The Press: Pegler v. the Vatican

From Hearst's New York Journal-American Westbrook Pegler's terrible-tempered column was conspicuously missing one day last week. Reason: as often happens, the column was deemed too hot to print.

Other papers like McCormick's Washington Times-Herald and Hearst's Detroit Times did run the column, and the specific reason for the Journal-American's silence was plain.

Three weeks ago, while he was on a European trip, Pegler reported that in Rome he had delivered an eye-opening report to the Vatican's "highest authority" on union labor and the "criminality and autocratic rule of American unions." His anonymous authority was so impressed with what he had to say that "he said it would be beneficial if I would write for the Holy Father a statement of the truth in care of the Papal Secretary of State."

As soon as it read of Pegler's lecture, the Catholic Welfare Conference News Service fired off a query to its Vatican correspondent. Last week it sent out the reply to more than 100 U.S. and Canadian Catholic newspapers. Said the News Service: "Official sources in the Vatican stated categorically that no Holy See official has been authorized to treat with anyone concerning union problems . . . The same sources had no knowledge whatever of the possibility of the so-called 'official' mentioned in the Westbrook Pegler story, and they disavowed any Holy See association with the Pegler attack on U.S. unions and union leaders."

Pegler swung right back with his usual fury. Wrote he: The Catholic News Service "agents are either liars or such bad reporters that they cannot verify a fact which could easily be verified on their own beat . . . I will stake my word against any man, whatever his office." In Rome, an official spokesman again said that 1) the Vatican had no knowledge of Pegler's ever talking with any high official, and 2) there is no such thing as a Vatican specialist on labor matters. Perhaps, said the Vatican spokesman charitably, Pegler talked to some priest or monsignor, who either personally shared his views or was just trying to be polite and asked Pegler for a report on labor to get rid of him.