"Everything is Promised"

"Encyclical Letter of His Holiness, Pius XI, by Divine Providence Pope"--thus last week began a document which was spirited out of the Papal State, past Italy's eagle-eyed frontier guards, and so to Paris. For this dramatic exploit the Holy See employed a young priest, modest, inconspicuous.

Large though his sober soutane was, the young priest had to secrete a quantity of papers so great as to have given a man of faint heart pause. The Holy Father was sending to Paris not one copy of his encyclical, but copies in Latin, Italian, French, English, German, Spanish, etc. etc., all on substantial paper.

As best he could the young priest stowed them away, slipped with pounding heart out of the Vatican, penetrated Italy, rode demurely in a hot and rattling railway car for more than 24 hours, then faced grim but unsuspicious Fascist frontier guards who gave one scowling look at his Papal passport, let him go. After that it was easy for the young priest to carry his precious documents to their destination. Once in Paris, he turned them over to Catholic superiors who nodded approval when the young priest begged, "Please do not let the newspapers know my name."

Pope v. Pagan. In the Papal State experienced electricians cared last week for the wireless apparatus by means of which Pope Pius can instantly dot-dash an encyclical letter to Paris, should couriers lose their cunning.*

Situation Which Provoked the Encyclical: up to last week the Italian Government had sent a total of two notes and the Holy See a total of five notes re- specting the Italo-Papal differences over suppression by Dictator Benito Mussolini of numerous Catholic clubs and the Society for Catholic Action (TIME, June 8 et seq.). His Holiness was getting no satisfaction, receiving no apology from the Italian Government. The world press had dropped the story from front-page headlines to inside squibs. By his 15,000-word encyclical Pius XI stirred slumbering interest as by a mighty trump (though the Italian Government took no visible notice). Presumably with direct reference to Benito Mussolini, the Supreme Pontiff thundered:

"One is not a Catholic who adopts and develops a program that makes his doctrines and maxims so opposed to the rights of the Church of Jesus Christ and persecutes Catholic Action. . . ."

Fascismo, the encyclical charged, plans ''to monopolize completely the young, from the tenderest years up to manhood and womanhood, and all for the exclusive advantage of a party, of a regime, based on an ideology which clearly resolves itself into a true and real pagan worship of the State, which is no less in contrast with the natural rights of the family than it is in contradiction with the supernatural rights of the church."

In these circumstances, Italian Catholics who swear Fascist oaths and participate in pagan worship of the State are advised by the encyclical to do so with mental "reservations, such as 'safeguarding the laws of God and of the Church' or 'in accordance with the duties of a good Christian' with the firm proposal to declare also externally such a reservation if the need of it might arise."

With Jesus and For Jesus-- With the calm assurance of one to whom the future is all but an open book, Pius XI concluded thus: "Everything is definitely promised in answer to prayer; if the answer will not be the re-establishment of serene and tranquil relations, it will have its answer at any rate in Christian patience, in holy courage, in the infallible joy of suffering something with Jesus and for Jesus, with the youth and for the youth so dear to Him, until the hour hidden in the mystery of the divine heart which will infallibly be the most opportune for the cause of truth and of good."

* Associated Press dot-dashed the entire encyclical out of Rome last week, complained of no interference from the Italian censor. United Press, which carried the "young priest's" exploit exclusively, saved money by dot-dashing the encyclical from Paris, where it was released at the same time as in Vatican City. It was later said that the young priest traveled from Vatican City to Paris with Monsignor Francis J. Spellman of Whitman, Mass. Thus had the Monsignor's party been searched or subjected to indignity U. S. Catholic opinion would have mobilized with double force.

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