Infiltration

by Taylor Marshall

  Father Ignacio Lorenco said he saw the miracle from eleven miles away:

  I was only nine years old at this time, and I went to the local village school. At about midday we were surprised by shouts and cries of some men and women who were passing in the street in front of the school. The teacher, a good, pious woman, though nervous and impressionable, was the first to run into the road, with the children after her.

  Outside, the people were shouting and weeping and pointing to the sun, ignoring the agitated questions of the schoolmistress. It was the great Miracle, which one could see quite distinctly from the top of the hill where my village was situated — the Miracle of the Sun, accompanied by all its extraordinary phenomena.

  I feel incapable of describing what I saw and felt. I looked fixedly at the sun, which seemed pale and did not hurt the eyes. Looking like a ball of snow revolving on itself, it suddenly seemed to come down in a zigzag, menacing the earth. Terrified, I ran and hid myself among the people, who were weeping and expecting the end of the world at any moment.

  Near us was an unbeliever who had spent the morning mocking at the simpletons who had gone off to Fatima just to see an ordinary girl. He now seemed to be paralyzed, his eyes fixed on the sun. Afterwards he trembled from head to foot and lifting his arms fell on his knees in the mud, crying out to our Lady.

  Meanwhile the people continued to cry out and to weep, asking God to pardon their sins. We all ran to the two chapels in the village, which were soon filled to overflowing. During those long moments of the solar prodigy, objects around us turned all the colors of the rainbow. We saw ourselves blue, yellow, and red. All these strange phenomena increased the fears of the people. After about ten minutes the sun, now dull and pallid, returned to its place. When the people realized that the danger was over, there was an explosion of joy, and everyone joined in thanksgiving and praise to our Lady.

  The churches of Portugal were filled, and the bishops recognized this Miracle of the Sun. Pope Benedict XV, by his papal invocation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, received a divine response, and he recognized this to some extent. In a letter dated 29 April 1918 to the Portuguese bishops, he referred to the occurrences at Fatima as “an extraordinary aid from the Mother of God,” but he seems to have taken little formal interest in these apparitions in Fatima. The apparition of Our Lady of Fatima would not be approved as “worthy of belief” until 1930 during the papacy of his successor Pope Pius XI.

  34 Except where otherwise noted, the narrative and quotations are derived from the memoirs of Sister Lúcia de Jesus Rosa dos Santos, which can be found in Louis Kondor, ed., Fátima in Sister Lúcia’s Own Words (Fatima: Secretariado dos Pastorinhos, 1976).

  35 The historical occurrence of this miraculous light is explained subsequently in the chapter about Pope Pius XII.

  36 Andrew Apostoli, Fatima for Today: The Urgent Marian Message of Hope (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 131.

  8

  Conclave of 1922: Pope Pius XI

  The Secret Societies, which by their nature are ever ready to help the enemies of God and of the Church — be these who they may — are seeking to add fresh fires to this poisonous hatred, from which there comes no peace or happiness of the civil order, but the certain ruin of states.

  — Pope Pius XI, Caritate Christi compulsi

  The conclave of 1922 began eleven days after Pope Benedict XV died of pneumonia on 22 January 1922. There were sixty living cardinals, but only fifty-three participated. Three were sick, and one could not make the trip from Rio de Janeiro. The two American cardinals and one Canadian cardinal arrived too late to vote (as had happened in the conclave that elected Benedict XV). Several cardinals insisted that the conclave should wait for these non-European cardinals, but they were ignored.

  The conclave of 1922 was the most gridlocked of the twentieth century. Whereas the previous three conclaves had elected a supreme pontiff in three days or less, this conclave lasted five days with fourteen ballots. The two factions aligned with two previous pontificates. The former were stalwart anti-Modernists, the “Irreconcilable Party.” They revered Pope Pius X and favored his secretary of state, Cardinal Merry del Val (who had been dismissed by Pope Benedict XV). The latter were the progressive party who favored the more conciliar approach of Pope Benedict XV. They supported Pietro Cardinal Gasparri, who had served as secretary of state under Benedict XV.

  A Roman proverb says, “Whoever enters the conclave as ‘pope’ leaves the conclave as cardinal.” That is, the men most supported initially usually do not attain the two-thirds majority needed for papal election. In 1922, the two parties were evenly divided and could not attain the required majority. When it became clear after three days of voting that neither Merry del Val nor Gasparri would win, Gasparri approached Achille Cardinal Ratti as a possible compromise candidate and offered to send his supporters to Ratti. Cardinal Gaetano de Lai allegedly said to Cardinal Ratti “We will elect Your Eminence if Your Eminence will promise that you will not choose Cardinal Gasparri as your secretary of state.”37 Cardinal Ratti rebuffed him saying, “I hope and pray that among so highly deserving cardinals the Holy Spirit selects someone else. If I am chosen, it is indeed Cardinal Gasparri whom I will take to be my Secretary of State.”38 In this way, Cardinal Ratti showed himself to be an ally to Cardinal Gasparri and the legacy of Pope Benedict XV.

  The followers of Cardinal Merry del Val in the legacy of Pope Pius X sought to attain the majority, but Cardinal Ratti won the election on the fourteenth ballot with thirty-eight votes on 6 February 1922. Surprisingly, Ratti took the name not of Benedict but of the opposition by choosing Pius XI. When asked why he chose the name Pius, he replied that “he wanted a Pius to end the Roman question39 which had begun under a Pius.”40 In this way, he subtly rebuked the hardliner legacy of both Pope Pius IX and Pope Pius X.

  Some of the conservative cardinals and followers of Cardinal Merry del Val begged the new Pope Pius XI not to give the Urbi et Orbi blessing from the balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica. The omission of this blessing had become a symbolic protest against the secular state of Italy and a sign of the pope’s imprisonment in the Vatican. Pope Pius XI responded to them, “Remember, I am no longer a cardinal. I am the Supreme Pontiff now.”41 Pope Pius XI began by giving the Urbi et Orbi blessing facing the people; he was the first pope to do so since the fall of the Papal States in 1870. This indicated that he would, in fact, retreat from the firm position of Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X. He would accommodate the modern secular state of Italy and surrender the temporal claims of the papacy. Much to the disappointment of the conservative cardinals, Pope Pius XI immediately appointed Cardinal Gasparri as his secretary of state — just as he had promised in the conclave.

  Pope Pius XI was a mountaineer and a scholar. Ordained a priest in 1879, he gave his life to studying medieval manuscripts. His passion was the Ambrosian Library of Milan, where he edited and published an edition of the Ambrosian Rite Missal particular to Milan. He went on to become vice prefect of the Vatican Library (1914–1915) and then prefect of the Vatican Library (1915–1919). He spent his vacations climbing mountains and had ascended the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc.

  He published thirty-one encyclicals proclaiming Catholic orthodoxy. He published an encyclical promoting the study of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Studiorum ducem in 1923. He established the feast of Christ the King in 1925 and promoted the Social Reign of Christ the King. In 1928, he rejected the idea that Christian unity could be attained by a federation of Christian denominations, teaching instead that all Christians must enter the one true (Catholic) Church. He also prohibited Catholics from joining interfaith bodies and conferences.

  In 1930, after the Church of England allowed artificial means of contraception, Pope Pius XI issued Casti connubii, which praised Christian marriage and condemned artificial contraception in no uncertain words: “Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an of
fense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.”42

  To commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum, he published Quadragesimo anno, condemning socialism as intrinsically evil and unrestrained capitalism as contrary to human dignity.

  All previous popes had refused to recognize or compromise with the state of Italy. Pope Pius XI was determined to find a solution. Italy’s prime minister Benito Mussolini was also eager to reach an agreement with the pope. Mussolini offered the following terms to Pope Pius XI:

  Vatican City State (108.7 acres within the Vatican walls) would receive sovereignty as an independent nation in return for the Vatican’s relinquishing its claim to the former territories of the Papal States.

  Pius XI would be recognized as sovereign of this Vatican City State.

  Catholicism would be recognized as the sole religion of Italy.

  Italy would pay salaries to priests and bishops.

  Civil recognition would be given to church marriages (previously the Kingdom of Italy required that couples had to have a civil ceremony).

  Catholic instruction would take place in the public schools.

  The Italian state would have a veto power over selection of its bishops.

  Italy would pay the Vatican 1,750 million lira (about $100 million) for the seizures of church property since 1860.

  This was a bad deal, but Pope Pius XI took the bait. He agreed to the Lateran Treaty in 1929. Mussolini bought the Catholic Church for a cheap price: $100 million and some concessions that could and would be later revoked. Imagine the happy grin of Mussolini when the deal went through with Pope Pius XI and was subsequently ratified by the Italian parliament. Sadly, this compromise of 1929 undermined Pius XI’s teaching in 1925 that Christ is King over the political realm.

  In retrospect, the Lateran Treaty looks more like a bribe and less like a covenant based on Catholic principles. Since the pope was no longer at odds with the Italian state, Pope Pius XI explained that the Leonine Prayers would remain but would be prayed for a new purpose: “to permit tranquility and freedom to profess the faith to be restored to the afflicted people of Russia.”43 The axis of evil had shifted from Rome to Moscow. This was appropriate because Our Lady had warned in 1917 of the errors of Russia, and Moscow implemented a new anti-Christian campaign in 1929 in which the destruction of churches peaked around 1932.

  I personally believe that Pope Pius XI acted in goodwill, but that he did, in fact, sign a deal with the devil in the person of Benito Mussolini. Pope Pius X and his saintly secretary of state, Cardinal Merry Del Val (to whom is attributed the Litany of Humility), had the right approach against Modernism and the right approach against the Freemasonic Kingdom of Italy. The 1929 Lateran Treaty opened the floodgates to demonic influence in the world, as we shall see.

  37 David I. Kertzer, The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014), 15.

  38 Thomas J. Reese, Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 94.

  39 The dispute regarding the temporal power of the popes.

  40 “Cardinal Ratti New Pope as Pius XI,” New York Times, 7 February 1922.

  41 Ibid.

  42 Pius XI, Encyclical Casti connubii (December 31, 1930), no. 56.

  43 Indictam ante of 30 June 1930, in Acta Apostolicae Sedis 22 (1930): 301.

  9

  Communist Infiltration of the Priesthood

  He will set up a counter church which will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ.

  — Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen44

  The Freemasons and Socialists persecuted Christianity ruthlessly in Mexico, Spain, and Russia during the pontificate of Pope Pius XI. Pius XI appointed Berlin’s nuncio Eugenio Pacelli (future Pius XII) to work secretly on diplomatic arrangements between the Vatican and the Soviet Union. This approach yielded failure. Pius XI is largely seen as abandoning the Cristeros, who fought for the Catholic Church in the Cristeros War in Mexico (1926–1929). During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), priests, monks, and nuns were brutally attacked, churches were sacked, and believers were tortured. Former Communist agent Bella Dodd later explained, “During the Spanish War the Communist Party was able to use some of the best talent of the country against the Catholic Church by repeating ancient appeals to prejudice and by insinuating that the Church was indifferent to the poor and was against those who wanted only to be free.”45 As a result, the Freemasonic-Communist Spanish government appropriated all church properties and schools. In 1937, Pius XI endorsed a third way against both Communism and Fascism in his encyclical Divini Redemptoris, which did nothing to stop the emerging power of the Communist Soviets nor the Fascists in Italy, Germany, and Spain. Pius XI died on 10 February 1939. On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany would invade Poland and launch World War II. Between those two dates, Pope Pius XII was elected.

  Unbeknownst to Pius XI, the Communists were not simply attacking Catholic government and monarchs. Beginning in the 1930s, the Russians began secretly to infiltrate Catholic seminaries to plant their own Communist men as priests and eventually as bishops, cardinals, and even pope. Recall the advice of the Carbonari Freemasons who, as early as the 1840s, were recommending the following strategy: “So, in order to secure a pope according to our heart, it is a task first of all to form for this pope a generation worthy of the kingdom that we desire. Leave aside old and mature men, and go instead to youth, and, if possible, even to children.”46 The planned goal of the enemies of Christ since the 1800s was eventually to “secure a pope according to our heart,” and that entailed planting their own as seminarians.

  Bella Dodd testified before the United States House Committee on Un-American Activities Committee in 1953 about the subversive ways in which Communists try to infiltrate American institutions. She originally converted to Communism “because only the Communists seemed to care about what was happening to people in 1932 and 1933. . . . They were fighting hunger and misery and Fascism then, and neither the major political parties nor the churches seemed to care. That is why I am a Communist.” Having lived as a Communist agent in America, she later renounced her Communism under the spiritual direction of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen and returned to Catholicism in 1952. Dodd testified before a committee of the House of Representatives that, in the late 1920s and all during the 1930s, Communist agents in the United States followed directives from Moscow. One such order from Russia was to destroy the Catholic Church from within by planting Communist Party members in seminaries and in diocesan positions.

  Dodd testified that “in the 1930s we put eleven hundred men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within, and that right now they are in the highest places in the Church.”47 She was not claiming to have worked alone but worked with a group of Communists who sought to infiltrate not only the Catholic priesthood but also the American public school system, as is stated openly in the Alta Vendita: “Leave aside old and mature men, and go instead to youth, and, if possible, even to children.” As a former Communist agent in America, her testimony echoes perfectly the strategy mapped out in the Alta Vendita.

  A second former Communist, African-American agent Manning Johnson, also testified before the United States House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953 regarding Russian Communists infiltrating the Catholic priesthood:

  Once the tactic of infiltration of religious organizations was set by the Kremlin . . . the Communists discovered that the destruction of religion could proceed much faster through infiltration of the [Catholic] Church by Communists operating within the Church itself. . . . In the earliest stages it was determined that
with only small forces available to them, it would be necessary to concentrate Communist agents in the seminaries. The practical conclusion drawn by the Red leaders was that these institutions would make it possible for a small Communist minority to influence the ideology of future clergymen in paths conducive to Communist purposes. This policy of infiltrating seminaries was successful beyond even Communist expectations.48

  Here we have sworn testimony by former Communist agents that the Kremlin was strategically placing their own men in American and European seminaries so as to infiltrate the Catholic priesthood and that it was “successful beyond even Communist expectations” — all before 1953. In other words, long before the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the Communists had their own men in the seminaries, in the priesthood, and in the episcopate. Bella Dodd revealed that four of their infiltrated priests had attained the level of cardinal.

  In 1967 or 1968, just before Dodd’s death, she was interviewed by the scholar Dietrich von Hildebrand and his wife, Alice, in New Rochelle, New York. Alice von Hildebrand recounted their conversation: