Pope's University --

Six motor cars purred out of Vatican City one morning last week, crossed the Tiber and rolled through the streets of Rome without attracting any particular attention. When they drew up at the Church of St. John Lateran at the opposite side of the city, attendants lifted Pope Pius XI out of his car, into a sedan chair. The Holy Father had arrived to inspect and inaugurate one of the many new projects his busy mind continually hatches -- an Ateneo Romano or Pontifical University, established in the vast church where, in 1929, Mussolini and Cardinal Gasparri signed the Lateran treaties between Italy and the Church.

The Pontifical University, founded as an institution of higher learning for Italian men, cost $500,000 of the Pope's private funds. He inspected its big halls, was helped to a throne before a waiting audience of cardinals and prelates. There, Pius XI spoke briefly, telling prospective students: "You are the real hope of the Church and the glory of God."

Two days later, during the annual service the Pope holds in the Sistine Chapel for cardinals who have died during the year, attendants noted that the Holy Father's pallid face was newly blotched with red, took this as a sign that his old circulatory troubles had returned. The 80-year-old Pontiff took to his bed. Once more, rumors of a serious relapse went out, the wildest being that papal Dr. Aminta Milani was telling prelates: "I would not be surprised any morning to hear the bells of St. Peter's toll out the sad news."

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