The Pope's Last Crusade

by Peter Eisner

  Ledóchowski had lobbied the pope more than once to link Jews with the spread of Communism. “Perhaps your Holiness would like to make known to the world this terrible danger, one that becomes every day more threatening,” he had said to the pope prior to the 1937 publication of the pope’s encyclical Divinis Redemptoris, “The Promise of a Redeemer,” which attacked Communism. The encyclical was the pope’s strongest statement opposing Marxism and was issued a few days after the more controversial anti-Nazi tract, With Deep Anxiety, which set the stage for future criticism of Nazism as well. The two encyclicals had a certain symmetry in dealing with the world’s two totalitarian systems; issuing them so close together perhaps assuaged Vatican dissenters such as Ledóchowski who were more rabidly anti-Communist than concerned about the Nazis. But the pope had no intention of using the anti-Communist encyclical as Ledóchowski intended—as a groundless diatribe against Judaism.

  Divinis Redemptoris did criticize Communism on grounds that it “strips man of his liberty, robs human personality of all its dignity, and removes all the moral restraints that check the eruptions of blind impulse.” But Ledóchowski insisted on changes once more. Your Holiness, he told the pope, such a strong message on Communism should contain a mention of what he saw as the international conspiracy of Jews, Masons, and Bolsheviks. “Though the atheist propaganda from Moscow becomes ever more intense, nonetheless the world press, in the hands of the Jews, hardly makes a reference, just as it ignores the crimes committed in Russia.”

  “For not only were all the intellectual fathers of Communism Jewish,” Ledóchowski said in his letter to the pope, “but the Communist movement in Russia was staged by Jews, and even now, if one digs deeply one finds that the primary authors of Communist propaganda, though perhaps not always openly, are Jews.”

  These fraudulent charges had been circulated widely by anti-Semites inside and outside the Catholic Church. The pope challenged these written corrections and in several places penciled in the word “Verify!” Prove it, he was saying. Ledóchowski had no factual responses, and the pope rejected these attempts to change the text.

  Similarly, the pope turned down Pacelli’s requests that the Vatican be more supportive of Generalissimo Francisco Franco in Spain. Pacelli saw Spain as a clear confrontation between good—the Nazi and Fascist-backed Nationalists—and bad—the Soviet-supported Spanish government. Pius did not see the dispute in such stark terms—he never accepted or trusted Franco and questioned Franco’s ties to the Nazis.

  The pope even considered a dialogue proposed by the leader of the French Communist Party about creating a united front against the Nazis and Fascists. The pope told a French bishop that it might be a good idea “to take up that invitation, not of course so that we might be drawn toward the Communists, but rather so that we can draw the Communist proffered hand toward us.” Not surprisingly, Cardinal Pacelli was against such a dialogue and worked behind the scenes to block it. Conservatives within the Vatican saw Pius’s interest in this dialogue as evidence that the pope was losing his grip on reality.

  DURING THE June 26 meeting, Pius told Ledóchowski about his meeting with LaFarge and the new encyclical, and Ledóchowski immediately set out to devise a strategy for dealing with LaFarge. He said he would help LaFarge, and even appeared to be doing so, but he was certainly against issuing the document, and his strategy would be to manage the process. Ledóchowski had once told his friend Cardinal Edward Mooney about his methods for manipulating the Jesuits beneath him. “Jesuits obeyed as long as they got few orders; and none against their grain,” he told Mooney. A “wise superior can get obedience provided he does not violate a man’s love of reasonable independence.”

  Along the lines of that thinking, LaFarge would think he was acting as an independent agent. Ledóchowski would encourage LaFarge as he prepared the encyclical, but the superior general would eventually control the final product.

  LaFarge would not be difficult to manage. All Jesuits had an ingrained sense of obedience, and Ledóchowski had already met LaFarge and lectured him about his responsibilities as a Jesuit journalist. Specifically he had discussed America magazine’s mission. Ledóchowski directed the magazine’s political commentary to focus on traditional church teachings and preaching. As a traditionalist, he expected and demanded adherence to the ancient precepts of the church. America, he felt, had the sacred responsibility to explain current events in terms of the church: “People look to us for the interpretation of what is going on,” he said, “what religion has to say concerning events.” America must not be a journal of individual opinion—rather it should express the viewpoint of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits.

  The message was that Jesuits in the United States owed their full fealty to the Jesuit Curia in Rome, to Ledóchowski himself, and thence to the Vatican. LaFarge was evidently cut in the classic Jesuit mold: an obedient, earnest fellow who would do what he was told.

  Ledóchowski summoned LaFarge to meet with him the next morning, June 27. LaFarge was unaware of the political maelstroms and intrigues swirling around the Vatican. He was relieved that the pope had told Ledóchowski about the assignment. LaFarge was already starstruck and simply in awe that he was meeting with the Jesuit general. He was also intimidated and fearful. Ledóchowski had a reputation that extended all the way back to New York. Even from afar on West 108th Street in Manhattan, LaFarge had gotten word that the seventy-one-year-old Jesuit superior general could be moody and was not to be trifled with.

  “It was fortunately one of his good days, and he was most lively and spoke most entertainingly and he has the wonderful gift of making you feel at ease at once,” LaFarge wrote after that first meeting. “Indeed, I had to pinch myself several times to realize I was actually talking to the [leader] himself.”

  In this second meeting, as with the first, LaFarge was disarmed. Ledóchowski was quite good-humored when he greeted the American and said the pope had spoken with him about the encyclical. Once put at ease, LaFarge told the Jesuit superior that he felt overwhelmed by the assignment from the pope. If he had a hint of something of this magnitude was about to take place, LaFarge added, “nothing would have persuaded me to go to Rome, much less meet with the pope.” Ledóchowski told him not to worry: “nothing to do, but to go through with the whole thing.”

  That said, LaFarge identified a number of concerns. First, he told the general he wanted to review background materials in the Vatican archives—prior declarations and positions taken by the Vatican on racism and the Nazis. Not a problem, Ledóchowski told him. He made sure LaFarge would have every facility open to him.

  Next, LaFarge was worried about the intense heat of the Roman summers. He much preferred working in a mild climate, preferably Paris. A very good idea, Ledóchowski said, and accepted that proposition as well.

  Finally, LaFarge said the pope asked him to work quickly. Given the short amount of time, he asked if the superior general could provide him with an assistant to work on the encyclical. Ledóchowski assigned two Jesuits—one would be Gustave Desbuquois, who LaFarge had met in Paris, the leader of the French Jesuit social organization, Action Populaire. The other, Ledóchowski decided, was to be Gustav Gundlach. “The two Guses,” as they became known, were discreet and both had prior experience in preparing such documents. Ledóchowski knew both men’s work and also knew they could be controlled.

  Charming though he might have been, Ledóchowski effectively used his skills to oversee the project. He discussed the need for secrecy and speed. Among other things, if LaFarge’s work was ever made public, “every government in Europe would have people in 24 hours at the Vatican, urging the expression of their ideas.” All the more reason for LaFarge to go to Paris. He was to leave as soon as possible. Any questions, any doubts should be forwarded back directly to Ledóchowski at the Vatican.

  LaFarge mentioned that the Sunday-morning edition of Osservatore Romano had as usual listed the pope’s activities the previous day in a column on the left side of the front
page. One could read in small type under audiences: “Giovanni LaFarge, SJ.” His meeting with the pope was no secret—only the subject discussed was closely guarded. Ledóchowski suggested that LaFarge use a cover story—he would say he had decided to work on revisions of Interracial Justice and would be writing and conducting interviews in Paris.

  After the meeting, LaFarge was given access to pertinent documents and diplomatic communications at the Vatican. It was a rather quick review, but long enough to note that political affairs and church relations with Italy and Germany were worse than he expected. Probably out of a sense of excitement or overenthusiasm, he broke almost immediately with the pledge to remain silent. He wrote a letter to Francis Talbot, his editor in New York, that described the situation and discussed his delayed return home, adding that the story must be concealed.

  “If people get nosey, you can say I am working on a possible second edition of my book, collecting notes, seeing people. Etc. That is generally true—and telling them that here.”

  Ledóchowski could consider the meeting with LaFarge as a success. He had followed his precept by making LaFarge think he was getting everything he wanted—full freedom of action. He had established a trusted relationship, and he had employed two known and reliable cowriters who would not stray too far from existing Vatican dogma. And LaFarge’s request to work away from Rome was easy to accept. Ledóchowski was probably much happier to have LaFarge at a distance, not able or likely to approach the pope until the work was finished. This would limit the number of people at the Vatican who might find out about the encyclical or with whom LaFarge might be able to communicate. Ledóchowski could interpose himself between Pius XI and his American ghost writer with hopes of toning down the pope’s recently increasingly virulent rhetoric.

  LaFarge thought he was being given the best possible structure in which to work on one of the most important documents he might ever write. It remained to be seen what the product would be, but LaFarge told a friend that Pius had said: “Remember, you are writing this encyclical for me, not for Ledóchowski.” Even so, LaFarge put his faith in the Jesuit leader, not only out of obedience, but also because of the experiences he had in the past with authority figures.

  “I had a curious sensation that I was talking to my own father,” LaFarge recalled about his conversation with the pope. “His gestures were singularly like those of my father, particularly the characteristic one of the joined index and middle finger raised and waved paternally in the air. Little turns of expression remind me of Father, and there was the same atmosphere, as it were, of conversation.” It was easy to understand the comparison between the Holy Father and LaFarge’s real father, who now had been dead for more than twenty-seven years. The elder LaFarge had been an inspiring but a somewhat frightening presence in his son’s life, and a person LaFarge wanted to please and impress. And now, no one other than the pope was as exalted, awe-inspiring, in John LaFarge’s religious life.

  But LaFarge did not see Ledóchowski as a father figure, but more as mothering influence. He said the Jesuit superior’s “wiry vivacious person reminded me oddly” of Katharine Drexel, a prominent nun and friend in Philadelphia.

  LaFarge, nevertheless, left his meeting with the certainty that his Jesuit superior would “facilitate” communications with the pontiff. On June 27, LaFarge packed his bags, bade farewell to McCormick at the Gregorian University, and took a train first to Geneva and then onward to Paris to begin a mission that seemed simple on its face but was to have moral and political repercussions he couldn’t imagine.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A Democratic Response

  Paris, July 19, 1938

  ON JULY 19, about three weeks after John LaFarge arrived in Paris to begin his secret work on behalf of Pope Pius, he took a break for the arrival of Britain’s King George VI.

  LaFarge had been invited with several other priests to watch the ceremony from a fifth-floor balcony overlooking the Champs-Elysées. The king rode by in an open black limousine. He wore the blue-gray, full dress uniform of the Royal Air Force and was seated next to French president Albert Lebrun, with Queen Elizabeth and Lebrun’s wife trailing behind. Spahi cavalry—French Arab regiments—created a phalanx around them, led by that old hero of the Great War, Marshall Philippe Pétain. Soldiers lined the streets, a military band played, and a dirigible maneuvered overhead close to the Arc de Triomphe.

  “We had a splendid view,” LaFarge wrote afterward. “It was a wonderful sight, the Spahis magnificently mounted, those from Tunis being dressed in red, and those from Morocco in black . . . The Army was idolized by the people and the crowd was cheerful and in good humor. Periscopes were on sale everywhere.”

  Reporters compared the event and safety concerns to the spectacle Mussolini had laid out for Hitler in Rome two months earlier. Despite the joyous reaction of the French, tens of thousands of security officers fanned out across Paris. “Two hours before their arrival, troops virtually took over Paris,” reported the United Press. “Army tanks rumbled through the boulevards and took up commanding positions in the Place de Concorde and the Champs Elysee, barring all traffic.”

  LaFarge doubted that the pomp and the show of democracy meant anything in the face of Nazi war preparations.

  “I found my French friends in a state of political optimism. As for Hitler, they explained to me, there was really nothing to worry about,” LaFarge wrote. “Nous sommes si calme,” people kept telling him. “But when you have heard people tell you four or five times a day how calm they are, you wonder just how deep is that tranquility?”

  Coinciding with the royal visit, the United States had convened an international conference on refugees in Evian-les-Bains, 350 miles southeast of Paris on Lake Geneva. By now, at least 150,000 German Jews had fled Germany, only a fraction of those teeming to leave Europe. President Roosevelt, the prime mover, sent his friend Myron Taylor, a respected businessman, as the U.S. representative. “A forced migration is taking place and the time has come when governments . . . must act promptly and effectively,” Taylor said in an ardent appeal to the thirty-two countries attending the conference.

  It became clear that Roosevelt, facing anti-Semitism at home, expected others to take in Jewish refugees. No country provided substantive help to the Jews.

  Hitler mocked the United States and the other participants sarcastically for claiming to have “such deep sympathy for these criminals,” the Jews being expelled from Germany and Austria. World opinion, he said, was “oozing sympathy for the poor, tormented people, but remaining hard and obdurate when it comes to helping them.”

  The pope was disturbed by the weak response to the Evian refugee conference. He asked American Catholic leaders to discuss the prospects for resettlement of Jews with U.S. officials in Washington. Meanwhile, he focused on his own campaign. He would not wait for the encyclical before lashing out against anti-Semitism.

  LAFARGE WAS WORKING intermittently on the pope’s encyclical. Early in July, he had decided to take a series of trips outside Paris to clear his head and to take time to understand what the pope wanted him to do. He visited friends and relatives and traveled to hallowed battlefields of the last war. The United States had been France’s great protector when it entered World War I and helped beat back the German army. More than sixteen million soldiers and civilians died on all sides in the Great War; twenty million were wounded. LaFarge visited Reims, which symbolized the war’s madness and the carnage. The cathedral at Reims had been rebuilt with the help of the American philanthropist John Rockefeller. “It is not well to be too reflective,” he wrote in a letter home. “Not well to let the mind rove still further,” LaFarge wrote, “where almost under the spires of the cathedral American boys lie buried by the thousands side by side with German and French lads and many another from other lands, and that freezes the soul still with its silence crying to deaf humanity.”

  LaFarge saw the rededication of the cathedral as progress overshadowed by a new round of human folly.
“Better to thank God that with a thousand reasons for grief and regret, France at least has the one great thing, she has liberty, narrow liberty, if you wish, liberty that limps. But still liberty for the Church to live . . . liberty to build a new France not patterned upon the old. . . .” But for how long?

  After visiting Reims and World War I battlefields, he visited relatives on his father’s side whom he had met thirty-five years earlier when he was a seminary student. He stayed at the old Manor House where his father had lived for a time as a young man in the village of Ploujean in Brittany. His brother Grant had made the same journey three years earlier, and, LaFarge wrote in his memoir, they both had the same experience of “suddenly finding a hundred reminders of home in such a remote part of the world. They had laid on my table a big box of family papers and documents. In the shimmering summer evening, I read them until long after midnight. I found Father’s old sketchbook made in Brittany the year before he came back to the United States and became acquainted with Mother.”

  John LaFarge the son, the youngest of nine children, remembered his father as a distant presence when he was growing up in New England and New York City at the turn of the twentieth century. “I was never part of my father’s early life at home,” he recalled, “and had never known him as directly and personally as had my two older brothers, Grant and Bancel. It was Bancel in many ways who took Father’s place as a parent, playing the role with me that a young father might assume with his children.”