NIKITARONCALLI 


Counterlife of a 

Pope 


Franco Bellegrandi 


FRANCO BELLEGRANDI 

NIKITARONCALLI 

Counterlife of a Pope 

To Anita, for her quiet, unflagging, precious help 


Author’s Note 


Once again to take in hand the manuscript of a book that 
was never published, open it, leaf through those pages 
written so many years before, is like stepping into a long- 
closed house. A house that was once our home, in which 
we lived, suffered, and loved. 

The dusty windows are, once again, thrust open, and as 
the morning light stirs, the rooms from the darkness one 
after the other, the eye makes out the ancient layout of the 
furnishings concealed by the coverings, of the objects, of 
the books once familiar. 

And approaching the walls and pushing aside with emotion 
the drape which shrouds a portrait, one encounters the gaze 
of a person well known and loved who has continued to 
live for all those years, in the dimness of the closed house, 
with the very same expression in her look, with the same 
fettered ability to move you in the splendor of those eyes, 
in the grace of her face, in the elegant and delicate posture 
of her figure. 

Much time has passed, and yet all has remained in its place 
in the house where year after year not a piece has 
resounded anymore, nor voice has uttered another word. 

However for this very reason those ancient emotions 
indissolubly tied to those rooms, to those decors, to that 


rich furnishing, to those veiled portraits, appear unscathed 
by time. 

No irksome hand has violated that seclusion nor moved 
anything. 

Thus time has stood still in those rooms like the subdued 
beat of the old pendulum on the console, in the stillness and 
in the shadows in the “physical” absence of life, all the 
spirituality, all the ideals, all the delusions and all the 
heightened or consuming passions that breathed so many 
years before within those walls. As, once again we enter 
that house, we find them still powerful, intact, pitiless, and 
punctual in “their” actuality having survived time and 
events. 

So it was with the manuscript of this book. Which ought 
to have been published many years ago, when the facts 
narrated had just taken place. The draft had been completed 
effortlessly, without halting reflections, with the voices of 
the protagonists still resounding in my ears, and the echo of 
the emotions still stirring in my heart. 

For many narrated facts I witnessed in person, with the 
awareness of moving in a world and amidst personages on 
which the curtain would be forever lowered. Where are 
they today? Somewhere they exist, and are living their own 
life. Yet erased from History, which, in spite of them, has 
turned the page. Confined into silence and lost in the 
swarming of the anonymous throng. Power has its 
proscenium and its actors. That is the “sanctioned 


actuality” continuously proposed. And so today one is led 
into thinking that a nation is represented by this unicum of 
plebeians in shirt and tie, with no trait of nobility in their 
face. And it is these, and always these, in power today. And 
yet those others, when death has yet to call an end to their 
days, are still alive. But they no longer “exist.” Their gold- 
embroidered uniforms, when not consigned to the junk 
dealer, lay at the bottom of a closet. Their talents produced 
books that today’s power has relegated into oblivion. Their 
code of honor called for a duel, to wipe the insult, or for a 
shot in one’s own head, in the disgraceful instance. People 
used to saying, watching them at ceremonies, “How noble, 
what a grand signor!” And yet some would take the 
streetcar to get to those ceremonies, the greatcoat buttoned 
up to conceal tailcoat and decorations, and born their 
destitution with dignity and decorum. 

But they are forever gone. 

The last of that rare stock with whom I lived, and 
befriended under the gilded vaults of the Vatican palace, 
furnished me with documents and precious information for 
my book, and encouraged me to write it: 

May my gratitude and admiration for their courage be 
with them wherever they are. 


Preface 


One could entitle these indispensable lines that introduce 
the pages that follow, Preface to the preface. The subject of 
this book is not frozen in time, but rather moves on with 
time. It flows like the sand in the grand inflexible merciless 
hourglass of History, arresting its moment is impossible. 

Only memory can immobilize them in its boundless 
archive upon which time can however do much, with its 
fog and its amnesias, more or less controlled by man. For 
the personal use, these amnesias, of the undemanding 
humanae gentis. 

Perhaps never like the present, a present encased in the 
swift passing of seasons, the political reality of the 
contemporary world has been devastated by a tremor as 
macroscopic as unpredictable, which has upset the political 
geography of half of our globe, and uncovered pots in 
which were brewing hallucinogenic schemes. 

The Soviet macrocosm has disintegrated piece by piece. 

All of its quasi-centenary monolithic order has been run 
through by cracks and clefts whence with the swiftness of 
an otherworldly nightmare have detached and flown away, 
obedient to a mysterious centrifugal force, vital fragments 
of its empire, which seemed unassailable and indissoluble. 


Communism, in an instant has disintegrated. It no longer 
exists. And Soviet Russia with hat in hand asks mercy of 
the dollar so as to feed herself. 

The last great ideology of the twentieth century to which, 
willingly or not, millions of men have given their intellect 
and sacrificed their lives, is sinking in a jubilation of 
shame. 

The ship is sinking and the rats are abandoning the ship in 
droves. All precipitously distance themselves, those who 
professed their beliefs in Communism in order to dunk in 
the doughnut of their avidity, and are now crying out the 
anathema. 

But this their distancing themselves, this their 
ostentatious outrage cannot annul facts and documents, 
cannot wipe out inescapable responsibilities, and cannot 
erase with a snap of a finger heavy and very uncomfortable 
accounts/scores. 

Regrettably for that multitude of “ex,” with tragicomic 
punctuality the sins are starting to catch up. And so this 
manuscript, recounting the approach between Church and 
Marxism, blossomed amidst the lights and shadows of the 
Giovannean pontificate, lived by the author in full, a step 
away from the pontifical throne, bestirs at the breeze of an 
actuality unimagined at the time of its draft. The distance of 
those days has been increased hundredfold by the forward 
flight of History. 


Days sanctified in the liturgy of the proletariat and strict 


political and social realities, solemnly affirmed and 
apparently indestructible. Days in which these pages 
yellowed by the years were written with a solid - if callow 
- faith in the fairness and legitimacy and honesty of the 
intent. Pages rather quite documental than literary, and thus 
designated by the intent - or vain ambitions? - of the 
author to a future which then seemed well beyond the 
discernible horizon of a lifetime, yet with equally solid 
uncertainty as to the if, how, and when, they would be 
consigned to the printing press. 

Indeed, these pages on which intermingle diary, 
chronicle, and history mostly unknown to most, are blotted 
by the original sin of a guilt, at that time deserving of the 
most passionate blame: having dared, against every 
opportunistic logic, to trace a “counter-life” of John XXIII 
that would underscore the revolutionary commitment of 
that Pope, which earned him the name of “Pope of the 
communists.” 

The sudden fall of Soviet communism has triggered a 
centrifugal jumble within the muddled ranks that used to be 
the party of the sickle and the hammer. No one has ever 
soiled his hands with the Bolsheviks; no one has pocketed 
ready rubles; no one, by George! has ever compromised 
himself with Moscow. And in the meantime, as in a 
Biblical scourge, from the half-closed archives of the 
Kremlin are darting out, as deadly thunderbolts incinerating 
the fake, irrefutable documents corroborating the closest - 
and logical - cooperation of these individuals with the 
Soviet “Mamuska” (mother). 


Most of the media, which follow the stream, are hunting 
down the comrades lost. Every man for himself. Yet entire 
generations did embrace communism. And many still carry 
it in their hearts. In the West and East alike. Especially in 
the East, the feast over, after the first bitter taste of the new 
reality. 

Even on the night of the coup, of that 19 August 1991, 
there was no counting of the ante-march comrades who 
wept and laughed, glued to the TV broadcasting the martial 
sequences of that ephemeral coup d'etat. Here now, finally, 
comes Stalin’s red army, taker of Berlin, to reestablish the 
inviolable power of the State Party against the treachery of 
the little bourgeois, whom Uncle Sam has bought by the 
pound. In the depths of the mausoleum of the Red Square, 
the mummy of Lenin has aroused and calls out to the 
revival. 

Those spirits, pure no matter what, respectable flag- 
bearers of faithfulness, lived in their exalted fancy the night 
of the coup. They beheld in the courtyards of the barracks, 
cut by the beams of the spotlights, the officers standing on 
the tanks, haranguing the troops; beheld the invincible 
blood-hued flag kissed by the commanders. They perceived 
the cry of the engines and the rattling of the caterpillars. 

But the exaltation was short-lived. As bitter, the 
reawakening. Many are now fleeing the old beloved party, 
which diligent hands have castrated of its historical, 
chrismatic emblem. 


The news hounds are after the comrades compromised 
with deeds and actions. But when the exciting lead creeps 
under the Bronze Door, an imperious whistle freezes up 
their race. How long is this dormant “omerta,” this official 
silence upon a Vatican policy and an ecclesial course 
responsible and commendable for such a long season of fat 
years of the communist parties of our time, yet to last? 
Today that the lid has blown off the Eastern pot, and the 
uncovered Marxist light broth has caused noses to turn up 
the world wide, the threshold of the Leonine City and of its 
policy compromised with communism are rigidly precluded 
to the media. Oh yes, because the witnessed denunciation 
of all the corruption and bloodthirsty ferocity in which 
those regimes prospered, made cocky by the Vatican 
“Ostpolitik,” renders all the more momentous with 
responsibility and moral guilt the opening to that 
communism by the Catholic Church and the Vatican, 
wanted by Pope Roncalli and carried on to its close by 
Pope Montini. 

From the standpoint of the clergymen involved, this 
silence imposed with the ancient authority is 
understandable: that preaching and pursuing the 
antagonistic union between Catholicism and Marxism, that 
carrying forward so complacent a policy toward the 
Communist regimes of the East - as so well knows cardinal 
Agostino Casaroli, then monsignor, and Vatican’s charge 
d’affaires, who in those crimson government palaces was 
one of the family - on the skin of the Church of Silence, 
today can but arise bewilderment and meditated 
condemnation. 


The iron curtain has been torn to pieces, and the eye of 
the world has been able to wander over the countries of the 
European East, inviolate satellites of the Soviet planet. 
Horror, condemnation, and indignation have come back to 
haunt the doped affluence of the Western consumer, and 
the many who were in cahoots with those regimes for 
flaunted open-mindedness or aimed political opportunism, 
have rushed, as the saying is, to distance themselves. 
Although their words hailing those regimes and the men of 
those regimes, and, what is worse, the political steps, 
sometimes ominous, undertaken and undersigned with 
those regimes, still mark the trail of their hastened retreat. 

Comes to mind what Giancarlo Vigorelli wrote not long 
ago: “I have known three great peasants, Mao Ze Dong, 
Ceausescu, and John XXIII”. I doubt that pen, dipped in 
opportunistic ink, today would write that wanton praise, 
after the slaughter of Tienanmen square and the unmasked, 
witnessed thuggish ferocity of the “great Rumanian 
peasant.” And the author of that historical tirade could 
hardly ever fancy to be making, putting together the three 
characters, a singular matching loaded with prophetical 
significance and inescapable coincidences, which only a 
few years later would stir shuddering reflections. 

And that is what lies behind this “counter life” of John 
XXIII, the Pope from Sotto il Monte responsible for that 
turn in a Marxist key, ecumenical and not ecumenical, 
which set in motion the opening of the Church and of the 
Vatican to communism. Of an all-new Vatican that with 
Giovanni Battista Montini would achieve the inconceivable 


goals of closing agreements, secrets and not, with the 
regimes of the East. Starting with the liquidation of the 
Church of Silence and of her most important representative, 
cardinal Mindszenty, Primate of Hungary. Of a Vatican that 
welcomes politicized “priests of the peace,” invented by 
those regimes that would impose their approval upon the 
election of the new bishops. And so bishops - potential 
cardinals - bearing the DOC official label (Denominazione 
di Origine Controllata; or Certified Origin, originally 
limited to first-rate wines) of the communist approval have 
come to mark the Episcopal grape-harvest of those years. 

But today’s man has a poor memory. The fast pace of the 
events, the violence exerted with growingly sophisticated 
sapience by the mass media on the opinion, have made man 
unable to experience but a “mesmerized” present, and to 
retain even the most recent past. True, it would be 
sufficient to remember, to debunk, ridicule, nail to silence 
so many “mosche cocchiere,” (fly riding on the back of a 
horse, as though steering the larger animal) delegated by 
most to the helm of the nations. 

Will History ever get the better of these Two-Faced 
Januses? 

The genuine memory, the noble memory, the non- 
polluted memory “ad usum delfini,” is the backbone of 
History. It should be the duty of anyone in the know, to 
consign to her archives, precious for humanity, without 
reticence, without false respects, even for purple and 
Triregno (Papal Tiara), the name and the actions of those 


who with those regimes have come to terms, deeming them 
invincible. The actions and policy of raw models at the 
head of great masses of humanity, such as those Roman 
Pontiffs who that communism have promptly accepted and 
for long years encouraged, with which they have entered 
into pacts in flagrant contradiction with the principles and 
religion they personified, and whose atheist and 
materialistic doctrine have permitted, with their dormancy 
and stunning collaboration, to proliferate in those years 
amongst the masses of the West, cannot and must not be 
erased. What is more, that communist penetration amongst 
the Catholics had been checked by an uncongenial 
predecessor of theirs, without mincing words, with 
excommunication. 

Fortunately for our descendants, History has neither face 
nor political hue, and could not care less whether in her 
truths are caught up untouchable personages. Only, it is 
often so terribly vexing and unpopular, with the eyes 
fastened onto History, as onto the peremptory hand of an 
infallible compass, to write the truth one has lived, if from 
minimal angles, when such truth involves and overwhelms 
untouchable personages holding in their hands the blazing 
thunderbolts of power. 

Challenging those thunderbolts, in the conviction of 
doing something coherent with my principles, I have 
handed my manuscript over to the publisher. For it would 
have seemed to me unworthy, precisely in light of my 
deep-rooted principles, to subtract the tessera of a personal 
experience, singular and unrepeatable, to the great mosaic 


of memory, and, who knows? of history. 


CHAPTER I 


“The only real struggle in History is that either for or 
against the Church of Christ.” St. John Bosco 

“Never, perhaps, did a Pope render the spirit in a human 
concept more unanimous. . .” With these words, 
“L’Osservatore Romano” of Monday-Tuesday, June 3-4, 
1963, opened, on the front page of a special bereavement 
edition, with the news of the death of John XXIII, that 
occurred on Monday June 3, at 19:49 hours. 

That statement by the Vatican newspaper had stricken 
me, and had caused me to reflect as, in the late morning of 
Tuesday, June 4, 1 was walking up to the papal apartment, 
to pay homage, as a dignitary of the Pontifical Court, to the 
body of the deceased Pope. Due to my responsibilities 
(Chamberlain of the Sword and the Cape of His Holiness.) 

and my long-standing position as a journalist for 
“L’Osservatore Romano”, I had lived, day in and day out, 
behind the scenes, throughout the pontificate of Angelo 
Giuseppe Roncalli. A startling, amazing pontificate, and 
today we may add, fatal, for the survival of the Church and 
the fate of all of mankind. I quickly began to have an 
inkling of what a formidable reforming and progressive 


will was hiding behind the kindly and humble countenance 
of Pope Roncalli, as well as his authentic personality, 
oozing with abilities and diplomatic shrewdness, of his 
perfect knowledge of human psychology, of irony and 
sympathy with which he spiced up his relationships with 
his fellow man and with his direct collaborators. In the 
course of his brief pontificate, that was to last less than five 
years, yet so explosive as to unsettle twenty centuries of the 
Church, I had spoken with cardinals and bishops startled 
with lightning-quick papal resolutions, I had witnessed the 
desperation of old and venerable men of the Church who 
foresaw in that supreme expression of the reforming will of 
John XXIII which was the Vatican II Ecumenical Council, 
the beginning of the disintegration of that monolithic block 
which had been the Church up to Pius XII. Today as I am 
writing these pages, the painful foresight of those old men 
sounds prophetic. 

An American Jesuit resident in Rome, hiding behind the 
pseudonym of Xavier Rynne, revealed in the “New 
Yorker” of the second week of July, 1963, that when 
Cardinal Domenico Tardini, Secretary of State and, 
amongst the cardinals, one of the most informed on the 
situation of the Church in the world, learned of the 
intention of John XXIII to summon a Council, as a good, 
forthright Roman, he confided to those close to him that he 
considered that the Pope had “temporarily gone mad.” The 
Ecumenical Council had immediately proved an explosive 
instrument upon which the Marxist dynamite was promptly 
triggered. 


It will suffice to consider that, following the promulgation 
of the encyclical “Pacem in Terris”, in which Pope Roncalli 
proclaimed that “. . . There can, and should be cooperation 
between the Catholics and the Communist regimes on the 
social and political level. . in the April 28, 1963 Italian 
elections the communists gained one million more votes 
than in the previous elections, five years earlier. This first 
clamorous success of the Italian Communist party (PCI) 
was unanimously attributed to the policy of John XXIII; 
they called it “Ecclesiastical Leftism”, when he was still 
alive, or “Giovannismo” which they did after his death. 

The statements by the Secretary General of the Italian 
Communist party, Palmiro Togliatti, given to the 
Florence’s daily “La Nazione”, in an interview of August 
26, 1963, are of a lapidary eloquence: “In fifty years? I may 
be wrong, but the world will be dominated by us and by the 
Catholics, and it is certain that we shall find the 
groundwork for a reciprocal collaboration. . . We’ll never 
get to know a time of perfect “Civitas Dei”: Marxism’s 
well aware of it. Perhaps the most intelligent Catholics 
know these things as well as knowing where the world is 
headed, but are nonetheless afraid. They fear, for example, 
to examine in depth that great phenomenon that has been 
the “Giovannean Pontificate.” (John’s pontificate). It’s not 
just a matter of peace-now, but of a superior human 
understanding, of a mutual rapprochement that we’ll be 
able to achieve. As to the present, moreover, the 
“Giovannean” phenomenon, has been that of creating a 
responsible Catholicism in politics. They are the premises 
for a transformation of the world. . 


Twelve days before these statements by the Italian 
communist leader, and precisely seventy-two days 
following John XXIII’s death, on August 14, 1963 the 
Soviet magazine “Nauka i Relighia” published a script by 
Anatoli Krassikov, in which the author, after stating that 

. .The Ecumenical Council, which is to resume its work 
on September 29, has already shown that within the 
ecclesiastical hierarchies there exists a strong tendency 
rejecting the old methods of Pius XII. . recognizing in the 
deceased Pontiff qualities of “...wise and farsighted 
politician, who saw realistically the changes coming about 
in the world and knew how to value the imperatives of the 
time...” Then, commenting on the encyclical “Pacem in 
Terris,” the Russian columnist wrote that John XXIII 
“. . .puts forward for the first time in an official document 
the issue of a possible cooperation between Catholics and 
non-Catholics toward the achievement of a scope that is of 
interest to all humanity. He writes explicitly that the 
reconciliation, which only yesterday was or seemed 
impossible, is necessary today or could become so 
tomorrow... 

Certainly the desired “reconciliation” has turned out to be 
unexpectedly advantageous to the Marxists. It has 
alienated, on the other hand, a considerable mass of 
believers who no longer recognize their own Church in the 
post-Conciliar Church. I carry in my memory and in my 
heart the words spoken to me by Cardinal Mindszenty in 
Vienna on October 18, 1974. 1 had asked the Primate of 
Hungary, twice nailed onto the cross of his martyrdom, first 
by the fierce fury of the Marxist bailiffs, subsequently by 


the cold callousness of Papa Montini: “Which is the True 
Church, that official one that now, in the world, fraternizes 
with Marxist atheism, or else the one abandoned by Rome 
because it remained faithful to Tradition.” The old Magyar 
bishop had directly replied to me, “The one abandoned by 
Rome.” 

It will be historically proven how important “the 
reconciliation” had been to Communism, for its affirmation 
in the world, the Vatican of John XXIII and Paul VI. 

French bishop Marcel Lefebvre responded on the pages of 
the daily “Vita” of February 27, 1977, to those who asked 
him what he thought of the relations between the Vatican 
and the communist countries: “Just look at the outcome; 
that is, the worldwide communist advance on every front. 
The Vatican deserves the gratitude of the Soviets for the 
extraordinary help it is contributing to their victory. We 
may see soon how the gratitude of the communists will 
manifest itself.” 

The Council, therefore, had obliterated in an 
unimaginable conflagration the solidity of the entire 
ecclesial body, and gave rise to disorientation, dispute, and 
hostility amongst the peoples. 

Such were my cogitations on that late June 4, 1963 
morning, as I was walking up to the papal apartment. I had 
chosen not to use the elevator to avoid the queue of 
personalities from the diplomatic corps and clergy that 
continuously formed in the small lobby that opens onto the 
St. Damaso’s Courtyard, bustling with an incessant coming 


and going of big black automobiles. Above all, that 
reference to the “Enhanced human accord” caused me to 
give a start for the evident contrast with the reality, and 
bitterly to smile to myself. The silence, along those ancient 
solitary stairs of the Apostolic Palace, was at a peak. That 
ascent across the courtyards, the immensely high walls 
bathed in history, the hundred halls of the palace of the 
“Supreme Sovereign,” as always, overwhelmed me. It 
seemed as though I was climbing step after step toward a 
mystical height. It seemed as though, as I was climbing that 
ancient flight of stairs immersed in the shade. I could 
perceive the heart-beat of that venerable and notable edifice 
of the Bramante, which for centuries had been holding in 
its walls the breath, the thoughts, the life of the Popes. It 
seemed to me as though I had left down below, in a St. 
Peter’s square darkened with a mass of silent people, all the 
reality, all the bitter and desecrated history of our time, all 
the tangled and disquieting questions for the imminent 
future, my very human identity, with its capacity of 
detached observation, with its analytical and critical spirit, 
with its disenchanted cynicism in evaluating the events, 
with all its boundless and conscious and, perhaps, resigned 
disillusionment. And now I was climbing toward that room 
that had been visited by the Angel of Death, with 
trepidation. And as I was coming to the end of the ascent, 
an obscure disquietude was invading my soul. An obscure 
disquietude and a heartfelt anguish and sadness, and a 
poignant melancholy. I heard my footsteps resound, step 
after step, under the fourth century vaults and, in a moment, 
the sense of that anxious, earnest melancholy realized itself 
in me, lunar, painful, and distant: the memory, with a silent 


fluttering of wings, flew toward me from above, from the 
stairs that faded in the shadow and brought me, like a 
breath and a caress in my heart, the lake-setting of Castel 
Gandolfo and the poignant sadness of the fall night when, 
on the shores of that lake, Pius XII passed away. I stood a 
moment, and I breathed that unreal silence in the deepest 
and most secret intimacy of the Apostolic Palace, evocative 
of ghosts and memories of times that a mysterious, yet 
most powerful will, had imposed on everyone, in the 
Vatican and in the outer world, to forget. 

* * * 

It had seemed a premonition: the last great Pope in 
History wanted to die immersed in the magical quiet of 
those woods that had been sacred to the Romans, away 
from a Vatican that was now enemy to him. 

A few months after the passing of Pope Pacelli, I met at 
Palazzo Farnese, blazing for a reception by the ambassador 
of France, Cardinal Eugenio Tisserant, who honored me 
with his confidence. The aged cardinal who had maintained 
under the purple the courage and the openness of the old 
officer of the Spahis, told me, indignant, pacing hastily 
beneath the gilded ceilings of Rome’s most beautiful 
Renaissance palace, how in the last weeks of Pius XII’ s 
illness some representatives of the Vatican echelon had 
begun to disobey openly. And he then told me, grinding 
that Gallic Italian of his, pronounced with military ease, in 
the great white beard that descended to rub the pectoral 
cross, as the German nun detailed to the person of the Pope, 


the unforgettable Suor Pasqualina, originally Josephine 
Lenhert of Einsberg, was to suffer the extreme affront by 
Pacelli’s foes. Pius XII was agonizing. The nun, who had 
dashed to the Vatican to fetch some linen for the Pope, was 
denied the service-car to return directly to Castel Gandolfo, 
to the bedside of the dying Pontiff. The most erudite French 
cardinal, Dean of the Sacred College, Librarian and 
Archivist of Santa Romana Chiesa, distinguished himself 
amongst the cardinals, as a “man of integrity”. He was 
respected and feared in the Vatican for two precise reasons: 
his crude and resolute boldness, which brought him to 
expose clearly his opinions in front of anyone, and the 
awareness of knowing a quantity of “uncomfortable” 
secrets, tied to the past of many Vatican personalities. The 
former officer French cardinal possessed, indeed, an 
archive of his own, vast and continually updated and 
enriched, containing documents of great historical value 
and often of shattering consequence, put together, with 
competence and method, in nearly half a century of activity 
at the service of the Holy See. This most eminent cardinal 
with the great beard knew, therefore, one by one, the foes 
of Pius XII and of the “Pacellism.” In that archive was 
documented, for example, the Marxist “credo” of the then 
monsignor Giovani Battista Montini, substitute of Pius 
XITs Secretary of State. Montini, in 1945, had befriended 
the secretary of Italy’s Communist party, Palmiro Togliatti, 
who had just returned to Italy from the Soviet Union. The 
uninformed monsignor Giuseppe De Luca, an eminent 
Latinist, intimate friend to the Marxist leader with whom he 
shared a love of the Italian Classics, had godfathered that 
hazardous friendship that for Togliatti was the first, 


unhoped-for success, conquered without moving a finger, 
on the Italian soil, with Fascism scarcely out of the way. 
Soon, that most secret union between devil and holy water 
had borne its fruits. Through Protestant circles of the 
University of Uppsala and their ties with the Russian 
orthodoxy, the Substitute of Pius XII’s Secretary of State 
let the Kremlin know that . .Not all the Church and not all 
the Vatican approved of the political directions of Pope 
Pacelli for the future.” These most secret initiatives by 
Giovani Battista Montini, however, did not escape the then 
monsignor Tardini. Not by chance the two prelates, 
distinguished by opposite temperaments - so rationally 
ambiguous the former, as open and assertive the latter - 
never had a good relationship. And in cardinal Tisserant’s 
archives, together with other important documents on the 
delicate “affaire”, ended up the secret relations by the 
Archbishop of Riga and Pius XII, in which are described, 
with a wealth of documentation, the contacts that Giovanni 
Battista Montini had, unbeknownst to the Pope, with 
emissaries of the Soviet Union and of satellite States’, and 
the sensitive outcome of the secret investigation that Pius 
XII had immediately entrusted to an officer of the French 
Secret Service. The agent had laid his hands on a collection 
of letters attributed to Montini that signaled to the K.G.B. - 
the Soviet political police - the names and the movements 
of the priests, largely Jesuits, who, in those years, exercised 
clandestinely their ministry amongst the populations of the 
communist countries, oppressed by religious persecution. 

That officer would later relate to French writer Pierre 
Virion that “. . .1 was dumbfounded when I laid my eyes on 


those accusatory letters, written on Segreteria di Stato di 
Sua Santita’s letterhead” (2). 

(2) Pierre Virion will confide the episode to Vaticanist Gabriella de 
Montemayor, met in Rome in June 1974, who will receive 
confirmation from a high ranking Roman justice, dottor Giulio 
Lenti, who had received the information from mons. Domenico 
Tardini, to whom he was bound by a long-standing friendship. 
Indeed, Pope Pacelli, distraught by that revelation, had 
immediately summoned mons. Tardini. 

Cardinal Tisserant’s secretary, monsignor Georges Roche, 
annotates the episode in his book “Pie XII devant l'histoire”, 
published by Laffont of Parigi. 

Pius XII collapsed immediately upon reading those papers. 
Forced into bed for many days, he disposed the immediate 
departure of Montini for Milan, the first vacant diocese that 
in that moment of terrible anguish was at hand. The future 
Paul VI, who at that time was de facto Secretary of State, 
thus departed at moment’s notice his office at the Vatican. 
In fact, Pius XII had left that office vacant, after the death, 
in 1944, of cardinal Maglione. 

Montini departed Rome and the great pain caused to the 
heart of the Pontiff, and reached Milan in conformity with 
that ancient Vatican norm “promoveatur ut removeatur” 
(“promote to remove”). It was the late autumn of 1954. In 
order to obtain the much sought-after “Galero” 

(cardinalitial hat), the Hamletic monsignor from Concesio 
would have to wait, from that day on, for the election to the 
See of Peter of his “precursor” Roncalli (3). 


(3) Thirty years later will write Antonio Spinosa in “Pius XII, The 
Last Pope” (le Scie Mondadori, October 1992, p. 357, 358): 

“At the close of that same year 1954, the Pope appointed Montini 
archbishop of Milan. Had he wanted to distance himself from him? 
In August had died in the Lombard capital the Benedictine cardinal 
Schuster, head of the Ambrosian Archdiocese, and by the 
beginning of the following November the Pontiff had already 
replaced him with Montini. He broke the news to the main 
exponents of the Uomini di Azione Cattolica gathered before his 
residence at Castel Gandolfo. “You’ve never disappointed me, said 
he to those present, turning in particular to Gedda, Father 
Lombardi, and to the Association’s assistant monsignor Fiorenzo 
Angelini. “And I’m glad of it”. Then he added: “I must now give 
you some news: His excellency mons. Giovan Battista Montini is 
the new Archbishop of Milan.” Heartfelt and lengthy was the 
applause of those present, but the buzz had it that many failed to 
grasp the hidden significance of the appointment... Montini was not 
happy, rather, he appeared as though bewildered to a friend, 
Camaldolese father Anselmo Giabbani, who met him in those 
days. “His countenance,” witnessed the friar, “had changed. Even 
the tone of his voice was different, and his gestures less 
expressive.” It was spoken of a true exile inflicted upon the 
monsignor who had dared to “betray” - the term was very strong - 
Pacelli’s anti-Socialist, and anti-communist battle. Suor Pasqualina 
had seen the Pope weep, disappointed by Montini’ s receptive 
approach. The monsignor had already drawn the attention of the 
pro-secretary of the Sant' Uffizio (Holy Office), cardinal Ottaviani, 
a front-liner, with Gedda, of those who accused Montini of plotting 
with Fanfani and of aspiring to a Christian Democrat party 
autonomous of the Vatican. It was also alleged that the monsignor 
had even been present at certain black masses. It was father 
Lombardi who broke the news to the Pope. 


The Vatican of the new direction, attempted by whatever 
means, naturally, to get hold of that collection of 
documents. Now forced into a corner, cardinal Tisserant 
had to give up his prized archive, but not, however, prior to 
having his secretary, abbot Georges Roche, photocopy the 
whole lot. For years, after the death of Tisserant, the 
Vatican pursued in vain Roche and the niece of the 
deceased cardinal in order to acquire, at any price, that 
inconvenient double that was abroad. 

At length, cement-businessman Carlo Pesenti, who had 
managed to acquire from Roche for 450 million lire 
($750,000) the precious archive, gave it to the Vatican, in 
the person of monsignor Benelli, in exchange for a 
facilitated loan of 50 billion Swiss Francs. In fact Pesenti 
was in need, at the time, for his banking group and for the 
acquisition of two banks at Munich and Monte Carlo, of 
foreign currency loans from the Istituto per le Opere di 
Religione (Monsignor Marcinkus, monsignor De Bonis, 
doctor Strobel). 

Pesenti’ s interest was that of being able to use that 
Vatican institute both as a guarantor or co-guarantor of this 
credit, and to profit on the spread between the official 
exchange rate and the “black market” rate. 

So, the anti-Pacellian front, progressive and advocate of 
the “dialogue” and of the “openings,” was already a solid, 
disconcerting reality, some years prior to Pius XII’ s death. 


The agitators of the new times despised Pius XII. They 


considered him the most anti-democratic Pope of the 
modern Church, with his only two Consistories of 1946 and 
1952, and with that fulminating hand-grenade launched 
between the legs of Marxism, which was the 
excommunication of the communists. And the Italian 
Republic born of the Resistance could not forgive Pope 
Pacelli his excessive love for the German- speaking peoples, 
from 1914 to 1945. 

In observance, expectedly, of the teachings of the “Soviet 
Encyclopedia,” at the voice of “Catholicism” (Vol. 20, p. 
379) wherein Pius XII is presented as Germanophile. 

His enemies lay in wait for Eugenio Pacelli’ s death. It 
was necessary to debunk the figure of Pius XII, of the 
“Pastor Angelicus” and of his twenty-year-old pontificate. 

It was imperative to render it miserably human to the eyes 
of the masses. So it was started, that terrifying direction, 
that transformed the death of a Pope into a grotesque 
tragedy, to feed the vulgar, voracious and inextinguishable 
curiosity of the man of the consumer world. Unscrupulous 
editors spared no efforts to buy Pontifical Archiatra (Pope’s 
personal physician) Riccardo Galeazzi Lisi, called “The 
crow with the Leica,” whom with his camera searched and 
fixed on celluloid, with callous coldness and precision, 
moment after moment, the face of Eugenio Pacelli 
devastated by agony. So, in full standing, on the front pages 
of the newspapers, the image of a dying Pius XII, supine on 
the pillows, the gaunt face darkened by the growth of days, 
the eyes closed and sunken, the mouth open in the rattle of 
death, sold like hot cakes amongst the throngs famished 


with desecration, traveled despoiled on coffee-shop tables, 
between empty “cappuccino” cups and cigarettes stumps, 
hanged for days at newsstands amidst pin-up girl 
magazines and tabloids, finally ending up in trash-bins. 

Even the television had its jackal- share in that fierce 
tearing to pieces of a myth. So that the agony of Pius XII, 
complete with its hallucinating details, entered the Italian 
homes, was observed from behind the set tables, between a 
“forchettata” (forkful) and another of spaghetti, between a 
glass of wine and another. The most reserved Pope in 
modern history — when he walked in the Vatican gardens 
the guards on detail were ordered to conceal themselves 
behind the trees; and no one, other than Suor Pasqualina, 
ever violated the intimacy of his apartments, of his work 
desk, of his papers — was thrown, dying, to the world. All 
the dramatic intimacy of his agonizing humanity, of his bed 
muddled by the starts of death, all was meticulously and 
pitilessly and despicably tossed to the public feeding frenzy 
of prying eyes. 

The recollection of that death overwhelmed me, as I had 
slowly started up the sounding stony steps and was 
approaching this other Papal death. And yet what an abyss 
divided them. The “Pastor Angelicus” had died in a climate 
of Greek- tragedy. Concluding or wrapping up a chapter of 
the history of the Church and humanity that spanned much 
longer than the twenty years of his pontificate. He had lived 
and operated luminous, as a sun of spirituality. That new 
world that was about to appear on the scene of History had 
transformed his human death, with studied measure, into an 


iconoclastic slaughter. John XXIII, reformer and 
progressive, responsible, with the Council, for the doubts 
and obscure destinies toward which were plunging the 
entire Church and humanity, had passed away in an 
atmosphere oozing serenity, optimism, almost happiness; 
loved or flattered by his own people, in the Vatican. 
Exploited as no other Pope ever was, in the world; 
applauded by the Marxists to whom he had unexpectedly 
opened the doors of the Christian citadel. 

Only a few years had passed since the passing of Pius XII. 
As I now recalled it, in that my solitary ascending to the 
papal apartment, it seemed to me as though a century had 
gone by. I recalled with blinding lucidity that afternoon of 
waiting on the Church yard at St. John’s basilica. The 
squad of the Noble Guard drawn up before the gates, with 
the sun flashing on the gilded helmets and the scarlet coats. 
I recalled, next to that line up of Roman aristocracy, the 
aspect irremediably “petit-bourgeois” of the representatives 
of the Italian State. There were, naturally, the Christian 
Democrats in full ranks. Precisely all those who, years 
later, would take the historical leap into the arms of the 
communists. “The verbose pigmies “ of Italy’s politics, as 
general De Gaulle, jokingly, defined them, crowded as 
schoolboys, in their brand new tailcoats, holding their top 
hats behind their backs, visibly uneasy amidst so much 
nobility at arms. Then the arrival of the coffin from Castel 
Gandolfo, and the winding of the long funeral cortege 
through the streets of old Rome, amidst the dull rumbling 
of the bells and two overflowing wings of silent crowd: 
clapping the dead became popular only later. The Roman 


Pope was returning, dead, to Rome among his children. The 
Pope of my youth, the Pope of the war, who had risen like a 
white apparition through the smoke and the rubble of 
San Lorenzo devastated by the American bombs, when the 
rumble of the “liberators” still vibrated in the azure Roman 
sky, with his arms open in an embrace toward his people 
lashed by iron and fire, that squeezed him from all sides, 
pressing about him to touch him, dusty and bloodstained, as 
the white tunic of the Pope crimsoned itself with that 
blood. 

But in what a state was he coming back! The embalming 
process had gone wrong, and so the body borne on shoulder 
by the “sediari” in their costumes of scarlet brocade, before 
the horrified gazes of the cardinals of the Court, appeared 
unrecognizable, swollen, bluish, and fetid with 
putrefaction. We were a small group, around the 
Confession, in a St. Peter deserted and immersed in the 
shade. Night had descended. The great doors of the Basilica 
had been shut onto the piazza illuminated by the blazing 
flares of the mute and solemn crowd. In that atmosphere 
loaded with death and eternity, we paid the last respect to 
the transfigured remains of Pius XII, clothed with the 
sumptuous pontifical dresses, escorted by the Swiss 
halberdiers and by the dignitaries of the Court to the three 
traditional biers in wait, wide open, beneath the Beminian 
bronze canopy. The cardinals paraded before their defunct 
Pope bestowing their benediction, before those features, 
with no remnant of the ascetic countenance of Pius XII, 
would disappear forever under the first, heavy cover. 


The sharp heel clicking of the Swiss on detail at the 
landing of the papal apartment stirred me from my 
melancholy recollections. I started for the Pope’s rooms 
amidst the coming and going of prelates and secular in dark 
apparel, crossed the hallway, walked through a threshold 
and, at the center of the hall with the windows on St. 

Peter’ s square, very luminous in the summer noon, I 
beheld, on a bed, the body of John XXIII. I joined the tail 
end of the personages who were slowly filing toward the 
feet of the dead Pope, stood a few moments in meditation, 
and walked away contrite, on tiptoes. Preceding me was the 
old French ambassador to the Holy See. I gazed at his white 
hair combed backward, and I made out the expression on 
his face, so familiar to me, always courteous and serene, 
slightly bowed forward. He held in his left hand, scrawny 
and gemmed, the handle of his walking stick, and now and 
again, with his right hand, brought to himself a scented 
handkerchief, and I could also feel that fragrance, in my 
nostrils. Without noticing it I found myself, in turn, before 
the soles spread out of the dead. I raised my eyes and 
looked at him. He was still and always Angelo Giuseppe 
Rone alii: the broad, good-natured and keen face, the gently 
closed eyes, the gloved hands conjoined on his mighty 
breast, all of his rural corpulence appareled in the pontifical 
habit. 

Roncalli dead seemed placidly asleep in a serene and 
satisfied doze. Nay, the quasi-merry expression of the dead 
Pope, contrasted with the severe faces framed by the 
helmets, of the Guardie Nobili di Fazione (Pontifical Noble 
Guard), with unsheathed swords, at either side of the bed. 


The Pope seemed thus to have died satisfied. And all 
those, around that body, some more and others less, seemed 
pervaded by that sense of ineffable serenity. Certainly, I 
thought, the device of the exchange had worked wonders, 
and the bandwagon of the Church had taken, with a big 
shake, the desired track, which was no longer the one that 
ran straight and glistening toward the horizon, but thrust 
itself, taking a perfect turn, implacably to the left, 
forcefully headed into the gloom of a tunnel, whose exit 
was an insoluble and frightening question mark. 

Perhaps, for the first time in the modern history of the 
Church, it had punctually come about, as anticipated, the 
rapid, unsettling shifting of the pieces on the board of a 
game by secular tradition very prudent and hermetic. In the 
Vatican’s high spheres it was indeed no secret that after 
Pius XII, the coming Conclave would elect Venice’s 
patriarch Roncalli, who, in turn, would “bring” on the See 
of Peter Giovanni Battista Montini. From Milan, the 
Brescian bishop with the owl-gaze, whom in Rome they 
nicknamed “Hamlet,” or the “Cat,” was pulling the strings 
of a colossal game, with the precious help of a group of 
powerful prelates among which distinguished themselves 
Belgian cardinal Leo Jozef Suenens, Dutch Bernard Jan 
Alfrinck, and German Agostino Bea, with the secretive 
support of international Marxism. That colossal game that 
would upturn the contents and the aspect of the Church, of 
Italy, of Europe, and of the whole world with all its 
established checks and balances, needed, to get in motion 
and develop, a formidable “battering ram.” This “battering 
ram” that hit with irresistible violence against the bi- 


millenarian walls of the Church, shattering their inviolate 
compactness, was Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli. Behind him 
the fury of the “New Course” would burst into the 
vanquished citadel. All had long been predisposed, with 
precision, so that the cardinal from Sotto il Monte would 
become a breaking Pope. The College of Cardinals was so 
well guided and oriented that today, years after that 
Conclave, it has even been given a more credible version of 
the little mystery of the three “fumate,” white, black and 
then again white, which came, in brief sequence, out of the 
chimney of the Sistine Chapel, causing confusion within 
the packed crowd with their nose in the air in St. Peter’s 
square. In spite of the plans, the Armenian cardinal 
Agagianian, was elected on the last ballot - Hence the first 
“fumata bianca.” Directly followed by the black smoke, as 
the elect, giving in to immediate pressures, would decline 
the appointment, clearing the way for Roncalli, announced 
by the ultimate white smoke. 

I accompanied, in that Conclave, cardinal Federico 
Tedeschini, Datano di Sua Santita and Arciprete della 
Patriarcale Basilica Vaticana, who much loved me, and to 
whom I was sincerely and affectionately bound. In the quiet 
of his study, loaded with brocades and crowded with 
portraits, in the old palace of Via della Dateria, by the 
Quirinale that handsome cardinal, tall and aristocratic in his 
venerable oldness, by the pale and delicate face on which 
his gray-blue eyes shone luminous, had told me, sadly, of 
those, unfortunately, authentic forecasts and had guided by 
hand my bewilderment in that intricate maze of political 
interests, personal ambitions, of rivalries, of conflicts 


between power groups, which intertwined, so thickly, in the 
ante-chamber of that Conclave and that would have borne, 
beneath the vaults of the Sistine packed with the crying 
throngs of Michelangelo, that result that had been 
established and that the unknowing Catholics would 
attribute to the Holy Spirit’s intervention. And I felt like 
laughing, as I watched the disheveled and sweating and 
frantic rushing of the journalists hunting for indiscretions 
and rash forecasts and the hermetic faces and indefinite 
grins with which the most eminent princes of the Church 
resisted, or eluded, their assaults. There was, however, a 
German journalist, Elisabeth Gerstner, who smelled the 
truth in the air and, risking accusations of insanity, wrote it 
and hit the mark. In an article titled “Zur Todesstunde Pius 
XII” appeared on the “General Anzeiger fur den Nieder- 
Rhein” by mid-October 1958 , Gerstner wrote in detail, that 
the Conclave would elect Venice’s patriarch Roncalli, who 
would open the door to the future Paul VI (4). 


4) Emblematic the letter by cardinal Eugenio Tisserant dated 
March 12, 1970 at the third paragraph where it says that “The 
election of the present Sovereign Pontiff (Paul VI, note by the 
aut.) having been done rapidly. It is the previous one, that of John 
XXIII that could have been open to dispute, the sessions having 
been so numerous. Besides, I do not see how anyone could ever 
provide any accounts on the ballots after the Conclave, as a strict 
secrecy had been imposed with major precision. It is ridiculous in 
any case to say that any other cardinal had been elected. You will 
understand that I cannot say anything more.” 


The cardinals entered in groups in the “Recinto” of the 
Conclave where, for each one of them, had been set up the 
customary “cell”. The bell that would command the “extra 
omnes” to clear the “Recinto” of the extraneous before the 
heavy bolt would be closed shut by the “Marshall of the 
Conclave,” isolating from the world the most eminent, was 
about to ring, when I learned that the patriarch of Venice 
had been assigned as a “cell” the room of the commander 
of the Noble Guards, who had a plate on the door that read 
“the Commander.” I almost started. And I liked to think 
that someone had probably already thought of captivating, 
in advance, the sympathy of the future Pontiff. To all of 
this I was going back with my memory, as I watched John 
XXIII asleep in death. And in a moment it occurred to me 
as if the dead had just lifted the lid of an eye and was 
winking about, as in Nikolai Gogol’s short story “II Vij,” 
the beautiful dead daughter of the old Cossack Centurian- 
leader; but with a flash of irony and witticism, in that 
pupil’s slit that I seemed to discern, in the soft play of 
lights and shadows that the crackling splendor of the 
candles, at the sides of the bed, barely moved upon the 
face. 

The Pope seemed to make fun, with amiability, even in 
death, of the Spanish etiquette of old that surrounded his 
ultimate sleep. The little flames of the candles reflected 
palpitating on the glistening blades of the swords of the 
Pontifical Noble Guard. Only a few years later, happily 
reigning, Paul VI, “begotten” by John XXIII of venerated 
memory, those silver hilted swords would suddenly be torn 
away from the hands of those gentlemen and tossed afar; 


that military Body which for centuries watched in arms 
over the safety of the Pontiff would, by a stroke of the pen, 
be forever dismantled. The same end would befall the 
ancient Court devoted and faithful to the papacy; the 
Vatican would be stripped of its incalculable exterior 
splendor and of all its ghosts, and would be transformed by 
the iconoclastic frenzy of the “New Course” into a gigantic, 
vulgar, soulless Hilton. In the Catholic world the dispute 
would flare out, the clergy would be disoriented and 
divided, the de- spiritualization of Christendom would 
disperse the vocations, and the lightning of the schism 
would pelt down, from that dim and tempestuous sky, to 
split the old tree of Christendom. The Church of Silence 
would be betrayed and abandoned under the iron boot of 
the Godless, and official Rome would shake the bloody 
hand of Marxist atheism which would soon lift its 
victorious banner upon the Roman Campidoglio, a stone’s 
throw from St. Peter’s cupola. Then I recalled the words 
that someone, who had stood watch by the Pope’s door, 
swore to have heard from Roncalli as he approached his 
death: “. . .What did I do, my God, what did I do!” (Letter 
by cardinal Eugenio Tisserant with the meaningful allusion 
to John XXIII’ s election) 


CHAPTER II 


Almost everyone, in Italy, is acquainted with the official 
biography of John XXIII, as it has been divulged by those 
centers of the new power that, in the Vatican and in Italy, 
are working so that the figure of Roncalli become the pillar 
on which to lay the new temples of Communism, or rather, 
as they say today, of “Euro-communism.” 

Sotto il Monte, the birthplace of Angelo Giuseppe 
Roncalli, has for years been transformed into a sort of 
permanent country-fair wherein the boundaries between 
religion and superstition are kept blurred by the new post- 
Conciliar clergy, who have everything to gain from the 
fanaticism of the masses. The “Pope of the Communists” is 
certainly the only Pontiff in the two thousand years of the 
Church, who has so triumphantly entered - the term is 
indexed in the post-Conciliar ecclesiastical vocabulary - 
into the popularity of the masses. 

This is the first, undisputable victory that must be 
acknowledged to John XXIITs ability. His portrait, in Italy, 
is everywhere. On trucks’ windshields, at post offices, 
lottery kiosks, tobacconists, prostitutes’ sublet rooms and 


robbers’ wallets, government offices, communists’ houses, 
next to the faces of Lenin and Berlinguer. The “Papa 
buono” (The good Pope), the Pope of the dialogue with the 
Marxists, the Pope of the Council, has had a place of great 
esteem in the textbooks of the Italian republic. In these 
history books, which are a singular testimony of how 
nowadays, mischievous cunning old devils with the soiled 
conscience, will fail to teach the truth to the upcoming 
generations. 

Roncalli’s exaltation has as a counter altar the reappraisal 
of Pius XII, the Pope who “dared excommunicate the 
communists.” In these times when almost everyone minds, 
with tenacious absolutism, his own wallet and his personal 
outcome and is ready, for that “one and one add up to two,” 
to change opinion, political faith and color of his own skin, 
very few have taken pains to pay any attention to the other 
face of that hagiography constructed to serve a one-sided 
ideology. It would then have come out, a “Giovannea” 
biography filled with premonitory signs of that which that 
seminarian, that priest, that bishop, and then that cardinal, 
would have become, one day, wearing on his head the 
heavy pontifical Triregno (Papal Tiara). 

We know that in 1900, Angelo Roncalli was sent to the 
Seminary of Rome, to complete the studies he had 
commenced in Bergamo. He was born in 1881. He was thus 
nineteen years old, and arrived in Rome, the new capital of 
the Kingdom of Italy, in a year that was not just another 
year, as its end marked the beginning of a new century. 


So the young provincial seminarian suddenly found 
himself immersed in that progressive delirium with which 
the secular establishment, official and non-official, openly 
anti-clerical in those years, celebrated the dawn of these 
new times. 

So much so that the Latin verses composed by humanist 
Leo XIII, in honor of the new century, were, perhaps, the 
only poetical voice not to show traces of the magniloquent 
progressivism, hopeful and naive. Yet certainly those 
archaic by the orthodox contents, by the slender Pontiff 
remaining anchored to tradition, who, appareled as an 
equestrian, loved to hunt through the centuries-old woods 
of Ariccia, would not stir lengthy reflections in the young 
lad from Sotto il Monte, who opened his peasant gaze onto 
that modernist jubilation, remaining charmed by it. 

After all, seminarian Roncalli bore within himself, in his 
blood, the germ of a modernist fighting spirit, when it came 
to Catholicism, that was emblematic of his Bergamascan 
homeland. In the series, historically remarkable, of the 
Bergamascan bishops must be remembered monsignor 
Camillo Guindani, who can be credited with preparing the 
times for his successor, famous in the annals of that diocese 
for his progressive convictions: bishop Radini Tedeschi. In 
a period in which the Kingdom of Italy, completing its 
unity by the shelling of Porta Pia, made life difficult for 
both clergy and Catholics, that bishop formed in Bergamo, 
a free land wherein the social reality, the “Real Italy,” as 
they said, contrasted with the “Official Italy” of the rulers 
of Rome. 


Count Stanislao Medolago-Albani, in 1877 assumes the 
chair of the Diocesan Committee controlling the entire 
Catholic movement based on the three hundred and sixty- 
six parochial committees. Professor Niccolo Rezzara was 
appointed as its vice-president. In addition to the 
Committee, of a general organizational nature, the same 
year saw the establishment of the Diocesan Union of the 
Catholic Social Institutions that toward 1884 began to 
assume such an influence as amply to overcome the 
Diocesan Committee. Count Medolago-Albani was one of 
many Italian nobles, in those years straddling the 
nineteenth and twentieth century, who earned themselves 
the name of “Social Counts,” for tying their name to social 
struggles in favor of the Catholic working class. The 
typically Italian phenomenon of the “Social Aristocrats,” 
will reach its apex one century later, when a crowned 
Sardinian landlord, marquis Enrico Berlinguer, would hold 
with lordly mastership, the crimson scepter of the Italian 
Communist party. 

Professor Niccolo Rezzara, instead, a secondary school 
teacher and a journalist (founder of the “Campanone” and 
director of “L'eco di Bergamo”), was a bold organizer of 
labor rallies and a trade unionist. Among others, he 
invented and conducted the strike of 1909, from whose 
solution emerged the affirmation of the worker’ s right to 
his own union activity . (Cfr. G. Bellotti, Don Angelo 
Roncalli and Catholic Bergamo, “L'Osservatore Romano,” 
November 6, 1958 ). 


Bergamo, as can be seen, had anticipated phenomenon 


and issues, which in the rest of Italy would not come about 
for another twenty years. 

All such ferment seminarian Rone alii felt flowing in his 
veins, with the rustic violence of his nineteen years, when 
he began his attendance at the Roman Seminary. Later, he 
would rummage through any archive that would come to 
hand, the unpublished documents, ancient and modern, 
attesting to these very particular and unsuspected 
peculiarities of the Bergamascan land. Once the Rome 
Seminary period was concluded, fate awaited Angelo 
Roncalli, ordained priest, at his first appointment of 
responsibility. 

He was in fact summoned to Bergamo, to act as a 
secretary to that bishop, Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, the 
aristocratic “aperturista” prelate, as they would call him 
today, for his advanced sociological convictions, who with 
his own example would contribute considerably to 
Roncalli’ s early modernist and progressive formation. 

With difficulty could the portly priest from Sotto il Monte 
have lent his services, at that juncture, to a bishop that 
seemed cut out to fit Don Roncalli’ s political and social 
convictions. Inaugurating, as we have said, that Italian 
tradition, which sees the offspring of ancient and titled 
families to roll around for all their life, for calculation or 
faith, in the red bog of Marxism, that bishop was a count 
and nurtured within himself an uncontrollable progressive 
movement. 


Thus the youngster Roncalli could not have found a better 
harbor than the one that was so casually provided to him. 


That meeting and collaboration was decisive to him. It 
taught him the Machiavellian and Renaissance art of 
pursuing the thread of one’s own revolutionary ideas, while 
giving others the impression of marching in step and 
covered, instead, with the most traditional orthodoxy. 

In those years of activity, always at the side, as though he 
were the shadow, of the modernist-count-bishop, Roncalli 
was initiated into the subtle art of pretending that he had 
achieved an etymological dignity of his own in the 
respectable definition of “diplomacy.” He added to it that 
natural charge of communicational joviality and a few 
tidbits of the sharpness that was inborn in his Bergamascan 
temperament, and, in the chancery of the Episcopal palace 
of Bergamo he began to appear, to move, to assert himself, 
in “nuce” that John XXIII who would one day actuate the 
ambitious dream of that ancient mathematician who said, 
“Give me a lever and I will lift the world.” Wherein as 
irresistible lever, Roncalli would have one day his 
Ecumenical Council. 

From what is known, monsignor Radini-Tedeschi did not 
oppress with work his secretary, who was rather a precious 
collaborator in finding, as they would say today, a position 
“committed to the left,” for the bishop’s pastoral action. 

In spite of the most careful concealment of that unusual 
commitment, not to say scandalous, in those times, for a 


Pope’s representative in the Kingdom of Italy, in which still 
echoed the shelling of Porta Pia, when priests and clerics 
had been pricked on their buttocks with the bayonets of the 
“bersaglieri,” some clamorous implication of that political 
commitment leaked out and even made it into the 
newspapers, and left tracks in the offices of the police 
constables. 

After all, the socialist-count-bishop was well known for 
his stands, in the Vatican as well as Italy. He had uttered a 
loud and clear no, to the Pope, who had designated him for 
a diplomatic mission in Belgium, replying, as he looked the 
Roman Pontiff straight in the eyes, that the “subtleties of 
diplomacy were repellent to his Christian consciousness.” 
(Cfr. Angelo Roncalli: “In memory of Monsignor Giacomo 
M. Radini-Tedeschi, bishop of Bergamo,” Bergamo 1916, 
p. 19-20). The strong personality of that bishop, whose 
effects will still glint, many years later, in the granite-like 
resoluteness of John XXIII, is witnessed in some passages 
of a 1911 letter in which bishop Radini-Tedeschi had to 
clear himself with the Pope for not being sufficiently 
realistic: for having been too “rosy” in the face of the 
events. And so he wrote about it on November 26: “Rosy 
view, Holy Father, that has earned me the public accusation 
of autocrat, intransigent, rigid, Czarist: that has earned me a 
mention by the District Attorney of Brescia’s Court of 
Appeal in his judicial season inaugural speech. . . That from 
the Justice Ministry has deserved me harsh blame and 
threat to strip me of my temporality.” (Cfr. Roncalli, title 
above, p. 185). “There was in his soul” - would later write 
Roncalli, who in those years was close to him daily, on 


every occasion, and in that experience was strengthening 
his character - “There was in his soul everything of the 
military spirit: a love and transport for the struggle... He 
was not fond of the war by pin pricks: if war it had to be, 
he’d rather fight it with a cannon. . .” (Cfr. Roncalli, title 
above, p. 134). After fifteen years of work and social 
struggle as organizer and a driving force, having come to 
Bergamo, as a bishop of that diocese, the first occasion of 
contrasts presented itself to him, and he exploited it fully, 
on the visit to that city of the Queen Mother, Margherita di 
Savoia. 

More blazing were the polemics when in 197? the count 
bishop, of whom marquis Berlinguer would have been 
fond, took side with the striking workers. Don Angelo 
Roncalli, who lived that episode as a protagonist (making 
himself welcome by the militants barricaded in the 
factories, loaded with food supplies and vehement 
encouragements to stand firm in the struggle, he, in his 
priests’ habit, in competition with the Socialist ring 
leaders), he thus recalled: “When the Ranica strike burst 
out, which it was much spoken of, the name of the bishop 
who had remained, publicly, in a dignified reserve during 
the preceding agrarian unrest, appeared among the first and 
the most generous underwriters for the bread to the workers 
who had folded their arms. From many parts they cried out 
to the scandal; information in a less than benevolent tone 
was sent even high up. 

Several also amongst the good ones, thought that a cause 
lost its right to be sustained, only because in the use of 


certain means one could run the risk of some 
intemperance. 

Monsignor Radini did not follow that philosophy. At 
Ranica it wasn’t a particular question of salary or persons at 
play, but a principle: the fundamental principle of the 
liberty of the powerful capitalist organization. For him to 
side resolutely with the striker, in that case, was to fulfill a 
deed of justice, of charity, of social peace. He disregarded 
the outcries and continued in tranquility upon his path of 
lively interest for the strikers, even though lamenting, 
excusing, correcting the inevitable inconveniences of things 
and persons that had to be expected in a struggle of that 
nature, that was to last fifty days (Cfr. Roncalli, mentioned 
title, p. 90 ss.) 

Behind the relaxed assessment of the episode can be 
divined the “total” participation of Roncalli in those 
turbulent events. 

It is known that he was personally in the thick of it, and 
that his bishop was barely able to save him from the 
reaction of the police. 

The words written by his own hand on those facts are an 
impressive document confirming his precise progressive 
opinions, well rooted in the experience of 1909. The 
indulgent approach toward the possible “intemperance” and 
the inevitable inconveniences. . . That had to be expected in 
a struggle of that nature. . . is the approach of the post- 
Conciliar Church, half a century later, toward the Marxist 


violence. It must not be forgotten that monsignor Radini 
Tedeschi, Roncalli’ s direct superior and teacher, had held 
in Rome, in his youth, the professorship of Christian 
Sociology, which was the first, official, in those times 
regarded with great suspicion by many clerical circles, 
because full, as it can easily be imagined, of badly curbed 
centrifugal forces. He continued to pursue that discipline, 
for the rest of his life, with passion and exaltation. Thus 
sociology was the connection between young Roncalli and 
his bishop, and at that Episcopal table, the priest from Sotto 
il Monte, ate of it, as if it were his daily bread. Managing 
with his big peasant-hands, that matter, so explosive to a 
clergyman, the vision of a new Christianity and of a new 
Church was shaping up in his sharp and programmatic 
mind. A new Christianity in a sociological and 
anthropologic key and a new Church conceived to serve 
that new Christianity. Perhaps in those years of formation 
the first, very first, exalting idea, in embryonic form, of a 
revolutionary Ecumenical Council, entered the mind of 
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli. 

After all those years of true political apprenticeship, in 
the shadow of the social-count-bishop, were what best 
History could ever offer a priest with revolutionary ideas, 
such as young Don Roncalli was, so that he could exercise 
without concessions the practice of his convictions. In 
those years, in fact, the Italian Catholics were committing 
themselves to a true political battle, within a nation that had 
achieved its unity at the expense of the Pope, in order to 
obtain from the new super- secular and priest-eater Italian 
state, a say in the running of the public polity. Indeed, the 


Italian Catholics were officially emarginated from the 
national public life. 

They were excluded from a career in the judiciary, 
teaching, or public office. As a consequence, they found 
themselves to be subjects, rather than citizens of the 
Kingdom of Italy. 

While a part of them had remained faithful to the 
temporal conception of the papacy, shattered by the shells 
of 1870, another, more open to the new times, struggled to 
have its say in the handling of the Italian nation, upholding 
the Catholic point of view in the solution of the most 
burdensome political and social problems. 

Naturally, the political space more at hand to them was 
not that dominated by the Risorgimento political class, 
totally secular and mostly tied to the Sabaud King who had 
dared have his army shoot at the troops of the Pope, but 
that managed by the progressive groups which, naturally, 
saw in the monarchy and its entourage, a powerful obstacle 
to their plans. No one in those years of tireless clerical 
commitment to mend the weft of the Catholic organizations 
disrupted by the sword of Victor Emmanuel II, would ever 
suspect of progressive or Socialist tendencies, a priest who 
committed himself to that program. 

In was certainly in those years that Roncalli learned and 
assimilated that way of doing things, that actual strategy, 
made of smile and sudden and decisive surprise actions, 
that, many years later, from the Vatican, allowed him to 


fulfill his revolutionary program within the Church and the 
entire world, in only a four and a half year pontificate. 

In those preparatory and active years, young Roncalli 
enjoyed the greatest personal freedom, disconcerting for the 
secretary of the bishop of a city such as Bergamo. Even 
though monsignor Radini-Tedeschi had entrusted him with 
the teaching, in that seminary, of Patristic, Apologetic and 
Ecclesiastical History, don Roncalli had all the time to 
nurture his almost daily contacts with the political 
representatives, Catholics and progressive, who struggled 
on the same front to wrestle from the government of Rome 
larger and larger chunks of power. It will suffice to 
consider that his direct superior “loaned” him, to help in the 
political fight, to that professor Rezzara, organizer of the 
early labor unions and the driving force of that Ranica 
strike that saw Roncalli an active protagonist. 

And yet, he found the way to distinguish himself even in 
that secondary teaching activity, using for his lectures to 
the seminarians, Duchesse’s text “History of the Ancient 
Church,” which for its vision, was considered by the 
Sanfedist circles stuffed with “modernist” ideas, so much 
so that shortly afterward it was put on the Index, despite an 
earlier imprimatur. 

A fresh testimony on the Roncalli of those years comes to 
us from the Carte Cavalcanti (Cavalcanti Papers). Don 
Alessandro Cavalcanti (1879-1917) was director of the 
Sanfedist daily “L'unita Cattolica” (The Catholic Unity), in 
the heated years of the modernist crisis at the beginning of 


the century, and as such, tied to certain Vatican high 
figures. In that important collection of documents are five 
long letters written by the canonical Giambattista 
Mazzoleni (1835-1931) between May and September 1911, 
in which are analyzed some conferences held by the then 
professor Roncalli. In the first letter, Mazzoleni concludes: 

. .1 was expecting that he would expand on the concept of 
Christian life, but to me his conference had too strong a 
flavor of occultism. It also seemed to me to be missing a 
basis, which is the abneget semetipsum, disinterested as he 
was to the evangelical counsels, to begin with. 

And that calling matrimony ‘sanctification of the sexual 
pleasure’ seems to me a true impropriety to say the least.” 

The appointment of professor Roncalli to the chair of 
Ecclesiastical History at the Roman Seminary was vetoed 
in 1912, having been indicated of “dubious orthodoxy.” 

It must be remembered, at this juncture, the clamorous 
and forgotten episode of an intervention of the Holy Office 
against professor Don Roncalli that put an abrupt end to the 
teaching by the future John XXIII even at the Bergamo 
Seminary. It had been discovered that Roncalli, in defiance 
of the Encyclical “Pascendi” by his co-regional Pope Sarto, 
Pius X, not only acted as a modernist, but corresponded 
with the excommunicated priest Ernesto Buonaiuti. This 
priest and historian of the religions was amongst the major 
exponents of Modernism in Italy, and was excommunicated 
in 1926 for his progressive activity and his open 
insubordination to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. To get a 


precise idea of Buonaiuti, and of the ideas that he professed 
and advertised, it would suffice to go through the following 
letter written by the modernist priest, in October 1906, to 
the historian and French sociologist Albert Houtin, also a 
priest, who ended up abandoning the priesthood and the 
Church. 

A known representative of Italian Modernism, just expelled 
by a decision of Pius X from the Collegio Apollinare, thus 
wrote to his French friend: . Here, at the very center of 

Medieval theocracy, I wish to fulfill a work of tenacious 
corrosion. . . There are many of us friends, here in Rome, 
now, determined to operate in the critical field, to prepare 
the ultimate fall of the whole old carcass of Medieval 
orthodoxy. The trouble is that the laity does not favor us for 
now, as it ignores, nay, it tends to shift once again toward 
the Vatican in order to sustain the Monarchy. But I do hope 
that the example set by France, the very fatality of the 
historical evolution will soon also give to us an anti-clerical 
parliament and, with it, a radical ministry. Then our hour 
will have come.” The letter is self explanatory, and it is the 
most enlightened presentation of its author. Around such a 
rebel gathered a group of modernist priests that put so 
much effort into the propagation of their theories that Pius 
X believed it appropriate to condemn the movement with 
the Encyclical “Pascendi,” promulgated in 1907, which 
severely condemned Modernism. The same Pope set up in 
the Vatican a special section, the “Sodalitium Pianum,” into 
whose chair he placed monsignor Benigni, in order to 
single out and hit, one after the other, the suspects with 
severe sanctions. The group of the modernists was 


disrupted and dispersed. Buonaiuti, with his collaborator, 
Turchi, left for Ireland; the other priest followers, among 
whom Pioli, who left the habit, Rossi, who became an 
Evangelical pastor, Hagan, who retired in hermitic solitude, 
De Stefano, who also dropped the habit, Balducci and 
Perella who, shifted to the secular state, went underground. 

It comes as no surprise that Roncalli would come into 
contact with such a champion of modernism. Evidently, the 
“Sodalitium Pianum” had been informed and had conveyed 
to the Holy Office a detailed denunciation. The conviction 
and immediate suspension fell on the large head of the 
teacher from Sotto il Monte, despite the cautious defense 
by the bishop. That denunciation, and the consequent 
intervention by the Holy Office, as was the custom, were 
archived in a special section of the Secret Vatican Archive. 
In the dusty shadow of that gigantic archive, among 
mountains of papers perfectly recorded and organized, they 
lay forgotten for nearly half a century. Until one afternoon, 
after office hours, a heavy, slightly shuffled footstep paced 
those arcades and those rooms in the half-light, and stood 
before a metal cabinet inside of which, so many years 
earlier, they had been locked up. The key turned in the lock 
and the doors were opened. Two large hands rummaged for 
some time through the numbered files, full of yellowed 
documents. The competence of the researcher in the matter 
of archives soon prevailed in that ocean of documents 
rigorously organized. 

In his large right hand ornate with the “Anello Piscatorio” 
(Fisherman’s ring) stopped some old rustling papers. In the 


high stillness of the deserted archive John XXIII examined, 
for a time, smiling to himself, that ancient condemnation. 
He then shut the doors again and, with those papers in his 
hand, he returned to his apartment with the ermine trimmed 
Camauro (white fur- trimmed red bonnet associated with 
Medieval popes) lowered onto his eyes, while the shadows 
of the night descended upon the eleven-thousand deserted 
rooms of the Vatican, watched by the unhurried, equal 
pacing of the Swiss Guards. 

That night, unconsciously, John XXIII inaugurated, with 
that, his secret tampering in the Vatican Archives, that 
which would later become, with Paul VI, a pattern to the 
detriment of History: that of making compromising 
documents regarding the person of the Pontiff and his 
closest entourage vanish. 

Having become Pope, Roncalli did not refrain from 
commenting, as was his style, on that misadventure of 
youth and would say, one day, in the course of an audience, 

. .For, as you can see, even a priest placed under 
“observation” by the Holy Office can, on occasion, 
become Pope!” Revealing, in the joke, his deep-rooted 
scorn toward the institutions of the traditional Church. 

But let us resume our story. Don Roncalli also had the 
opportunity, in those years at Bergamo, of spending a long 
time studying ancient and rare documents recovered in 
Milan’s archbishopric archive, all attesting, not a casual 
detail, to the antiquity of the social deeds by the 
Bergamascan Catholics and their achievements, on the road 


to “modernism,” already realized some century earlier. 


”1 was going to Milan,” he recounted, “to accompany my 
bishop and signore in the occasion of the gatherings of the 
preparatory commission of the VIII provincial council. 
These were held in the archbishopric around the 
Metropolitan cardinal A.C. Ferrari. Only a few clergy took 
part in it. Nothing more interesting for me, in those hours 
of idle waiting, than to call on the very rich archbishopric 
archive, which so many as yet unexplored treasures holds 
for the history of the Milanese archdioceses, and not only 
that. It struck me immediately the collection of the thirty- 
nine parchment volumes, bearing on the spine ‘Spiritual 
Archives - Bergamo.’ I explored them: I went back to see 
them in subsequent visits. What a pleasant surprise to my 
spirit! To meet, all gathered together, documents so copious 
and interesting: The Church of Bergamo in the most 
characteristic age for the renovation of its religious life, just 
after the Tridentino (Council), in the most heated fervor of 
the Catholic Counter Reformation!” 

It is not difficult to suppose that Don Roncalli was 
stricken, leafing through that huge mass of yellowed pages, 
by the precursory modernity that characterized the action of 
the Bergamascan Church since those remote times. And he 
was influenced by it to a point as to obtain from his bishop 
the permit to devote time and studies to the critical revision 
of those ancient papers. 

That great work will beget a full-bodied scientific 
publication, titled “Atti della visita apostolica di San Carlo 


Borromeo a Bergamo (1575),” published with the “Fontes 
Ambrosiani” by the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, (ed. Olschi, 
Firenze). 

Today, measuring the entity of the earthquake impressed 
on the Church by the action of Roncalli as Pope, we can 
well understand the passionate interest that confused the 
soul and the intellect of the young secretary of the bishop. 
First of ah, the “modernity” of the Church of Bergamo. 

That word which identifies itself with the more 
compelling and dangerous “progressivism,” has always had 
upon Roncalli a magnetic hold. It is sufficient to consider 
what the Vatican II Ecumenical Council has come to, in the 
matter of “overcoming” the contrasts between Catholics 
and Protestants, to account easily for the feverish interest of 
young Roncalli to frame, penetrate, and examine in depth 
that subject in all of its components. 

The months and years of that life so thick with diverse 
experiences passed for Roncalli, constructing him, refining 
him, developing him in his already considerable natural 
structures of commitment and, above all, convictions. With 
the passing of those years the Catholic formation had 
reinforced itself and, naturally, the situation of an “Official 
Italy unlike the real Italy,” was sooner or later due to fade 
before the evidence of the facts. 

Already in 1911, on the occasion of the Libyan campaign, 
the Italian government sought, for the first time to approach 
the Catholic circles. 


Then came the fatal 1914. Fatal for the survival of 
Europe. Fatal for Don Roncalli, who saw the death of his 
bishop and great mentor, just on August 22 of that year, 
and stood alone waiting for events which did not take long, 
to thrust him from the quiet of the bishopric to the 
resounding din of the barracks. 

CHAPTER III 


In 1915, we find Angelo Roncalli in gray-green 
uniform. 

He is a sergeant with the Royal Italian army’s medical 
corps, committed, as a priest ahead of his times can be, to 
involving himself in a conflict in which the stake is the 
overthrow of the Central Empires, with the consequent 
Europe- wide reversal of the ancient balances. 

It is Roncalli’ s “military” choice, as he didn’t stop a 
moment to consider the possibility of being a priest among 
the soldiers, and only afterwards, by authority, will he be a 
chaplain. It is perhaps the earliest “official” indication in 
his life, of the lucid and perfect coherence between his 
thoughts and his acts. 

Already in 1902, cutting short his studies in Rome, he 
had done his military service, at Bergamo, as a “one-year 
volunteer” with the 73d foot regiment, “Lombardia” 
brigade, discharged with the stripes of sergeant sown on his 
sleeves. Those stripes are now an asset to him, in the 
army’s medical corps, along with his priestly status and his 


title of Seminary professor, well known to his superiors. 
And so he can cut out some autonomous space for himself, 
within the inflexible machinery of the military apparatus, 
and make inroads, authoritatively, amongst the Secular and 
the “non-interventionist” Socialists that clutter the 
battalions, as a priest who, refusing any favorable treatment 
owed to his habit, had rather mingled with the fighting 
masses, proletarian amongst the proletarians, to plunge 
himself all the way into his social and progressive credo. 

In spite of the open secularist avowal by 1915’s Italy - be 
it kept in mind that the Italian government in London, 
while assuring France and Britain of Italy’s intervention at 
the side of the new allies, demanded and imposed, as a 
secret return, that no post-war call be forwarded to Italy 
demanding the settlement of the Roman Question (the 
antagonism between Church and Italian state after 1870, 
which only later will be composed through the Concordat 
of Benito Mussolini) - the great majority of the Italian 
Catholics responded with unanimous participation to the 
call of the nation. “Those Catholics who for over half a 
century,” wrote “L'Osservatore Romano” fifty years after 
1918, “had been pushed and confined into the official 
shadow by the exponents of the united Italy, did not refuse 
the call to duty, once the Nation was committed, even when 
they hadn’t been in favor of the intervention. And they 
heroically faced death in combat. First among so many, as 
if to offer an example to those who acclaimed him and 
chose him as their leader, was Count Giuseppe Dalla Torre 
of Sanguinetto, later, for over forty years director of our 
newspaper, then president of the Azione Cattolica Italiana. 


He volunteered. And with him set out not a few young 
executives, to attest with blood and life their loyalty, their 
civil commitment, their love for the Homeland. The Italian 
Catholics, these “Second class citizens,” in those terrible 
moments proved themselves as soldiers. No other 
Secularist Association was ever able to put together in 
those tragic years as many military decorations for 
gallantry as the Societa della Gioventu Cattolica Italiana: 
one hundred gold medals, thousands of silver and bronze 
ones, war crosses, field mentions: ten thousand dead and 
wounded.” (Cfr. F. Bellegrandi, “La testimonianza nel 
sacrificio dei cattolici italiani” in “L'Osservatore Romano,” 
November 22, 1968). 

At this juncture we must, however, turn the page and 
consider the flip side of the luminous fagade. At a mass 
level, the 1914-1918 war was not a globally “felt” conflict. 
This is attested by the historiography that is not as 
publicized, obviously, by the interested parties, where it 
shows the high number of desertions that occurred within 
the units, where it lists the interventions by the war 
tribunals and execution squads, where it lists the episodes 
of insubordination, sometimes concluded with the killing of 
officers. 

We must not forget, in fact, the Italian reality of those 
war years. If on the one hand, a certain national elite 
galvanized by Gabriele D Annunzio, fought that conflict 
that had seen Italy turn its back on the old allies, in light of 
a romanticism that would, the war over, soon make way to 
the most bitter disillusionment - be it recalled Flume’ s 


occupation by D'Annunzio and his Legionnaires, in 
contempt of the provisions of the Versailles Pact - on the 
other, that very conflict marked, for the fighting Italian 
masses, a new awareness of their social consistence, of 
their numerical power, of their rights and future claims. 
Those very masses, demobilized, claimed in the streets 
their contribution of blood to a victory they had no interest 
in. And Italy was a step away from communism, had it not 
imposed itself, against all expectations (first of all those of 
Moscow’s Bolsheviks), the Fascist movement of Benito 
Mussolini. 

Roncalli, in those years, quenched his thirst at the 
socialist brook that snaked amidst the soldiers. Few times a 
coarse military cap did shield from the cold a head so rich 
of foresight and intuition. Those who had the easy venture 
of meeting in those times, which marked the death sentence 
of the old Europe, sergeant Roncalli, will still recall the 
amiability of that stocky non-commissioned officer from 
medical corps by the thick black moustache, of whom 
many privates ignored the true identity of priest, amiability 
that won you over immediately, and opened to intimacy. 

But those who knew him more closely will still recall that 
his revolutionary conception of the near and not so near 
future, angelically simple, yet stubborn, absolute and bold, 
that he never stopped preaching. That obstinate digging in 
that made him stand fast, even when facing an infuriated 
general. Roncalli paid great attention, in the rear lines of 
the great massacres of World War I, to the wounded 
soldiers who packed the medication posts and the hospitals 


where he lent his service. Sometimes he found, stretched 
out before him in a stretcher on the floor, a socialist cell- 
head. For the portentous ability of the sergeant-priest it was 
child’s play to conquer the trust of that poor devil in need 
of medical attention. 

The friendship would be a matter of days, and in the 
wards the buzz had it that sergeant Rone alii, “that big 
Veneto with the mustache,” was a “comrade” that could be 
trusted. With great amiability he was able to win over the 
officers, whose benevolence was to him of the essence, so 
as to enjoy a certain autonomy and gratify of special 
treatment his Socialist comrades. Looking back, today, to 
the human swarming that moved, agitated, and contorted 
itself on the battle fields of that dusk of a world, one 
wonders to be meeting on the same scene men and ideas 
that would be protagonists, afterwards, of grandiose, 
apocalyptic, at times, big shakes in the history of 
humanity. 

While the future John XXIII refined himself at that 
atypical school of progressivism, soiled with blood and 
mud, in those very days, in another sector of the war front, 
a stretcher carried to the rear lines a wounded Socialist, 
who a few years later would give plenty of trouble to his 
former party comrades: “bersagliere” Benito Mussolini. He 
who, then, took a peep a little farther due Northwest, would 
have stumbled into a young mustached lad from Braunau; 
name: Adolph, surname Hitler, hobbling along, with his 
Mauser on his shoulder, amidst the rubble of the French 
villages pounded by the artilleries, in the iron boots of a 


Bavarian foot regiment. 

World War I has rocked in its arms of iron and fire the 
first cries of the biggest and often ill-omened shakers of the 
modern world. But, probably, that big priest dressed as a 
medical corps sergeant of the Royal Italian army, went way 
past even the most celebrated of those personages. 

That Lenin fellow whom in March 1917 imperial 
Germany had the brilliant idea of shipping back to Russia, 
in a sealed train compartment, to unleash Bolshevism and 
ignite that fearsome fuse that is still ominously blazing, 
under the bottom of the whole world. 

It escapes my pen here, and I set it down integrally, a 
caustic judgment by the most famous Italian Vaticanist, 
Roman count Fabrizio Sarazani, on John XXIII’s 
pontificate and its consequences. When I first heard it, from 
his own voice, in his Roman study in the Viale Parioli, it 
impressed me and made me reflect for a time. It is a 
judgment that reflects, in its crudeness, the evaluation of 
that famed scholar of Vatican things as to the extent of the 
catastrophe set in motion by the stocky priest from Sotto il 
Monte. Sarzani told me “. . .The mark left by Roncalli in the 
history of humanity goes far beyond Lenin’s and Stalin’s. 

In fact, if those have liquidated a few million human lives, 
John XXIII has liquidated two thousand years of Catholic 
Church.” 

All the experience accumulated in those four years of 
military life, in contact with peasants and workers in 


uniform, Roncalli carried along with him after laying down 
the gray-green and taking up the habit once again. And it 
did soon rise, in the tumultuous post-war times, when 
strikes and unrests turned the country into a great hobbling 
organism, with the cavalry in the streets and the barricades, 
and the rallies blazing with red banners and gunshots and 
bombs and dead and wounded. 

The demobbed masses fluctuated in the streets plunging 
slowly into unemployment, into discontent, into violence. 
Don Roncalli, now back at Bergamo, with no longer the 
protection of his old bishop, deprived, following that police 
report, of the professorship at the Seminary, had obtained 
from the new bishop the post of “spiritual director” of the 
clerics, scarcely back from the war and reinstated on their 
priesthood path. It was a task, as it can be seen, that did not 
allow a direct and influential take upon the students. The 
spiritual director operated mostly in the presence of the 
teaching body, confined to delivering sermons, spiritual 
exercises at Lent, and confessions. 

By taking teaching away from him, they thought, in 
Rome, they had cropped the claws to the modernist rebel. 
But they were mistaken. 

Indeed, Roncalli managed to keep awake amongst those 
clerics, made more restless by the taste of secular life they 
had experienced at the time of the war, the flame of 
progressivism, and to continue to “doing politics” covertly, 
now, always siding with those who uncobbled the streets to 
play target shooting with the “carabinieri” and the royal 


guards. No one, however, this time was there to cover his 
back, and one day from Rome came a curt letter that 
transferred him without a moment’ s notice to that town, to 
work, well organized with other collaborators, at the 
reorganization of the missionary activity. It was December 
1920. Pius X had died on the eve of the war, had been 
succeeded by Benedict XV and the next Pope, Pius XI, 
found Roncalli recently transferred to Propaganda Fide. 

The information as to his “modernist” and “progressive” 
persona, received in the Vatican through the famous 
charges dating back to the times of the Bergamascan 
Seminary, had followed the priest from Sotto il Monte as a 
conspicuous label, throughout the pontificate of three 
Popes. In Rome, a more mature and experienced Roncalli 
grew extra careful, extra cautious, infinitely shrewder, and 
began to disguise himself, and organize, in order to map out 
a well-planned path for himself. 

He checked his instincts and began to deploy his 
formidable will and his extraordinary brain. Sweetening the 
whole thing with the overflowing sympathy and simple- 
mindedness distinctive of his hide of Veneto countryman. 
His perfectly timed “change-of-skin” makes it possible for 
Roncalli, in that atmosphere swelled with social climbing, 
envy, double play that is the Roman Curia, to maneuver 
with surprising tact. Galvanizing, around his bulky person, 
as if it were a prodigious magnet, an ever-growing number 
of friends and sympathizers. The times when he wore out 
his big shoes running tirelessly from place to place in a 
Bergamascan province shaken by social ferments, slip 


farther and farther on the horizon of Angelo Roncalli, who 
is now much more watchful and has learned from the 
Rome’s monsignors to be unapproachable, to smudge his 
stands, to smile indulgently, when, inside, the pachyderm 
violence of his disposition is surging and bursting. His self- 
assurance bears, in due time, its first fruits. He is ordered as 
Apostolic Visitor to Bulgaria. A timid spring smiles upon 
Rome. It is March 1925. 

On the 19 of that month, St. Joseph’s day, in the Lombard 
Church of San Carlo al Corso, in Rome, Angelo Giuseppe 
Roncalli is ordained bishop by cardinal Tacci, secretary of 
the Oriental Congregation. 

The new bishop sets out for his mission. The Orient 
opens in front of him. The Orient with the violence of its 
colors, the contradictions of its history, the impenetrable 
smile of its thousand religions, welcomes Roncalli and 
envelopes him in its charming splendor. Here, destiny is 
awaiting the priest from Sotto il Monte. Beneath the 
sparkling phosphorescence of those “One thousand and one 
Night” skies, the road that will lead Roncalli to climb the 
steps of the See of Peter will indeed be marked out. 

With the title of Archbishop of Aeropoli, Roncalli arrives 
in Bulgaria, emerged from the Treaty of Neuilly, to gather a 
sense as to the real situation of the Catholics, both Latin 
and Oriental, and reorganize their ranks. He travels to every 
corner of the country, by automobile, and, when the roads 
do not allow it, on donkey’s back, to get to know and 
penetrate the reality of that people, hard to comprehend and 


win over. The contacts with the Christian communities 
scattered all over the Bulgarian territory are difficult to 
establish. Finally, in 1927, at the end of a most careful and 
patient diplomatic work, he is able to meet the Metropolitan 
of the Armenians, Stepanosse Hovegnimian. 

In Roncalli’s life this meeting can be defined as the first 
step on the road of that ecumenism that will be the pivotal 
point upon which will beat, without shifting a single 
degree, the magnetic hand of the policy of the man who 
revolutionized the contemporary world, in only five years 
of pontificate. 

Monsignor Roncalli’s residence in Bulgaria marks the 
first success of his portentous personality. First and 
foremost he is acting on his own. He is free to undertake, 
that is, within the boundaries of his diplomatic action, all 
those decisions that he deems material to the fulfillment of 
his mandate. He does not respond, immediately, to anyone, 
of his initiatives. In addition, he is working in a country 
that, although amongst the most hospitable yet in the 
civilized world - the only country that allocated in the state 
budget a significant sum for the Armenian and Russian 
refugees -, due to its host of religions and ethnic groups, 
would constitute a great problem for a diplomat of the Holy 
See who had proceeded along the lines of a traditional 
diplomatic approach. Thus an ideal terrain to a Roncalli 
who contrives a diplomacy of his own, made of informal, 
direct contacts, and concrete, expeditious human 
relationships. 


Personages from all political and religious faiths are 
invited to his table, so long as they can serve his ends. And 
the table of the Pope’s envoy will not so easily be 
forgotten, by those who have the venture to lunch or dine at 
it. It is, perhaps, Roncalli’s only “weakness,” the good 
cuisine and good wine. His table will always be full of 
succulent food and his good appetite will never falter. It 
will always be remarkable, throughout the rest of his life. 
With the exception of the latter months, when the anguish 
of repentance will fall onto his shoulders, along with the 
illness, crushing him. 

In 1931, the Holy See disposes that Roncalli’s temporary 
mission become a permanent one, and the bishop from 
Sotto il Monte is appointed Apostolic Delegate. The first 
Vatican ever in Bulgaria. He will remain in that country 
three more years, until at the end of 1934, he is ordered 
from Sophia to Istanbul, as well as Athens, with the title of 
Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and Greece, as archbishop of 
Mesembria. 

That is to say, to leave a country that has become your 
own home, for another, rather, two others, wherein 
resentments and contrasts are pumping up a dangerous 
tension that could burst out at any moment. In Athens, in 
fact, it has not been forgotten that following the 
intervention by the League of Nations, they had to swallow 
the invasion of Petrie, occupied militarily in October 1925. 
Moreover, Bulgaria is likely to be strengthened by the 
personal involvement of King Boris into national politics: 
from the suppression of ORIM to the formation of the 


Kiosseivanof s cabinet, to the military alliance with Italy. 


As a consequence, in February 1934 it had been shaping 
up, to Bulgaria’s detriment that Balkan Understanding 
devised by Paris as a continuation of the Little 
Understanding. In this state of affairs, the transfer of the 
representative of Rome from Sophia none other than to 
Athens, causes a certain degree of alarm throughout the 
Greek world. Worse still, Roncalli is sent off as Apostolic 
Delegate not only to Athens, but also to Istanbul, capital of 
the forthcoming Turkish republic, at a time when the 
paragraphs of the Locarno Treaty, are being hammered out, 
as well as Ankara’s. With the result that a million Greeks 
were forced to leave Turkey, and half a million Turks 
forced to leave Greece. With all the imaginable political 
and religious implications and repercussions, when one 
considers that amongst the repatriated from Istanbul and 
Anatolia is a large group of Catholic Greeks who for 
generations had gotten used to living in Turkey, obeying 
the institutions of the Ottoman Empire rather than their 
own bishop. This Catholic autonomy reinstated after 
generations into the compact Greek Orthodox block, will 
not fail to cause problems of a certain import. In this 
simmering reality is grafted the action of the Pope’s envoy. 
His life takes on immediately dramatic tones. He will be 
under the constant watch of official authorities and 
religious and political sects that breathe deeply the ancient 
and bloody rivalry between the Greek and Turkish worlds, 
and the exasperated diffidence, at that juncture, all Balkan, 
of the two countries toward Bulgaria, whose pungent odor 
the bishop from Sotto il Monte carries with him, clotted 


between the creases of his Episcopal habit. So Roncalli 
would have to get used to moving about in civilian clothes, 
to sit up at night, abruptly awakened by sudden gunshots 
exploded by strangers near his home, to dodge, in the 
streets, the victims of unknown hands, and in that 
atmosphere of suspect and violence, mend and carry 
forward his difficult diplomatic mission. Those who knew 
him in those years recall the Apostolic Delegate, in 
simulated clothes, as they say, mostly dark, with a cloth-hat 
lowered onto his forehead. Very reserved, with the concern 
and at times fear that transpired behind that smile of his, 
always the same and reassuring. It is known for certain that 
at that time Roncalli, to survive as a Pope’s emissary, had 
to come to terms with the local environment. 

He had numerous secret meetings with figures and 
personalities - at the time influential - that guaranteed him, 
sometimes decisively, the good outcome of his initiatives. 

And it is precisely in that gloomy Balkan period that his 
Masonic initiation is historically placed. 


CHAPTER IV 


In the book “Fe profezie di papa Giovanni” (The 
Prophecies of Pope John), printed in 1976 by Edizioni 
Mediterranee, the author, Pier Carpi, recounts the story of 
that initiation. 

The year is 1935. Freemasonry reaches out to the 
archbishop of Masembria, Apostolic Delegate in Turkey, in 
the most difficult moment of his diplomatic activity. 
Roncalli joins the secret sect as a “Rose Cross,” states the 
author, and takes on the name of Johannes. He, a priest, 
knows well the value of that name. The significance and 
the carrying charm of that name that carried along, in 
history, the movement of the “Followers of the light,” the 
“Giovanniti,” that is. In the Masonic sect of which he is 
now part, priest Roncalli knows his way around, and 
recognizes, beyond the vetoes and the inflexible 
condemnation of the Church, the leading threads to him, a 
priest, familiar. As that St. John’s Gospel, laid down in the 
Fodge, to witness the devotion of those affiliated to the 
“Enlightenment” Evangelist. The Masonic hand timely 


“rescues” Roncalli and his mission from the quicksands in 
which they are slowly sinking. The action of that powerful 
hand fulfils, at that moment, with a single gesture, a rescue 
and a choice. From that point on, in fact, the life of 
Roncalli is mapped out. Until the day of his death. Not by 
chance, twenty-three years later, coming out of the Sistine 
Chapel as a Pope, he will choose the name of Johannes, 
taken there, on the Bosphorus, upon his Masonic initiation. 
And he will love to shock the informed, calling himself like 
that other John XXIII, the schismatic. And he will raise his 
own coat of arms, with a tower and two lilies standing out, 
to which not few experts of Freemasonry will attribute a 
significance at all emblematic: The tower of the Masonic 
temple, flanked by two knights, “Reason” and “Instinct.” 
Naturally, the Vatican denied it. But they were brief 
denials, of no import. Uttered by persons bound body and 
soul to the destiny of John XXIII. It has never enlarged, 
instead, upon whatever has hitherto been written in detail 
on the issue. Moreover, that Freemasonry had always 
looked at the Catholic Church with close attention is a fact 
that does not escape the informed. Listings of the most 
eminent affiliated were published, and today is no mystery 
to the great Magisterium that the echelons of the Church 
are present amongst the Freemason brothers. I am relating 
here two Masonic judgments on the Church, expressed 
during the VI Initiatory Convent of Strasburg: 

“And we are certain that much of the esoteric knowledge 
we believed to be lost to our initiatory orders, are jealously 
kept and seriously administered in two esoteric institutions, 
the Catholic Church and Islam. It is time to acknowledge 


the wishes of our masters.” (From Friar Aldhiran’s 
address). And: “...As for the Opus Dei, this organization 
that unites mystic to initiation, it is no case that its founder, 
monsignor Escriva, one of the most enlightened men of this 
century, had closed at 999 and not another number, the 
maxims of his work, Camino, that has conquered millions 
of consciences and a spiritual reawakening. 999 is the 
maximum initiatory number, that of the triumph upon the 
Beast in John’s Apocalypse.” (From Friar Manothes’s 
address). 

At least in Rome, in well-informed circles, the names of the 
Freemason cardinals are no secret. 

A priest friend of mine, Don Enrico Pompilio, military 
chaplain with the rank of major of the “carabinieri,” 
confided to me to have received from a French monsignor, 
a renowned lecturer met at a congress, a most grave 
revelation about the sudden and tragic and scandalous death 
of cardinal Jean Danielou. As it will be remembered, that 
cardinal from France, famous for his erudition, was found 
dead in Paris, in the apartment of a young female dancer. 
The circumstances of that death were never ascertained. 
Well, that French monsignor revealed to Don Pompilio, to 
whom he was bound by an old friendship, that cardinal 
Danielou had been destroyed, physically and morally, by 
Freemasonry because he was about to publicize the list of 
all the most eminent cardinals affiliated to the sect. 


To Freemasonry, Roncalli was to be a means, a pawn. It 
is no case that two years after his election to the pontificate, 


in 1960, he would promote a series of studies on the 
esoteric and initiatory societies and their relationship with 
the Church, initiating that process that would bring about 
the overriding of the excommunication of Freemasonry. 

Some events, known and not so known, lend credibility to 
the premise of a Roncalli-mason. For example, the fact that 
the election of the patriarch of Venice at the Conclave of 
1958 was known in advance. Today, ten years after that 
Conclave, before the progressive loosening of the millenary 
structures of the Church impressed by the Vatican II 
Ecumenical Council, someone has decided to reveal 
important and corroborating documents. One of these is the 
letter by cardinal Eugenio Tisserant to an abbot professor 
of Canon Law, in which the French cardinal declares illegal 
the election of John XXIII, because “wanted” and 
“arranged” by forces “extraneous” of the Holy Spirit. (Cfr. 
“Vita” of September 18, 1977 pg. 4 “Le profezie sui papi 
nell'elenco di San Malachia”, by “II Minutante”). 

Hither and thither, in the long itinerary of Roncalli’ s, 
should we say, pre-papal activity, transpire at times 
enlightening reflexes, which make Angelo Giuseppe 
Roncalli appear to us as the “Rose Cross” pawn of the 
Freemason brothers. 

In 1941, for example. One further step on the path of 
ecumenism is incredibly “set forward” by the delegate of 
the Pope. At Sophia, where he is on a call, a meeting is 
arranged for Roncalli, in an elevator! with the Orthodox 
Metropolite Stefan, and on that itinerant and neutral 


territory, pretending fortuity, he hugs him. Roncalli knows 
perfectly the hazard of that meeting, and the risks he is 
exposing himself to, toward the conservative forces of the 
Church. But that meeting is a necessary tessera in the 
construction of the great mosaic that, one day, would be the 
Vatican II Ecumenical Council, and had to be put in place. 
Thus the pawn let itself be moved on the chessboard, the 
move was successful, and the game went on. Meanwhile 
World War II breaks out and rages. Roncalli is amidst the 
rubbles of Greece, in the thick of a countrywide battle. 
Then, when least expected, the pawn suffers an abrupt shift. 
A ciphered telegram turns up in his hands: “284145 stop 
416564 stop 855003 stop 641100 stop...” The cipherer 
translates laconic: “Report immediately stop. Transferred 
nuncio Paris stop. Tardini.” 

In 1944 a big problem had arisen between the liberated 
France and the Holy See. General De Gaulle wanted to 
carry out a tough purge among the prelates compromised 
with Petain’s collaborationist regime. 

In that state of things, in the afternoon of December 30, 
1944, there arrived at Ville Combe the new Paris nuncio 
Roncalli. The official appointment was dated 23, but he 
presented his credentials to general De Gaulle only on the 
morning of January 1, 1945. The ceremony, at 9.45 sharp, 
was quick. Minister Bidault and ambassador Loze 
accompanied De Gaulle. Presently a little episode took 
place that today we might call a premonition. Immediately 
after monsignor Roncalli’ s credentials, at 10.30 sharp, the 
diplomats present at Paris would present, as customary, the 


new-year wishes to the French president. Dean of the 
diplomats in France was, at that moment, the Soviet 
ambassador, who was due to deliver the inaugural address. 
The Russian diplomat had already positioned himself at the 
head of the ambassadors and plenipotentiaries, with the 
sheets of the address in his hands, when, moments before 
10.30, contemporarily, almost, to De Gaulle, the new 
nuncio Roncalli, by force of international rule, now, the 
new Dean, rushed to place himself before the bewildered 
Soviet ambassador and began to deliver the official 
address. It was 10:30 of the first day of 1945. Thirteen 
years later Roncalli, now John XXIII, would rush to place 
himself, with just five years of pontificate, ahead of the 
Soviet Union with his revolutionary and progressive policy, 
which opened the Church to the dialogue with the 
communists and the acceptance of Marxism, “So long as 
that doctrine can help in solving the problems of society.” 

Even in his new mission, success smiled at the priest 
from Sotto il Monte. He succeeds in his intent of not 
satisfying entirely the French government, without 
upsetting it too much. His home hosts meetings with 
unpredictable personalities, nurtures personal and frequent 
relations with exponents of the left, and makes friends with 
figures and ministers belonging to Freemasonry. 

Of that French period is an incident, unknown to most, 
which raises for a moment the curtain on the alleged 
Roncalli membership in the Masonic sect. His most 
eminent highness, prince Chigi Albani della Rovere, then 
Great Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, had 


received in the Gran Magistero’s Rome office a letter from 
cardinal Canali, heavy as a massive boulder: Pius XII, 
protector of the Order, had just learned, with great pain, 
that the minister of the Order of Malta in Paris was a 
freemason. They hastened, in the Magistral palace of the 
Via dei Condotti, to rummage through the file of baron 
Marsaudon, recently appointed in place of count Pierredon, 
who had been retired. It was discovered, with a certain 
relief, that he had been made “Grand Cross of Magistral 
Grace” at the suggestion of his predecessor and, above all, 
appointed minister on recommendation by the nuncio in 
Paris, Roncalli. 

The outcome of that first investigation was immediately 
reported to the Vatican, to cardinal Canali, who was heard 
crying: 

’’Poor Roncalli! I’m sorry I have to embarrass him and I 
hope that this would not cost him the cardinalitial 
galero. . .” The Vatican arranged in the strictest reserve that 
the Order send a trusted person to Paris at once, to carry out 
in depth the delicate discovery. The Great Magisterium was 
in an awkward situation. All three personages involved in 
the story had indeed to be treated with regard. The nuncio, 
for his precious contribution to the Order of Malta in the 
closing of certain business deals in Argentina; count 
Pierredon for his lengthy services, first at Bucharest, and 
then at Paris; Baron Marsaudon himself for his meritorious 
commitment in order to obtain the official recognition of 
the Order by the French government. After a careful and 
accurate selection was named “Magistral Visitor” a 


chaplain professed of the Order, monsignor Rossi 
Stockalper, who was also canonic of Santa Maria Maggiore 
and thus in Vatican’s hands. He left for Paris at once. He 
had been advised to begin his discovery with father 
Berteloot, of the Company of Jesus, and an expert in 
Masonic issues. The Jesuit, consulted in the strictest 
discretion, confirmed to him that baron Marsaudon not only 
was a Freemason, but “thirty-third level” of Masonry and 
life-member of the Council of the Great Lodge of the 
Scottish Rite. Monsignor Rossi Stockalper continued his 
tour. He learned very little from the archbishop of Paris 
monsignor Feltin, who sent him instead to his general vicar, 
monsignor Bohan, “who knew the baron more closely.” 
Here, for the envoy from Rome, was another surprise: the 
general vicar had pulled out of a safe and scattered over the 
table a series of incontrovertible documents, among which 
an issue of the “Journal Officiel de l'Etat francais,” 
published in Vichy during the (German) occupation, in 
which Yves Marie Marsaudon was indicated among the 
followers of Freemasonry; three or four copies of the 
Masonic magazine “Le Temple” containing a few of his 
articles, and an informative profile of the subject. No 
document existed relating to an abjuration. The Magistral 
Visitor, with his heart in pain, dragged on to 10, avenue 
President Wilson, residence of the nuncio. He asked 
Roncalli, tactfully, for circumstantial information about the 
mason-baron. The sturdy priest from Sotto il Monte, 
between a smile and a joke, sent the chaplain of the Order 
of Malta back to the secretary of the nunciature, monsignor 
Bruno Heim. This priest, today the “apostolic legate” in 
Great Britain, ended up startling the envoy from Rome, 


first with his clergy-man and the smoking pipe in his teeth, 
then with his amazing statements on Freemasonry, defined 
as “One of the last forces of social conservation in today’s 
world, and, therefore, a force of religious conservation,” 
and with an enthusiastic judgment on baron Marsaudon 
who had the merit of making the nunciature grasp the 
transcendent value of Freemasonry. Precisely for this his 
merit, the Nuncio of Paris, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, had 
sustained and approved his appointment to minister of the 
Order of Malta in Paris. Monsignor Stockalper at that turn 
had remained dumbfounded, and received the ultimate 
blow when, protesting that Canon 2335 of the Canon Law 
calls for the excommunication for the affiliated to 
Freemasonry, he was told by his interlocutor, between a 
puff and another at the scented smoke of his big pipe, that 
“the nunciature of Paris was working in great secret to 
reconcile the Catholic Church with Freemasonry.” It was 
1950! This episode seems to expose the connivance of 
Roncalli with Freemasonry. The post-conciliar Church will 
indeed reconcile with the secret sect. I wish to wrap up this 
subject, reporting a revelation made to me a while ago, by 
count Paolo Sella of Monteluce. This figure, an economist, 
politician, writer and journalist, who was a close friend of 
Umberto of Savoy, and who boasts a direct descent from 
the founder of the Italian Historical Right, senator Quintino 
Sella of Biella, shared with me, in the quiet of his Roman 
home on the slopes of Monte Mario, the evidence in his 
possession, of the assault by Freemasonry on the Catholic 
Church. I had found in his drawing room Vaticanist 
Gabriella di Montemayor, who had been the go-between 
for our encounter. Count Sella was reorganizing some 


papers on the low table in front of him. The sunset burst in 
from Monte Mario and gilded the shelves loaded with 
ancient volumes with their spine of parchment, and the 
reddish beams of the sun, filtering through the curtains 
barely moved by the evening breeze, enlivened the portraits 
of the ancestors watching severely from the walls that 
learned descendant of theirs, sitting in an armchair before 
me. Then the count, raising his face and staring at me, 
began to speak: “... In September 1958, about seven or 
eight days before the Conclave, I was at the Sanctuary of 
Orope, attending one of the usual dinners at Attilio Botto’s, 
a Biellese industrialist who fancied gathering around him 
competent from various branches, to discuss the different 
issues. That day had been invited a character I knew as a 
high Masonic authority in contact with the Vatican. He told 
me, driving me home, that “. . .The next Pope would not be 
Siri, as it was murmured in some Roman circles, because 
he was too authoritarian a cardinal. They would elect a 
Pope of conciliation. The choice has already fallen on the 
patriarch of Venice Roncalli. “Chosen by whom?” I 
rejoined surprised. “By our Masonic representatives in the 
Conclave,” responded placidly my kind escort. And then it 
escaped me: 

’’There are freemasons in the Conclave?” “Certainly,” 
was the reply, “the Church is in our hands.” I rejoined 
perplexed: “Who, then, is in charge in the Church?” After a 
brief pause, the voice of my escort uttered precisely: “No 
one can say where the upper echelons are. The echelons are 
occult.” 


The following day, Count Sella transcribed in an official 
document, now kept in the safe of a notary, the full name of 
that character and his stunning statement complete with the 
year, month, day, and hour. Which, days later, would turn 
out absolutely exact. 

CHAPTER V 


But let us go back to Paris, at 10, Avenue President 
Wilson. Roncalli, nuncio in France, is more and more his 
own self. With respect to the Balkan, Bulgarian, and later 
Greek and Turkish period, to him who observed with 
aloofness his political action and his pastoral work, he 
seems to have mastered more confidence, authority, and 
determination. The France of those years endures 
anguishing crisis. The labor world is in turmoil. As always, 
in the events that see Roncalli as a protagonist, the stake is 
the same: the overthrow of the old world and the promotion 
of new times, revolutionized and revolutionary. Chain- 
strikes paralyze the France in which the priest from Sotto il 
Monte represents the Pope. 

Violence takes hold of the masses. Proletariat and 
gendarmerie are clashing in the streets of Paris, in the 
suburbs, throughout the province. To the nuncio, it is but a 
re-enactment of the far-off days when Bolshevism 
attempted to seize power in Italy. It is like going back to 
the Ranica days, when with his bishop, Radini-Tedeschi, he 
had sided with impetuous imprudence with the violent. Yet 
this time, by George! he, Roncalli, is the nuncio. To put it 


differently, he is the Pope in France. The game has 
therefore changed. 

All the aces are in his sleeve. And his action unfolds 
directly, powerful, in the light of day. The nuncio will side 
with the strikers. And with him, behind him, all of the 
French clergy. 

To the priests, in those years, open dissent was still a 
meaningless word. 

Roncalli hauls with him, in organizing ready-Francs- 
support and in pronouncing resounding exhortation to 
resistance, the bishops of Nice, Clermont-Ferrand, Tarbes 
Lourdes, and the archbishop of Carthage. Aware of the 
unpopularity his stand is drawing upon himself in 
government circles, he is now seldom seen at the Foreign 
Ministry. In those years, numerous episodes portray a 
Roncalli “ready” for the pontificate that is awaiting him. He 
sides with the worker-priests, that movement that, to be 
sure, numbered a few samples of authentic pastoral 
experience, yet was mostly the easy expedient of bad 
priests who defied hierarchy, and, mingling with the 
secular, served as forerunners to those defrocked priests 
who today live totally integrated in the world, and celebrate 
Mass at night, in the kitchen, with their woman by their 
side. Beneath the vaults of the nunciature there walked, 
stood chattering, and sipped at excellent iced Pernods, the 
most blatant atheism that enlightenment Paris could then 
account for, throughout its legendary districts. A frequent 
guest at the nunciature, amongst other “founders” of French 


atheist progressivism, was in those years Radical professor 
Edoardo Herriot. Roncalli kept a set table every day of the 
week, for the endless procession of guests who in turn sat 
before him, at lunch or dinner, in the most absolute 
discretion. A bottle of good aged wine, more often than not 
Italian - the cellar of the nunciature, with Roncalli, was 
abundantly stocked - represented to the nuncio, who knew 
well whom he was dealing with, the safest and most 
infallible connecting link, to establish “impossible” 
relations with the cream of French anti-clericalism. Which 
sooner or later would serve the scope of the nuncio and 
then, who knows? of the Pope. 

The French soil, with all its revolutionary and 
enlightenment tradition, represented the ideal territory for a 
man like Roncalli. It was certainly the last important 
chapter of his preparation toward the “breakaway” 
pontificate. 

He completed this preparation in a superlative way. So 
much so that the cardinalitial purple would arrive 
punctually in spite of cardinal Canali’s perplexities at the 
time of the Marsaudon scandal. On January 15, 1953, he 
receives the cap at the Elysee, from the hand of president 
Vincent Auriol. A socialist, ultra-progressive misbeliever. 
And a long-standing friend. So close as to indulge 
Roncalli’ s weakness to let a group of his Bergamascan 
acquaintances attend the ceremony. Although on the 
cushion of Charles X, Roncalli, as the ceremonial calls for, 
must bend his knees and bow down before the socialist 
atheist Auriol, who at that time is representing the Pontiff. 


A singular game of contrasts that might excite reflection. 
And that singular game of contrasts seems cut out for the 
priest from Sotto il Monte. Roncalli galvanized the French 
episcopate, dragging it into a leftward race that at times 
surprised and overtook the communists themselves. To the 
point that in the first statement by the assembly of cardinals 
and archbishops - while the deputies of the Constituent 
Assembly were elaborating the fundamental law of the new 
State emerged from World War II - those bishops, worked 
up by Roncalli, thought well to put down in a shattering 
document, the following condemnations, expressed and 
articulated with Episcopal aptitude: 1) “Of the proletarian 
condition. Of the state of uncertainty, economic 
dependence and often misery, that deprives numerous 
workers of any authentically human living; 2) of the 
supremacy of money, when the quest for profit and return 
is put ahead of the just concern for the human person of the 
worker; 3) of the degenerated business that becomes a 
means of exploitation toward private ends and interests, 
whereas it should constitute a service rendered to the 
community; 4) of the opposition of the classes, that are 
instead mutually united by essential communal interests, 
and must be intended for the common benefit of the 
profession; 5) of materialism, which has sacrificed to the 
excesses of a soulless competition and to the lust for 
money, the rights of the human being.” Moreover, the text 
looks forward to: “The progressive access of every worker 
to private property; the progressive participation of the 
worker in the organization of labor, business, profession, 
and society; the realization of a professional organization 
with trade unions, business committee and mixed panels.” 


This document, a double- edged weapon masterly 
sharpened, printed in thousands and thousands of copies 
care of the nunciature, was distributed to the striking 
masses. It was the hammer that swooped down on the 
primed charge of subversion, setting it off. 

The absolute “unsuspectingness” of the signatories of 
those five condemnations - in those years the Pacellian 
Church was truly above suspicion and firmly anti-Marxists, 
- surprised and won over the French proletariat in turmoil. 

It took the prefectures aback, enraged some members of the 
government. Those sheets with the “five condemnations” 
printed with the monies of the nunciature, marched in the 
streets, creased in the pockets and sacks of the violent, 
between packs of Gauloise cigarettes and Molotov 
cocktails destined for the gendarmerie. The crafty smile of 
the Bergamascan nuncio glittered at the bonfires of the 
urban guerrilla, while the ancient structures of the State 
were being progressively dismantled, heralding the new age 
of the Western world. 

Roncalli’s career continues, carried forward, it seems to 
some, by a mysterious hand. The cardinalitial purple is 
followed by the appointment as patriarch of Venice, with 
the immediate transfer to the “Serenissima” city on the 
lagoon. Once again the pawn on the great chessboard has 
been moved. Brought closer to Rome, prepared for Rome. 
The ailing Pius XII, is no longer himself. While his 
government action is gradually losing its drive, around his 
throne the power of his foes keeps growing. Roncalli, in 
Venice, is amidst his own folks. He feels at home. His 


secretary, carefully picked in the pack of those open to 
Marxism, is a frail, neurotic-looking priest, a certain Don 
Loris Capovilla, whose scarcely known credential is a 
brother, a communist cell-head from Mestre, right there, a 
stone’s throw from Venice. Therefore warmly 
recommended to Roncalli directly by the PCI (Italian 
Communist party). This priest, consumed by progressive 
fanaticism, will be made bishop by Paul VI. His way of 
running the diocese of Chieti, of which he is put in charge, 
embitters that clergy to the point that he will soon have to 
be transferred to Loreto. Here, the former secretary of John 
XXIII finds this ancient Sanctuary too triumphalist - the 
Italian Lourdes - to his progressive taste, and thus he 
orders that the decors be dismantled, starting with the 
precious glowing lamps that crowned the high altar, which 
he has sawed up, to make room for the little table-altar of 
the novel liturgy, leaving not even the window of the 
House of Mary untouched. But someone files a claim with 
the Soprintendenza ai Monumenti (Italy’s art works 
conservation agency), and the hand of the iconoclast is 
fortunately stopped on time. 

The pawn, Roncalli, now plays, in addition, the small 
game of the Italian Communist party. The secretary of the 
patriarch of Venice, up to his neck in a murky past of red 
violence tied to the 1944-45 civil war in northern Italy, is in 
fact the black guardian angel of Roncalli. He will warily 
influence him, guiding his steps, until the last moment of 
his life. 


The funds of the patriarch of Venice are now made 


available to the local communist chapters. The Communist 
party’s manifests are printed with the monies of the 
patriarch. 

It will cause sensation at the time, the not completely 
hushed up Lourdes’ episode. When Roncalli, Legate of the 
Pope, goes to consecrate that underground Basilica, to the 
French authorities who wish to offer a “contribution” for 
the return trip and ask for the amount to be made out on the 
check, the patriarch of Venice replies, smiling, “One 
million Francs.” The check is made out to him, not prior, 
however, to being photocopied. All that snarl of business 
and covert political activities passes through the hands of 
Don Capovilla. Cardinal Roncalli, meanwhile, from time to 
time betrays the signs of an incipient arteriosclerosis. He 
will be treated by professor Togni, brother of Christian 
democrat congressman Giuseppe Togni, who will be 
minister of state in future governments several times. 

It is in this period that Roncalli begins to develop a keen 
interest for Soviet Russia, and that brand of communism. 

Soon that interest, fomented with skilful cleverness by 
Don Loris Capovilla, makes way to a genuine fondness, to 
an emotional predilection. The dream of a rapprochement 
between the Church and the Holy See and the country of 
the greatest social revolution in history is now born. 

The meeting of John XXIII with Khrushchev’s son-in-law, 
Adzhubei, is born at that time, in Venice, between the silent 
glistening of the canals in which the ancient palaces are 


reflected, in the odor of the “calli” greened with moulds, 
where the echo of the cries of the gondoliers dies out. 

Once Auriol is passing through Venice, and Roncalli goes 
out to hug him publicly, in the lobby of his hotel. He takes 
him to the Patriarchio, shows him Pius X’s room, humble 
as a parish priest’s. And says he promptly, to his close 
French socialist friend, “He was also a son of poor folks. 
Like me. We make do with little.” With Cardinal 
Wyszinsky, finally free to travel to the Vatican, when he 
stops in Venice on his way to Rome, Roncalli is more 
cautious. He refrains from speaking his mind. All he does is 
guide him around. 

He knows that to the Polish, populist discourses are like 
smoke in the eyes. And that Wyszinsky learned the hard 
way not to love Soviet Russia and the communists at large. 
Instead, when cardinal Feltin, archbishop of Paris, drops by 
in Venice, he escorts him to San Marco. It just happens to 
be the patron saint day. April 25, 1955. In Italy, according 
to the new republican calendar, this date marks the most 
sacred day of the year, that of the 1945 partisan 
insurrection against the Nazi-fascists. A mere coincidence? 
Emerging from the Basilica arm in arm with his French 
colleague, he asks a band playing in the piazza to perform 
the “Marseillaise.” The cross-reference to the French 
revolution, by the patriarch of Venice, on the day elevated 
to the splendor of foremost festivity, all and absolutely 
Marxist, in Italy, ignites the souls of the Veneto region’s 
politicians. Roncalli’ s popularity is at a zenith. 


In that Venetian stretch the priest from Sotto il Monte 
traveled a lot. In Italy and abroad. Yet incognito, he 
traveled far and wide, by car, only in Germany. To “get a 
hunch of that inconceivable reality that was the ‘German 
miracle’.” Of this period is the “rapprochement” between 
Roncalli and Giovanni Battista Montini. Or, more 
precisely, the rapprochement between Giovanni Battista 
Montini and Roncalli. Indeed, ever since the times of the 
“affair” Marsaudon, that shook the foundations of the 
Order of Malta, some prelates from Pius XII’ s Secretary of 
State reported the evident satisfaction of the Brescian 
monsignor in seeing Roncalli exposed to a possible Papal 
reprimand. Then, when Roncalli was made cardinal, and 
Montini was obstinately denied the purple by Pius XII, the 
monsignor with the owl-eyes suddenly changed course. 

And from Milan, he set out to work relentlessly, in unison 
with the two cardinals, Belgian Jozef Suenens and Dutch 
Bernard Jan Alfrink, to prepare Roncalli’ s election. 

The earliest Montinian “intuition” of that Delfinato in the 
shadow of Roncalli, that in a few years will bring the 
Bergamascan monsignor to the coronation in St. Peter, is 
placed in those years. 

It is Montini, for the record, who rushes to escort to 
Rome the brothers of Roncalli when the patriarch of Venice 
is elected Pope, passing, with deliberate contempt, over the 
head of the bishop of Bergamo, to whom the pleasant duty 
would pertain. This expedient “exploit” will be Montini’ s 
first act, of John XXIII’ s reign, on the path of his ascent to 
the See of Peter. 


In Rome, after the death of the Pope, the world of Pius 
XII is dissolving like snow in the sun. As it was being 
predicted in close well-informed circles, as it had been 
established long, long before Eugenio Pacelli would expire 
on the shores of lake Castelgandolfo, Roncalli comes out 
elected by the Conclave. Now, at length, he will be the 
renovator. The first sensational act, which will leave the 
cardinals of the Holy Roman Church breathless, is the 
choice of his name. But what had John XXIII meant in the 
history of the Papacy? 

We find the answer in Ferdinando Gregorovius’s “Storia 
della citta di Roma nel Medioevo” (History of Medieval 
Rome), which introduces to us Baldassare Cossa, the anti- 
Pope and history’s first John XXIII. The German historian 
wrote that “. . .Baldassare Cossa was born of a noble 
Neapolitan family, and it was said that in his youth he had 
practiced, with his brothers, the lucrative trade of the pirate. 
He was earlier an excellent soldier; then he studied at 
Bologna, in that university, and therein led a dissolute life; 
and Boniface IX had there elected him archdeacon, and 
then had taken him to Rome as his attendant. In the Curia, 
where the fortunes often arrive exceedingly abundant, he 
had used his position for profit, selling indulgences and 
lending money at usury. He had become cardinal of St. 
Eustachio, and had finally returned as a Legate to Bologna, 
where he spared no boldness in order to preserve the 
Signoria of Romagna. His contemporaries are agreed that 
he was a man adept in worldly trades, as ignorant and inept 
in religious things. Neither lacking were cries of 
indignation for the exaltation of this man, who had not 


distinguished himself for any merit, but had rather made 
himself famous for many crimes, whose guilty past and the 
suspicion that he had killed two Popes berated the office 
that had been conferred on him. . 

The famous German historian, who spoke his mind and 
was not bound, by interest, to any conspiracy of silence, 
continues on that tenor of extreme clearness, recounting 
that this man, energetic and shrewd, cardinal since 1402, 
achieved a great power under the weak Alexander V, whom 
he succeeded in 1410. Like his homonymous five and a 
half centuries later, he summoned an Ecumenical Council 
in Rome, for the reformation of the Church. But unlike his 
homonymous of our times, his Council, despite the dreadful 
reputation of the promulgator, represented no cataclysm to 
the Church of the time. In fact, it did not go beyond a 
condemnation of Wycliffe’s heresy. 

Flying from Rome before Ladislao, King of Naples, 
against whom he had supported Louis of Angio, hoping to 
get the better of the legitimate Pope Gregory XII and of the 
Avignon’s Pope Benedict XIII, he allowed Sigismund, king 
of the Romans, to summon that Council of Constanza that 
would depose him as a Simoniac, in 1415. He was at last 
elected cardinal, Bishop of Frascati by Martin V, to whom 
he submitted in 1419, the year of his death. Gregory 
concludes his portrait of John XXIII with these words, 
“...this Cossa, most iniquitous representative of the old 
Church, a tyrant falling under the burden of his own 
crimes; this Cossa who makes himself the judge of John 
Hus, enthusiast of the moral idea of humanity; this Cossa is 


a profile deserving of contempt, so that the eye will not 
endure the sight of him.” 

This was the model Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli based 
himself upon, resurrecting that “taboo” name for himself. It 
was the first resounding slap to Tradition by the priest from 
Sotto il Monte, who was just minutes into holding in his 
hands the fate of the Church. It was his challenge to the 
world. When the Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, 
with a shudder, hollered from the Loggia delle Benedizioni 
to the Roman people gathered in St. Peter’s Square, that 
name for centuries unuttered in the Vatican, many old 
cardinals secretly crossed themselves, and the cries of the 
ghosts resounded in the eleven thousand rooms of the small 
state. 


CHAPTER VI 


The anecdotic of John XXIII is probably the most 
copious the life of a Pope can boast, in relation, that is, to 
its brevity. And, reading between the lines, it turns out to be 
a surprising and reliable guide for the identification of the 
person, in his most unexpected realities. The composite 
personality of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, with its wealth of 
implications and quick-tempered nuances, had an essential 
part in the revolutionary program of his policy. An 
assertive human nature that had a perfect grip on his fellow 
man and his ideas, essentially thanks to that unalterable 
semblance of simplicity and amiability that always 
characterized John XXIII, and that indeed concealed, with 
the ease that naturally came with his personality, an 
unyielding and inflexible disposition, comparable, in 
consistency, to the bulky proportions of his peasant build. 

That he had been conscious as to the how and whys the 
Conclave had placed the Pontifical Triregno (Tiara) on his 
head, it may be inferred from the fact that he more than 
hinted to everyone that his successor should be Giovanni 
Battista Montini, that same Montini who, as we have seen, 
not by chance, as Roncalli is elected Pope, rushes to 


accompany to Rome the brothers of the new Pontiff. He 
noted it in his diary. And he could not wait to tell him in 
person, when, as a newly made Pope, he met the bishops of 
the Italian Episcopal Conference. “On that occasion,” 
recalls monsignor Arrigo Pintonello, at the time Military 
Ordinary for Italy, “we bishops were lined up along the 
walls of the vast hall. John XXIII stood before each one of 
us, exchanging a greeting, a word. When he was before me, 
he came to attention, and, saluting militarily, he introduced 
himself as Sergeant Angelo Roncalli.” I still remember my 
embarrassment and that of the bishops present, in seeing 
the Pope play around like that. Then, as he stood before 
Montini, he stared at him for a time, smiling, held his 
hands, and cried, “It was you that should have been elected, 
not I. I’ve been elected by mistake!” Indeed, Montini will 
be the favorite of John XXIII. Topping the list of the new 
cardinals created in 1958, Montini works at the draft of 
Roncalli’ s most important addresses, and during the first 
session of the Council he is hosted in special apartments, in 
the Vatican, that the Pope had had personally appointed for 
him. 

As, on the one hand, John XXIII pursued point after point 
his progressive policy, dismissing the advice and 
suggestions of the College of Cardinals and of the 
episcopate, on the other his diplomatic ability and his subtle 
knowledge of man suggested to him that nothing should be 
changed, of the Vatican’s exterior, that could alarm the 
public opinion, poorly or badly informed on secret things. 
Thus, for example, the Court and Court-life remained the 
same. Indeed, some positions that in the latter years of Pius 


XII’s pontificate had remained vacant or had been 
neglected and abolished, were reinstated. Notable, for the 
singularity of the all but formal procedure, was the 
restoration in his position of the old Master of the House, 
“commendatore” Pio Manzia. This dignitary, in advanced 
old age and the archetype of the old “Black” Roman 
gentleman, that is, by family tradition bound to the Pontiff 
and to the clerical circles, as soon as Pope-elect Roncalli, 
after blessing the people from the Lodge of St. Peter had 
retired to take refreshment in a specially appointed room, 
had the nerve to knock on that door and, as the Pope invited 
him in, he introduced himself and explained that for over 
fifty years he had filled the abolished position of “Master of 
the House of His Holiness.” Roncalli cut him short and 
reinstated him in the position on the spot. Then he poured 
the wine that was before him on the table, into two glasses, 
and drank with the aged gentleman in tears, wishing him a 
long and happy life. The papal apartment, at the Apostolic 
Palace, and the villa of Castelgandolfo remained as they 
were, as unchanged remained the pomp of the ancient 
ritual. The Pope appeared at St. Peter on the Sedia 
Gestatoria (portable throne), surrounded by the religious 
and secular Court in full ranks, with the silver trumpets 
playing Silveri’s Triumphal March, from the wide-open 
stained-glass windows, within the Basilica. He continued to 
wear the ancient sacred vestments and to respect the 
ancient traditions. To be sure, he often wore the “Camauro” 
(white fur-trimmed red bonnet) of the Sixteenth Century 
Popes, and I never did see a wristwatch on his wrist. 
“Apparently,” everything remained unchanged. Yet living 
next to the Pope, one could see that, from the time of Pius 


XII, something fundamental, in the Vatican, had changed. 
Although respectful of the ancient protocol, John XXIII 
signaled to his inner circle that he found that protocol quite 
burdensome and, at times, he came to disregard it, making 
fun of it, as it was in his nature. To some very private 
weaknesses, to beO sure, the priest from Sotto il Monte 
become Pope had given in. 

For example, he had the St. John’s Tower, an old tower 
that rises in the heart of the Vatican gardens, transformed 
into a Pharaonic summer residence. The exact cost of the 
huge, useless work, was never known - John XXIII never 
dwelled in the tower that hosted, instead, for a few days, 
Athenagoras, on a visit to the Pope, and, later on, Paul VI 
reigning, it was the gilded prison of cardinal Mindszenty, in 
his brief, bitter Vatican sojourn-isolation - but the buzz has 
it that into the bottomless well of that enterprise, were 
thrown between three and four billion lire of the time. The 
ancient building had to be reinforced with substantial 
foundation works; the inside had to be “emptied” and 
reconstructed according to the latest building codes. 
Elevators were installed, as well as a thorough air- 
conditioning system. The apartment, developed with 
extreme conceptual grandiosity by its height, was equipped 
with very expensive services and bathrooms, which those 
who had the venture to see them, defined as “Pharaonic.” 
The magnificent furnishing stood against a backdrop of 
precious tapestries and paintings. That tower was long 
spoken of in the Vatican as of a “thousand and one nights” 
dream. Such is the costly preciousness contained in that 
circular construction, complete with ample covered and 


open terraces, which however has maintained on the 
outside the original aspect of a severe fortress-tower. 

A few stone steps climb to the entrance door, almost 
monastic in its simplicity, surmounted by the bronze coat of 
arms of Pope Roncalli. That “weakness,” alas! of nouveau 
riche, to which Roncalli abandoned himself and yet, to be 
sure, does not even begin to compare with the triumph of 
bad taste that burst out and imposed itself in the Vatican 
with his successor, Paul VI, which was labeled by the 
Pacellian the “Caprice of the Nabob.” 

Living next to him, and following the disconcerting and 
ruthless development of his policy of “overture” to the 
Marxist new times, one could easily perceive the 
contradiction between the packaging and the content, and 
measure, at times, how burdensome it was to Roncalli’ s 
progressive and reforming mentality, to pay respect to 
those customs that proclaimed for all times the Pontifical 
Court, the first amongst any others in the world. 

More than once did I realize that the Pope was absent- 
minded, bored, or even vexed by certain aspects of the 
ceremonial. And at times, when he was particularly weary, 
those around him could read the annoyance on his face. I 
remember the visit for the presentation of the credentials of 
a new South- American ambassador. We were in the Throne 
Hall. The Pope was sitting on the little throne with the two 
Noble Guards at his sides. The participating monsignor “di 
settimana” (on weekly detail), whom on that day happened 
to be my friend Del Gallo of Roccagiovine, had introduced 


the ambassador. I, with the other Chamberlain of the Sword 
and the Cape on weekly detail was in front of the throne, 
next to a gilded console on which towered two enormous 
Chinese vases. So that when the diplomat began to read the 
letter to the Pontiff, I saw his shoulders, while regarding the 
Pope in the face. That letter soon appeared excessively 
long. The emphatic voice of the ambassador seemed to be 
reciting a Spanish Madrigal. Del Gallo of Roccagiovine, 
close to the Pope, looked at me and covered his mouth with 
his hand as he felt like laughing. I also felt like laughing, 
and at that moment I realized that John XXIII was clearly 
signaling his vexation. He dangled his feet, which would 
not reach down to the red- velvet cushion, continuously 
opened and closed his leg looking-glasses, which he was 
holding in his hands, and raised his eyes gazing at the 
ceiling, and looking us standing in front of him in the face. 
Thank God the reading came to an end, and with but three 
hastened and colorless words, Roncalli excused the verbose 
South American. He got out of the throne. The other 
Chamberlain of the Sword and the Cape on weekly duty 
and I opened the small procession which, as a rule, would 
escort the Pope to his apartments. Behind us, the slippers of 
the Pope shuffled on the floor the heavy pace of John 
XXIII, and I could hear him mumbling something in the 
Veneto idiom. We started for the usual dark corridor, when 
all of a sudden Roncalli’ s shuffling stopped. We looked 
back and paused. The Pope was gone! We looked for him 
everywhere. Nothing. We consulted each another 
perplexed. At last the old sergeant of the Swiss Guard that 
was with us resolved the puzzle. In the wall of the long, 
shaded corridor opened a secret little door, concealed in the 


tapestry, which led to the Pope’s apartments in no time. 
Roncalli had learned of it and now and again he used it to 
sneak away, leaving his retinue in the lurch. That’s how 
John XXIII was. 

He had taken and imposed onto anyone, in the Vatican 
and abroad, his most particular habit (downright reckless 
for a Pope) of leaving the Vatican incognito, at every hour 
of the day and night. 

Suddenly it was discovered that the Pope had disappeared. 
Anxious searches throughout the Vatican, with the men of 
the Gendarmerie going mad of aimless zeal. Then the 
notification to the Italian police that would search Rome 
and its neighborhoods after that impossible track. Most of 
the times Roncalli and his driver would furtively return to 
the Vatican, and the Pope would explain smiling to his 
dismayed collaborators that he had felt like a walk 
incognito through Rome, or that he had suddenly felt the 
urge to call on an old friend, without the snarls of the 
ceremonial. 

It sometimes happened that the Italian police would 
locate the Pope at someone’s house. Then the officers 
would stand in wait by the door for hours and hours. 
Meanwhile the voice would spread. Some personalities 
arrived hastily from the Vatican, a small crowd of 
onlookers would gather on the sidewalk. A few hours later 
an unknowing John XXIII, after chatting and sometimes 
dining with his host, emerging through that door, dressed as 
a priest, had the annoying experience of finding himself 


surrounded by policemen, by the applause of the people 
and, in the morning, the Papal escapade would make news 
on all the newspapers. 

Roncalli had always somebody at his table. Mostly 
prelates and acquaintances passing through Rome would 
invariably receive the invitation of the Pope. And often the 
sisters working in the kitchen were advised of the number 
of the table guests at a moment’s notice, and soon had to 
master to perfection a great number of dishes, opulent and 
spicy, of the most sophisticated international cuisine, as 
Roncalli proved immediately to be that great “fork” and 
even better “glass” that he was. 

Every Saturday, after the last audience, John XXIII 
maintained the old papal habit of receiving, for 
thanksgiving, all the components of the Court that had 
fulfilled their “weekly” service. We lined up around the 
damasked walls of his library, and then the Pope walked in. 
Standing, at the center of the carpet, he addressed us with 
his thanks and voiced his “embarrassment” for the 
“confusion” and the trouble that his modest person was 
causing us. Then we would depart, kissing his ring as we 
knelt down. When we wore our uniform or the magnificent 
Spanish costume, only before the Pope were we expected to 
bend our knee, and only to him did we owe the kissing of 
the ring. In fact, our rank designated us as Gentlemen of the 
Pope, and exclusively his. As, also, the Noble Guard, which 
presented the sword only to the Pope, while saluting all the 
others, including the cardinals, merely standing at attention. 
But most of the “careerists” belonging to the Court, who 


could well smell the turn of the times, whenever they came 
across Giovanni Battista Montini, for example, directly 
made cardinal by John XXIII, would prostrate themselves 
at his feet, seeking and holding his hand and deluging it 
with kisses. 

One morning, just before cardinal Tedeschini passed 
away, I accepted his invitation to escort him to a private 
audience with the Pope. After the cardinal had spent nearly 
half an hour alone with John XXIII, the door of the Pope’s 
study opened, and I was invited inside. Roncalli, in his 
white habit, sat behind his desk, crowded with papers. On 
the desk, along with an antique clock, an artsy inkpot and a 
little vase, with a thick forest of pens, nibs in the air. 

Cardinal Tedeschini introduced me with that unmatchable 
gentlemanly style that distinguished him, and John XXIII 
asked after me, and my activity. He told me that he had 
read some of my writings on “L'Osservatore Romano,” and 
for a moment, but only for a moment, by a flash that passed 
in his amiable and cordial gaze, I had the impression that 
within himself he was saying to me, “And I also know, dear 
friend, that we are not exactly agreed.” Knowing that I was 
an editor, he told me of the importance of information in 
the modem world, wherein all the men are protagonists, 
each by his own degree, of the transformation of the times. 
“See,” said he to me at a certain point, “I read many 
newspapers every day,” and he pointed with his hand with 
the big “anello piscatorio” (fisherman’s ring), a wad of 
dailies heaped on a corner of the desk, under a heavy 
paperweight. I gazed mechanically at those broadsheets, 


and my heartbeat increased. At the very top, sat “L'Unita”, 
the newspaper of the Italian Communist party, with red 
marks on a title’s margin. “The world today goes very 
fast,” continued the Pope. “We Catholics must keep abreast 
with the times, and should not be caught off-guard by the 
great changes that are in the works with the proactive 
contribution of all the men of good will. You are young 
enough to see the world change, and that new world will 
bring a better humanity, I know it will.” 

An exchange of witty remarks followed, and the audience 
came to a close. In walking out of the Pope’s study I 
stumbled, almost, onto a priest who entered in haste, 
wrapped in a black cape that left uncovered only a pair of 
large dark-looking glasses and a shaven head. I leapt to one 
side and monsignor Capo villa vanished behind the door, 
which was closed behind him with an iced gust of air. 

Two Sediari (chair bearers) in the ancient dress of red 
brocade, with the Ante-chamber Dean, lay on the lean 
shoulders of cardinal Tedeschini his great cape. The 
cardinal’s secretary, the good Passionist father Ridolfi, 
stood three steps away, with the leather briefcase in his 
right hand. 

I watched in admiration and emotion my Cardinal, tall 
and handsome in the sumptuous vest of Prince of the 
Church. In spite of the abyssal difference in age that 
separated me from him, I felt I did belong, body and soul, 
to his world to that world that with a great gleam of light 
was inexorably sinking into the dusk. And we left the papal 


apartment, in silence, walking past the Swiss Guards who 
rendered, still, the military honors. 


CHAPTER VII 


The election of Roncalli to the pontificate sets in motion, 
on the face of the Church, the hands that will punctually 
mark, one after the other, those decisive hours that in four 
years will disrupt Christianity and will reverse the political 
balance of the West. Today we can look at those events in 
perspective, with composure and detachment, and we can 
but wonder in observing how that program perfectly 
studied and analyzed “outside the Vatican,” would fulfill 
itself in its entirety, attaining all of the objectives of that 
integral subversion that was to be the conclusive point of 
the combined action of two Pontiffs, that of Roncalli, and, 
afterwards, that of Montini. 

We have written, at the outset of this book, that a German 
newspaper, the “General Anzeiger flir den Nieder-Rhein,” 
had the fortune of printing the incredible prediction only 
days after the passing of Pius XII that the imminent 
Conclave would elect the patriarch of Venice, the 
predetermined forerunner of Giovanni Battista Montini. 
That newspaper has unwillingly entered into history. Not as 
a random fortune-teller who chanced to guess an 
impossible prophecy, but as a newscaster scrupulous 
toward its own readers. 


This program had been fine-tuned for years “outside the 
Vatican,” and, as we have said, it promptly began to unfold, 
springing forward, as soon as the priest from Sotto il 
Monte, become John XXIII, looked out of St. Peter’s 
Lodge, in the white habit of the Pope, to bless the hailing 
faithful. 

That very night, at Termini railways station, Giovanni 
Battista Montini alights from the train from Bergamo, 
pushing ahead the brothers of Roncalli, in their country 
clothes, awed and confused under the flashes of the 
paparazzi. 

The quarantine of the Brescian monsignor is drawing to a 
close. His appearance in Rome, that night, with the brothers 
of the new Pope, is to be intended, for him who can read 
between the lines of Vatican’s “symbolism,” as the public 
affirmation of that “Delfinato” that will bind, from that 
moment on, Montini to John XXIII. 

Indeed, without delay, just twenty days after that 
moment, Roncalli names Montini cardinal. Never mind if 
he had fallen into disgrace under Pius XII, because of his 
political schemes, which, once discovered, had cost him the 
immediate ostracism from Rome and the longed-for 
cardinalitial galero ! 

Defying the Pacellian, a scarcely elected John XXIII lays 
his large peasant hand upon the pale baldness of the 
monsignor from Concesio in whose blue veins, it is no 
secret, flows the blood of the stock of Sion. 


And suddenly, in the new Vatican, all of Montini’ s 
weighty, “uncomfortable” baggage will rigorously be 
“taboo”. All must be forgotten: his private “weaknesses,” 
his secret political initiatives. His ideological credo that has 
brought him, among others, to hate the Germans and 
Germany, to an extent that would lead him to share in the 
outbreak of the hostilities, in 1939, advising Poland to open 
fire against the German army. 

Historian Louis Marschalko, in his book “The World 
Conquerors” (the real war criminals) thus writes about it, 
on page 276: “On April 21st, 1939, Monsignor Montini, the 
papal legate to Poland at that time, told Count Szembeck 
that according to the official view-point of the Vatican, 
should Poland decide on war, it would be a just and rightful 
war. (Count Jean Szembeck, one of the leading officials of 
the Polish Foreign Office, published his diary in France 
under the title “Journal 1933-1939”)”. 

But who is this “Delfino” of Roncalli’s, whom joint 
forces without the Vatican have already designated, for 
years now, to succeed the priest from Sotto il Monte? Let 
us look at him, for a moment, under the magnifying lens. 

He was born in Concesio, in the Brescia province, on 
September 26, 1897. Progenitor of the family is a 
Bartolomeo, or Bartolino De Benedictis, called Montino. 
De Benedetti (Benedictis) is a Jewish name. 

Not by chance it will be discovered that Montini, become 
Paul VI, has the audacity to wear the “Ephod” of the 


Hebrew Supreme Priest, on the pontifical habit. To break 
the sensational news to the world is the abbot Georges de 
Nantes, who in October 1970, on issue 37 of his monthly 
“Contre Reforme Catholique,” launches a cry of alarm, 
with an article titled “The Amulet of the Pope.” In “Paris 
Match” of August 29, Roberto Serrou’s column “Will the 
Next Pope be a Frenchman?” Is illustrated by a large 
photograph of the Pope and of cardinal Villot. I gaze at 
those two closed faces dissembling the fate of the 
Church. . . But, what is this, over here, on Paul Vi’s breast, 
beneath the pectoral cross? A curious jewel I cannot recall 
seeing on any other Pope! The object must be made of 
gold, of a square shape, ornate with twelve precious stones 
set on four lines, three by three. It is hanging in a very 
particular way from a cord running around alongside that 
bearing the Cross of the Christ. 

I am afraid to understand. All doubts are thus possible. 

To describe the object, artlessly, I used the very words 
that, in eh. XXVIII of the “Exodus,” describe the Ephod of 
the Hebrew Supreme Priest! 

Here then, on the Pope’s heart, hanging from his neck, is 
the “Pectoral of Judgment” that the Supreme Priest Aaron 
and his successors must wear as a ritual ornament to signify 
the twelve tribes of Israel, “to recall them incessantly in the 
presence of Jahve” (Ex. 28,29.) 

Paul VI has been bearing the emblem of Caiphas. . . Who 
knows for how long, why, and from whom did he get it? 


Would the Pope be signaling that he is the direct legatee of 
Levitic priesthood, as the Pontiff of a Church turned into 
the new and sole Israel of God? Or is he rather preparing a 
restoration of Judaism as the religion of pure Monotheism, 
of the most sacred Book, of the universal Alliance? The 
Abbot of Nantes continues in his writing: 

”At the Katholikentag, this year, there was a Sabbath 
Hebrew cult, and at Brussels, cardinal Suenens has 
anticipated an upcoming Council, a Council of 
“reconciliation” which is to be held in Jerusalem. Now, 
B’nai-B’rith and Fremasonry alike dream to erect there, 
too, as well as in New York, a “Temple of Understanding” 
of which a model has been presented to the Pope as a sign 
of wide ecumenism. It is all coming together! 

Who is to inform us, humble believers, of that pectoral 
and on all the obscure points of distant, dark schemes? 

Who among us has the right to know whether the Pope, 
bearing the Ephod of Caiphas, intends to take up the 
Ancient Hebrew cult in the Church without fearing the rage 
of Israel according to the flesh, or whether his design is to 
bring back the Christian churches to universal Judaism and 
restore in Jerusalem the Levitic Priesthood? Ambiguity of 
the gaze and of the gesture, of the word or of the amulet. . . 
hitherto, the Crucifix had never borne the competition of 
any other symbol of cult. Is it, without a sound, without a 
word, soon to disappear from the heart of the Pope? Then 
in the Vatican, a rooster will crow one last time.” 


I, too, have seen the Ephod on the white habit of Paul VI. 


It was stitched to the stole, and the gold chain with a tassel 
at the end reached almost to his knees. I remember asking 
what it meant of some “participant” monsignors. Some had 
no idea. Others said it must have been a gift from a group 
of foreign pilgrims. There exist many pictures of Montini 
with the Ephod. The first of those pictures of the Pope with 
the “amulet” on his breast dates back to 1964. Sometimes 
the pectoral Cross is not to be seen at all. In some, it is 
concealed under the mozzetta (short cape worn by prelates 
in solemn functions). In only one occasion the stole appears 
without the mozzetta: in a photograph taken in India, 
wherein the Pope appears sitting and surrounded by Hindu 
children. In his calls on holy places, or sanctuaries, the 
Ephod is never wanting. 

So it was on his visit to Fumone, when he called on the 
grave of Celestine V, at Santa Sabina, on Ash Wednesday, 
wherein they sing the renewed litanies of the Saints, 
starting with Sancte Abraham. . . At the feet of the 
Immaculate on the 8 of December, in Rome, etcetera, 
wherever he is wearing mozzetta and stole. 

Naturally, the “novelty” aroused the curiosity of the 
journalists, who began to ask more and more insistently for 
explanations. 

To the extent that professor Federico Alessandrini, director 
of the Vatican Press Office, was ordered to respond, in the 
course of a press-conference, that that jewel was none other 
than a “clasp” to hold the stole together. Yet no Pontiff had 
ever worne that clasp prior to Paul VI, as witnessed in the 


portraits and pictures of all his predecessors. 


Montini, moreover, it is murmured in Rome and in all of 
Italy, is a homosexual. Hence subject to blackmail. Hence 
in the hand of those who intend to maneuver him to their 
own ends. 

In Milan, as archbishop, he was often stopped, at 
night, by the police, in plain clothes and in dubious 
company. For years he has been tied by a particular 
friendship to an actor who paints his hair red, and who 
makes no mystery of his relations with the future Pope. 
The relationship would continue for years, staunch and 
constant. It was confided to me by an official of the 
Vatican security service that this favorite of Montini ’s 
had been granted authorization to enter or exit the 
papal chambers as he pleased. 

So much so that often they would see him arrive in the 
elevator in the middle of the night! 

The ‘banana skin’ on which he, Paul VI, slipped, 
provoking the official end to this open secret (reference to 
his homosexuality), was the homily that he delivered in 
January of 1976 on “sexual ethics,” peppered with many 
points regarding homosexuality, thus provoking the 
reaction of the French writer Roger Peyrefitte. 

In fact the weekly “II Tempo,” issue no. 13 of April 4, 
1976, published an interview with the literary writer (Roger 
Peyrefitte), who describes himself as “ the most liberal man 


of all of France,” in which this celebrated homosexual 
sharpens his pen, and rebukes the Pope with the Pope’s 
own homosexuality, and thus denies him the right of 
holding himself up as a censor. Paul VI acknowledges 
officially the wound of this rapier thrust. 

A day of prayer was called to “make reparation for the 
affront made against the Pope,” but all of Italy laughed 
long over this episode. The English television interviewed 
Peyrefitte who aggravated the situation still further by 
declaring himself surprised at having obtained so much 
unhoped-for publicity, at such a good price. 

The first blackmail will clutch Montini by the throat as he 
climbs the See of Peter. When freemasonry will promptly 
obtain the abolition of the excommunication with which the 
Church hits those in favor of cremation, threatening to 
reveal the secret meetings between Montini, archbishop of 
Milan, and “his” actor, in a hotel of Sion, in the Swiss 
Valais Canton. Later in Paris, the behind-the-scene-activity 
relating to that first, clamorous papal act of Paul VI, and to 
the activity of a gendarme, patient collector of the 
incontrovertible evidence, will be made known. 

But let us return to that 1958. In his quarantine at Milan, 
Montini is certainly aware of his predestination. And he 
awaits the death of Pius XII. From that moment he will re- 
enter the scene as a more or less occult protagonist, yet one 
with a sure future. It can be said that he directly participates 
in Roncalli’s Pontificate, collaborating with the Pope in the 
drafting of the most important pontifical documents. 


Toward the second half of the five-year Roncallian 
government of Church, the archbishop of Milan becomes 
the leading brain of John XXIII’ s policy. Monsignor 
Capovilla is shuttling between Rome and Milan. The 
uninterrupted connection is leaked out in the Vatican. And 
those who wish to know the reasons, and question the pope 
with extreme caution, are led to believe that Montini will 
be the next pope, and so he might as well prepare for the 
succession. 

Montini’ s ability, in this period of preparation for his 
imminent Pontificate, unfolds entirely into getting John 
XXIII to predispose the track on which to proceed 
expeditiously ahead. He must guard, in the Vatican, from a 
great ancient enemy of his: cardinal Domenico Tardini, 
whom the astute Roncalli has refrained from removing 
from the Secretary of State. That same Tardini who, years 
before, discovered Montini’ s secret contacts with the 
Kremlin. That same Tardini who forced Pius XII’ s 
intervention in the matter, and the banishment from Rome 
of the dangerous plotter. But in 1961 Tardini dies, and John 
XXIII appoints as secretary of state the bland cardinal 
Amleto Cicognani. Some do not discount the hand of the 
archbishop of Milan in Roncalli’ s choice. It is a fact that, 
from that moment on, Montini’ s influence upon the policy 
of John XXIII grows, sometimes in the open. 

His political action within the limited circle of his 
Milanese diocese plays along the lines of John XXIII’ s 
great progressive policy. Modernism, at times deemed 
quaint by the faithful, characterizes Montini’ s introvert and 


unpredictable personality. His homosexual nature prevails, 
in the quest at all costs of novelty and eccentricity. He 
appears in public, at a ceremony at Milan’s Velodrome, 
wearing a cyclist cap; another time, at a construction site, 
he is photographed with a carpenter’ s helmet on his head. It 
is his exhibitionist mania at play, one that one day, as a 
Pope, will lead him to opt for that super-modern tiara that, 
resembling a missile - and thus the insolent Romans 
promptly baptized it - was placed on his head on 
coronation day. And his fever of the grotesque and novelty, 
would lead him to wear, during an audience with the Native 
Americans of Gaylord (Michigan), a Chief’s headdress, and 
in that state pose before the camera. That ANSA 
photograph went round the world in no time, to give the 
exact measure of a temperament that for a Pope was rather 
curious, to say the least. 

That very frenzy for the new, that Montinian iconoclast 
fever, hits the Vatican of Paul VI turning it into a Hilton of 
dubious taste. 

That hysterical fury will drive him to wipe out every 
ancient remnant, within the Vatican, abolishing the Court 
and the ancient armed Corps, erasing in a moment century- 
old traditions and customs that no Pope in history had ever 
dared to alter, passing down to their successors, as the rule 
calls for, what they had received from their predecessors, 
intact and sound. 

Thus Montini, in Milan, misses no chance of acting as a 
progressive. 


He goes as far as to authorize lawyer Mario Mazzucchelli 
to read, transcribe, and publish in a book the classified 
files, held in the archbishopric’s Archive, of a celebrated 
and scandalous seventeenth century trial of a nun, the Lady 
of Monza, guilty of having turned her convent, whose 
mother superior she was, into a pleasure house for her male 
lover. The book, “La Monaca di Monza” (Dali’ Oglio, 
Editore - Milan, 1961), is a masterpiece of refined 
pornography. Naturally, the crafty author of that best- 
selling book carefully forgot to include a copy of the letter 
by which Montini had authorized him to read and publish 
the embarrassing documentation of that ancient trial. 

Moreover, Montini is in constant contact with John 
XXIII. When he is in Rome, the Pope has some rooms near 
his apartment always appointed for him. And he sees him 
often informally. On those Vatican calls, Montini almost 
betrays the awareness of his approaching future. And he 
studies closely John XXIII’ s men, to get a personal hunch 
of their worth. With some he is cold and discomfiting. With 
others he affects benevolence and protection. 

He has his men in the Vatican, priests and secular, 
working for him, informing him of everything that goes on 
under the sun, about the Pope, round the clock. One of his 
brothers is a Christian democrat representative, who has a 
private secretary. No sooner is Montini made Pope, than he 
appoints his brother’s secretary Chamberlain of the Sword 
and the Cape. I would get to meet him myself. We will 
share many an hour in honor details and diplomatic 
missions. Never have I met a busier man than that secretary 


of senator Montini’s. He is the direct thread between the 
Christian Democrat party and Paul VI. And he has given up 
his personality. And his private life. He has learned at his 
own expense, what to be a tool in the hands of the Montinis 
is like. His parliamentarian boss, when speaking with some 
one, never looks the interlocutor in the eyes. When I 
mentioned it with him, in our Vatican encounters, he, who 
was his secretary and must abstain from speaking out his 
mind, raised his eyes to the sky. An eloquent answer, for a 
Roman. 

The Confindustria (Industrialists’ trade association) 
regards the archbishop of Milan with suspicion. They 
dislike his ambiguous attitude of never taking a clear stand. 
And the management is well informed as to Montini’s 
cordial relationships with labor’s representatives. 

Unlike Roncalli, clear, genuine, stalwart in his 
revolutionary convictions, Montini would not commit 
himself. He can heap his future within himself, build it 
piece after piece, without giving away a hint that might 
reveal his future plans. He can keep rancor and 
benevolence at bay. Even those who know him well will 
say that he has an arid and manipulative temperament. And 
unloyal . 

I can admit to have followed closely some of the 
Montinian “misdeeds.” One example for all: the betrayal of 
the Primate of Hungary. Cardinal Mindszenty has learned 
at his expense the two faces of Paul VI. And he was greatly 
hurt. But he stood tall against that betrayal with all his pride 


and dignity of prince of the Church and Primate of 
Hungary. In October 1974, at Vienna, I knelt down before 
that great cardinal. And I wanted to write in its entirety the 
story of how he was betrayed, by Giovanni Battista Montini 
( 1 ). 

So well has the archbishop of Milan staked out his route, 
under the massive shadow of the priest from Sotto il 
Monte, that when his turn came to sit on the papal throne, 
all of the objectives prefixed outside the Vatican, are 
happily achieved. The overruling of the excommunication 
of freemasonry, the rapprochement with the Jewish world, 
the acceptance of Marxism, the involvement of Christianity 
with Protestantism, the de- spiritualization of Christianity. 

No pope “elected by the Holy Spirit” would have 
succeeded, in such a few years, as it happened with 
Roncalli and Montini, to transform the bi-millennial face of 
the Church and upturn the equilibriums of the world, in 
accordance with the design of occult forces, interested in 
this colossal and dramatic revolution. Montini knew that 
the points of that program had been firmly established. That 
is why, when upon John XXIITs death he arrives in the 
Vatican and enters the Conclave, he will carry in his 
suitcase a well-pressed, elegant papal habit made by the 
most prestigious tailor in Rome. 


(1) See Franco Bellegrandi’s “II portone di piombo,” Sugarco 


edizioni, Milan, March 1975. 


CHAPTER VIII 


Another change that did not escape the close circle of 
those who spent, because of rank and service, most of their 
day in the Apostolic Palace, was the sudden appearance of 
homosexual figures in posts of prestige and responsibility 
close to the Pope. The sore that in Paul Vi’s time will 
submerge and transform the Vatican, devastating it, began 
to show its first evident symptoms, well hidden between the 
baroque creases of the ancient Court, yet sadly alive and 
real. The long hand of the archbishop of Milan, afflicted by 
his weaknesses, was already arranging, with discretion, one 
after the other, the personages of his game and heart, on the 
chessboard of the eleven-thousand-room State. 

Naturally, the new protagonists affected by the “illness,” 
in turn brought along some minor figures, bound to them 
by the same solitary fate. And so, slowly yet with growing 
insistence, voices and indiscretions began circulating in the 
Vatican, unfortunately followed by most grave events. 
These figures, because of their office, were often in our 
midst, especially when monarchs and heads of state were 
visiting the Pope. 

And they did have their favorites. Effeminate young men 
in close-fitting uniforms who powdered their cheeks “to 
hide the dark of the growth.” With extreme care we 
Chamberlains of the Sword and the Cape steered clear of 


their smiles and affability, limiting ourselves to saluting 
from a distance with the standard heel click. Naturally, 
even within the undergrowth of the officials began to 
spring up the “recommended” of the archbishop of Milan, 
and, at times, here and there erupted small and big 
scandals, so much so that the Pontifical Gendarmerie had 
its work cut out in steering, as the saying is, amidst all 
those vagrant mines, and closing an eye, and not seldom 
both, and hushing up reports, and discouraging a diligent 
editor or two. 

I underwent such an experience myself. With a branch 
director of the Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank, emeritus 
member of the emeritus Circolo di San Pietro. The banks, 
starting with the Santo Spirito bank chaired by Marquis 
Giovan Battista Sacchetti, are swarming with Vatican lower 
ranks. Offspring with no skills or trade, getting by until 
retirement, dealing cash over the counter and giving up 
their yearly bonuses to afford themselves a membership in 
the Hunting Club. 

Often, representatives of lesser nobility, hanging around 
nights at Palazzo Borghese, taking advantage of the free 
newspapers and ordering a glass of mineral water of the 
liveried waiter. 

This director, a middle-aged man with the macho look, 
bald and hairy, had the guts to approach me with queer 
propositions, as I chanced by the agency after business 
hours. Playing dumb, I politely got away. I later learned 
that that character that looked like a little Fascist official 


was a great cordon of the sovereign militant order of the 
“faggots.” 

Suddenly, old and worthy employees of offices 
depending from the “Governatorato,” were, with no 
apparent reason, retired or transferred, and on the resulting 
vacant seats rested their tender buttocks the newly arrived, 
each with Montini’s recommendation letter in pocket. 
Meanwhile the ancient Vatican protocol was being moth- 
balled. Repeated and more frequent breaches in the 
century-old and hitherto unbroken fabric of the severe 
Spanish etiquette in the course of the solemn ceremonies 
appeared evident to us of the Court. The Court detail, 
during the solemn functions at the basilica, was supervised 
by the Monsignor Maggiordomo’s secretary, the passionate 
“commendatore” Giovanni Giovannini. This constantly 
excited and panting man, knew his difficult job to the dot, 
and had been carrying on his shoulders always clad in a 
fluttering tail-coat, glistening with a myriad of ephemeral 
decorations, the responsibility of commanding with 
extreme tact the Court’s secular members, all or most 
representatives of the finest Italian aristocracy. Obviously, 
sometimes some of these gentlemen, who never in their 
lives had even dreamed of obeying anyone, according to 
their momentary mood, gave the “commendatore” a flat 
refusal, and he had to make the best of things. 

After the early years of John XXIII’ s pontificate, for 
“commendatore” Giovannini things took a sudden turn. The 
crushing blow of the Council had produced its effects even 
upon the customs of the ancient Pontifical Court. Ancient 


privileges had gone to the dickens, and authentic and 
venerable gentlemen were treated, as they say in Rome, as 
“fish in the face” (like dirt), right in St Peter’s basilica 
swarming with people, with the Patriciate and the 
Diplomatic Corps in full ranks. 

I recall, for I witnessed them, a couple of meaningful 
episodes regarding this change in the name of Giovannean 
progressivism. Once, during a Papal Chapel, the mission of 
the Sovereign Order of Malta arrived at St. Peter a few 
minutes late, to find that its place on the gallery had been 
taken by another foreign mission. The four or five knights 
of Malta, all stiff as a ramrod in their scarlet uniforms, 
haughtily asked the intruders to vacate their seats, but these 
refused to do so. There arose a subdued altercation. 
“Commendatore” Giovannini was on the spot in a flash, 
and ordered the Maltese to find themselves another place 
commenting in a loud voice that it was high time to put an 
end to privileges become ridiculous in the light of the new 
times. These, red in the face, conceited in their useless, 
humbled uniforms, were forced to retreat announcing 
ominous reprisals to the “commendatore,” who walked 
away with the greatest contempt. 

An Order of Malta’ s friend of mine told me that the Great 
Magisterium wrote a bombastic letter of protest, which the 
Vatican left unanswered. One other time, always during a 
solemn function at St. Peter’s, an old friend of mine, count 
Franco Ceccopieri Maruffi, also a Chamberlain of the 
Sword and the Cape of his Holiness, a bigot and a fraud, 
only because he had let an acquaintance of his take 


someone else’s seat, was confronted by Giovannini, seized 
by the arm and brought away by the detail. Patricians, 
diplomats and populace enjoyed the unusual show of a 
gentleman, solemn in his magnificent Spanish costume 
complete with sword and decorations, dragged outside by a 
bourgeoisie in tailcoat, transfigured by anger. 

With the more and more massive introduction into the 
small state’s staff of elements at all unreliable, yet 
powerfully protected by the personages of the “new 
course,” the very general tone of morality, once exemplar 
beyond the Bronze Door, went slowly deteriorating, and, at 
length, irreparably contaminating. Small groups of ruthless, 
covetous, vicious usurers sprang up, helped by bottom- 
level employees who often were but mere ushers, who also 
smuggled goods out into Italy - mostly cigarettes and 
liquors - purchased at a low cost in the Vatican and re-sold 
very advantageously across the border. Some of these 
speculators became involved in real financial dealings, 
lending money at usury to unfortunate in need that fell into 
their claws. Most of the times, other than from their illegal 
trafficking, the loaned money came from avid and 
complacent loftier anonymous figures. Many in the 
Vatican, among these secular and some clergy, were 
literally ruined by these vultures, some of whom had felt no 
embarrassment in using that soiled and sizable income to 
set up real estate and trading businesses of remarkable 
relevance, right here in Rome. And so it passed that a 
simple usher, or humble Vatican receptionist, once beyond 
the border with Italy, would suddenly turn into an industrial 
executive or a wealthy landlord. 


The strictest “omerta” (conspiracy of silence) protected 
the ill doings of these ugly people, in the Giovannean 
Vatican, and even though the Gendarmerie came to know, 
at times, of the existence of these rogues, it could never 
step in as it always found an important figure in monsignor 
habit that prevented the conclusion of the inquiry, and 
clearly discouraged the investigators. So much so that, 
when into the net of that rabble fell a young gentleman who 
held a lofty position in the Pontifical Court and was 
induced into suicide, the whole thing was hushed up and 
the shameful scandal that would have swept away, as they 
say in Rome, small and big fry, was averted by authority. 

We dignitaries of the Court knew this unfortunate quite 
well. He was “commendatore” Aurelio Catalano, affable 
and efficient young secretary of the Master of the Chamber 
of His Holiness, monsignor Nasalli Rocca. On the occasion 
of his appointment as Pope’s Chamberlain of the Sword 
and the Cape, we all had presented him with the heavy, 
gold-plated silver necklace, emblem of the rank, and 
entertained with him a genuine and open friendship. He 
came from a family that had lost its fortune in former 
Italian Africa, when the estates of the Italians of the 
colonies were confiscated, at the end of the war, by the 
newly independent countries. He was awaiting the modest 
reimbursement that the Italian government, with habitual 
sluggishness, sparingly handed out to those unfortunate 
who, one day, had staked all of their capitals and their very 
existence to make, as they said, greater and more respected 
the Homeland. 


None of us ever did get a hint of his destitution, politely 
concealed behind a smiling and immutable joviality. 

Indeed, his salary did not provide for his taxing family 
situation. When one considers that the salaries of the Holy 
See were, at the time, proverbially meager. But the 
straitened circumstances of their superior did not escape his 
subordinates, who lived daily at his side, in his sumptuous 
office above the St. Damaso’s Courtyard. And so they 
talked him into accepting, with subdued insistence, a “very 
convenient” loan. Within one year and a half, the “very 
convenient” loan became the soapy rope of a gallows, and, 
while the government compensation was irreparably 
wanting, the passive interests demanded via post-dated 
checks by those lone sharks soared to one hundred per cent 
of the loaned sum. Those subordinates of his that had laid 
him the trap became, month after month, fierce dogs, and 
when he was brutally threatened of a scandal, the poor man 
preferred to hang himself to a beam, in his Roman home, in 
a still August night, when everybody, even his fierce 
assassins, had left town on summer vacations. 

The tragedy caused sensation at the Vatican top. But it 
was all hushed up. I remember replying with indignation to 
the personality that, with hypocritical solicitude, appealed 
to my sympathetic discretion, invoking the good name of 
the Pontifical Family. And at times I still see before me the 
good and smiling face of my poor friend Catalano, as I had 
seen it at the Caffe Rosati, in the Via Veneto, a few weeks 
before the tragedy, and he had seemed to me sad and 
dejected, as if already aware of his long trip without return. 


Along with such negative phenomenon there awakened, 
for the first time in the Vatican’s history, in the early 
months of John XXIII’ s government, a “class 
consciousness” in the workers (a few hundreds) who 
worked in the offices and workshops of the small state. As 
a new wind was blowing, this category that passed on from 
father to son their Vatican job, was immediately stirred by 
the Italian labor unions. The gap between the pay and the 
benefits of the Italian workers and the Vatican’s was, in 
those years, disconcerting indeed. The first claims were put 
forward, attempting a convergence toward the Italian 
levels. Despite the already mounting progressaivism in 
those early days of the Giovannean pontificate, the claims 
were dismissed and the clergyman, as they say in Rome, 
stood once more by himself. At the right time, that is, 
feudal and authoritarian, in spite of all promises and smiles. 
There came consequently the first acts of “passive” 
rebellion and challenge. Some of these acts were however 
clamorous and dramatic, and, although they never did make 
it past the boundaries of the Vatican City, they remain 
unedited and meaningful chronicles of the changes in the 
mentality of the employees of the Holy See, awakened by 
the trumpets of the Council, from a sweet lethargy of 
centuries. Personally, I was accidental witness of three of 
these clamorous episodes. 

The first, chronologically, was a feigned suicide attempt 
of an employee of the Annona Vaticana, the great stores 
that sell, to the Vatican citizens and to those having access 
with a special card, consumer goods that flow into them 
weekly, from all over Europe, at a price inferior to that 


applied in Italy. The category had been on strike because of 
promised and always postponed salary improvements. One 
morning, as I was reaching “L'Osservatore Romano’s” 
editorial office, inside the Vatican, whose entrance is in the 
Via del Pellegrino, just across from the back of the Annona 
building, together with an editor, the Florentine Paoline 
Father Carlo Gasbarri, some cries and entreaties caused us 
to raise our eyes upon the windows opening about six or 
seven meters from the ground, in the Annona building. 
Some people were looking out and hollering to a fellow in 
a white coat hanging in the air, holding on to the window’s 
sill. As in a nightmare, we saw that figure part from the 
window and plummet, with the white gown lifted in the air, 
on the pavement below. We rushed to help and Father 
Gasbarri knelt by the fallen, lifeless on the cobblestones, 
and signed him with the cross. Other people rushed by, and 
the poor wretch was hoisted hastily into a car and taken to 
the hospital. I later learned that he had survived the little 
jump, and that his demonstrative act had resolved the 
impasse and earned the salary improvements to the 
category. 

Another episode, which, on the other hand, ended up 
badly, was that of an aged monsignor official of the Curia 
Romana, who considered the order that, without a 
moment’ s notice, deprived him of his office, forcing him 
into premature retirement, utterly unfair. He actuated a 
silent and dramatic protest. For over a year he spent his 
regular working hours, rain or shine, all dressed up and 
briefcase in hands, standing at the center of St. Peter’s 
square, his eyes fastened onto the window of the Pope. 


Many, in the Vatican and outside, witnessed the solitary 
tragedy of the poor monsignor. Perhaps the Pope himself, 
from behind the panes of his window, had been troubled by 
that small dark figure of a priest with his nose up in the air, 
still, all alone in the middle of St. Peter’s square, on the 
very same spot, day in and day out and for all those endless 
hours. But he did not intervene. And in the end, the old 
priest went out of his mind. 

The third episode, the most clamorous as it was 
punctuated by gunshots, took place on Wednesday April 8, 
1959, shortly after 2.00 p.m. I was walking out the St. 
Anne’s gate with Andrea Lazzarini, director of 
“L'Osservatore Romano’s” third page, when cries and 
gunshots pierced the air. The Swiss on detail vanished 
inside the door of the guard-post. What in the world would 
ever come to shatter the olden quiet of the quarter of the 
Swiss? The guard Adolfo Ruckert, deeming unjust his 
removal from the corps decreed by the commander, 

Colonel Roberto Nunlist, had stormed into the apartment of 
the officer, just above the St. Anne’s gate, and had 
unloaded his gun into him, wounding him on his buttocks, 
fatally exposed in the precipitous flight. The young man 
was arrested, and forced to spend some time in a 
psychiatric clinic near the town of Tivoli, before heading 
for the other side of the Alps. The gigantic colonel, instead, 
had to lay with great circumspection, on well-upholstered 
chairs, that bottom of his that had had such an inglorious 
baptism of fire. 


CHAPTER IX 


Roncalli’s witty public attitude exposes him to 
speculations of a particular gravity. It was no secret that the 
patriarch of Venice had been affected for years by a form 
of arteriosclerosis, and was being treated at Pisa by a 
specialist of that town, the brother, as we have said, of the 
Christian Democrat minister of Industry and Trade. From 
Venice cardinal Roncalli traveled periodically to the 
Tuscan provincial capital, and, for years, underwent the 
treatment this physician administered to him. When 
professor Togni learned from the radio of the election of his 
illustrious patient, they saw him bringing his hands to his 
hair. 

The thesis of John XXIII’ s recurrent arteriosclerosis 
episodes kept accurately hidden to the outside world, which 
would create in his government action recurring crisis and 
memory lapses, would explain the importance of the 
frequent journeys to Milan by the Pope’s secretary, Loris 
Capo villa, who, said those in the know in the Vatican, in 
his continuous encounters with Montini, archbishop of that 
town, received by the latter guidance and instructions upon 
which to carry on the progressive policy of the reforming 
Pope. It is a fact that the Pope’s Marxist secretary installed 
himself in the Lombard capital as in a very personal and 
well disguised political office of his own. My uncle Enrico 
Pozzani, president of the “Cavalieri del Lavoro” (knighted 
for services to industry), more than once manifested to me 
his apprehensions as to the amazing growth that the 


Lombard labor movement was experiencing toward a 
policy almost exclusively directed to foiling the initiative of 
the private industry. He often told me, on those occasions, 
that well informed sources connected to such large 
industrial concerns as Pirelli, Alfa Romeo, and Fiat, had 
ascertained a direct influence of Capovilla upon the action 
of the unions and upon the widespread subversive activity 
within the workers of major factories in northern Italy. My 
uncle, who had frequent contacts with the most 
representative personalities of Italy’s big business, at the 
time examined a report he had been handed by professor 
Valletta, FIAT managing director, in which, after the 
documented account of the involvement of the Pope’s 
secretary in the “communization” and in the labor struggle 
of the metal workers of the North, the perplexities of the 
company’s management impotent to counter so dangerous 
an action, as it was impossible to counter, were expressed. I 
recall that meeting, in which I participated as a “Vaticanist” 
for the Federazione Nazionale dei Cavalieri del Lavoro’s 
press office, at Rome’s EUR district, nicknamed the 
“Square Coliseum,” because of the six galleries 
overlapping from the floor to the terrace, about its marbled 
square massive shape. The small figure of professor 
Valletta, in dark, almost faded clothes, within the lofty 
polished marble walls of that presidency on which stood 
out, in bronze letters, the names of those newly elected 
“Cavalieri del Lavoro” who had donated large sums to the 
Federation, and the amount of the donation. But that little 
southerner exuding so much will power and intelligence 
was indeed a giant in the history of the industrial recovery 
in post-war Italy. FIAT and the Agnelli family owe it to 


Valletta if the Turin automobile industry has become what 
it is today. 

Sunk into his yellow leather armchair, Valletta had 
pulled out of his briefcase a wad of typed papers and placed 
them before my uncle, as a singular “solitaire” on the 
crystal desktop of the monumental presidential desk. I sat 
before the managing director, and I had set out, as I knew 
them, some viewpoints and assessments as to Pope 
Roncalli’s policy and the outcome of such policy, through 
various influential figures, and, in that case, monsignor 
Loris Capo villa, upon Italy’s life and affairs. 

Then, Pozzani had begun to leaf through the typed report. 
And when his voice began to spell out some passages, here 
and there, my attention grew. 

Those typed sheets were a confidential report for the 
managing director, compiled by the company’s security 
service, directed at the time by a former high ranking 
officer of the carabinieri. From the report, filled with 
names, dates, and facts, took shape the political action of 
John XXIII’ s secretary, through the labor unions and the 
Italian Communist party, within the workers of the most 
important industries, mainly mechanical, of the north of 
Italy. After a personal profile detailing an old involvement 
with the Italian communists at the time of the civil war in 
northern Italy, in which Capo villa’s name was linked to 
summary executions of fascists by communist bands; and a 
profile of a brother of his, a Mestre communist ringleader, 
the report spoke of how Capo villa, in his confidential 


contacts with politicians, activists, labor union 
representatives, underscored that he was speaking on behalf 
of the Pope, as an interpreter of his precise political course. 
Moreover, there were described his relations with the 
cardinal of Milan, Montini, who, in the far-reaching 
scheme for the political control of the Country, was 
responsible for the total “communization” of the large 
working masses of Lombardy, and the animator of Marxist- 
bent evangelical preaching. 

The information profile concluded that the regular and 
frequent meeting between Capovilla and Montini were 
proof that the latter had an influential voice in the political 
progressive direction of the Vatican policy. 

I recall that a few months after Valletta’s visit to my 
uncle, in the course of an audience John XXIII granted to a 
FIAT delegation led by “avvocato” Agnelli and professor 
Valletta, I unexpectedly met the likely editor of that 
dossier. The Pope was sitting on his small throne and 
monsignor Capovilla, in his violet ceremonial habit, the 
gaunt bald head and the large dark-framed spectacles, was 
introducing to him, smiling and solicitous, those FIAT 
personages, all in dark and excited. 

As I was on my “week detail” I kept slightly aside, 
buttoned up in my diplomatic uniform, when all of a 
sudden a tall, gray-haired gentleman, with a little mustache 
and a pair of golden spectacles on his nose approached me, 
and in a subdued voice introduced to me the chief of FIAT 
security service. Shortly after, pointing to Capovilla, taken 


up with the introductions to the Pope, he asked me whether 
I knew him well and was familiar with his political 
preferences. Upon my affirmative response, that man who 
seemed to me visibly tense, unburdened himself with me, 
right there and then, in close propinquity to the Pope, 
recounting into my ears how he, former officer of the 
carabinieri, had known Capovilla well, and knew what he 
had done during the civil war, that he had on his conscience 
several killings, and that he would have gone out of his way 
to strangle him with his own hands. I looked that man in 
the face, solemn in his dark double breast as only some old 
soldiers can be in civilian attire, and from the emotion I 
caught in it, I realized that he must have been informed, if 
not altogether the witness, of tremendous facts linked to the 
priest with the neurotic countenance that now, just steps 
away, was stooping from behind Pope Roncalli’s shoulders, 
to follow with that icy smile of his, the words that the FIAT 
men offered in response to the queries and jokes of the 
Pope. The audience ended, and that gentleman excused 
himself, and I never met him anymore. But I have never 
forgotten that singular confession, which in time helped me 
to open my eyes, when things in the Vatican and in Italy 
began to change and the figure of that small, frail priest 
with the neurotic look, with the pale and scrawny face, 
somewhat dismal, with those large dark-rimmed spectacles, 
began to have a major standing of his own, in the process 
of “communization” of the Italian nation from the “opening 
to the left” onward, and in the leftward shifting of the 
whole European Western block. 


CHAPTER X 


It is amazing, when one beholds the things of the Vatican 
from a distance, or through an ill-informed press, more or 
less controlled by Rome, the punctuality with which the 
communists come knocking on the Bronze Door, as soon as 
Roncalli becomes John XXIII. And likewise perplexing, is 
the swiftness with which those doors are flung open before 
the wolf disguised as a lamb that has awaited with well- 
planned patience that great appointment with History. 

Our “home-groomed” communists knowthe score. They 
know who Roncalli is, and know that next to Roncalli lives 
and works his trustworthy personal secretary. The Italian 
multitude, scarcely cultured and superstitiously bound for 
centuries to the Catholic religion, continues to follow the 
Pope. Even if the Pope is now Roncalli, with his revolution. 
The Kremlin is more cautious. The Church is the ancient 
enemy that must be brought down. It has been officially 
and bloodily persecuted hitherto. Yet perhaps, for this very 
reason, it could never be wiped out. Now, with the advent 
of John XXIII, the great turn is here, long awaited and 
carefully engineered. Now the Church can offer her 
defenseless nape to the ultimate blow. But this requires a 
different strategy; the new Pope must be presented with an 
“apparent” situation that is different from the former. An 
“apparent” situation that would smother, rather than excite, 
the indignation of the civilized world, so prone to futile 
rebellion, and so easily slanting back into a forgetful doze. 
Having assessed the impossibility of bending by force the 


resistance of the ecclesiastical hierarchies, the Marxist 
chiefs decide a tactical change, and embrace the encircling 
action of the “divide et impera,” (divide and rule) and of 
the hollowing out, from inside, of the ecclesiastical 
institutions. The “Red Book of the Persecuted Church,” 
written by an historian, prelate of the Secretariat of State 
hiding behind the pseudonym of Albert Gaiter reads, on the 
subject, “The main device the communists have deployed 
to undermine the efficiency of the clergy and weaken its 
resistance, is that of fostering the division amongst the 
clergymen. Once a sympathetic approach toward the 
regime is aroused in a number of them, they constitute 
“priests’ associations,” which they often give innocuous 
names, even pious, sometimes, but actually operate as a 
fifth column within the Church, with the task of destroying 
it through internal contrasts (to be intended in a Marxist 
sense)... And thus the communists set up: the Union of the 
National Priests in Czechoslovakia; the Union of the 
Catholic Priests for the Peace, or “Priests of the Peace,” in 
Hungary; the Union of the Saints Cirillus and Methodio, in 
Croatia, and similar associations in the other federated 
republics of Yugoslavia; the Movement of the Partisan 
Clergy, in Rumania; the Association of the Patriot Priests 
adhering to the movement of the Triple Autonomy, in 
China, etc. Parallel to this effort directed to splitting the 
clergy, is the attempt to control the seminaries for the 
education of priests. In some countries the communists 
have even founded “state seminaries.” 


At this point I wish to report in its entirety an interview I 
did, some years ago, Paul VI reigning, at Munich’s English 


Garten, with an Hungarian “priest of the peace,” professor 
of Theological Philosophy at a communist university that 
has requested not to be named, lecturer and columnist, from 
which transpire the “Iron-curtain” view of the Roncallian 
“detente,” and a precise portrait of Montini as the 
“predestined” carrier of the Giovannean revolution. 

Question: “What do you think of the figure of the Pope, 
today, in your countries?” 

Answer: “The Pope, as the spiritual head of the Church 
has lost credibility with the Catholics, let us say 
“conventional” and “traditionalists,” to take on more and 
more the physiognomy of a “political” head of certain 
masses of humanity. John XXIII’s pontificate has 
decisively and meticulously dismantled and torn to pieces 
that Pacellian scheme of the Church inaccessible to any 
transformations, fixed as a sun within a system of minor 
planets in the absolutistic light of its spirituality. And with 
ecumenism, he has set off a decisive turn: finally 
Christianity aligns itself with those doctrines and 
philosophies derived by the desire of humanity to better 
itself. Paul VI seems to have grasped the significance and 
the importance of this historical turn for the Church of 
Rome, placing the figure of the Pope on a realistic plane 
that would allow him to lead the Christian masses toward 
social evolutions that would deliver humanity of its eternal 
sours, that would deliver it of the exploitation of the richer 
upon the poorer, that would ensure a more equitable 
distribution of the wealth amongst all of the social 
categories and contribute to the achievement of that 


equality among the peoples, preached by the Christ. And it 
is only by descending from his mystical pedestal that the 
Pope could obtain his first breakthroughs in this policy of 
renovation of the Church that has brought the Vatican, for 
the first time in the history of modern papacy, to align itself 
with the progressive policy of the most advanced socialist 
and anti-capitalist countries in the world. Thus to us, today, 
the Pope is essentially an interpreter of Marxism in a 
Christian key. Or, better yet: an interpreter and 
implementer of Christianity in a Marxist key.” 

Question: “But haven’t Marxism and Religion always 
been irreducibly opposed?” 

Answer: “That was true until yesterday. For the Christian 
religion had always been preached in the right sense, yet 
applied as a “Feudal” religion, in the absolute respect of the 
hierarchies, in the famous “infallibility” of the Pope. Today 
Paul VI has understood that Marxism is definitely 
acceptable to the Catholics, so long as it concurs with the 
well-being of humanity. And that he is separating the term 
“Atheism” from the term “Marxism” is demonstrated by 
the fact that he has approved and confirmed our birth and 
our active presence. We “priests of the peace” say that the 
Catholics can and “must” collaborate with the Marxists to 
“humanize the Socialist society.” And Montini has opened 
his arms to the East, lamenting the misunderstanding that 
ruled until yesterday, and alimented intentionally by that 
reactionary Church whose ultimate personalization has 
been Pius XII’ s, and which he has been renouncing. 


Question: “How do you Priests of the Peace today 
consider the Vatican?” 

Answer: “We are essentially at the service of our 
countries and our masses. We are perfectly aware of our 
origin: a formally bi-lateral agreement, yet an actually 
unilateral one, realized solely thanks to the strong pressure 
exerted by our governments upon the Vatican. Usually, the 
agreement on the affairs of the Catholic Church in our 
countries is made up of two documents, undersigned by the 
parties. The one that remains in the hands of the Holy See 
and relates to our commitments toward the Catholic 
Church, the priests, etcetera, is almost always one and the 
same for all of the Socialist republics, and it is so general 
that it could not be named a “protocol,” and so we called it 
by the more appropriate name of “agreement;” while the 
one concerned with the Vatican commitments toward us, is 
exhaustive in all of the possible voices, features a great 
quantity of paragraphs, and is appropriately defined as 
“protocol.” You will understand that as things stand now, 
the treaties are indeed unilateral, and any initiative is in the 
hands of our governments. Pope Montini and monsignor 
Casaroli know well how to deal with us, now, although at 
times there has been a little crisis; acclimatization, should 
we say.” 

Question: “Could you give me an example?” 

Answer: “For example, in the Mindszenty matter. When 
Paul VI was postponing the removal of the cardinal as a 
Primate of Hungary, thus violating the precise 


commitments he had made with the signing of the first 
agreements with our country, our government had to enjoin 
to the Pope to respect the agreements, or the same would be 
voided with the consequent resumption of a harsh policy 
toward the Catholics. And so Montini realized that we were 
serious, and immediately removed Mindszenty as the 
Primate of Hungary.” 

Question: “What is, father, your opinion of Paul VI?” 

Answer: “Pardon me, but you can call me professor. 
Montini was the most suitable man to be the Pope today. 

On the other hand, the Soviet Union knew since 1945, from 
the reports on the Italian affairs coordinated by the 
secretary of the Italian Communist party, Palmiro Togliatti, 
that the then monsignor Montini of the Secretariate of State 
was a person surely sympathizing with Socialism, and had 
had more than a meeting with the Italian communist chief. 
And at Moscow they also learned of Montini’ s part in the 
liquidation of the Italian monarchy, in 1946, and they 
began to hope and work to clear the way for him. Today we 
can say that thirty years ago Togliatti had a good nose.” 

Question: “Do you believe that with the traditional 
interference of the Vatican in the Italian things, 
communism would have had such a great leap in Italy, if on 
the “Cathedra” of St. Peter were to sit a Pope other than 
Montini? We must remember that Pius XII’ s 
excommunication of the communists marked for 
communism, whatever it has been said, and especially for 
Italian communism, a moment of undisputable crisis. And 


it was a dangerous stop for the PCI (Italian Communist 
Party) along its path to power.” 

Answer: “True. Paul VI has an ambiguous personality of 
his own, Machiavellian, introvert. But the agreements he 
undersigns are spelled out very clearly by our government, 
and after all, a glance around to the East is sufficient 
testimony of it.” 

This excerpt from the interview sheds some light, in 
prospective, onto the upcoming thriving times for the 
communists of the East, in Paul Vi’s reign, prepared by the 
Roncallian policy and by the Roncallian Vatican II 
Ecumenical Council. 

The Marxist governments are indeed looking forward to 
stipulating a “modus vivendi” (way of life) with the Church 
that would mean, from China to Albania, from Bulgaria to 
Rumania, authentic attempts on the unity of the Church. 

Marxism is somehow attempting to clear the way for the 
swift and resolute steps of the new revolutionary Pope, 

John XXIII. And it shifts its tactics. It no longer wants a 
“Church of the Catacombs,” a “Church of Silence” that is 
to it a double edged sword, but a Church “in silence.” 
Poland’s Primate, cardinal Wyszynski, will bitterly say 
some years later, “Today we are like fish in an aquarium. 

At the time of Stalin they tried to destroy us with 
martyrdom, fishing hither and thither and pulling out the 
designated victim, or victims. Today they pursue an action 
apparently not so violent, and altogether legal: they are 


draining the pond.” 


Roncalli, in his impetuous rush to clasp the hand that the 
chief of the new Soviet Russia, the “good” Nikita 
Khrushchev is holding out to him, falls ruinously into the 
net of this new policy, so opportunely concocted by the 
Moscow communists. That same Khrushchev who just the 
day before the opening of the Vatican II Ecumenical 
Council, has no doubts in declaring: 

”What is wanted is an elaborated and integral system of 
scientific-atheist education that might reach all layers and 
groups of the population, that would prevent the diffusion 
of religious ideas, particularly among children and 
adolescents.” 

But what does he do! In the course of the Council, firmly 
bridled in the large hand of Roncalli, when it comes to the 
“Church of Silence” the password is “hold-your-tongue.” 
Certain things, unpleasant and irritating to the 
“conciliatory” at all costs, must not be uttered. So that the 
men of the West believe in the communist “good will,” 
even toward religion. Therefore, the directive in the 
Council is to keep quiet, if not smile, before the incredible 
evolution of that communism in respectable disguise that 
now claims to be ready to deal with the Vatican. 

Writes an Eastern bishop, during the Council, “The true 
Church of Silence is not we, for we witness every day, and 
our voice calls out to Heaven. But it is the Church of the 
Free Countries, that is a Church of Silence, when the 


faithful, accepting it all, remain silent before the great 
tragedy...” In this same period, a clergyman, from another 
Iron-curtain country, leaves on record, before returning 
East: 

’’For ten years I’ve been dreaming the freedom of the 
West, I’ve been dreaming of a free Church. Why, I’ve been 
here a month and it’ s been plenty for me to decide to go 
back to the Church of Silence, for the suffering of the 
Church of Silence is to me less painful than the silence of 
the Free Church. 

But Roncalli is secretly dealing with the Soviet Union 
already, and looks forward to the historical meeting with 
the chief of world Marxism, and spends long hours, in the 
utmost discretion, with emissaries of the Botteghe Oscure, 
(Via delle Botteghe Oscure, Rome; Italian Communist 
Party HQ) and has ordered the most absolute silence, in the 
Council, upon the uncomfortable issue of his policy. And 
so those bishops who have managed to wring permission to 
participate in the works of the Ecumenical Assembly from 
the communist authorities, and have rushed to Rome to 
launch in St. Peter the high cry for help of the martyr 
Church of the East, are hushed up by the inflexible hand of 
a political calculation that now awes them. 

Another testimony is that of the Jesuit father Domenico 
Chianella, future director of the Exhibition of the Martyr 
Church, who writes, challenging the new Giovannean 
course, the dialogue and the reconciliation between 
Christianity and Marxism, “. . .Besides the ignorance of the 


issue of the Church of Silence, there is the confusion of the 
minds, which is a worse and more dangerous thing. The 
Marxist tactic and dialectic have by now challenged even 
the mentality of the Catholics, pretending, for example, that 
speaking of the preservation of the faith and of the Church 
from communism, or caring for our persecuted brothers in 
the atheist countries, be tantamount to playing politics, 
siding with reaction, lending a hand to the political 
speculators, and so on. There are even those who say that 
speaking of the suffering of the Catholics under 
communism, all we achieve is to aggravate their fate. We 
had better hold our tongue! Apart from the fact that 
communism can do no more than it has already done and is 
still doing to the Church, there is the earnest, unanimous 
call by the Iron-curtain bishops and priests asking that we 
speak up on their behalf; stressing that we, and not they, are 
the true Church of Silence, whenever we choose to do 
nothing for them; that speaking and showing to the whole 
world what communism has been doing to religion is, after 
prayer, the only way to help them out, to induce 
the governments to leave them a scrap of freedom. There is 
nothing that these regimes fear as much as the truth. These 
atheist and dictatorial governments have no fear of God, 
whom they disbelieve, they fear not weapons: all they fear 
is world public opinion. They very much rely on the silence 
of the West... 

An authentic Christian cannot falter before communism. 
Communism is an ideology, a new religion, a new thorough 
conception of life and man, and a materialist and atheist 
doctrine that openly wishes to annihilate the religious faith 


of the peoples, which it considers a superstition. According 
to Lenin, this annihilation is indeed the ABC of Marxism. 
To endorse its development and its diffusion even only 
indirectly, it is to counter the Kingdom of God, the 
apostolic mission of the Church. Certainly! For the 
communists as individuals, next to us in our every-day life, 
we must have the same love that Christ has for them as 
single persons. When it comes to their doctrine, to their 
party, to their tactics (and here is the secret of their great 
success!), however, we must be able to grasp the peril they 
constitute to Faith and liberty. Peace, reconciliation, 
softening, coexistence. . . Are all fine words that are used by 
the enemies of God to spread confusion and gain ground. 
Communism will change basically nothing so long as it 
remains the ideology that it is and intends to be today. 

These are the concepts I heard so many times from those 
who have seen communism in the face. . . 

The political events that will upset the equilibriums of the 
West, exposing it to communism, sink their roots into the 
Roncallian planning of the Vatican II Ecumenical Council, 
and it is in it that must be sought the pressures that will 
soon lead to an alignment to the left of nearly the entire free 
European world. 

The causes that would bring about in Italy the Center-left 
governments, first, and then the s.c. Historical Compromise 
with the PCI (Italian Communist Party); that will cause the 
sprouting in Federal Germany of the Brandt phenomenon 
with the transfer of German territories to Communist 
Poland, anticipating the epilogue of Salazar’s Portugal, the 


dusk of Francoism in Spain, the occurrence of that Marxist 
terrorism whose violence is but blind bloodthirstiness and 
arrogance, are multiplying, inasmuch as tolerance, alarm, 
and complicity are now widespread in the Western 
democracies “open” to the dialogue and to reconciliation. 

In the first weeks of the Council, on the desk of the new 
Pope pour entreaties, reports, and letters from every corner 
of the globe, imploring John XXIII to take a stand against 
the persecutors of the Church. The new Pope reads on, 
receives messengers, and lingers with the bishops, talking 
the dialect of his Veneto region, gentle, melodic. He smiles. 
Reassures. Then goes on as he pleases. 

To the Secretary of State, who after reading in a 
manuscript of his some “made up” words and dared 
observe, “Your Holiness, but these words do not exist, they 
aren’t even quoted in the Palazzi dictionary. . .” Rone alii 
responds, briefly, “Well, we’ll have to reform many things. 
We’ll have to do something about this Palazzi, too.” 

While in the latter years of Pius XII’ s pontificate, the 
Italian communists maintained with the Vatican indirect 
relations, promoted, coordinated and followed by Giovanni 
Battista Montini, and through the mediation of some 
prelates well dissembled in the complex bureaucratic 
apparatus of the Holy See, now, for the first time, the 
Italian Communist party has a direct link with the Pope. 

The party’s secretary, Togliatti, is frequently seen, semi- 
incognito, in the elevators of the Pope’s apartment. His 
visits are not logged in the table of the audiences. Inside the 


Vatican he is accompanied hastily and with no ceremonies 
to the study of the Pope. But some among the gendarmes 
on detail, and the elevators attendants, recognize him and 
exchange with him a witty word or two. 

His Holiness’ Master of the House, Pio Manzia, told me 
that John XXIII had hosted Togliatti at his table more than 
once. Even though, according to that quick-witted 
“commendatore,” the appetite of the Communist did not 
measure up to that of his august table companion. 

The Communist secretary carried with him a great quantity 
of papers. A Master of Ceremonies, the old memorable and 
very Roman monsignor Capoferri, told me that one 
afternoon, one of those “confidential” meetings lasted two 
hours and three quarters, watch in hand. 

Once, I was on “week duty,” as I stepped out of the 
elevator, in the St. Damaso’s Courtyard, I saw walking 
toward me a Pope’s Master of Ceremonies, in simple 
clergyman, and that politician I knew so well. They hurried 
to the elevator, while the blue FIAT that had transported 
them, with a young lad in a sweater at the wheel, parked in 
the neighborhood. I was in uniform, and I did not turn to 
look. But as I boarded the service car that was to drive me 
home, I felt sincerely and unbearably uneasy. No one, then, 
in the Pontifical Court, fancied what was in the works, day 
after day, behind the fagade of the Apostolic Palace. We 
continued our service, respectful of the ancient, unchanged 
ritual, with our gold embroidered uniforms and our 
sumptuous Spanish costumes. The Swiss Guards continued 


to click their heels and present their halberds. The silver 
trumpets played Silveri’s Triumphal March, when the 
Pope, in full apparel, descended into St. Peter’ s escorted by 
the Noble Guards. Behind that unchanged outward 
appearance, however, something fundamental was rapidly 
growing and would soon, very soon, bear its fruit. 

These contacts with the Italian Communist party, as a first 
result, obtain to the communists the scrapping of the 
excommunication, of Pacellian memory. (Decree of 
condemnation of communism.) In this way that red electorate, 
held back at the polling station by the problem of 
conscience, will rush to swell the Italian Communist 
Party’s votes. Especially women’s. In most Italian families, 
the women are those who felt the most the bridle of Pius 
XII’ s excommunication, and have remained, due to 
ancestral complexes, aligned and covered with the 
directives of their parish. John XXIII has promptly 
consented to Palmiro Togliatti’s well-calculated request. It 
will be seen in the tremendous advance of the Italian 
Communist party in subsequent elections, and in that leftist 
policy that will bring Italy to the reality of today. And a 
grateful Italian communism makes itself readily available 
to the Giovannean policy. The Italian Communist party will 
precede His Holiness’ Secretary of State in paving the way 
for the historical dialogue between the Vatican and the 
Socialist countries of the East, starting with Soviet Russia. 
Roncalli implements his revolution without upsetting 
public opinion. He operates, in politics, so that his left hand 
ignores what his right hand does. While on the one hand, in 
bland little speeches of circumstance he voices his grief for 


the Church of Silence and condemns the persecutors, on the 
other he pushes relentlessly the coupling operation with the 
Iron Curtain’s political world. When it comes to taking a 
stand, against Marxism, with the Council, he would let 
down the Catholics languishing under the Marxist yoke, 
and impose silence on the bishop on the issue. Slowly, yet 
progressively, the public opinion loses interested in the fate 
of those millions of souls in helpless despair. The official 
information, in fact, speaks of concessions, of “dialogue” 
that is beginning to develop, timidly at first, and then faster 
and faster, between Christianity and Marxism. The Pope 
has taken the habit, continued by Paul VI, of chatting with 
the people from the window of the Apostolic Palace. The 
Italian Communist party, with its remarkable organization, 
sends a few coaches filled with members to St. Peter’s 
Square. These mingle with the small Sunday crowd with 
their wine flasks and homemade sandwiches, littering the 
place with the wraps. When Rone alii appears, bulky, in the 
dark rectangle of the window, they applaud him; give him 
the clenched-fist salute, wave, sometimes, their red 
banners. Roncalli wants to be the “people’s Pope.” He has 
an unpretentious eloquence, accessible to all. Especially to 
the blue-collar. Well spiced with expressions that easily 
stir the easy emotion of the man of the street. And 
sometimes he uses, amused, his unpretentious eloquence to 
startle and fluster the formal impassiveness of his Court 
and diplomatic corps. Roncalli does not neglect, in his 
window chats to the people, to reassure them about the 
communist danger. His famous exhortation... “You must 
love Khrushchev. God loves him” speaks for itself. 
Meanwhile, the visit to the Vatican of the dictator’s 


daughter, and her husband, the journalist Adzhubei, is fast 
approaching. 


CHAPTER XI 


“Last night I had a dream: a voice was urging me to call a 
great Council. A universal Council of the Church. An 
Ecumenical Council. And I shall do this Council...” Thus, 
one morning, John XXIII addressed his secretary of state, 
Cardinal Domenico Tardini, as he entered the Pope’s study, 
with his briefcase of confidential papers under his arm. The 
prelate stood startled for a moment. And he himself, as he 
was to confess to his closest aides, believed for a moment 
that Roncalli, as was his custom, was only joking. But it 
became almost immediately evident that this was no 
laughing matter. The Pope was speaking seriously, and the 
cardinal had no doubts that something in the head of John 
XXIII was not properly functioning. That he was, that is, as 
he would remark some days later, gone “temporarily mad.” 

With the tale of his dreamlike little adventure, speaking 
simply, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli informs his closest aides 
on his decision to convene Vatican II. Naturally, for the 
very few unaware that come and go from the room of the 
Pope, the surprise is indescribable. The others, those in the 
know, do not bat an eyelid. Rather, they give the 
announcement the significance of a divine inspiration. The 
true bomb will go off at the official announcement, at St. 
Paul’s Basilica Outside the Wall. For most of the 
Cardinalitial College, far from being consulted, as the rule 


calls for, has been kept in the dark. And so the Pope, in one 
go, breaks the news to journalists, cardinals, and people, 
placing on the same level princes of the Church, journalists, 
bourgeois, and plebeians. It is the “summit” of the 
Roncallian strategy: to put forward the inescapability of the 
fait accompli. This time, the victims are the Church, her 
millions of faithful and the two thousand years of her 
history. No sooner had the solemn black automobiles of the 
cardinals left St. Paul’s basilica and driven the most 
eminent cardinals back to the quiet of their apartments, than 
the phones become red-hot. Bewilderment and 
consternation, bitterness and accents of impotent 
indignation run through the lines in the young hours of the 
Roman night. But that obedience that imposes upon the 
cardinals, in the grandeur of their purple, to bow down 
before the throne of the elected Pope - so fascinating a 
scene, that of the Cardinalitial College, with the scarlet 
caudate habits, prone, their forehead on the ground, at the 
feet of the Pope, which I will forever cherish - inflexibly 
hushes the Pope’s electors, and prevents them from 
expressing any emotions. 

The world, from the morning of the following day, begins 
to take in the idea of the Council. That word, in the years to 
come, will be the most bloated in the domestic and foreign 
policy of all the countries in the world. It will be the 
justification and legalization of all the errors, speculations, 
disputes, baseness, and uproars, of the surprising and well- 
calculated human presumptions that will burst out, from 
that moment on, within the Church. 


While in the Vatican John XXIII eagerly begins the 
preparatory work, in the rest of the world, and, especially in 
some North European countries, they are sharpening the 
weapons that in Rome will flash under the gilded ceilings 
of a St. Peter’s Basilica reduced into Council Chamber, to 
slash with deadly aptitude the organism of a Church they 
wish at all costs to liquidate, in the name of the ecumenical 
ideals that are to beget a diverse Church, one in which 
mysticism and spirituality must give way to a sociological 
and anthropological vision of Christianity. 

The Pope appears serene, in great mood, and, above all, 
determined. In those months of preparation of the Vatican 
II Ecumenical Council, Roncalli is at his best. The way is 
clear. In the Church, he can now do as he pleases. The 
subversive and the progressive worship him. The 
conservative despise him. His way of addressing century- 
old issues with the ease of the naive is infinitely vexing to 
some. 

Roncalli, now, has less and less time for his little 
escapades outside the Vatican. He works keenly at the 
organization of his Council, under the growing pressure of 
the most powerful anti-Christian and anti-Traditionalist 
centers of the world. He has started the work for which, 
years before, he has been selected among many, followed 
month after month and carried forward, directly and 
indirectly, with infinite attention and patience, up to the day 
of the Conclave when the little canopy on his seat, in the 
Sistine Chapel, remained to crown with august papal shade 
his formidable head. His commitment was multiplied by 


the growing encouragement coming to him daily from the 
non-Catholic Christians, although their official institutions, 
at the announcement of the ecumenical character of the 
great ecclesial assembly, at first take on a wait-and-see 
approach, if generally favorable. 

The World Council of the Churches, in the meeting of 
August 1959 at Rhodes, had determined that . .The 
leaders of the ecumenical movement could not be 
indifferent before an event (the Council) that cannot not 
have repercussions on the relations between the 
Churches.” 

Naturally, that conference would not completely express 
their views. They first wanted to see what actual 
development would ecumenism be taking during the early 
phases of the Council. But certainly, they were not caught 
off guard by the events. And they worked with intelligence 
to place the ecumenical program of the Vatican II in safe 
hands, those safe hands of cardinal Agostino Bea (a name 
derived from the other, Semite, Behar), who comes 
punctually forward to propose to John XXIII the creation of 
a special organism, within the Council, in charge of the 
issue of the reunification of the separated Catholics. 
Roncalli, who seems as if he had been expecting it, 
promptly welcomes the proposal. 

Bea writes in his book “Ecumenism in the Council,” 

“. . .After an in-depth study and a more accurate elaboration 
of the proposal of a commission for the union of the 
Christians, I transmitted it to John XXIII, on March 11, 


1960. Only two days later, on March 13, through a phone 
call of his personal secretary the Pope advised me of his 
overall concurrence and of his wish to discuss it in detail, 
which we did during the audience he granted me the same 
day. The swiftness of his decision appears indicative of 
how the Pope, perhaps since the announcement of the 
Council, had been seeking a way to actuate the ecumenical 
aim he had set for the Council, and had therefore seen in 
my proposal of instituting an ad hoc organ, the providential 
path toward this goal. A few weeks later, after a gathering 
of the Congregation of the Rites, held in his presence, the 
Pope called me to tell me that the new organ should be 
called secretariat, rather than commission; in this way, 
added he, it could move more freely within the assigned 
jurisdiction, which was rather new and unusual. And so 
with the motu proprio “Superno Dei motu” of 5 June 1960, 
holiday of Pentecost, the Secretariat of the Union of the 
Christians was instituted, beside the eleven Council’s 
preparatory commissions. Its task was thus “outlined” and, 
we should add, “camouflaged,” “To show in a special 
manner our love and our benevolence toward those who 
bear the name of Christ, but are separated from this 
Apostolic See, and in order for them to attend to the works 
of the Council and find more easily the way to attain that 
unity that Jesus Christ has implored from the Celestial 
Father with ardent entreaty, we have instituted a special 
office, or secretariat.” (Cfr. AAS 52, 1960, 436). 

Bea continues, in his book, “. . .The creation of the 
secretariat for the union was received with great interest 
and sincere joy by both the Catholics and our non-Catholic 


brothers, and also by the public opinion worldwide, which 
has shown great interest from the very first days. When my 
appointment to the chair of the secretariat was announced, I 
happened to be in New York. I was immediately requested 
a press conference upon the aim of the secretariat, and the 
various aspects of the ecumenical issue. The conference 
aroused a vast echo, and the interest has been growing ever 
since. As for the interest of our non-Catholic brothers, it 
will suffice to quote the reaction of the central committee 
of the Ecumenical Council of the Churches, which, just two 
months after the institution of the secretariat, in its meeting 
of August 1960, at St. Andrews, (Scotland) declared: 

’’The fact that now a dialogue with the Catholic Church 
becomes possible must be warmly welcomed. This chance 
for a dialogue must be exploited; it means that the true 
issues are coming to light.” And it added that the World 
Council of the Churches would be seizing the occasion to 
bring to the attention of the new secretariat some 
fundamental principles, sponsored by the general 
assemblies or by the central committee of the Council 
itself; for example, those on religious freedom, on the 
social activity of the Christians, and such like.” (Cfr. 
Agostino Bea: “Ecumenism in the Council”, Bompiani, 
May 1968, p.31-32). 

Today, the particulars tied to the creation of the 
secretariat recommended to Roncalli by cardinal Bea, its 
future president, all carry precise significance and features. 
The swiftness with which Roncalli agrees to Bea’s 
proposal. The presence, not casual, of Bea in New York, 


one of the political centers, with the UN, of world Judaism, 
at the moment of his appointment to the chair of the 
secretariat. The immediate, enthusiastic assent of the World 
Council of the Churches, which hides in its bosom a 
concentration of powerful and well dissembled financial 
forces, when one considers that this very organization, as it 
is learned afterwards, has financed, among others, the 
Communist wars in Angola and Mozambique. (1) 

(1) FRELIMO: Mozambican Liberation Front. 

MPLA: Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. 

GRAE: Revolutionary Government in Exile of Angola. 

APIGC: African Party for the Liberation of New Guinea and Cape 
Verde. 

The MPLA’s president was Agostino Neto (one of the three anti- 
Portuguese guerrillas received in an audience by Paul VI July 2, 
1971.) 

The aforesaid movements received 340,000 US dollars from the 
COC: Ecumenical Council of the Churches. (“Libre Belgique” 
25.11.1961). 

Agostino Neto declared that the MPLA did not have to justify the 
important contributions granted by the COE, as the money had 
been paid out “without conditions”. 

The COE gathered at Sofia from 5 to 9 September, 1971, has 
donated the sum of 200,000 US dollars to nine revolutionary 
organizations of Africa fighting against the regimes of Rhodesia, 
Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea Bissau (Portugal’ s overseas 
territories) and to six revolutionary organizations of North 
America.) 

That “eagerness” of the World Council of the Churches of 
sharing with the new secretariat “Some fundamental 


principles” which are, strangely enough, precisely those on 
“Religious freedom” and on the “social activity” of the 
Christians. 

Precisely the two landmines, well stuffed with Marxist 
explosive, which, when they go off, will turn the ancient 
edifice of the Church into rubble. 

The surprise action on the Council, the gravest and most 
crucial for the dismemberment of the Church, of its 
Christian and traditional essence, is a fait accompli. 
Roncalli, who knows well what he has done, once again in 
his motu proprio gives an inspired and evangelical 
significance to the all-political initiative. And Agostino 
Bea can now establish his contacts and dialogues in the 
light of day. The “Separated” enter the Vatican, seat in St. 
Peter in the Council assembly, I see them close by so many 
times as I seemed to be catching, echoing from the vaults of 
the basilica, the moans and the muffled thuds of the Popes 
tossing and turning in their tombs. And did I study those 
“observers!” Hermetic and reserved, they now feel at home. 
They chat with Bea, who carries with him, in his spectral 
countenance, elusive, so Semitic as to resemble a 
caricature, his origin and his vocation to occult 
machination. Those gentlemen in black who often hide 
their gazes, in the half-light of the Vatican basilica, behind 
impenetrable dark lenses, know that the game has been 
won. They have made it inside the citadel, without firing a 
shot, hiding in an 


unhoped-for Trojan horse. Now it is only a matter of time, 


little time, before the citadel capitulates. It would not be the 
Church to reabsorb the Separate, the Protestants. It would 
be the Protestants, to “phagocytize” the Church. 

The Catholic Mass will soon become a Protestant rite. 
How did the post-Council Mass become Luther’s Mass? 

We can respond to this question with Leon Cristian’s text, 
“From Lutheranism to Protestantism,” published in 1911, 
in one hand, and with the text of the “Novus Ordo,” the 
new rite of the post-Council Mass, in the other. 

’’When at the last Supper Jesus instituted priesthood, he 
instituted it for the sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Cross, for 
such sacrifice is to the Catholics the source of all merits, of 
all graces, of all Sacraments: it is the source of all the 
wealth of the Church. Therefore, it is the sacrifice of the 
Cross, which is repeated on the altars, and priesthood is 
intimately related to the sacrifice. There is no significance 
in priesthood without the sacrifice, for priesthood exists 
only 


The FRELIMO’s leaders participated in the 240th Congress of the 
Communist party at Moscow, in 1971. 

The subsidies are handed out by the COE under the form of aid to 
Third World developing countries. . . 

Even the World Lutheran Federation subsidizes certain “liberation 
movements” among which the FRELIMO. The Swedish pastor 
AAKE Kasthund has stated that they act solely to ship bedcovers, 
clothing and drugs. 

(C15E5. Traditionalist Bulletin: “Convulsions marxiste dans 
1'Eglise” by Andre Laforge). 


for sacrifice. We could also say: it is the incarnation of 
Jesus Christ throughout the centuries, “usque ad finem 
temporum,” as the texts say, the Sacrifice of the Mass will 
be offered. If Jesus Christ has wanted this sacrifice, He also 
wanted to be the Victim. To be the Victim, he must be 
present, actually present on the altar. If He is not present, if 
there is no real presence on the altar, there is no Victim, 
there is no priesthood. All is linked: Priesthood, Sacrifice, 
Victim, and Real Presence. That is: Transubstantiation. 

This is the “heart” of what of greatest, of richest Jesus 
Christ has given the Church and the entire humanity that in 
the Catholic Church recognizes itself. And thus we can 
understand how Luther, when he wanted to change these 
principles, began by attacking priesthood. And so do the 
modernists. For Luther knew well that if priesthood would 
disappear, there would no longer be the Sacrifice, there 
would no longer be the Victim, there would be nothing left 
in the Church, there would no longer be the source of the 
grace. Luther said, “There is no difference between the 
priests and the secular. Priesthood is universal... Every 
faithful has priesthood, together with the baptismal 
character...” 

And so the “secularization” of the contemporary priests 
becomes clear: even on the exterior they reject any 
particular attire; they no longer wish to be distinguished 
from the faithful as they are all priests, and the faithful are 
to choose their priests and elect them. 

A new book on the Sacraments has been printed in Paris, 
in January 1975, under the authority of the archbishop, 


cardinal Marty: the authors have discovered “eight” 
sacraments, no longer seven, for the eighth Sacrament is 
the religious profession. In the book it is clearly stated that 
all the faithful are priests and that the character of the priest 
comes from the character of Baptism. 

The authors had to read Luther, become to them a Father 
of the Church. Luther plainly states, “That the Mass is not a 
Sacrifice, but a Communion” (The miracle of Bolsena with 
the blood spurted by the host broken by the disbelieving 
officiator?). “It is possible to call the Mass Communion, 
Eucharist, anything, but Sacrifice; as a consequence, there 
no longer is a Victim, nor Real Presence, but only a 
spiritual presence, a memory or a Communion.” Luther 
called the Eucharist “Sacrament of the Bread.” We must 
acknowledge that today’s diocesan and parochial bulletins 
no longer speak of Sacrifice of the Mass, but of Eucharist, 
of Communion, of Supper. What a singular reconciliation 
with the theses of Luther! The very Luther who said that 
one of the ends of the Mass is to thank God, thus not a 
Sacrifice of expiation, but of worship, of Eucharist. And 
this is why the modern Protestants accept the new rite of 
the Mass, “because,” they say - and this was printed on a 
publication of the diocese of Strasburg reporting on a 
reunion of Protestants from the Confession of Augsburg - 
“now, with the new rite, it is possible to pray with the 
Catholics.” (From L’Eglise en Alsace”, 8.12.1973 and 
1.1.1974). 

’’Indeed, with the current forms of Eucharist celebration 
by the Catholic Church and the theological convergences 


present, many obstacles that could prevent a Protestant 
from participating in the Eucharist celebration are 
becoming a thing of the past, and it is now possible for a 
Protestant to acknowledge in the Catholic Eucharist 
celebration the Supper instituted by the Lord. “We hold in 
high regard the new Eucharist prayers, which have the 
advantage of blurring the theology of the Sacrifice.” 

Already in 1974, in England, an Anglican bishop adopted 
the new Catholic rite throughout his diocese. He stated: 

’’This new rite conforms perfectly with our Protestant 
beliefs.” 

One wonders, at this juncture, why the Protestant did not 
adopt the ancient rite. There is thus a difference between 
the new and the ancient, and this difference is essential; it is 
not an accidental difference to those who do not accept to 
celebrate the ancient rite with all the prayers that truly 
enlighten the aim of the Sacrifice: Propitiatory, Expiatory, 
Eucharistic and Latreutic. And this aim of the Sacrifice of 
the Catholic Mass, clear in the ancient rite, is no longer so 
in the new rite, as the Offertory is no longer there. And this 
is why Luther did not want the Offertory in his rite. 

Luther performed the first Evangelical Mass, or, more 
precisely, Evangelical “function,” on the night from 24 to 
25 December 1521. In this first Evangelical Mass, recount 
the texts, after the sermon on the Eucharist, the 
Communion is presented under the two kinds, as 
obligatory, and Confession as unnecessary, as Faith would 


suffice. Then his follower Karlstadt, shows up on the altar 
in secular clothes, recites the Confiteor, commences the old 
Mass, but only up to the Gospel; in fact the Offertory and 
the Elevation have been abolished, and this demonstrates 
that all that signified the idea of Sacrifice has been done 
away with. Communion follows the Consecration, and 
many assistants eat and drink, even aquavit, before taking 
the Communion, and give out the Communion under the 
two kinds, holding bread in their hands. One of the hosts is 
dropped on the dress of a faithful. A priest picks it up; 
another is dropped on the floor and Karlstadt asks the 
secular to pick it up, and since these refuse to do so, out of 
respect or fear, he says, “Let it be where it is now, it does 
not matter, so long as no one steps on it.” Numerous 
persons were happy about the change, and many came to 
attend this new Evangelical Mass as it was partly read in 
the German language, and they said they understood it 
better. Then the monasteries began to empty, and anarchy 
reigned amongst the priests. Everyone celebrated the Mass 
in his own way. Then the Council resolved to establish a 
new liturgy. The Mass was to be sequenced as follows: The 
Introibo, the Glory, the Epistola, the Gospel, and the 
Sanctus; and a sermon would then follow. The Offertory 
and the Canon were abolished, and the priest, become a 
shepherd, “Recited the institution of the Supper.” He 
uttered it aloud, in German, and gave out the Communion 
under the two kinds. Then came the Agnus Dei and the 
Benedicamus Domino, in conclusion. The modifications of 
the Consecration made to the “Novus Ordo” are similar to 
those introduced by Luther: the essential words of the 
Consecration are no longer solely the words of the form, as 


we have always known them, “Hoc est Corpus meum. Hie 
est calix Sanguinis mei.” And the words that follow. The 
essential words begin thus: “He took the bread” up to, after 
the Consecration of the wine, “Hoc facite in meam 
commemorationem,” Luther said the same thing. Why? 
Because the story of the Supper is told: It is a story, not an 
action, not a Sacrifice, not a Sacrificial action. It is a simple 
memoir. The innovators have therefore “copied” from 
Luther. Who again, says, “The Masses and the Eves are no 
longer.” The Office shall instead be maintained as well as 
the Matins, Hours, Vespers, and Compline, but only in the 
ferial Office. No Saint shall be celebrated that is not 
expressly named in the Scriptures.” He has thus, in 
addition, completely changed the Calendar, just like they 
did today. It may therefore be concluded that the current 
transformation is identical to Luther’s. 

One last example is that of the words for the consecration 
of the bread: “Hoc est Corpus meum quod pro vobis 
tradetur”. Luther has also added these last words, because 
these words are precisely those of the Supper. He believed, 
in fact, that the Supper was not a Sacrifice, but a meal. 

Now, the Council of Trent says explicitly, “He who 
affirms that the Supper is not a Sacrifice, be anathema 
(Session 22 of the Council of Trent of September 17, 

1562.) The Supper “was” a Sacrifice. And our Mass is the 
continuation of the Supper, for the Supper “was a 
Sacrifice.” It is evident in it already the early separation of 
the Body and of the Blood of Jesus Christ. The Sacrifice 
was already signified in this separation, but Luther, in 


opposition, states, “No, the Supper is not a Sacrifice,” and 
that is why only the words that our Lord uttered at the 
Supper, must be repeated. And these are, “Hoc est Corpus 
meum quod pro vobis tradetur,” which will be offered for 
you on the Cross. 

Why imitate Luther so servilely in the new Mass? The 
only possible explanation is hidden behind the word 
“Ecumenism.” It is the aim and the result of the Vatican II 
Ecumenical Council: the dismemberment of the Church, 
through the mystification and the undermining of her basic 
principles. This reformation cannot be comprehended in 
any other way. It has absolutely neither theological nor 
pastoral value. No advantage, if not that of reconciling the 
Catholics and the Protestants. It can legitimately be thought 
that for this reason the Protestants have been invited in the 
Commission for the liturgical reformation, to let the 
reformists know whether they were satisfied or not, if there 
was something they did not like, if they could or not pray 
with the Catholics. 

As we said at the beginning: They wanted, with the 
Council, to reconcile with the Protestants. But it is the 
Catholics that have become Protestants, and the Protestants 
that have become Catholics. 

With this long premise, which, it seems to us, clarify the 
subtle, ambiguous dismantling operation of two thousand 
years of Church, many absurdities are explained which, 
when accidentally uncovered, aroused amazement and 
scandal, like the Mass co-celebrated in Rome, many years 


ago already, between Catholics and Protestants, and 
afterwards, when the fruits of the Council would rapidly 
come to ripeness, meaningful episodes that took place 
under the sun, become clear, and now, between the 
indifference or near indifference of the Catholic masses, 
castrated of any reactive vigor by the intense and shrewd 
“Zusammenarbeit” of Marxists, and Vatican and 
progressive priests, like the fact, for example, of the 
participation of five cardinals and fifteen bishops in the 
“Youth Council” at Taize, in the course of which some 
received the Communion by the Protestants, and others by 
the Catholics. And again, like the declaration of cardinal 
Willbrands, pronounced as envoy of the Holy See at the 
Ecumenical Council of the Churches, in Geneva: “We must 
rehabilitate Luther.” 

The Giovannean Council has upset everything, in its 
subverting passion. Even Christening has been reformed! 
From the ritual formula has been abolished the “Ego te 
confirmo in nomine Patris...” (I confirm you in the name of 
the Father). And if these words are not pronounced, there 
can be no Sacrament. I gathered testimonies of parents, 
who were about to have their children christened. Many 
faithful fear that their children do no have the grace of the 
Christening, as they are doubtful of the validity of the 
Sacrament that nowadays is administered in the churches. 
No one knows whether or not it is a Sacrament anymore. 

Naturally, many young priests look at this Babylonian 
confusion, and “organize” ritual things according to very 
personal interpretations. And so we see churches turned 


into “Communes,” with people sitting on the floor, playing 
guitars and singing, and others dancing around the altar, 
during Mass, holding hands. Curious sermons are heard; 
the new rite of matrimony has become a little act. And 
matrimony, a lucrative industry for the new priests who 
lease out their churches - 

- A wedding every forty-five minutes, and the nuptial 
parties in rowdy wait are called in from the square with 
repeated rings of electric bells. 

The new priests and many old ones, obedient to the 
liturgical reform, from one day to the next changed the 
decor of their churches, replaced the altar with the little 
table, and sold out the ancient decors, to the extent that the 
warehouses of antiques dealers and ragmen are now 
bulging with objects of cult, often artworks, sold for vile 
cash, by avid and ruthless priests. And antique dealers 
sometimes found in the midst of chandeliers, crosses, and 
ostensories, reliquaries still containing the relic of the 
Saint! And that is what happened, in great style, inside the 
Vatican. International antiques dealers bought anything 
they wished, when Paul Vi’s reformist and modernist 
mania cancelled the ancient splendor of the Vatican, 
turning it into a cold and rational ultra-modern complex. So 
much so that the new Audience Hall recalls one of those 
gargantuan stalls that in the East host the congress of the 
Communists parties. Inimitable and exceptionally rare art 
and historical “Pieces” left the Vatican forever. 


This is the “separation” operated by the Council in the 


Church. In its Scheme on “Religious freedom,” the 
contradiction springs into view, with aggressive arrogance. 
In the first part, it is said: 

’’Nothing has changed in Tradition.” And inside the 
Scheme all is contrary to Tradition. It is contrary and 
antithetic with what Gregory XVI, Pius IX, and Leo XIII 
have said. But how can so evident, so complete, so flagrant 
a contradiction be imposed upon an assembly of bishops, 
which is expected to be courageous, impartial, and in 
perfect good faith? Either one agrees with the Religious 
freedom of the Council and goes counter to what those 
Popes have said, or vice versa. There is no third alternative. 
And it is absolutely impossible to be in agreement with 
both. Freedom: Religious freedom; Fraternity: Ecumenism; 
Equality: Collegiality. Are not these precisely the three 
principles of the liberalism coming to us from the 
philosophers of the XVIIIth Century, and developed into 
the French Revolution? These are the ideas that have 
sustained the Council. And the Council fulfilled itself in all 
of its scheduled points, spelling the ruin of the Church. Its 
assault on the ancient Ecclesial structure has unfolded in 
two periods succeeding one another simultaneously, 
uninterruptedly. These two periods have had their two 
Popes. John XXIII, the battering ram that provided the 
collision and the breach, and Paul VI, the executor, in the 
continuation and conclusion of the work. In Montini’s 
tender and undecided hands, the Council has proceeded 
without a guide. Paul Vi’s personality, intellectually far 
from that of his predecessor, characterized by uncertainties 
and fears, ill-concealed rancor, by a genuine exhibitionist 


neurosis, one Sigmund Freud would indicate as 
characteristic of his particular nature, has greatly sustained 
the splintering process of the Church, causing the curdling, 
within the Council, of negative forces characterized by a 
dreadful erosive power. 

Today, years after the conclusion of that Council whose 
consequences continue to play havoc in a Church more and 
more hollow for the crisis of the vocations, many focused 
and impartial observers are beginning to realize how and 
when the Vatican II had been “prefabricated.” Today, these 
observers speak openly of a “conspiracy” of cardinals. 

Four, to be exact, and all from central Europe: the French 
Lienart, the German Frings, the Belgian Suenens, and the 
Bavarian Doepfner. Not by chance these are the names that 
are being connected to the essential turns of the Church, 
from the death of Pius XII onward. Behind them, firm and 
avid of subversion, marches the progressive “wing” of the 
Council, which shortly will be joined by the Italian cardinal 
Lercaro. 

The characteristic of this progressive wing has been that 
of outpacing Pope Roncalli, and later Montini, on the path 
of the radical transformation, in a modernist, sociological, 
para-Marxist sense, of the Catholic Church. Weighing in 
not only upon the decisions of the Pontiff, but even on the 
very Conciliar rulings. The spirit with which these rulings 
have been applied has done the rest. 


Today we witness the occurrence of those collective 
phenomena of Catholic protests, which bring up again, in 


the name of Tradition, the “Laws of the Church” of two 
thousand, sanctioned in over four years of keen, at times 
polemic, often elusive and nearly always conditioned 
debates. Conditioned by the imperative of the number. 
When a s.c. “Parliament of God” is convened, quantity 
prevails upon quality, and these hardly ever coincide. And 
that is how democracy entered the autocratic Church. 
However, as it usually happens in the secular world, the 
“Law of the Number” is born and grows not of autonomous 
force and in the light of day, but in the clefts forbidden to 
the majority, wherein an exiguous minority studies and 
predisposes the thesis on which, later on, it would find the 
consensus thanks to a careful persuasive action. This is, in 
the coarse democratic game, the “pressure groups” tactic. 

And this was the tactic perfected and applied, within the 
Council, by that handful of cardinals who had their hands 
in the dough, up to their elbows, in the election of Roncalli 
and then Montini, and now went all out to ensure that the 
Council, the essential objective of those two predestined 
elections, would produce those traumatic and subversive 
effects of the ancient order that had been previously and 
accurately preordained. It is not yet possible to establish up 
to what point John XXIII realized this “forward departure” 
of the Council, from his forecasts and his plans. Neither 
whether he would be caught off guard by it. Be it as it may, 
his action did not betray the minimum repercussion at that 
explosion of vehemence. Was he in it together with the 
handful of the “assault cardinals”? Knowing his ability, we 
should perhaps not discount this possibility. For the very 
reason that the heated concurrence of the progressive was 


so bold, that whoever had not followed a preordained script 
would have reacted promptly and severely. 

In fact cardinal Lienart, on the morning of the outset of 
the works, rose at the desk of the presidency, and threw 
away the mask. He said, in fact, that all the schemes 
predisposed by the members of the preparatory 
Commission created by John XXIII on 5 June 1960 with 
criteria that we might still define traditional, would be 
rejected “a priori.” In that precise moment the ancient 
balances were shattered. The true face of the Council 
appeared in all its actuality, before the Church, before the 
Catholics, before the world. 

Superimposing his crushing scheme to that predisposed 
by the unaware Pontifical Commissaries in over two years 
of work. And it preempted it in that very sorry “Law of the 
number” which, with careful strategy, had first been 
invoked and then applied in support of the surprise attack. 

Why, the expression has again escaped our pen. How not 
to recognize Roncalli’s tactic? How not to presume, behind 
that astonishing and decisive action, the favorite mode of 
action of the priest from Sotto il Monte? Frankly, we had 
rather believe in another bold scheme of his, than in a 
defiant initiative that would catch off-guard the shrewd 
Pope of the Council. 

Within the general framework of the Council, as we look 
back at it years later, that move was indispensable to push it 
swiftly toward its objectives. This time Roncalli is the 


Pope. That is, he decides who is to act on his behalf. And 
the plunge is taken. In this way the Church is projected 
toward an utterly new and different dimension, antithetic to 
that in which it had remained, if with ups and downs, for 
nearly two thousand years. More than to follow the change 
of the world, as many inexperienced or in bad faith like to 
affirm, - and it is the men, who change the world, for the 
better or for the worse, Lenin said - the Church adapted to 
the archetypal future outlined by the progressive brains, for 
suicidal conviction or calculation, or because ensnared by 
powerful atheist and Marxist forces in the ecclesiastical 
establishment. More than to keep up to date to be closer 
and closer to the men of “our time,” the new “Conciliar 
Church” self-reformed itself in view of an uncertain and 
hazy future, subject to unpredictable changes that would 
render, perhaps within a generation, all of the adopted 
innovations lapsed and useless. 

The Council proclaimed the advent of the Church of the 
“poor,” and hurled itself at the “institutional” Church. 

The Catholics were getting used to hearing about a novel 
Jesus. A politically committed Christ, a “zealot” Christ who 
pursued the overthrow of Roman imperialism in Galilee, a 
Christ, that is, “tribune-of-the-people” who was being 
associated with heated passion with a Che Guevara. I recall 
my amazed disappointment in seeing priests from every 
station rushing to align themselves with the Conciliar 
course. Unsuspected, at times. 


Obviously, the Italian television did not let the juicy 


opportunity go by. And more than once, in such Easter 
broadcasts as, for example, “Waiting for Christ,” I had to 
hear with my own ears, as a television reporter, at that time, 
of the Religious Broadcasts, dissertations on the “political” 
nature of Jesus held by priests, as the Jesuit father Tucci, 
former director of “Civilta Cattolica” magazine, who, 
fearing the label of reactionary, had rushed to accept the 
well-paid invitation, to speak their condescending word on 
the subject. And with these priests argued affably 
sociologists and historians who attributed the paternity of 
the Christ to a forward Roman centurion ! These were, 
among others, the results of the Council. The systematic 
desecration of religion by the hand of its most eminent 
ministers. 

In only four years the Vatican II Ecumenical Council 
reached and easily surpassed its three fundamental 
objectives: the Liturgical reform in the Protestant sense, the 
dialogue with the representatives of Dialectic and 
Historical Materialism, and the yielding on Religious 
freedom in a Masonic key. 

With meditated impartiality, we must give Angelo 
Giuseppe Roncalli credit for his “technically” flawless job. 
The liquidation in less than five years of two thousand 
years of history. What is puzzling, is the guilty blind 
acceptance with which most of the clergy has suffered, 
when not an active participant, the action of John XXIII 
first, and Paul Vi’s afterwards, in the liquidation of the 
ancient structure of the Church. 


I know personally that many bishops were and are against 
it. All these gentlemen, who hold at heart the fate of the 
Church, shared with their close relations their dissent for 
the action of the Council. Inconceivably, however, none of 
them has voiced their concern, taking a stand. They have 
hidden behind the all too easy alibi of obedience. But what 
obedience? when the very Council which they, with their 
guilty silence sustained, dismantled the import of that vain 
term, hitting and annihilating, day after day, hierarchy and 
authority, in the name of a “collegiality” elevated to 
system? They feared and do fear the loss of their status and 
their prebends, and thus tighten their lips and ignore that 
two thousand years of Church are crying out their treason. 
One would holler in the livid faces of these pusillanimous 
or opportunist parades, the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, 
clear and resounding as trumpet’s blares: “Ilia virtus dicitur 
naturaliter prior quam obedientia, UT PATET DE FIDE” 
[(If there be any virtue, whose object is prior to the precept) 
That virtue is said to be naturally prior to obedience. AS IS 
EVIDENT CONCERNING FAITH.] (Summa Theologica 
11-11 question 104 art. 3); “Quandoque praecepta 
praelatorum sunt contra Deum. Ergo non in omnibus, 
praelatis est obediendum” [Whenever the commands of 
prelates are against God. Therefore not in all things must 
prelates be obeyed.] (11-11 question 104 art. 5) and 
“Praelati sunt imitandi non omnibus, sed in his, quae 
sunt secundum regulam Christi” [Prelates are not to be 
copied in all matters. But in these which are according to 
the prescription of Christ.] (Comment on the Epistle of St. 
Paul 2 to the Tess. 3,14). 

But they preferred the comfortable “unexceptionable” 


obedience, which is a flagrant disobedience to their duty of 
priests, of spreading and defending the Faith. And they did, 
and do, keep silent. . . . The Conciliar reforms have 
contributed to demolish the Church, to ruin priesthood, to 
destroy the sacrifice and the sacraments, to wipe out 
religious life, to spread Naturalistic and Teilhardian 
teachings in the universities, in the seminars, in the 
catechesis, teachings derived from Liberalism and 
Protestantism, so many times condemned by the Supreme 
Magisterium of the Church. 

Roncalli knew Montini in depth. He knew the push 
imparted to the Church on the slope of ruin would not be 
arrested, or diverted, or checked by the invertebrate hands 
of the monsignor nicknamed in the Vatican the “cat” and 
the “Hamlet.” He handed him a Church transfigured by the 
Council, reduced to a sort of chilling “Ecce Homo” as ever 
mind of faithful could envision. The Council, which not 
only carefully avoided the condemnation of Marxist 
materialism, but also became its authoritative guarantor, 
opened the Church to the atheist world. Which swarmed 
through her bi-millennial structures, infecting them with 
desecration. After the Council, the Catholic religion had 
split in two. On one side, the “familiar religion,” on the 
other, the “universal religion,” brand new, in secular habit. 
And now, the “official” religion. 

With the “revolutionary brotherhood,” the arms are now 
wide open to all, the good and the bad. Religious freedom 
has opened the way to the freedom of thought and to the 
freedom of morals. The “adulterous” marriage between the 


men of the Church and the men of the “revolution” has 
begotten bastard fruits. All is equivocal. As we have seen, 
the Protestants are now free to celebrate the new Mass, and 
Catechism has been affected. The caving in to Marxism has 
swept away all the ancient resistances, and the 
revolutionary ideas exploded like suns of blood, in the sky 
of the world. To the crisis of the Church, which is 
“monarchic,” and “hierarchic,” corresponds the ruin of the 
civil society. The representatives of the new Vatican, they 

themselves, you see? have confessed that “ It is 

impossible, today, to have a Catholic State,” and that “The 
social regality of Jesus Christ has lost every significance.” 

One year after the end of the Council, the faith of a great 
number of Catholics was so shaken that cardinal 
Ottaviani felt it opportune to poll bishops and general 
superiors of Orders and Congregations worldwide, on the 
hazards incurred by certain fundamental truths of the faith. 

The evil dwells mainly in a literature that sows confusion 
in the spirits with ambiguous descriptions, but under which 
a new religion is discovered. The present evil. . . manifests 
itself, currently, with an extreme confusion of ideas, with 
the disintegration of the institutions of the Church, religious 
institutions, seminaries, Catholic schools, of all that has 
represented the permanent support of the Church, but is no 
other than the logical continuation of the heresies and of the 
errors that have been undermining the Church for some 
centuries, especially in consequence of the Liberalism of 
the past century, which attempted at any cost to reconcile 
the Church and the ideas that developed into the 


Revolution. 


The Church has progressed insofar as it opposed such 
ideas, which go counter to the sound philosophy and 
theology; on the contrary, each compromise with these 
subversive ideas has determined an alignment of the 
Church to the common right, and the risk of enslaving it to 
the civil societies. Every time, moreover, that some groups 
of Catholics have been attracted by these myths, the Popes, 
courageously, have recalled them to order, enlightened 
them, and, when necessary, chastised them. 

It would be denying the evidence, closing one’s eyes, not 
to affirm courageously that the Council has allowed those 
who profess the errors and the tendencies condemned by 
the Popes, legitimately to believe that their doctrines are by 
now approved. . . That as general rule, when the Council has 
made some innovations, it has shaken the certainty of the 
truths taught by the authentic Magisterium of the Church, 
as definitely belonging to the treasure of Tradition. 

It is about the transmission of the jurisdiction of the 
bishops, of the two sources of the Revelation, of the 
scriptural inspiration, of the necessity of Grace for 
justification, of the necessity of Catholic baptism, of the 
life of Grace amongst the heretic, the schismatic, and the 
pagan, of the ends of marriage, of religious freedom, of the 
ultimate ends, etc. On these fundamental points, the 
traditional doctrine was clear and taught unanimously in the 
Catholic universities. Now, many texts of the Council 
promote doubt in the life of the Church. 


The doubts on the necessity of the Church and of the 
sacraments cause the disappearance of the priestly 
vocations. 

The doubts on the necessity and nature of “conversion” of 
all the souls cause the disappearance of religious vocations, 
the ruin of traditional spirituality in the novitiate, and the 
uselessness of the missions. 

The doubts on the legitimacy of the authority and the 
need for obedience caused by the exaltation of the human 
dignity, of the autonomy of conscience, of freedom, shake 
every society, beginning with the Church, the religious 
societies, the dioceses, the civil society, the family. 

Pride has, as a logical consequence, all the lusts of the 
eyes and of the flesh. It is perhaps one of the most ominous 
observations of our age that of the moral decadence 
reached by most of the Catholic publications. They talk 
with no restraint of sexuality, of birth control by any 
means, of the legitimacy of divorce, of mixed education, of 
flirting, of dancing, as necessary means of Christian 
education, of the celibacy of the priests, etc. 

The doubts on the necessity of Grace for salvation cause 
the loss of respect of the postponed baptism, the 
abandonment of the sacrament of Penance. It is on the other 
hand, most of all, about an approach of the priests, and not 
of the faithful. The same applies to the Real Presence: it is 
the priests that act as if they no longer believe, hiding the 
Holy Reserve, suppressing every sign of respect toward the 


Holy Sacrament and all the ceremonies in its honor. 


The doubts upon the necessity of the Church, sole source 
of salvation, upon the Catholic Church sole true Religion, 
stemming from the statements on Eucumenism and 
Religious Freedom, destroy the authority of the 
Magisterium of the Church. 

Rome, in fact, is no longer “Magistra Veritatis,” sole and 
necessary. 

We cannot but conclude that the Council has 
inconceivably favored diffusion of the Liberal errors. Faith, 
morals, and ecclesiastical discipline are shaken in their 
foundations, according to the predictions of all the Popes. 

The demise of the Church advances swiftly. For 
conceding an exaggerated authority to the Episcopal 
conferences, the Supreme Pontiff had become impotent.” 

Concluding these pages dedicated to the Vatican II, I now 
line up as soldiers, the words that Gregory XVI wrote in his 
encyclical: “Mirari vos”: “... For, to use the words of the 
Fathers of the Council of Trent, it is certain that the Church 
was instituted by Jesus Christ and his apostles, and that the 
Holy Spirit with his daily assistance never neglects to teach 
her every Truth, ‘it is the apex of absurdity and insult’ 
toward the Church to maintain that a restoration and a 
regeneration have become necessary toward ensuring her 
existence and her progress.” 


CHAPTER XII 


The quiet and severe times of Pius XII seemed in the 
Vatican so far removed as to appear almost unreal. At the 
explosion of the Council, the Vatican and Rome turned into 
an immense hotel of bishops and minor prelates pursued by 
a press avid of sensational news. In the morning, under the 
disconcerted baroque vaults caressed for centuries by the 
scent of the incense and by the powerful chords of the 
organ of St. Peter’s, fluttered desecrating and revolutionary 
words. Which ended up, as succulent preys, in the whistling 
rotary presses of the broadsheets, and in those fierce reports 
and comments on the works of the Council, intoxicated 
with renewal and progressivism, dunked their bitter 
doughnut the enemy of tradition and the advocates of the 
new times. And at night, those bishops who in the morning 
had mauled the compactness of the Church and of her 
hierarchy plunged their ravenous fangs into the most 
delicious dishes that the kitchen of the best Roman 
restaurants could feature for their excellencies. And those 
gold crosses, now sideways on those fat, panting pectorals, 
under those wine-red, cigar-stunk large faces, cried out for 
vengeance before God. 

A renowned beer hall near the Piazza di Spagna, had a 
room reserved on the upper floor for a pleasure- seeking 
party of bishops from northern Europe. Their excellencies 
were not in the least concerned to attract attention, and 
hollered and sang together with their drunken voices, and 
the stench of their cigars issued from their hall and flooded 


the whole restaurant, causing the ladies to turn up their 
noses. I called often on that place, and every night I saw the 
reverend bishops keeping the wee hours, drinking and 
feasting. And once, one of them, corpulent as a fattened 
turkey, drank himself unconscious. I remember the 
embarrassment of the owner and the subdued jests of the 
waiters, as that big man in clericals was carried outside, 
with the Episcopal cross hanging down, and hoisted into a 
taxi, as a sack, to be driven back to his hotel. 

In their conversation one could always hear a “John said 
this; John said that,” John being the Pope, the Pope of the 
dialogue, of renewal, of the new times. They felt, that is, 
the protagonists of the great turn of the Church. And for 
that turn the great majority of them had been carefully 
prepared, many years before the historical event of the 
Council, by their cardinals, who would then shine in Rome 
for their radically progressive ideas. 

These “assault” bishops educated to assembly “stunts,” 
according to the most orthodox concepts of Marxist 
technique, stunned those unaware bishops, candid of 
ancient honesty, when at ballots that were crucial for the 
ditching of some of the pivotal principles of tradition in the 
structure of the Church, the Modernists rose in unison, 
stirred confusion, stalled with elaborated quibbles the 
course of the Council and the interventions of the 
conservatives, until their points would be approved. What 
with the helpless disdain and the indignation of those 
independent bishops who freely expressed their mind, and 
were in total disagreement with them. It was in those 


assembly struggles, when the systems preached by Lenin 
upset - incredible! - the centuries-old ecclesial traditions, 
that the line of bishop Lefebvre [who signed most of the 
obnoxious conciliar documents] became apparent, as 
expressed in the will to resist with every means that 
colossal conspiracy that would subvert, in a few years, the 
very essence of the Church. In those months I was well 
posted on the progress of the Council. I was informed from 
time to time by cardinal Tedeschini, who was soon to pass 
away and was thus spared the pain of seeing that fine thing 
that was to be the post-Conciliar and Montinian Church, 
and by the indomitable cardinal Tisserant. On a level of 
more immediate confidences, I would hear the precious 
revelations of a holy priest, monsignor Luigi Faveri, bishop 
of Tivoli, a hunter, Marxist-eater, and old friend. 

I liked in that bishop the bold lucidity of his ideas. Once 
at city hall, during an official commemoration of Giuseppe 
Garibaldi, the communist mayor did not miss the occasion 
to turn the ritual speech into a pro-Marxist propagandistic 
production. And monsignor Faveri, attending in mozzetta 
and gold cross amidst the authorities, sprang to his feet and 
left, leaving the assembly in dismay. There were lengthy 
after-effects to that standing up, but from that moment 
everyone, friend and foe, treated that bishop with greater 
attention and awed reverence. He was often my guest at 
dinner. 

This most excellent guest would begin to talk to me 
about the Council. The many confidential reports of my 
bishop, good country neighbor who shot straight at the 


woodcocks between a breviary and the other, left me 
breathless. The Church was running on the wrong path and 
the world, stupidly unaware or perfidiously in bad faith, ran 
along. Toward the abyss. A far-reaching organization, 
explained the bishop, was preparing the Conciliar fathers 
ahead of the decisive days. There existed in the Vatican a 
restricted and secret staff very close to the Pope, which 
suggested to the progressive bishops, from time to time, the 
strategy to be followed to defeat the resistance of the 
traditionalists. Right in those early sessions of the great 
Conciliar assembly, the various conflicting blocks began to 
take shape, and it did not escape the keenest observers the 
reality that some cardinals and many bishops, before 
boarding their train or airplane to Rome, had concerted an 
action to impose upon the works of the Council, in 
agreement with, if not downright inspired by, circles which 
had nothing to do with the Council, when not offshoots of 
the non-Catholic world, or altogether hostile to 
Catholicism. However, it was symptomatic that those 
programs by the accentuated progressive and revolutionary 
spin had all an equal, common objective: the demise of 
tradition in the Church. So as it had been contrived by 
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the Council had to serve the 
revolutionary forces pressing beneath the ecclesial surface, 
continuously stirred and urged by covert propelling centers, 
yet perfectly functioning already in the latter years of Pius 
XII’s pontificate, to spring out, now, into the light of day, 
and shake off the century-old hierarchical structure of the 
Church that for two thousand years had guaranteed the 
Church her survival. 


CHAPTER XIII 

I believe it essential to recall in this chapter, some aspects 
of the “resistance” of a certain Vatican circle to the 
Giovannean progressivism. This opposition grouped about 
its banner a maniple of first-rate men. A handful of brave 
who did not share the new directions of the Giovannean 
policy, whose disastrous and irreversible outcomes they 
forecasted, and felt compelled to act, within their sphere, to 
attempt to prop up the ancient gate of the citadel, exposed 
to the blows of the battering ram of the “new course.” They 
were, naturally, sporadic attempts, and disproportioned to 
the hopelessness of the disaster befalling the Church and 
the Italian and Western politics at large. It was as if 
attempting to stop an armoured division with a slingshot. 
They were inadequate attempts. But they did take place, 
and they would make History. Just like, although hopeless, 
would make History the Hungarian rocks against the Soviet 
“T34” in the streets of Budapest lit up by the insurrection. 

A banner of the opposition to the Giovannean 
progressivism flew for a few years, and was a glorious 
“Little column” pierced by the raging shooting of the 
enemy, right in the editorial office of “L' Osservatore 
Romano,” hoisted precisely on the ancient nineteenth 
century desk, behind which thought and worked Andrea 
Lazzarini, viscount of Formigine, who was my mentor and 
to whom I was bound by a sincere friendship. 

Andrea Lazzarini, chief-editor of the newspaper’ s cultural 
page, for years the most celebrated “third-page,” they said, 


in the whole world. He was, with the director of the time, 
count Giuseppe Dalla Torre of Sanguineto, a personage 
who will forever remain bound to the history of the golden 
years of the Vatican newspaper, even though the dusk that 
was awaiting him never did match the heights of his earlier 
days. 

Our personage, remarkably learned and a valiant 
archaeologist, came from an aristocratic Orvietan family, 
which at the time of Napoleon paid its devotion to the Pope 
at the price of disastrous confiscations and persecutions. In 
his youth he had been Pius XI’s right-hand, and, later on, a 
man of Count Dalla Torre’s, who wanted him with him in 
the editorial office of “L'Osservatore Romano.” 

Pallid, short, with a large Etruscan nose dominating a 
thick hedge of neglected gray- speckled mustache that 
covered his upper lip, perennially in gray and with a blue 
gem on his right hand little finger, Lazzarini brought with 
him, on the whole, something of outmoded and 
melancholy, so much so that the colleagues had nicknamed 
him the “pallid king.” 

The fact that he had been brought up, as the saying is, in 
the sleeve of the legendary count Dalla Torre, placed the 
“pallid king” in a privileged position within the editorial 
office, one that afforded him freedom of action and the 
precious function of director’ s personal counselor. 


The office of this character opened onto the corridor of 
the editorial office, and was the third on the left, after count 


Dalla Torre’s and vice-director Federico Alessandrini’s. 

Yet although separated but by a thin wall from the 
management’s room, the “den” of the “pallid king” seemed 
far removed from the rest of the world, and animated by a 
life of its own that new no business hours, nor routines. 

In that room arrived and departed, in the course of the 
week, the best names of “off stream” literature and 
journalism of the time. These were men of great value and 
courageous coherence, holder of pens as sharp as blades. 
Ideas, news, and initiatives, came together on the wood- 
wormed nineteenth century desk of the “pallid king,” who 
consulted, confronted positions, expressed opinions, traced 
lines of action, suggested columns shrewdly constructed to 
put a spoke in the wheels of the new Vatican course and the 
rising “aperturista” policy of the Italian nation. 

The “pallid king” wrote his pieces filling sheet over sheet 
with a Medieval-monk neat handwriting, holding his gray 
Mont Blanc in the old fashion, between his medium and 
index fingers. And I will always remember the 
concentration of that suggestive face, on whose forehead, 
between the focused eyes, there formed and persisted a 
vertical furrow, the visible sign of creative thinking stirring 
behind the frowned eyebrows. And the decisive act of the 
pagination of “his” third page, on his feet, with the old 
measuring rope around his neck and the red-blue pencil in 
his right hand aligning the articles, as assault units, on the 
white sheet to be rushed to the head typographer in wait. 


An archaic electric little stove would boost in winter the 


heating of his room, to dry up his wet galosch, and in frosty 
days he wore a woolen beret, and would light up - he who 
did not smoke - a cigarette, to have between his fingers and 
beneath his mustache a little source of heat by the azure, 
scented volutes. 

Almost daily, from nine to two p.m. (“L'Osservatore 
Romano” goes to press in the early hour of the afternoon to 
be distributed to the newsstands in the evening) the door of 
the third room on the left of the long corridor of the 
editorial office would be shut, and voices could be heard 
talking animatedly, overlapping, and, at times, the 
unmistakable voice of the holder of that room, in a slight 
falsetto, raise above the others with composed authority. 

For an old custom of the editorial office, at noon sharp (the 
signal came from the cannon blast on the near-by Gianicolo 
hill) an ecclesiastical editor of the newspaper, usually a 
Tuscan clergyman, the “Paulin” father Don Carlo Gasbarri, 
stepped out of his room, and, strongly clapping his hands, 
would summon out of their door the whole staff of the 
newspaper, from director to last usher, to recite aloud the 
“Angelus” all together. Of course, if the “pallid king” were 
in a meeting with his collaborators in his room, he would 
not stick his nose out the door, and the hollering in that 
room, which sometimes pitched into heated polemic, 
disturbed the dull psalmody of the editorial office gathered, 
bowed heads and joined hands, in the corridor. 

No one ever contested to the chief editor of the third 
page his not so orthodox and vaguely provoking 
comportment. Count Dalla Torre, the only one that 


commanded deference of the “pallid king,” gladly forgave 
him that eccentricity, which rather caused him to smile. 

As we have said, upon the worn out top of the old desk of 
the “pallid king,” laid their hands and their papers, 
slammed their fists in earnest, emptied their hearts of all 
their frustrations and of all their hopes, the brightest 
exponents of anti-progressivism of the time. Some of these 
writers had fled the Iron curtain, hiding behind legendary 
pseudonyms, to avoid retribution toward their families back 
home and toward their battle, in the West, for the cause of 
freedom. Most were, of course, Italian and Roman. Among 
these roared Fabrizio Sarazani, one of the few 
acquaintances of mine that did not give in to the new times, 
as, instead, most of the others would do in the years that 
followed. And in that group I had my little space, as a 
novice journalist and Count of Formigine’s favorite. I was 
at his side for many years, and much loved him, until even 
my mentor was swallowed up in the decline of the new 
times. 

So the position of the Vatican newspaper’s third page of 
those years, was constantly critical and in contrast with the 
increasingly leftist direction of Italian politics. So much so 
that the editorial production of that handful of indomitable 
rebels began to be followed with attention, concern, and 
evident irritation, by the Vatican progressive groups and by 
Italian politicians fully committed to their program of 
“overture to the left.” 


But the ability of the “pallid king” managed to steer the 


feared gunboat of the third page, unscathed, through all the 
boulders and obstacles that with deceptive and priestly 
duplicity the partisans of the new course were industriously 
disseminating upon its route. 

But the times and the conscience of the men were swiftly 
changing. The Ecumenical Council had opened the arms of 
the Catholics to the embrace with the Marxists, the aged 
Count Dalla Torre had to relinquish the baton of command 
at “L'Osservatore Romano” to a new director, Raimondo 
Manzini, of a different mould from the old Venetian lion’s, 
and about the new director had sprung up, like mushrooms 
after the early October rains, little men, obedient 
instruments in the hands of the new progressive power. Life 
for the Resistance to the new course became difficult, if not 
downright impossible. And, as it usually happens in these 
cases, the “resistant” of “L'Osservatore Romano” closed 
their ranks, with more fervent steadfastness, around their 
animator, the brave flag-bearer of the third page. But their 
battle must now be carried forward with extreme caution, 
and, as the moment suggested, with audacity and swiftness. 
A sort of inflexible censorship clipped the claws of those 
polemic writings, thus draining of its more effectual 
contents that open struggle, conducted through red-hot 
“commentaries” or deadly pieces “back-to-back “ by the 
unyielding “pallid king.” 

By degrees, in this way, the open-field war had to make 
way for guerrilla warfare. The little big man with the 
mustached nose, who, as editorial office secretary, held the 
key to the office, began to gather his collaborators in the 


late afternoon, after business hours, and well into the night. 
While ensuring the maximum privacy, those evening 
gatherings in the heart of the Vatican soon took on the 
feature of secret meetings among conspirators. Even black 
habits began to rustle and disappear behind the door of the 
“pallid king,” in those nights of subdued consultations in 
the editorial office plunged into darkness, where only a thin 
thread of light filtered through the door of the director of 
the third page. They were Jesuits opposed to the new 
course and to ecumenism, who had placed their sagacity 
and their ancient intelligence under the fluttering banner of 
the “pallid king.” Those stealthy confabs gave way to 
dozens of initiatives that, as darts issuing from a most 
accurate bow, painfully pierced the flanks of progressivism, 
slowing down its race toward the seizure of power. 

It dates back to those days the fusion of some Jesuits 
“resistant” from the Vatican radio, coordinated by a 
diabolical follower of St. Ignacio of Loyola, Father Farusi, 
with the maniple of men operating around the “pallid king.” 
These valorous disciples of the Company of Jesus used 
their broadcasts to convey skillfully ciphered messages to 
those priests operating covertly beyond the “Iron curtain.” 

It was especially the newcasts in the various Eastern 
languages that conveyed news, information, and warnings 
through the ether, camouflaged behind a conventional 
alphabet that was continuously changed. They flew out of 
the famous tower of the Vatican Radio, crossing 
simultaneously half of Europe, soaring past those borders 
bristling with barbed wire and machine guns fettering in 
their girdle of iron and fire the untouched possessions of 


the red star, to reach the clandestine, and croak up their 
crude receiving radios. 

In that period, I recorded at the Vatican Radio some 
conversations of mine on cultural-historical issues, and on 
one of my visits to the broadcasting station, I could observe 
the ability of those Jesuits using that powerful unsuspected 
media to carry on their struggle in defense of the Church 
and of the faith in the Sovietized territories of the East. 

One Friday, July 14, 1961, at 11:30, 1 was in fact at the 
Vatican Radio, and, as I finished the registration, I lingered 
about the studios to greet father Pellegrino, the Pugliese 
clergy who then directed a section of the broadcasting 
station. So, through the crystals of a recording cabin, I 
recognized and watched one of those Jesuits I had met at 
the “pallid king’s,” as in extreme concentration and 
tranquility carried out his duty of “clandestine informer.” 
From what I could learn, one of the cipher systems 
consisted in placing at the beginning of pre-established 
lines, the words composing the secret message, spaced out 
by a certain number of lines including a certain number of 
words. The recipients of the message extracted from the 
text transcribed in shorthand and in accordance with the 
given pagination, the convened words, which, pieced back 
together, constructed the message, obviously ciphered. Out 
of every six or seven typed-sheet-transmission, the 
conventional messages scarcely occupied one, one sheet 
and a half. I realized, at the time, how precious a secret 
agent working with a national radio could be. 


Indeed, the anti-progressive “resistance” in the Vatican 
radio survived for years. And, although silenced at times, it 
was never tracked down and blown off the waves, as 
evidenced in the clamorous episode that took place far after 
the facts of our narration. In October 1963, the Italian 
government was in a dire situation. On October 22, the 
Italian Communist party published a document denouncing 
the contradictions of the old Center-left majority, and 
invited the socialists to resist the attempt of the Christian 
democrats to impose a policy barred to whatever change. 
The socialists were not to give in to the Christian 
democrats’ tactic, but were to “reinforce the united action 
of the working classes.” The sense was clear: the Leone 
government was about to fall, and the communists wanted 
to deprive the Christian democrats of the support of the 
socialists. The Italian Episcopal Conference directed by the 
anti-progressive cardinal Siri had already prepared a 
statement by the bishops that was a very violent attack on 
communism, on all forms of Marxism, on any collaboration 
with Marxist or Socialist forces. Paul VI fought at length 
with the adamant Siri in order to tone down the document. 
On October 23, the Italian president Segni paid a visit to 
the Pope, and immediately after saw government premier 
Leone at the Quirinale. The ministerial crisis was 
hammered out. As the Italian bishops published a modified 
version of the document on communism, the Azione 
Cattolica would make itself available to the Christian 
Democrat party in the confused period that would ensue 
upon the resignation of the government. But on October 31, 
the Italian bishops published their letter to the Italian 
people on Marxism, as it had been conceived. Presently, the 


text of a document to be aired through the Vatican radio 
was prepared under the guidance of Paul VI: “only” the 
general principles of the social and political conduct 
according to Christian ethics and theology were illustrated 
in the document. But the comment was never aired. 

Another “political” text, reflecting the traditionalist and 
anti-Marxist ideas of Cardinal Siri and Ottaviani and of the 
conservative group, was instead taken to the offices of the 
Vatican radio and handed over to an “emissary,” who 
immediately aired it to the Italian people and to the world 
before anybody could prevent it. 

The inquiry ordered by Pope Montini came up with 
nothing. What vexed Paul VI even more was the 
observation that certain passages of the original draft of the 
famous letter, which he had judged inappropriate or 
altogether rash, rather than being corrected or canceled, as 
he had ordered, had been included in the final draft. 

’’L'Osservatore Romano”, by now the instrument of the 
new course, commenting on the letter on November 2 tried 
to play it down, but some dailies such as the Catholic pro- 
Marxist “L'Avvenire d'ltalia” of Bologna, abiding the will 
of Paul VI and cardinal Bea, criticized as “factious” the 
interpretation of the letter by the Vatican Radio. 

These Jesuits managed to lend incalculable services to the 
Church of Silence, especially at the time when the 
Secretary of State was held by the anti-progressive Cardinal 
Domenico Tardini. Consigned to History is his poignant 
commemoration of Pius XII, held in the presence of Pope 


Roncalli in an Aula delle Benedizioni filled with guests, on 
the morning of October 20, 1959. It was almost his moral 
testament. His permanence as the Secretary of State made it 
easier to the “resistant” to capture news of crucial 
importance regarding the implementation of John XXIII’ s 
earliest decisions, in the program of that opening to 
communism that was to bring about, as an immediate 
consequence, the bitter and bloody betrayal on the part of 
Rome of the Church of Silence, relinquished into the hands 
of the godless. 

Nowhere in the world the premature passing of that 
cardinal was mourned as long as amongst the Catholics of 
Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. 

One of these exponents of the “Resistance” blossomed in 
the garden of the Company of Jesus, friend and apologist of 
the “pallid king,” was in constant contact with some 
prelates in charge of the “spiritual care” of the Quirinale. 
These two or three monsignors, continually besieged by 
senators and representatives avid of Vatican honors, found 
themselves in the happy condition of being able to barter 
St. Sylvester and St. Gregory Magnus’ crosses and plaques, 
with precious confidences, whispered by presumptuous 
political figures, glistening with metal junk of all size and 
colors, at official receptions, between a Martini and 
another, and a mouthful and another of caviar canape. 
Obviously, the Italian politicians of the two major parties, 
Communist and Christian Democrat, in those years were 
already aligned to the new Vatican policy of Dialogue and 
Ecumenism. The communists, because, for the first time in 


Italy, the Church placed itself unexpectedly at the service 
of Karl Marx. The Christian democrats, because, tied hands 
and feet to the Vatican directions, in order to hold on to 
power, had rushed to occupy those spaces that the 
revolutionary Giovannean policy had left half-open for the 
left. To the extent that Amintore Fanfani, strongly inspired 
by monsignor Loris Capovilla, had been encharged with 
developing the program of the “overture to the left,” tying 
indissolubly his name to the realization of that irreversible 
“Center- left” that would be sadly fatal to Italy’s health. 

In this way, the Vatican Resistance thus projected itself, 
at times, into Italian things, causing here and there some 
considerable damage in the realization of the programs of 
the new Roman politics orchestrated by the Apostolic 
Palace. Some communication “channels” were created with 
Italian personalities opposed to the “overture to the left” 
and to the dialogue with the communists. Personalities well 
selected by the soldiers of St. Ignacio of Loyola, for their 
possible impact upon the opposition to the new progressive 
course that was asserting itself on either bank of the old, 
impassive Tiber. 

Yet all of the action was focused on the assistance to 
those clergymen and Catholic figures from the East 
committed to maintaining the contacts with those lofty 
exponents of the Church who did not share Pope Roncalli’s 
embrace to the Marxists, on assuring their covert return into 
the territories of the Church of Silence, on slipping news 
and sometimes instructions into those countries, and in 
obstructing with an intelligent and relentless action the 


Italian programs of the opening to the left. 

From time to time we gathered in the house of some 
eminent cardinal, to make the point of the situation. The 
apartment of cardinal Tedeschini, in the Via della Dateria, 
was one of these reference and meeting points. We used to 
arrive a few at a time, at dusk, and we sat about the 
monumental chair that accommodated the transparent 
majesty of that prince of the Church. 

The most unlikely characters, bound to one another by 
the same credo, often joined us. I recall some Latin 
American diplomats by the Holy See, the chaplain of the 
Quirinale, monsignor Poletti, the Christian democrat 
Angelilli, the chief-editor of “L'Osservatore Romano,” 
Mario Cinelli, a most worthy journalist of the Catholic 
newspaper “II Quotidiano,” Lamberto De Camillis, my 
mate of the Sword and the Cape at the Pontifical Court. 

In the stillness of the Roman night, barely pierced by the 
subdued roar of the near-by Trevi Fountain that sometimes, 
brought by the breeze, filtered through the brocade curtains 
of the cardinal’s study, our voices seemed unreal and our 
concern for the events, keen and unswerving, had the tones 
of a restrained drama. I shall always remember those long 
nights with emotion. The cardinal would dismiss 
Domenico, his household attendant, who would retire to his 
room, and we stood about the grand old man, for a long 
time, to listen and to be listened to. In those months the 
“resistant” met, sometimes at the Vatican, with another 
“iron cardinal,” Cardinal Ottaviani, venerable and almost 


blind yet lucid and eager, one of the last strongholds of 
tradition and anti-progressivism. 

The most eminent was a column of the mythical Holy 
Office, whose secretariat he held for many years. What was 
the Holy Office, the inaccessible Congregation dissolved 
some years later by Paul VI? The constitution of the Roman 
Church, the s.c. Canon Law provided that the Supreme 
Congregation of the Holy Office had a worldwide 
jurisdiction in the matter of faith and morals. But since 
faith and morals are part of every human action, the Holy 
Office exercised an actual control over the jurisdiction of 
the other congregations, could interfere, block or annul 
decisions, that is, decide. Its activity was highly secret. Its 
control extended over the five most powerful 
congregations: the Consistory, in charge of the appointment 
of the bishops and the management of the dioceses; the 
Congregation for Extraordinary Affairs, in charge of all the 
matters relating to the political-religious situation of the 
Church and of its members; the Congregation of the 
Council, in charge of the discipline of secular priests and 
laity; the Congregation of Seminaries and Universities, in 
charge of religious education, priest education, 
development of ecclesiastical studies, etc.; and the 
Secretary of State. The chairs of each of these 
congregations were in fact members of the Holy Office. As 
a consequence, no decision regarding bishops and dioceses, 
relations between the Holy See and foreign states, behavior 
of ordinary clergy or laity, educational programs of the 
Church, could be taken without the consent and the 
approval of the Holy Office. 


With its open Roman accent - his father had been a baker 
in the central Trastevere district - cardinal Ottaviani 
gathered around him another handful of exponents of the 
anti-Conciliar resistance. A most authoritative man and 
endowed with an inflexible will, he incited his followers to 
fight and give everything in their power to thwart the 
opening to the left and the dialogue with the Marxists. He 
used to beat his fist on the table, when he got carried away, 
and the meek features of his face would suddenly harden, 
and a flush invade his forehead and his cheeks. There 
called frequently on his place a clergyman from Palestrina. 
He was a favorite of the cardinal, and, as I wrote in another 
chapter, a dear friend of mine, Don Enrico Pompilio, 
chaplain of the IV Brigade of the Carabinieri stationed in 
Rome. He had been on the Russian and Northern African 
fronts, and was also a “resistant” of the new course. He had 
experienced “live” communism, and would not hear of 
pulling down his pants before ecumenism, overture, or 
dialogue with the Marxists. He always told me that the then 
Rome’s Vicar, cardinal Traglia, had once told him loud and 
clear, “Don Enrico, today the Devil installed himself in the 
Vatican!” He was idolized by his soldiers, and when later 
the Christian democrats secretly allied themselves with the 
reds, and Italy became a country actually co-run with the 
communists, when his carabinieri took to the streets for 
public order during strikes and uproars, in spite of some 
fearful superior, aligned, for opportunism or career, with 
government complacency, don Enrico inflamed them with 
hated harangues, exhorting them to action and to respond 
with violence to violence. 


This coarse priest who at official ceremonies carried 
around on his habit a fine array of medals for gallantry, for 
many years was the “watch-dog” of the new generations of 
military chaplains. And as long as the Ordinary for Italy 
was the ex- Alpine and anti-ecumenical bishop, monsignor 
Arrigo Pintonello - who years later would lose his 
epaulettes for his anti-Marxist credo, and for treading on 
Giulio Andreotti’s feet, then minister of defense and 
already a Moscow favorite - the military chaplains 
continued to celebrate field Masses before the drawn up 
troops presenting the arms to the Lord, while today’s 
unkempt and hippie soldiers attend to the rite lying on the 
ground and playing guitar, out of respect for the new 
liturgy wanted by the Council. 


CHAPTER XIV 


Toward the close of John XXIII’ s pontificate, the 
resistant of “L'Osservatore Romano” were contacted, with 
extreme caution, by a small group of Christian democrat 
dissidents who at that moment were struggling with all 
their forces against the Fanfanian Center-left government, 
and against the opening to the Communist party. That wee 
group of “disobedients” was led by a congressman from the 
Trentino region, Flaminio Piccoli, who had set up an 
association of Catholic journalists, the U.C.S.I. (Unione 
cattolica stampa italiana; or Catholic Union of the Italian 
Press), and kept in touch with the Vatican, chiefly with 
“L'Osservatore Romano,” through the secretary of the 
director of this newspaper, Gianfranco Barberini. 

The latter readily agreed to act as a go-between between 
the Trentino’ s representative and the Vatican resistant led 
by the “pallid king.” From that moment, the genial 
initiatives of the little man with the big gray- speckled 
mustache would be targeted onto facts and events of Italian 
politics, from the most trivial to the most demanding. 
Congressman Flaminio Piccoli, who through U.C.S.I. 
controlled some newspapers from the north, among which 
the Adige of Trent, which he directed, thus found in his 
quiver deadly darts that suddenly began to hit the target and 
open gaps in the opponents’ ranks. 


The information and the strategic plans, elaborated in the 
Vatican, reached Piccoli’ s office at the Christian Democrat 


headquarters, at piazza Don Sturzo, in the EUR district, 
through the diligent Barberini (nicknamed Barberone for 
his remarkable build). And through Piccoli, swooped down 
to sow chaos among the ministers, on the newspapers or in 
Parliament, in the shape of frustrating interrogations and 
interventions. 

The years went by fast, one after the other. The 
Kennedian political winds blowing from overseas, and the 
stubborn pro-Marxism of John XXIII swelled the sails of 
the Italian left, which was speeding unchecked on its route 
to power, when, in the late spring of 1963, Piccoli shared 
with the “pallid king” his utmost concern for the Regional 
vote in the Valle d’ Aosta region, which was to take place 
the following October, and appeared seriously difficult for 
the Christian Democrat party. Therefore, the inexhaustible 
brains of the group barricaded behind the Bronze Door, and 
always ready for battle, were called in to save the day, and 
all the necessary means to work out an effective 
contingency plan were made available to the resistant. 

Time was running short, and the experts gave for granted 
the victory of the left led by the Communist party, as a 
consequence of an unpredictable adhesion of a certain 
clergy to the Giovannean ecumenism, which had turned a 
good number of fervent priests into preachers of the 
dialogue with the Marxists; of a series of favorable 
contingencies in the labor union field; and of a 
thoroughgoing propaganda skillfully developed by the PCI 
(Italian Communist party.) 


A plan of great effect that would suddenly reverse the 


situation and avert the advent to power of the left in that 
traditionally Catholic region would thus be of the essence. 
We met in the evening stillness of “L'Osservatore 
Romano’s” deserted editorial office, to debate and hammer 
out our plans. But of all the plans that accumulated on the 
ancient nineteenth century desk of the “pallid king,” and 
which were thoroughly examined and studied one after the 
other, none appeared to the little big mustached man as 
clamorous as to be able to resolve in less than no time the 
compromised situation of the Valle d’ Aosta. In the end, one 
fine night, the “pallid king” welcomed us opening the 
heavy door of the editorial office, in an unusual good 
mood, and smiling. His fancy, limitless at the time, had 
thought out a plan worthy of the most shrewd, scornful, 
Machiavellian mind of the Italian Renaissance. He 
explained to us, sitting behind his old desk and 
continuously passing his hand on his big, gray-speckled 
mustache, that he wanted to replicate in the Valle d' Aosta, a 
few days before the vote, nothing less than a Communist 
coup, with all the bric-a-brac of the most orthodox 
Bolshevik revolutionary tradition. Obviously, it was to be 
but an act, without the tiniest harm, for the love of God! to 
the people, but one that would have such a psychological 
effect as to shake the public opinion abruptly and violently, 
in order to divert at the last moment the majority of the 
votes from the Communist to the Christian Democrat 
party. 

We all found the idea remarkable, and the details of a 
Salgarian (Emilio Salgari, adventure writer) plan were 
readied in a few weeks. “Chinese communists” commandos 


would be “invented,” descending from nearby France a few 
nights before the election, to devastate and torch religious 
shrines, votive chapels, a church door or two. Those 
boroughs would be flooded with leaflets threatening 
Herodian reprisals upon the clergy, if it dared stick their 
nose out of convents and parishes to go to the ballot; on the 
same night of action, Soviet weapons would be planted all 
over the area, just to give the impression of an imminent 
violent coup, hatched by Chinese communists beyond the 
French border. 

The Catholic spirit of those peaceful mountain folks 
would surely be shaken by such events, and after that 
formidable collective electroshock, one could wager that 
those freshly won over to the communist cause would 
precipitously go back to the moderate and Christian 
positions, still preached in the region by the “crossed 
shield.” It must be kept in mind that at the time, in some 
outlying areas of the Christian Democrat party, the yielding 
of the top and the fatal opening to the left were not shared. 
Amongst these areas were the Valle d Aosta and Trentino 
Alto Adige regions, in whose riding belonged congressman 
Flaminio Piccoli. 

On the night when the details of the action were worked 
out, the room of the “pallid king” was all an echoing of 
roaring laughter and enthusiastic cries. The spirit of the 
Renaissance prank had taken hold of us, and we laughed till 
we cried, and the euphoria went sky-high when the man 
with the gray mustache concluded that to make the most 
out of the hoax, to wrap up the “brave night” we should 


torch the very door of Aosta’ s Episcopal palace. In the 
chorus of laughter, the little mustached man was doubled 
up in his armchair, as we pictured the meek bishop of Aosta 
awakened in the dead of night, rushing in his night gown to 
a window and give a start at the glowing flames, and heard 
the cries of the old housemaid shuffling about her slippers, 
and then, at dawn, the fear grip the city, as the horrified 
people turned over in their hands those cyclostyled sheets 
spelling terrible threats, as news of night fires, of smashed 
saints on the highway, of Russian guns turned up from 
bushes and from under park benches hit the city from the 
surrounding valleys. We pictured the confusion of the 
political circles, the perplexity of the communists, baffled, 
furious for that incomprehensible, incredible, moronic 
action of an extremist group outside of their control, and 
what is more, organized abroad, which in a moment had 
upset their victorious plans. 

That, for the resistant, was a memorable night. An iced 
bottle of champagne and a tray of glasses popped out of 
nowhere, and the sharp pop of the cork and the bubbling of 
the wine saluted the unanimous approval of the great hoax. 
Which in the following days was reported and illustrated to 
Piccoli, who approved it and made available to the “pallid 
king” a sum of money in order to get the organization work 
promptly started. And be ready at the designated time. 

To cause the planned havoc in the Valle d Aosta, the little 
man in gray chose three trustworthy collaborators. A 
brother of his, a living clone of an aging Emperor Francis 
Joseph, the intermediary of Piccoli, Barberini, and he who 


wrote, and is still laughing, you must believe me, these 
pages. From accurate and interesting information that had 
been pouring in great secrecy onto the desk of the “pallid 
king,” gathered in Valle d' Aosta by efficient executives of 
the local Christian Democrat chapter, we discovered that a 
certain portion of the young clergy, sometimes in contrast 
with the bishop, had been implementing the ecumenical 
directions in a radical and quasi-scandalous way, not only 
tolerating Marxism, but encouraging its diffusion amongst 
the faithful. 

In that preliminary stage of the Valle d’ Aosta action and 
in the course of the same, I could perceive the commitment 
and the faith of excellent marginal exponents of the 
Christian Democrat party, who struggled for those ideals 
that constituted the tradition of their party. Ideals that were 
already systematically betrayed and reneged, more or less 
secretly, by the most prominent exponents, the very same 
that today have handed Italy over to the communists. I 
could also verify the perfect camouflage of the organization 
that the local executives of the Christian Democrat party 
put at our disposal, and today, many years after those 
experiences, today that the Italian situation has plummeted 
to levels of barbarian degeneration, in which the political 
adversaries and the “troublemakers” are killed without 
delay, in which almost daily bombs explode here and there 
in the Peninsula and the shots of the ambushes resound all 
over and blood flows in streams, I fully realize how a 
ruthless political power can hit with impunity for its own 
advantage, wearing on its face the crimson mask of the 
ultra-leftists, today, and the black one of right-extremism, 


tomorrow. 


While I cannot help smiling, recalling that Valle d’ Aosta 
action, in all goliardic and Renaissance-like, flashing of 
mocking geniality, intelligent, linear, clean, bloodless, 
which achieved its success doing away with dramatic 
tones. 

In the fervor of the preparation, summer came, and with it 
came the passing of John XXIII. At the death of Roncalli, 
the plan preparation was briefly stalled. The anti- 
Giovannean resistance was mobilized on a wide scale. The 
election of Giovanni Battista Montini, archbishop of Milan, 
creature of Roncalli and fearsome prosecutor of the 
progressive policy of the scarcely deceased Pope, was a 
strong possibility. His past was known, his secret friendship 
with the Kremlin and international Marxism, his ambiguity 
of personage constantly exposed to blackmail. The election 
punctually dealt the Church of Silence its first hard blow. 
And through the ciphered messages of the Vatican radio, 
and the abnegation of brave exiles from Eastern Europe 
who willingly shuttled, between their Viennese base and 
their home countries, the resistance slipped past the Iron 
curtain a series of messages to warn and prepare the 
Catholic populations oppressed by communism, for the 
worse, and instructions were imparted to the clandestine 
clergy operating in the East. 

Immediately after, the work resumed with the highest 
caution. In fact, the “pallid king” had been in Montini’ s 
black list for years. The loyalty of the little mustached man 


toward Eugenio Pacelli and his ancient friendship with 
Count Dalla Torre, who for decades had lent his face to the 
most integralist Vatican and Catholic traditionalism, were 
well known to the new Pope. 

The plan of the resistant was perfected. In late September 
1963, on a wet night filled with the odor of an incipient fall, 
the Russian weapons covertly entered the State of the 
Vatican City. They entered through the St. Anne’s gate, 
dominated by the keys of St. Peter, accurately crated and 
locked in the trunk of an old, monumental green Cadillac, 
bearing Carinthian plates, and the private car of the “pallid 
king.” At the wheel of the car, a welcome present of old of 
munificent America to a cardinal of the Curia, sat the little 
man in gray, on a pillow that allowed him to emerge with 
his large Etruscan mustached nose above the massive 
dashboard of the car, phosphorescent with gauges. I sat on 
his right. The Swiss Guard approached the window, as with 
studied sluggishness, quietly and tacking, the car made it 
past the Vatican gate. He recognized the occupant and 
clicking his heels he rendered honor to the car, to the 
secretary of “L'Osservatore Romano,” to the dignitary of 
the Pontifical Court, and to the Soviet arms that certainly, 
in the darkness of the trunk and in the buzzing of the 
engine, started to sing in a low-voice, in the emphasis of 
the paradox, the solemn, atheist and revolutionary tune of 
the “Moscova.” The self-possessed “pallid king” had 
stepped his buckskin- shoed little foot on the gas, and the 
gigantic green car had leaped forward rustling on the tires, 
dashed down the Via del Pellegrino and now was coming to 
a halt, along the sidewalk, beside the closed street-door of 


“L'Osservatore Romano.” 


“Do you have any idea of the enormity of this thing?” 
said I softly, as if someone could be hearing us, as the little 
mustached man turned the key and killed the eight 
cylinders of the Cadillac. And I felt like laughing. “Of 
course I do. It’s all so incredible and fantastic,” rejoined the 
“pallid king.” And he broke into his falsetto laugh, and I 
laughed along, seized by an irrepressible intoxication, 
thinking that one day I would be writing this story, oh yes! 
It was all so flatly incredible and fine. And almost 
unthinkable. And all seemed to me again unreal, the contact 
with the film-maker and the story of the American 
collector, the choice of the pieces, the deal, the wad of 
cash, the acquisition, until I laid my hands on the hard, 
smooth and heavy consistency of those Soviet machine- 
guns and muskets, as I was taking them out of the crate, 
one after another, and placing them, in good view, on a 
large Persian rug that the little man in gray had pulled out 
and unrolled from a closet, muttering, sneering, that that 
rug had been put under the feet of Paul VI, on his recent 
visit to “L'Osservatore Romano,” as became the Pope. 
Presently, one of the coordinators of the Jesuit resistance, 
Father Farusi from the Vatican Radio, rang the 
conventional signal at the editorial office’s door, and was 
introduced, as a conjurer, to contemplate all those “devilish 
goodies” dished out on the rug consecrated by the papal 
soles, in the editorial office’s secretary. Jesuitically, the 
Jesuit did not bat an eyelid, behind his glasses, but stooped 
to take a closer look at the merchandise, quite unusual for a 
man of God, as I illustrated to him the pieces, all with the 


trade marks well visible and made evident by skilful 
polishing. In the lot were Russian Parabellum machine 
guns, Hungarian-made Mannlicher muskets with sickle, 
hammer and red star branded on the butt, Nagant and 
Browning pistols. 

The large Persian carpet that had borne the steps of Paul 
VI, held in its “ecumenical” embrace all those arms of the 
godless in a voluminous bundle, and the carpet with its 
content was locked up in a closet, whose key, from that 
moment on, always hung on the belt of the “pallid king.” 

At this point, we worked out the last details of the plan, 
which would unfold in three stages. First: acquisition in 
France of ah the material necessary to direct the police 
investigation toward the intended lead; second: 
topographical survey of the selected region and selection of 
the targets; third: action. Torching and “destruction” of the 
objectives, launch of the threatening leaflets and conclusive 
scattering of the weapons in downtown Aosta. We would 
split in two groups; the “pallid king” and I were to develop 
the attack along the valley, from the French border to 
Aosta; “Barberone” and the “Augsburg” brother of the little 
mustached man, were to act within the city. Then, in the 
dead of the night, we would meet at a fixed point to storm 
downtown Aosta and “light up” the portal of the Bishop’s 
palace. At the end of the raid, a farmhouse in the near-by 
country would be ready to host us in great secrecy, until 
things would settle down and we could return, undisturbed, 
to Rome. 


The night of Friday October 11, Barberone and I landed 


at Paris’ Orly airport. That night and the following day we 
filled our rooms at the Hotel “Louvre” with all that we had 
bought with frenetic precision in the department stores: 
mountain boots with an evident “made in France” on the 
soles, clearly French plastic containers, portable torches, 
cyclostyle paper, French road maps of the Valle d' Aosta 
and a chest to carry on the airplane all that material to 
Rome. 

Back in Rome - a phone call from the Vatican had 
ensured immunity at the customs - a few days later, on the 
evening of October 15, the “pallid king” and I boarded the 
sleeping-car that the following morning would make a stop 
under the roof of Turin’s railway station. 

The “Augsburg” and Barberone would be reaching the 
“operation zone” a couple of days later, carrying with them 
the material in the famous trunk. At the last moment the 
“pallid king,” responsible for the action, decided to 
abandon the idea of introducing the Russian weapons into 
Aosta: they would be an excessive risk for all of us, and, 
perhaps, the “credibility” of the whole action might have 
been compromised by such overkill. 

Locked up in the closet of “L'Osservatore Romano,” 
wrapped in the carpet of the Pope, the Kremlin’s machine 
guns and muskets continued their tranquil doze, guarded by 
the unhurried tolls of St. Peter’ s cupola and by the 
monotonous to and fro pacing of the halberded Swiss 
sentinels at the three gates of the little State. 


We took discrete contacts with a nice young man, and an 
executive of the local Christian Democrat party, who put at 
our disposal two fast party’s FIATs, and explained to us 
that in case of trouble, if we were to be detained by the 
police, that is, we would be promptly released, with no 
consequence of any sort. This was, naturally, a deplorable 
hypothesis to be discarded a priori, as it would surely 
jeopardize the positive outcome of the vote. We set down 
accurately the whole plan, up and down the valley, with the 
Monte Bianco hooded in snow alternatively ahead or 
behind us, depending on whether we climbed toward the 
border, or descended toward Aosta. On the morning of 
October 18, arrived from Rome our two companions in 
adventure, and the action was set for the night of Saturday 
19. The “pallid king” displayed unexpected secret-agent 
skills. The two groups apparently did not know one 
another, and when they had to speak, accosted the car in a 
city parking, and, pretending to be reading a newspaper, 
they spoke through the open windows without turning their 
head. 

And so came the “longest night.” As the “Augsburg” and 
Barberone marched on to their city targets, chapels and 
shrines of saints to set ablaze or raze to the ground, the 
“pallid king” and I drove up the valley, headlights on, with 
the hood full of jerry cans filled with gasoline, which we 
went laying beside the chosen targets. 

So we reached the farthest point, when at the “x” hour we 
would be starting back, igniting the fuses. For the 
occurrence we had had prepared by a skilled manufacturer 


of “firecrackers” and fireworks, a certain number of small 
fuses to be launched from a distance. They were little tubes 
filled with black powder and ending, on one extremity, 
with a sulfur head. Rubbing the sulfur on abrasive paper, 
the ignited tube would be tossed onto the gasoline- 
sprinkled target. The black powder, catching fire, would be 
blazing in the night. I was at the wheel, my pockets full of 
those jolly big matches, and the task of my mustached 
comrade was to dash onto the target and sprinkle it with 
gasoline, and mine that of lighting up the sticks and toss 
them, taking good aim, onto the target. 

The “pallid king” clicked open his pocket Movado watch, 
looked up the hour, and “Let’s move,” said he. I cranked up 
the motor again, and soon we were on our first strategic 
objective: a terracotta little Madonna, in quasi natural scale, 
whose conjoined hands the people of the valley had filled 
with flowers, illumined by a nightlight, standing in a 
roadside shrine. I braked. The little mustached man sprang 
out of the car, dashed to the shrine holding out his hands 
and clasped the neck of the Madonna pulling toward him 
with all his strength. But the Madonna, which had been 
anchored to the shrine with a steel wire, resisted; a silent 
struggle presently ensued between the mustached 
iconoclast on a furious attack, and the Madonna with the 
flowered hands, who, smiling, would not give in. I was 
laughing out my guts, and at the end the most catholic 
chief-editor of “L'Osservatore Romano” clasped with all of 
his little weight the neck of the Madonna, and this came 
down and with a thud went to pieces on the asphalt. The 
panting wrestler quickly spread out in the shrine and on the 


ground a handful of those leaflets cyclostyled in Rome by 
the innocuous “Barberone,” which promised . .Kicks in 
the butts, flying fists and a bullet to all those priests and 
nuns who would dare stick their nose out of the house on 
election day,” got back in the car and we drove toward our 
second objective: a big cross several meters high, 
dominating a little hill on the left hand side of the road. We 
had placed around it, coming in, a crown of containers full 
of gas and now the “pallid king” had unscrewed the cap of 
a jerry can he was holding between his legs, filled with gas 
to the rim, which he planned to empty on the others for a 
surer and more catastrophic blaze. I observed him out the 
corner of my eye, and saw him visibly excited. He looked 
ahead, in the night cut by the white beam of the headlights, 
and his large Etruscan nose would contract now and again 
on the thick hedge of his mustache. It was a man of 
learning and religion, Andrea Lazzarini, His Excellency, as 
I called him, affectionately. And he was an aristocrat, and 
an earnest papist, the old-fashioned type. The odd sensation 
of the violent action, risky and blasphemous had evidently 
surprised him, intoxicating him. “Damn!” cried he, when 
the car hopped on a hole I had not seen, and the gasoline in 
the open jerry can sprinkled between his legs, fouling the 
car with its odor. “It gave me a bidet! Oh God, does it 
bum!” I laughed the dickens to myself, in the night, and, on 
a bend, there rose before us, against the stars, the lofty and 
dark shape of the big cross on the hill. “Ready,” I said, as I 
pulled to the roadside and stopped the car. Lazzarini got out 
with the vessel in his arms, and I saw him starting up the 
slope, small and hindered by the weight, till he made the 
foot of the cross. He bowed down laboring, for a couple of 


minutes, and I knew he had opened the caps of the other 
cans and was now emptying on them the gas he had carried 
with him, and then he ran down the slope toward me, 
yelling, breathless, “the light! The light!” I rushed by, and 
some twenty meters from the cross I rubbed the stick on the 
sandpaper, took aim and tossed it, and outlining a violet 
parabola in the air it dropped at the foot of the cross, on the 
gasoline tanks, and a hell of fire rose roaring against the 
sky. I rushed to the car as the heat radiated all about. The 
little mustached man, exhausted, lay in his car seat flooded 
with the stench of the gas emanating from his pants, and the 
reflection from the blaze illumined his happy smile in his 
big, disheveled mustache. The car now sped toward Aosta, 
and behind us the night was coming alight of a red, 
quivering glow. And thus we both knew that the big cross 
of the Valle d Aosta had been irremediably destroyed by 
the terrible “Chinese communists enemies of God and of 
the Christian West.” 

That fantastic Aurora Borealis continued for a time, 
palpitating, in the night. We drove toward Aosta, along the 
deserted road, punctuating from stretch to stretch our 
nightly journey with blazing lights. Even my Etruscan 
comrade, viscount of Formigine, novel furious Jupiter, 
launched his blazing darts hollering and laughing, as if 
soothed reminiscences of ancient feudal barbarities had 
been surfacing from the depth of his subconscious. 

At the fixed hour, punctual as a train of other times, we 
reunited with the other pair of iconoclast-pyromaniacs in 
the name of faith and anti- subversion. The “Augsburg,” 


whose name was Alessandro and carried in his veins the 
ancient Etruscan blood of the “pallid king,” dominated with 
his scornful self-assurance the growing perplexities of 
Barberone. The “pallid king” raised his gemmed hand 
beckoning us to move on, and we started for the bishop’s 
palace, trotting, as a cavalry squad, the two of us in the 
lead. We had to penetrate a courtyard with two exits 
flanking the bishop’s palace. On the right hand side of the 
edifice, the street door of the dwelling of the representative 
of the Pope. We passed and passed around the target, and, 
when the night security guard turned the corner and 
pedaled away, we stealthily slipped into the courtyard, one 
car after the other. We swiftly built a pyramid of jerry cans 
against the door panes, unscrewed the caps, placed the 
messages, and all four of us lit up and tossed the fuses. 
There was a hurricane of fire, and the courtyard was in full 
daylight. As the roaring blazes incinerated in a flash the 
base of the massive portal, we dashed through the exit, 
darted through the square and cut through the quickest 
route to make the countryside. 

Twenty minutes later we were in the safety of the 
farmhouse and on the cars with the motor red-hot for the 
race, holed up in a hayloft, scratched about hens and 
chickens of the hospitable farmer. 

In the morning, as the people of Aosta gathered by, 
benumbed by the surprise, before the profaned bishop’s 
palace and the knocked down shrines, handing around the 
threatening leaflets of Mao-Tse-Tung’s followers, and 
groups of violent clashed in the streets, the Turin’s daily 


“La Stampa,” titling “Acts of Vandalism in Valle d’ Aosta 
Trigger Incidents Between Communists and Christian 
Democrats,” published the photograph of the devastated 
portal, and a column pointing to “unknown vandals who 
call themselves sympathizers of the Chinese communists” 
as the authors of the outrageous acts. 

Let them write what they please. The stone in the glass of 
the Marxists and of the ecumenical clergy supporting the 
Valle d’ Aosta’s Communist Party had been right on the 
target. The crystal had been shattered and the larks had 
flown away. 

A few days after, in fact, the same newspaper on October 
29 proclaimed the victory of the Christian democrats in that 
important election. 

And the uncomfortable bundle wrapped in the rug of the 
Pope? Some months later, one night, the famous and 
“unemployed” weapons from the Kremlin left the Vatican, 
as they had entered it, in the trunk of the Cadillac of the 
viscount of Formigine, saluted by the Swiss guard. They 
reached the Fiumicino shores in the night, and were 
consigned to the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea, to keep 
company, unrequested and perhaps unwelcome, with the 
fish. 


CHAPTER XV 


As a modernist-reformer, and, above all, as the 
progressive-revolutionary that he was, Roncalli knew 
perfectly that only a bold Ecumenical Council could 
unleash those forces that would wrestle the reins from the 
hands of traditional power, taking over that power. It was 
the old Marxist “coup d'etat technique.” The thorough 
preparation, followed by the surprise action. John XXIII 
had not uttered a word to anyone of his intention to 
summon an Ecumenical Council. The astute progressive 
from Sotto il Monte knew perfectly that a good part of the 
Cardinalitial College would not share his enthusiasm and 
his intention. Many cardinals, faithful to those Pacellian 
structures that had preserved the Church intact through two 
decades dense with upset balances, knew what was brewing 
in the Church’s pot, and had rather extinguished the fire 
under that boiling pot than raise the temperature until the 
lid blew off. It had been known for years, in the Vatican, 
and it was certainly known to Pius XII, that in some part of 
the world the Church was struggling oppressed by issues 
apparently irresolvable. That in certain far out regions of 
Latin America there were parish priests who had started a 
family, and carried on their priestly and parish duties, 
guaranteeing the unity of those parishes on the edge of 
civilization. The Pope knew of those most serious 
irregularities. But he had resolved to intervene with caution 
and discretion, without triggering a scandal. Taking into 
account the extraordinary needs of those human groups 
semi-abandoned to themselves. And, therefore, he worked 


with understanding sensitivity to restore orthodoxy in those 
parishes. But he worked in absolute secrecy. The clergy at 
large and the ordinary man, unprepared and vulnerable to 
all kinds of exploitation, were not to share the knowledge 
of certain delicate issues of the Church, which they would 
fatally misconstrue or twist to their favor, so that the 
scandal would spread, sweeping away people, ideas, and 
institutions. Those isolated cases, emarginated in the 
farthest corners of the globe, would be regained one by one 
to normality. Made public, they would trigger that reaction 
which indeed was to be triggered with the Council. The 
masses, mostly ignorant and incapable of grasping many 
facets of ecclesial issues, coarsely maneuvered by the 
newspapers, felt in the right to meddle with the things of 
the Church. And so, in the case at issue, the celibacy of the 
priests became everybody’s subject, and, expectedly, a 
great part of the public opinion, instigated by the 
progressive press and clergy, took side against celibacy. 
And presently appeared, on illustrated magazines, detailed 
stories and pictures publicizing clergymen in the act of 
celebrating the Mass in the kitchen, with their concubine at 
their side, between a pack of spaghetti and a flask of 
Chianti. Movie theaters countrywide began to give 
scandalous films on the licentious life of the reverends. All 
this soon determined a remarkable drop in the public 
respect of the clergy. Marxism blew out its lungs upon 
those dangerous embers, and the blaze started to flare up 
within the clergy’s base, with increasingly frequent and 
open rebellions against those bishops who still dared 
attempt to contain those exploits. 


Of the countless episodes, the rebellion of the parish 
priest of the Florence’s Isolotto district, and that of St. 
Paul’s abbot, don Franzoni, in Rome, are meaningful 
examples of how much storm did harvest him who sowed 
all that wind. 

Those two rebels were naturally backed up by the 
respective parishioners, and press and television used up 
tons of paper and magnetic tape to turn two rows with the 
well calculated ends, into spontaneous manifestations of 
post-Conciliar “conscience taking.” So that even the 
presumption of those revolutionary-mutineers - for 
calculation - was irresistibly stirred. Indeed, from the 
obscure clergymen that they were, from one day to the next 
they turned into arrogant and proud people-leaders who 
“made news” every day of the week. 

Many cardinals of the old regime knew exactly how 
things would go if the lid, as they said, blew off the old pot 
of the Church, and the masses could now peep within at 
leisure. For this very reason the shrewd John XXIII shot 
out at point blank the idea of the Council, without 
consulting any of those cardinals. 

That unforgettable Sunday of 25 January 1959, at St. 
Pauls’ s Basilica - right between those walls that only a few 
years later would be watching over one of the flowers 
blossomed from the ecumenical progressivism, John XXIII 
had announced the Council. After the Mass, having 
bestowed the blessing, the Pope with the procession had 
crossed the basilica and reached the adjoining monastery, 


wherein he lingered with Cardinals Mimmi, Agagianian, 
Aloisi Masella, Pizzardo, Tedeschini, Tardini, Confalonieri, 
Valeri, Giobbe, Canali, Ottaviani, and Di Jorio, who had 
attended the papal solemn function. The Pope announced to 
those most eminent, the “cream” of the Cardinalitial 
College, in his usual good-natured Venetian diction, 
humble and quasi-incidental, a Synod for the diocese of 
Rome, and then, the celebration of an Ecumenical Council 
for the Universal Church and the revision of the Canon 
Law Code, to be preceded by the upcoming promulgation 
of the Oriental Law Code. 

Cardinal Tedeschini told me that he and the other 
cardinals were petrified and alarmed for the surprise. Lor 
they knew those were the less auspicious years to call up a 
Council of that import, and, promptly, when still in their 
chairs before the Pope, apparently impassive but with a 
deluge of emotions in their soul, they resolved to exercise 
all of their influence to talk the Pope out of that enterprise. 
But the ultimate cold shower was to swoop down on the 
heads of those cardinals some ten minutes later. As they 
were being driven back to their residences, many of them 
learned from the radio that in the very moment the Pope 
was informing them, the world had been informed of the 
promulgation of the Vatican II Ecumenical Council, by 
order of the Pope. John XXIII, in contempt of every 
custom, had simply gone over the Cardinalitial College, in 
taking such a terrible responsibility upon himself. The news 
had already been passed on to the press, unbeknownst to 
most of the Vatican top brass, and was now spreading 
frenetically throughout the world. Tedeschini’ s house 


assistant, Domenico, told me that that night the old cardinal 
could not fall asleep. The light kept burning in his study, 
and only at dawn did the prince of the Church lie in bed. 
Some days later I called on him at the Dateria, to learn that 
the Pope had told him he had been instructed in a dream to 
summon a great Council. Cardinal Tedeschini had the 
feeling the Pope was pushing him around. Knowing 
Roncalli, that would have been a sure bet. Monsignor 
Faveri, who, as I wrote, was fond of hanging around my 
country house, in the stillness of the Agro, told me, with 
aloofness, of the unpopularity he had been earning himself 
in the Council, week after week. In fact, he was one of the 
few, with monsignor Lefebvre, who methodically rose to 
his feet to respond to the preordained stances of the 
assembly on the most delicate themes of clerical 
progressivism. Some bishops, because of his intransigent 
and old-fashioned attitude, were now ignoring him. 
Listening to the confidences of my guest with the golden 
cross, I could thus obtain a measure of the resentment a bad 
priest, and only a bad priest, is capable of, when somebody 
stands in his way. Resentment far deeper in constancy, 
hypocrisy, and malevolence, than the worst secular’s. My 
very guest, intolerant of any gags and therefore picked on 
with particular attention by the new regime installed by the 
Giovannean progressivism, was the protagonist of a 
clamorous reaction, when one bad morning, leaving the 
Council for the noon break, courteously yet firmly he was 
asked to surrender his briefcase full of papers and 
documents, to the inspection of the gendarmerie. The 
bishop refused, threatened a press scandal, thundered with 
cardinal Tisserant. The incident was hushed up, but it was 


enough to create in the Council that gloomy atmosphere of 
conspiracy that would come to characterize it throughout its 
first term, under John XXIII’s pontificate, and, even more 
drastically, throughout the catastrophic sequel undersigned 
by Roncalli’s predestined successor. 

But what was at the root of that unusual and disrespectful 
police measure evocative of late imperial times? Few know 
that since the inception of the Ecumenical Council that 
pointed its bow toward the tempestuous waters of the total 
reformation of the Church in light of sociological and 
Marxist theories, the Catholic world non-aligned to the 
revolutionary approach, which it judged disastrous for the 
future of Christianity, after the first moments of dejection 
and indignation regrouped to hinder in every way the pace 
of that steamroller that was crushing under its weight the 
traditional Church and all that with her identified. 

Catholics, since the very first weeks of the Council had 
closed ranks and begun to organize, to try and open the 
eyes of the Conciliar fathers to the truths that were 
concealed from them, and whose ignorance was turning 
them into instruments of religious subversion. Clandestine 
publications explaining with a wealth of names, dates, and 
facts the behind- the- scene activities and the hidden aims of 
the Vatican II Ecumenical Council began to reach the 
private residences of the most excellent bishops. In the first 
weeks of the Council, this proliferation of underground 
press, aimed at lifting the pitch shroud before the eyes of 
the bishops, was shrewdly kept hidden from the outside 
world. But those diligent bishops long conquered to the 
cause of progressivism and already gratified, for their 


reforming zeal and their revolutionary credo, with 
promotions and prebends, promptly denounced that sort of 
fifth column, and the Conciliar fathers were invited to 
surrender daily all those brochures printed all over the 
world, and especially in North and Latin America, France, 
and Spain, which by degrees were heaping on the desks of 
their private apartments, delivered almost weekly by mail, 
or, sometimes, by mysterious couriers. But it was soon 
realized that not all of the bishops were obeying the 
invitation. So much so that some of these little volumes 
found their way outside the Vatican, and when a 
comprehensive publication arguing that the election of John 
XXIII was illegal as it had been masterminded by 
freemasonry, and indicating Roncalli as a member of that 
sect since the times of his nunciature in Turkey, ended up 
into watchful Episcopal hands and less cautious secular 
ones, the repression spared no corner of the Leonine City. It 
seems that the Pope, at that blow aimed straight at his 
person, just for once had lost his temper, ordering the 
search, as they exited St. Peter, of those bishops “more 
suspected” of opposing the new course. The pontifical 
Gendarmerie organized in great secret a small squad that 
began, with grace, to stick their nose into the briefcase of 
some most excellent bishop. Some put up with it. Some 
resisted, among these my friend Faveri. 

That grave, inadmissible order injurious of Episcopal 
dignity, did not block the outflow of those much undesired 
publications, which continued, and more copiously, to 
circulate not only in Rome, but also in Italy and in the rest 
of the world. So much so that in a special issue of the 


Vatican weekly “L'Osservatore della Domenica” (The 
Sunday Observer), printed on the occasion of the 
conclusion of the Council, titled “The Vatican II 
Ecumenical Council,” it was not possible to ignore that 
phenomenon which by now had become unofficially 
known to all. And in fact the director of the weekly, 
professor Enrico Zuppi, was ordered to publish a piece to 
attempt to play down and ridicule that flourishing of 
counter-information that lasted uninterrupted throughout 
the Council. 

On page 154 of that special issue there appears, in fact, a 
three column article, “L'anonima letteratura anticonciliare” 
(The Anonymous Anti-Conciliar Literature), which, 
through the teeth, concedes the intense and uninterrupted 
actuality of the phenomenon, stating that “. . . As to the 
content, it may be added that many of these publications 
hide behind a suspicious concern for orthodoxy, from 
which they draw the pretext to attack inconsiderately 
Cardinals and Bishops, accusing them of wanting to 
introduce heresies, subvert the Church and sell it out to 
earthly interests. . .” and again, “. . .The first and more 
massive text published in August 1962. . . Has been 
launched under the pseudonym “Maurice Pinay”...The 
presentation promised “tremendous revelations,” yet it is 
but a muddled jumble of gratuitous and illogical 
accusations against the Fathers of the Council who are 
“plotting to destroy” - as the appeal to the Reader reads - 
“the most sacred traditions, realizing bold and malevolent 
reforms, of the kind of Calvin’s, Zwingli’s, and other great 
heresiarchs’, all under the pretension of modernizing the 


Church and bringing it up to date, yet with the covert 
purpose of opening the gates to communism, and 
accelerating the future ruin of Christianity.” And to follow, 
“...In some cyclostyled sheets from America (Caledonia, 

N. Y.) in August 1964, a Hugo Maria Kellner, after 
attacking “the devastating effects of secularism,” accuses 
the leaders of the Church of not making adequate efforts 
“to contain the catastrophic decadence of the inner qualities 
of Catholicism, that took place in the last decades.” For this 
author, many Conciliar Fathers would have “fallen victims 
to a satanic enticement suggesting the use, apparently 
praiseworthy, of the word of Christ, to ruin and destroy the 
Church.” 

And again, “... The attacks, however, more consistent 
and harsh, have been those leveled against the “falsely 
converted Jews” and the “International Judaic-masonic 
organization B’nai B’rith.” Some authors of little brochures 
or circular letters, secretly delivered to the private 
addresses of the Fathers, have stated that, “Only the 
Hebrew is truly the deicide people,” for “Judaism, through 
freemasonry, communism, and all the subversive 
organizations it has created and directed, continues to fight 
Christ in an arrogant and implacable form.” 

“. . . The campaign is not limited to Italy, but is now 
extended to the whole Latin world. The main culprits have 
been clearly indicated. Here are the “Heretical voices”: The 
German theologians, of the Hebrew race, Oesterreicher and 
Baum, who would have had the task to “Judaize the 
Christians”; Rev. Klyber, who has “brainwashed the 


Catholics in favor of the Jews;” Cardinal Bea, who “in 
presenting his project for a decree in favor of the Jews and 
in opposition to the Gospels, has concealed from the 
Conciliar Fathers that he was repeating the thesis suggested 
to him by the masonic order of the B'nai B'rith.” 

And, to conclude, not even the “Delfino” of Roncalli, 

Paul VI, has been spared from the deluge of attacks leveled 
against the Hierarchy in these heated years of the Council. 
In a small pamphlet printed in November 1965 in 
California, and signed Militant Servants of our Lady of 
Fatima, it is stated . . . that “The Pope (Paul VI) has 
perpetrated a detestable crime, comparable with an 
apostasy, pronouncing a speech before atheist 
representatives of the United Nations,” and that October 4 - 
date of the pontifical visit to the UN - must be considered a 
day of darkness, second only to that of the crucifixion of 
Jesus, for on that date the Pontiff would have delivered the 
Mystical Body of Christ into the hands of the United 
Nations organism controlled by Jews, Freemasons, and 
Communists.” 

Much could be said in the margin and in response to the 
three little columns printed by the Vatican magazine. With 
regard to the ridiculed alarmism of those concerned with 
the feared marriage with the protestants, the facts speak for 
themselves: Already in 1971, and precisely at Easter time, 
in the heart of Rome, in the ancient German church of the 
Anima, they concelebrated the Mass with the protestants, 
clandestinely yet in agreement, evidently, with the Vatican. 
The “Giornale d’ltalia” in the issues of 9 and 10 April 


1971, divulged the detailed news on the staging of that 
incredible “Zusammenarbeit.” 

As for the attempted “rescue” of the Christians by 
Judaism, it should be remembered that Paul VI, in his visit 
to the UN, as it is visible in the photographs taken of him 
on that occasion, carried the “Ephod,” the Rational of 
Judgment, the insignia of the Hebrew Supreme Priest, 
which he had started exhibiting on his pontifical habit ever 
since the time of his visit to Palestine, stitched on his white 
habit. It is no secret among UN employees that most of the 
American officials use Yiddish in their chats. 

It is symptomatic that in that article of the Vatican 
magazine commemorative of the Council, no hint of the 
accusation of freemason leveled against Roncalli, and the 
debated issue on the legitimacy of his election to the 
pontifical see, was ever made. The two very arrows in the 
flank that caused John XXIII to lose his traditional self- 
control. And no hint is made on what the underground 
press revealed later on, Paul VI reigning, upon the Jewish 
ancestry of Giovanni Battista Montini. 

In light of the facts that followed in the years after the 
Council, it must be recognized that many of those writings, 
sometimes desperate, that reached the Conciliar Fathers, 
turned out to be prophetic. In my capacity of columnist of 
“L'Osservatore Romano,” the newpaper that throughout the 
pontificate of Pius XII had been among the most 
prestigious source of information in the world, I witnessed, 
with the mounting of Vatican progressivism as well as 


Marxism in Italy, the gradual loss of any significance of the 
expression “freedom of press.” The Vatican newspaper was 
joined by a young priest of Jewish origin, Don Levi, who 
took the reins of the paper in his hands, depriving even the 
director, Raimondo Manzini, a meek man and a perfect go- 
getter, of his authority, and the newspaper became the 
obedient spokesman of the new regime, turning into a 
bulletin of clerical progressivism. Meanwhile, the word 
“journalist” in Italy lost rapidly its luster, as it now came to 
be identified with people who had sold out their conscience 
and their intellectual freedom to the regime in power. 

In those years I was to witness shameful defections of 
qualified personages, whom I respected and considered 
incorruptible, and who, on the contrary, driven by huge 
salaries, gave up their good brains, prostituting soul and 
body to the market of the more indecorous politics. If one 
could read today, with attention, those underground 
booklets that scared the heck out of the Vatican, then, and 
that today are unobtainable, preserved as the prized 
documents that they are, by those lucky enough to own any, 
he would be struck by their accuracy. 

But then, what was to happen afterwards was 
unthinkable. Beyond many of those predictions. The great 
ability of John XXIII had made it possible that the distant 
and absent-minded observer would fail to grasp the changes 
in the course that his large peasant hand, guided by a first 
rate mind, imparted to the helm of the Church. Angelo 
Giuseppe Roncalli walked briskly on his program, but tried 
to raise the least immediate attention, or dangerous alarm. 


The external aspect of the Vatican remained unchanged. 

The Court ritual remained the same, even if, as I have said, 
a certain inflation of new personages with the papers not 
exactly in order placed in key positions, would not escape 
the attentive eye. Some, in the Vatican, had defined John 
XXIII the “Ermete Zacconi” of the modern Church, for his 
innate ability of appearing under the most unlikely aspects. 
Roncalli, in fact, had two faces, which he dominated at 
will. The official one for all, amiable and humble, and the 
one that counted terribly, firm and resolute, stubborn and 
absolute. Occasionally, he who stood just a meter from him 
would catch a glimpse of the true face, behind his smiling 
public mask. In a remark, during a conversation, or in a 
gesture of his hands. 

That glimpse, those remarks, those gestures, were the 
revelation of his disposition, which could be hard to the 
verge of callousness. An example ignored by most: Incited 
by his advisors, he denied the poor Padre Pio the apostolic 
blessing on the fiftieth anniversary of the monk’s 
priesthood, in the August of 1960, and prevented him from 
bestowing the papal blessing to the faithful gathered at San 
Giovanni Rotondo. The anti-communism of the Capuchin 
with the stigmata was no secret in the Vatican, and the Casa 
Sollievo della Sofferenza (House for the Relief of 
Suffering), the great hospital realized with the offerings 
from the whole world, whetted the burning greed of many 
clergymen. 

After the “Pacem in Terris,” the visit of the Adzhubeis in 
the Vatican and the Italian election of 28 April 1963 that 


saw the communists gain one million more votes than in 
the political election five years before, Pope John received 
a certain John McCone, who had flown to Rome from the 
US two days earlier. The audience was recorded on the 
official bulletin of the Holy See, but none of the Vatican 
observers paid any heed to it at the time. Some time 
afterwards, the close circle of the pontifical family 
identified that figure with a branch director of the “secret 
intelligence” of the United States, that is, a high-ranking 
official of the CIA. 

When I learned of the identification of that mysterious 
American, another little empty space of the vast and multi- 
faceted Giovannean mosaic sketched out in the notes of my 
notebooks had finally its clarifying piece. 

Indeed, in early May of 1963, if I recall correctly, at the 
end of a papal chapel, as I walked toward the lateral exit of 
the basilica together with Cardinal Tisserant, who was in 
the company of Cardinals Spellman and Mcintyre, I heard 
Spellman express to the archbishop of Los Angeles his 
concerns for an urgent step the Pope had asked him to 
undertake with the White House, “... because after 
receiving that personality, the Pope had the impression he 
was being stalked by American cops, and he absolutely did 
not tolerate... .” Now that remark took on a significance of 
its own. As with hindsight, took a precise dimension of 
their own those tidbits of conversation between the Pope 
and monsignor Capovilla, which made me reflect for a 
time. The Pope spoke of Khrushchev. “We must love and 
help that man,” said he, “As perhaps he is the connecting 


link we have been waiting for so long between 
Communism and Christianity... Jesus Christ, in his own 
way was a true communist, too. . . And he was a victim of 
Roman imperialism. . . How many analogies with our 
time. . . Yes, we must pray the Lord for Khrushchev... We 
must get as close as possible to him. . . To him and to Soviet 
Russia, which will be the protagonist. . . of the future of the 
world...” 

That day, at the end of my detail, as the black Chrysler of 
the Court was driving me home, I set down on my 
notebook, as was my habit, those words of John XXIII’ s 
unveiling an horizon which to me had been hitherto quite 
blurred, but whose outline I was now slowly making out 
with increasing astonishment. A few weeks after that 
Wednesday, Luciano Casimirri, director of the Vatican 
Press Service, informed me of the intention of the Pope to 
invite to the Vatican Khrushchev’s son-in-law, Adzhubei. I 
immediately linked that breaking news with the words of 
John XXIII, on that general-audience Wednesday. Day 
followed day, and then the news of the reception of 
Adzhubei was given, and the Pope received Khrushchev’s 
son-in-law. In those days, in one of his usual window 
speeches, John XXIII told the crowd in St. Peter’s square 
waiting for the blessing, “. . . You must love Khrushchev, 
God loves him. . .” He was cheered by the ecstatic response 
of the communists of Italy. 

Did John XXIII ever realize how the Italian Communist 
party exploited his work and his person? He certainly did. 
His policy studiedly cleared the way for communism in 


Italy, and to the leftist forces of the West. Indeed, it seems 
evident that Roncalli calculated with absolute sense of 
timing every action, every word, and every gesture, so that 
the communists could use them to their own ends, and to 
the extreme consequences. In the latter part of his reign, 
Roncalli had probably moments of critical atonement for 
his revolutionary and pro-communist policy. Perhaps the 
illness that undermined him in his last months weakened 
his iron will, and sentiment had sometimes the upper hand. 


In the very last days of his pontificate, brief yet 
devastating as an earthquake, predicted by the naive as a 
“pontificate of transition,” the habits of John XXIII 
changed. He withdrew into himself. There were no more 
guests sitting at his table, his traditional good appetite had 
suddenly worn out and he appeared different, taciturn, 
absorbed. To the Household Master, “Commendatore” Pio 
Manzia, suggesting, as usual, the tasting of precious wines, 
he would rejoin unhappily, “. . .The good times are gone, 
“commendatore” dear. I feel oppressed, almost crushed by 
these years in which I have been a Pope. . .” 

The change was attributed to the early worsening of the 
illness that was afflicting him. But, perhaps, the causes 
were others. Perhaps Roncalli had looked back and 
considered, for the first time, his work from the angle of the 
man from Sotto il Monte, cast in a genuine peasant mould, 
not from that of John XXIII, personage- tool that had been 
instrumental to the disruption of the history of the Church 
and humanity, directing it toward an obscure course. 


CHAPTER XVI 


Analyzing the facts that occurred during the brief, 
revolutionary pontificate of John XXIII, it seems as if 
History had set up a date with Roncalli, clearing the way, in 
the great whole of the international political game, to the 
realization of his own program. 

In the United States of America, president Kennedy had 
no criticisms for the program his “eggheads” had 
hammered out for Italy. To them it did not seem just that 
Italy, liberated also at the cost of American blood from 
fascism, should continue to be run by a party, the Christian 
Democrat of the time, characterized by a solid center-right 
approach steadily anchored to Vatican conservatism. And 
had suggested to the young and enthusiastic president, the 
exportation, to Italy, of that center-left formula that, 
upsetting their plans, would clear the way to the advent of 
communism in the power zone of that Country. The 
formula, studied in every possible detail by the White 
House’s experts, was shipped well packed out to Italy. And 
it arrived in the nick of time, when John XXIII was 
beginning to “open” to Marxism, and the words 
“reconciliation” and “dialogue” seemed the magic recipes 
indispensable to resolve every contrast and issue with the 
communist East. The Italian Christian Democrat party, 
which had been in power ever since the fall of fascism, 
sensing the new directions of the wind, across the Atlantic 
and across the Tiber, and most of all concerned, as is 
customary with all the political parties of nearly all the 


“vague” democracies cheering up the modern man, with 
maintaining at all costs its hegemony, promptly adopted 
that formula simply inconceivable for the Italy of the time. 
The Vatican had chosen Amintore Fanfani, deemed the 
most suitable politician to realize the “opening” to the left. 
The choice had been the fruit of a cautious and very shrewd 
work of persuasion exerted by Loris Capovilla’s “clever 
monsignors,” and by the “secular nuncios” of Florence’s 
“visionary” mayor, La Pira. 

Why does the contemporary man so easily forget? Why 
does the man of the street not take another peep through the 
newspaper collections? How many lies would turn out and 
how many politicians would deserve the label of 
counterfeiter. 

I have a perfect memory of those times. When the Center- 
left option began to be debated, in all of the most reliable 
circles of the nation the realization of such an eventuality 
was simply considered a folly. It was even laughed at. Yet 
behind the scenes, away from the gaze of public opinion, it 
was work-in-progress to impose the new formula. The 
United States had naively given the “go.” The Roncallian 
Vatican, as it was obvious, backed with all its considerable 
weight the political initiative. Communists and socialists - 
the latter would be sharing power with the Christian 
democrats, becoming the vanguard of the Communist party 
in the government, and pushed with their utmost strength in 
that direction. And one morning the Italians awakened to a 
Center-left in full swing. Fanfani had fathered, on the 
Christian democrat side, the historical brainchild, tying his 


name to the political initiative that would bring Italy to her 
present decline, and Capovilla maneuvered with him and 
with another close entourage of Italian Catholic Marxists to 
pull out, with the forceps, that sorry and ill-born 
experiment of an Italy which had nonetheless been capable 
of that economic miracle that had amazed the world. And 
that from that very moment began its inexorable sunset, 
upon a gloomy horizon of economic crisis, strikes, and 
violence. As it can be seen, no other historical moment 
would have been as propitious to Roncalli’s revolutionary 
policy. Fanfani served Roncalli that historical moment, that 
long-fancied opportunity of establishing direct and friendly 
contacts with the official representatives of the godless, at 
last, on a silver platter. 

Once again, strangely enough, the United States: in the 
early phases of the softening and rapprochement between 
the Vatican and the Soviet world, an important part had 
been played, among others, by Norman Cousins, a 
prominent American journalist, director of the “Saturday 
Review” and a personal friend of John Kennedy. 

Cousins’ mediating mission began at Andover, Maryland, 
in October 1962, during the Cuba missile crisis. The 
American town was the only place in the world hosting 
American and Soviet scientists gathered together for a 
congress. Kennedy instructed Cousins to mediate between a 
Catholic priest, father Felix Morlion, and the Soviet 
Shumeiko and Feodorov, friends of Khrushchev’s. From 
the contact between the clergyman and the two Russians 
sparked John XXIII’ s peace message, which allegedly 


caused the Soviet vessels en route to the Antilles with their 
guns ready to blast, to turn back. At this point Cousins had 
gotten into the game, and continued to act as a willing 
mediator between the Vatican and the Soviet Union. 

He was in the Vatican in early September 1962. En route 
to Moscow, he asked monsignor Dell'Acqua and Igino 
Cardinale, whom with cardinal Cicognani, Bea, Konig, the 
nuncio in Turkey Lardone and then Casaroli, were amongst 
the closest collaborators of John XXIII in the conciliatory 
policy toward the East, which in their opinion would be the 
initiative that could be asked of Khrushchev to open up a 
dialogue. The two prelates, who were informed of the steps 
taken by cardinal Testa with Borovoi and Kotilarov at the 
Council, rejoined, “The release of archbishop Slipyi.” On 
December 13, 1962, Norman Cousins walked into 
Khrushchev’s study at the Kremlin. From the report 
Cousins later handed to Pope John, it is possible to 
reconstruct the meeting in detail. The conversation began 
on the thread of family memories and brief witticisms. 

Then Khrushchev said, “The Pope and I can have diverging 
opinions on many issues, but are united in the desire for the 
peace. What’s most important is to live and let live. All the 
peoples wish to live and all the Nations have the right to 
live. Especially now that science can do a immense good 
and an immense evil.” The colloquy went on for three 
hours. In the end, the substance was set out in five points: 

”1) Russia favors the mediation of the Pope, and 
Khrushchev admits that not only it is a crisis-solving, last- 
minute mediation, but also the Pope’s relentless work for 


the peace; 2) Khrushchev wants a communication line 
through private contacts with the Holy See; 3) Khrushchev 
recognizes that the Church is respectful of the principle of 
separation between State and Church in different states; 4) 
Khrushchev recognizes that the Church serves all and every 
human being as to life’s sacred values, and is not interested 
only in the Catholics; 5) Khrushchev recognizes that the 
Pope has shown great courage in his action, knowing that 
the Pope has problems within the Church, as Khrushchev 
has problems within the Soviet Union.” Roncalli read the 
document, and scribbled in the margin, “Read by His 
Holiness in the night of 22-23/XII/962”. 

Volumes could be written to comment and confute, facts- 
on-hand, one by one, the words spoken by Khrushchev in 
that meeting with the American reporter. The total 
subservience of the Church of Silence to the Communist 
state, only a few years later, accepted and recognized by the 
Vatican, the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the armies of 
the Warsaw Pact, the persecution of the Jews, of the 
dissidents thrown into mental homes and lagers, speak for 
themselves and cry out, “liar!” to Nikita Khrushchev. 

From the day of that encounter a month went by. On 
January 25, 1963, at 9.00 p.m., the Soviet ambassador to 
Italy, Kozyrev, handed Fanfani a note from Khrushchev, 
with the prayer to forward the content to the Vatican. The 
note announced the release of archbishop Slipyi. But the 
Soviet required guarantees: 


especially that that the returned bishop would not be 


exploited toward anti-Soviet propaganda. When the 
Ukrainian bishop, whom the inhumane detention in the 
Soviet lager had turned into his own ghost, alighted from 
the train, at Rome’s station, only Roncalli’s secretary, the 
Marxist Loris Capo villa, was waiting for him on the 
platform. 

As it happened years later, with the Primate of Hungary, 
Cardinal Mindszenty, tricked back to Rome to be removed 
by Montini. Loyal to the ultimatum of Kadar, that 
Ukrainian bishop was cast aside into silence. He lived 
removed in his little community on the Via Aurelia, on the 
outskirts of Rome. In some rooms of the Ukrainian College 
of Piazza degli Zingari, are preserved under glass the rags 
and the poor personal objects with which archbishop Slipyi 
lived and suffered his imprisonment in Siberia. 

Nikita Khrushchev had cast the bait. The unknowing bait 
was that larva of a man by the name of Slipyi. Roncalli rose 
promptly to the bait. The Pope, using those “private 
contacts” encouraged by the Russian, invited to the Vatican 
the daughter of the Soviet premier, Rada, and her husband, 
the journalist Alexei Adzhubei and director of the 
“Izvestia.” It was a straight blow in the style of a 1920’ s 
Roncalli. The most conservative part of the Vatican rose up 
and voiced the Pope their disapproval. Cardinal Ottaviani, 
in a dramatic one on one, expressed the Pope his dissent. 

Roncalli played deaf and marched on with his resolution. 
In March of that year the Russian couple, directed by the 
long hand of the Kremlin, set foot in the Vatican. The 


international Communism exults; the Italian Communist 
party is in seventh heaven. 

The two guests saw the Pope, in his library, with no 
member of the Cardinalitial College present. That visit will 
“pair up” with the other, some years later, when - on 
Corpus Domini day! - Paul VI would receive with open 
arms the Hungarian Kadar, and will clasp in his the bloody 
hands of the butcher of Budapest. For some days the 
polemic rages in the Vatican. In the end, the big hand of the 
priest from Sotto il Monte clobbers to silence the bravest 
voice. On 20 March 1963, Roncalli writes, “The absolute 
directness of my language, at first in public and then in my 
private library, deserves to be remarked and not artificially 
ignored. It must be said that the Pope needs no defense. I 
have said and reiterated to Dell'Acqua and Samore that the 
note drafted by Father Kulic (the interpreter), sole witness 
of the audience granted to Rada and Alexei, be published. 
The first section would not hear of it, and I regret it.” When 
a Pope writes that he “regrets” something, it means that that 
thing has terribly vexed him. On November 22 of that year, 
at Dallas, a sniper had put an end to president Kennedy’s 
life. He had been succeeded by Lyndon Johnson, who had 
pulled on the reins bringing back to a trot the gallop of his 
predecessor, and his daredevil race in pursuit of an illusory 
new world policy. And, punctual, after the call of the 
Khrushchev’s family on Roncalli, the “Pacem in Terris,” 
and the Italian elections, the CIA, as we have said, walks 
through the Bronze Door. 


But John XXIII does not stop. Nay, that American 


attempt to put the bit, as on a horse that has gone out of 
hand, on the Pope, vexes Roncalli and causes him to race 
more precipitously on his way. He now wants to meet 
Nikita Khrushchev. 

The meeting is prepared with a series of contacts placed 
under diplomatic secrecy and the strictest Vatican 
confidentiality. The two sons of peasants would be shaking 
hands on a memorable day of that summer of 1963. 

Even this time, a German press agency picks up the 
“whisper” and breaks the news to the world, which arouses 
vast, and not always positive reactions. On 20 March 1963, 
the daily “II Tempo” writes, “...Wonderment has been 
expressed in the Vatican circles as to the ‘tactical 
coexistence’ with which the German agency defines the 
scope of the meeting between John XXIII and Nikita 
Khrushchev. No common tactic,” it is remarked, “would be 
possible between the Vatican and Russia, as the 
coexistence is neither tactic nor strategic, but a mere 
acknowledgment of the reciprocal existence that may or 
may not be accompanied by contacts between the parties.” 

And, on the same subject, the periodical of the American 
Jesuits, “America,” writes that there are no obstacles in 
principle to the establishment of relations between the 
Vatican and the Soviets: “The Pope and his aides, on the 
other side, feel acutely the necessities of the universal 
Church, and the special issues of the communist-dominated 
countries. 


But the death, in the race with time and with the frenetic 
programs of John XXIII, was to win by various leagues. 
That memorable visit would never take place. Neither did it 
sit well with Nikita Khrushchev, who by now considered 
Roncalli a precious instrument for the “peaceful” expansion 
of communism in the Western world. So much so that in an 
interview granted to the American reporter Drew Pearson 
just after the signing of the nuclear agreement, and 
published on August 29, 1963, by the Dusseldorf daily 
“Mittag,” the Soviet premier said this about Roncalli: “The 
late Pope John was a man of whom it could be said, “He 
felt the pulse of the time. He was certainly wiser than his 
predecessor and understood the age in which we are 
living.” For a Soviet head of state, that is not a little! 

But by now the revolutionary exaltation had taken the 
hand to Roncalli. On April 11, 1963, Holy Thursday, his 
encyclical “Pacem in Terris” is announced. 

The Papal Encyclical will mark the fortune of the Italian 
Communist party. At the Botteghe Oscure, where some of 
the most delicate passages of the documents were already 
known, they read it in one go, in jubilation. At the Kremlin, 
they cannot believe their eyes, as they read the text 
immediately translated and divulged to the directions for 
“religious affairs.” The Italian Communist party has 
millions of copies printed and distributed at its own 
expense, of Chapter V of the Encyclical, addressed, for the 
first time in the history of these documents, not only to the 
Episcopate, the clergy and the faithful of the Church of 
Rome, but also to “all men of goodwill.” 


The encyclical letter that will knock down the last 
diaphragm separating Christianity and Marxism marks, 
historically, the commencement of the intermingling of the 
two doctrines and of the great misunderstanding that will 
undermine the foundations of the Church. The invitation to 
the dialogue is explicit in the passages in which the 
Encyclical says, “...He who in a particular moment of his 
life is wanting clarity of faith, or is adhering to erroneous 
opinions, tomorrow can be illuminated and restored to 
the truth. The encounters and the agreements, in the various 
sectors of the temporal order, between believers and those 
who do not believe or do believe in an inadequate way, for 
adhering to errors, may constitute the occasion to discover 
the truth and render praise to it.” And the minimization of 
the Marxist danger vibrates and soars wherein the 
Giovannean document explains with reassuring affability, 
that . .It must also be considered that philosophical 
doctrines on nature, origin and fate of the universe and 
man, cannot be identified with historical movements having 
economical, social, cultural, and political aims, even when 
these movements have been originated by those doctrines, 
and from these are still drawing inspiration. Since the 
doctrines, once elaborated and defined, remain always the 
same; while the said movements, operating on historical 
situations in relentless evolution, cannot avoid the influxes, 
and thus the even deep changes thereby.” 

Whereas Roncalli expresses the acknowledgment of the 
value of Marxism, insofar as it concurs to solving the 
problems of humanity, immediately after, wherein he 
writes, “Moreover, who can deny that in those movements, 


inasmuch as they are conformant to the precepts of the just 
reason and interpret the just aspirations of the human 
person, are positive elements and deserving of approval?” 
And there follows, immediate, the explicit invitation to the 
meeting, to the dialogue, to the acceptance: “Therefore, it 
may be that a rapprochement or a practical meeting that 
only yesterday was deemed inopportune or not fecund, 
could be such today, or become such tomorrow.” 

In that period, a parish priest so wrote to the periodical 
“Settimana del Clero,” “...The communists, in their 
appeals reaching every home have been repeating with 
great joy, “See, the Pope is with us. This, he has said in his 
last encyclical. And then, don’t you know? He has received 
the son-in-law and the daughter of Khrushchev, and the 
peace between Christianity and Communism is a sure 
thing. Vote for us, who will respect your feelings.” 

Outside the churches, communist activists, with a solemn 
air, distributed a leaflet: “Catholics and Communists: ... all 
must be grateful to the enlightened work of this Pontiff.” 

Crafty words, pronounced in the nick of time, by the old 
communist fox, who did not hesitate to write, revealing his 
authentic convictions, on “Momenti della Storia d'ltalia,” 
(Moments of the History of Italy) of the collaboration 
between the secular State and the Catholic Church, “Aware 
of the new real danger threatening the capitalistic society, 
of the danger of the rebellion of the working masses, the 
Catholic Church, after assimilating a part of the liberal 
method, now assimilates a part of the socialist method, and 


places itself. . . on the ground of the organization of the 
working masses, of mutuality, of economic defense, of 
social improvement. . . On this new level not only the 
relationship between State and Church take on a different 
shape, but the figure and the function of Church and papacy 
as forces fighting in defense of the capitalistic order, now 
on the forefront, now in the reserve, adopting a tactic, or 
another, as the circumstances and the particular situation of 
each country call for, now putting on a democratic mask, 
now showing openly a reactionary countenance. This, 
today, is the true temporal power of the Popes.” 

Seventeen days after the promulgation of the Encyclical 
applauded by the Marxists, Italy went to the polls. The 
unequivocal response to the “Pacem in Terris” was a jump 
of a million votes for the Communist party, with respect to 
the political vote five years before. The reconciliation 
undertaken in the East, the audience of the Adzhubeis in 
the Vatican, the “Pacem in Terris” seventeen days before 
the political elections in Italy: three formidable blows of 
the Roncallian escalation that will upset the Italian political 
equilibrium reverberating throughout Europe as a first, 
long, roaring thunder, foreboding a tempest. 

How not to think of an accurate scheme concocted and 
agreed in its minutest detail? That first result, that million 
votes “presented” with a blessing to the representatives of 
official atheism, along with that encyclical that would be 
the key to flinging open the inviolate door of the Christian 
citadel to the penetration of the godless, opens the eyes of 
those who still refuse to see the truth. To those who still 


refuse to think and believe in a gradual and swift 
subversive program. Made of sudden actions. One different 
from the other. Yet all convergent onto the same objective: 

The transformation of the Church into an essentially 
sociological organization, in line with the most advanced 
sociological and anthropological theories of our days. 

When the results of the vote become known, throngs of 
hotheads waving red banners pack St. Peter’s square 
acclaiming John XXIII. Another page of History had been 
turned, with a great rustle and a long, chilly gust of air. The 
Swiss Guards watched over, still, as down the centuries, on 
the Vatican borders, as the Berninian colonnade clasped in 
its stony arms the dismal clamor of that multitude. But ever 
since that night, their duty would be devoid of any 
significance. Behind their halberds, in fact, the ancient 
Church and Tradition had disappeared. From that night 
they had forever departed, ungreeted guests, the eleven 
thousand rooms of the little State. 

Approximately nine months prior to these events, the 
Pope had been assailed by the illness that would bring him 
to the grave. The “Archiatra” (Pope’s personal doctor) and 
his team of physicians, at a precise query of Roncalli’s, had 
responded that he would have about one year to live. 

The appointment with the death startles John XXIII. 
Indeed, a few months after that announcement, the 
outspoken Pope appears to his close aids growingly silent, 
not seldom lost in thoughts. The events set in motion by his 


revolutionary determination, are falling all about him. The 
force unchained by his acquired policy accelerates on its 
own inertia, disrupting programs, and upsets the post-war 
framework of the European politics, established in over 
thirty years of patient and tormented work. The countdown 
to the day of his ultimate departure, stirs Roncalli from his 
life-long dream, and the reality that issued from his hand of 
peasant and inflexible reformer, now makes him shiver, 
and, perhaps, horrify. Some of those around him tell me of 
a secretly weeping Pope. He has grown taciturn. But 
Roncalli, as the Oriental saying is, is now astride the tiger, 
which, in spite of himself, drags him forward deaf to his 
likely second thoughts. In those last months of his life the 
illness has caught him by the throat. We all see it, around 
him. He is absent. Wearied. Yet the communists continue 
to maneuver that Pope become a puppet in their hands. The 
last “bitter tea” the priest from Sotto il Monte would have 
to swallow at the behest of Italian and international 
Marxism only twenty-five days before his death, is that 
turbid promotional invention of the left, the Balzan Peace 
Prize. 

Roncalli would not hear about it, anymore. He tries to 
refuse, on the pretexts, dramatically valid, of his illness that 
has now brought him to the threshold of death. But the 
organization that he has created and wanted is now 
breathing around him, perfectly engineered and 
synchronized, at the service of international communism, 
freemasonry, and progressivism, and has the new Pope, 
Montini, sound and ready in its sleeve, and would not take 
his no for an answer. He is literally pulled out of bed, 


dressed up with the papal vestments, carried bodily to the 
Sistine Chapel, for letting him down to St. Peter’ s in that 
state, would be tantamount to killing him. By chance that 
morning, Friday May 10, 1 was on duty, and thus escorted 
that condemned, that was my precise impression, along 
with the Noble Guards and all the magnificent retinue of 
the Court. He was pale and devastated by the illness. He 
stared into the emptiness. As he was seated on the throne, 
he shuddered for a long time, shaken by shivers. But there 
were the others, around that throne, to smile on his behalf. 
There were the representatives of that prize, set up with the 
money of the killed by the lead of the reds in 1945, there 
was the gloomy monsignor Capovilla with the glistening 
teeth under the large funereal spectacles, to smile to the 
paparazzi in lieu of the Pope. Who after returning to his 
apartment would not see anybody, anymore. Outside that 
bedroom, which in a few days would be visited by the 
Angel of Death, an ocean of printed paper submerged the 
world, publicizing to the four winds that event in which 
once more, the last, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, John XXIII, 
the Pope of the communists, had been precious and 
powerful instrument in the skilful hands of the Marxist 
puppeteer. 

It is certain that on his deathbed Roncalli felt remorse. 
Some one, as I have written, swears to have heard his voice 
moaning in despair for what he had done. 

Before breathing his last, he spelled out word after word 
his profession of faith to the Catholic religion, and had the 
strength and lucidity to give his dramatic version of his 


death, with the words, “I’m dying sacrificed like the 
Lamb.” None of his predecessors, at death’s door, had felt 
compelled to voice such profession of faith, at least 
singular in a Pontiff, head of the Catholic Church and Vicar 
of Christ on the earth. And then, that “I’m dying sacrificed 
like the Lamb.” What was the dying Rone alii alluding to? 

The answer was out there, in the Italian Communist party 
awaiting that death with its jaws wide-open. It seized it in 
fact in its ravenous grab, and made it its own. In Sicily, 
where the electoral campaign for the “Regional” vote was 
in full swing, they ordered the suspension of all party 
rallies in “sign of mourning;” factory labor committees 
ordered that work be suspended for some minutes, to 
remember John XXIII; at Livorno, the workers were lined 
up and taken to the port to watch a Soviet merchant vessel 
with the flag at half staff for the death of the Pontiff; at 
Genoa, and in the other major cities, the communist 
activists distributed leaflets door to door informing that 
“The immense work for the peace of John XXIII is exposed 
to all kinds of perils because of the capitalist push toward 
the war,” and underscoring that the work of the Pope had 
not been easy, for “He had not been spared more or less 
veiled attacks, even coming from high ecclesiastical 
hierarchies... opposed to the reconciliation, for they know 
it would represent their political and ideological defeat.” 

Not even for the death of Joseph Stalin, did the rotary 
presses of the Italian Communist party work as hard as for 
John XXIII’ s. The hour had come to fulfill the “miracle.” 
They were now clattering day and night to build on tons 


and tons of printed paper the myth of Angelo Giuseppe 
Roncalli, the Pope of the Marxists. Precipitously the 
Vatican began the process of beatification of the scarcely 
dead Pope. A process that in the last few years has 
inexplicably come to a stop. Why? 

Here ends the yellowed manuscript that ought to have been 
published many years ago.