist officials: "I wish you and everyone to know that also in the race question we will go straight ahead. To say that Fascism has imitated anyone or anything is simply absurd." Thus squaring off once more at the Vatican, Mussolini caused his two sentences to be shrieked out in Italy's press. But to most Italians the cause of the battle was not immediately evident, would not be until their parish priests told them of it. With the exception of Rome's Catholic dailies, Italian newspapers had printed not a word of the Holy Father's views on racism.

* A saying during the conflict between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire was: Qui mange du Pape en meurt ("Who eats of the Pope, dies of it") Today most Catholics interpret "die" as "die spiritually."

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