GERMANY: Holy War

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This clerical thunder whipped Reich bigwigs and the Nazi press into a lather of fury. Through its news agency the Government roared: "The Vatican must decide whether it will allow the improper utterances of one of its servants to go unpunished or call him to order. . . ." Stormed Der Augriff: "Mundelein's challenge was made in a tone hitherto reserved for the wildest street agitator. He insults not only the German Minister [Goebbels] but the head of the State and the entire people including German Catholics."

In his summer villa at Castel Gandolfo, sick Pope Pius XI, instead of calling Cardinal Mundelein to order, received 150 German Catholic pilgrims, patted them on their spiritual backs. Speaking in German with a quavering voice he declared: "I am glad to see you, while at home there is being fought out a battle so unjust, so bitter and so inimical to conscience and religion. . . . The presence of you, dear children, here means that you wish to remain firm in your religion. . . . Tell your people that the Pope prays for them, daily, daily, daily."

It was not surprising that the Pope refused to crack down on Cardinal Mundelein. First, they are close friends. The first Eucharistic Congress ever to meet in the U. S. met in Chicago in 1926. That Cardinal Mundelein was chosen to organize this Congress was considered a special Papal tribute. Second the Cardinal had "a mass of accumulated evidence that could no longer be overlooked." Third, the Cardinal, who lives simply, has fine collections of coins and incunabula, is one of the Catholic Church's most successful money-raisers.

Ecclesiastical dignitaries over the country applauded Cardinal Mundelein's denunciation. Somebody saw to it that a New York tabloid got a full page of pictures showing the ordered life of a Berlin monastery. Vatican churchmen declared that the Cardinal "had every right to speak his mind."

Osservatore Romano, semi-official Vatican newsorgan, published reports from German Catholic sources charging that Hitler's State police had closed and confiscated 18 Catholic printing plants, "a dolorous echo of the Holy Father's encyclical" (TIME, March 29). Among the victims were reported such famed firms as Regensberg of Munich, Bachem of Cologne. The Pope was reported to have finished his "White Book," a stack of evidence to show that Hitler, not the Vatican, has violated the Vatican-Nazi Concordat. It looked as though the Church was campaigning in as big a way as the Third Reich.

Professor Friedrich Schonemann of the University of Berlin, onetime instructor at Harvard, tried to quiet the Nazi howling. He declared: "I think it is rather foolish and at the same time dangerous on the part of a certain section of the German press to indulge in wholesale criticism of the United States. [Because of] long continued British propaganda plus in recent years skilful Communist and Jewish propaganda . . . public opinion in America could be mobilized for war against Germany within a few hours."