Protective Custody

Since Viennese Nazis sacked the archiepiscopal palace of Theodor Cardinal Innitzer last month, the Nazi Government of the Ostmark has systematically closed down Roman Catholic schools and seminaries, bundled monks out of their monasteries, arrested and harried the lower clergy. After the sack, Cardinal Innitzer (whom the U. S. Catholic hierarchy at its recent annual meeting praised as a "valiant spokesman") issued a statement denying that he had ever attacked Adolf Hitler, or that he had been silent at the accession of Sudetenland, and declaring: "I expressed my thanks to the Fuehrer and ordered thanksgiving services and the ringing of bells for the whole of the Ostmark. I protest against the mortifying reproach that I placed myself in deliberate opposition to the Fuehrer and the nation during those great days of the German people."

Silent since then, Cardinal Innitzer last week was once more reported in "protective custody," a plight in which presumably he had been for a month. The reporter of this news was an anonymous broadcaster from the Vatican radio station, speaking in English. The Cardinal, he said, had quietly requested that "several trustworthy persons who would leave Austria shortly" be brought to his palace, to behold the unrepaired damage done by the Nazis.

Two U. S. priests (unnamed) visited him, reported that His Eminence, 63, "is looking young for his years," that a priest who had been thrown from a second-story window during the rioting had since died. Cardinal Innitzer, they said, declared that "the invaders . . . 30 young toughs . . . would not have respected his person or his dignity if they had found him. . . ."

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