News from Italy

Last week jittery Fascists suppressed too late an anti-war pastoral letter of the Bishop of Cremona which had already been read in every church of the diocese and reprinted in the Vatican's Osservatore Romano. Excerpt: "God punishes peoples by abandoning them to unworthy shepherds or to perverse or inept rulers or by permitting that even the better ones among them commit fatal errors."

Because of the war, Pope Pius XII last week let it be known he would not celebrate the usual elaborate Easter Mass in St. Peter's, ending with a blessing urbi et orbi, "to the city and the world." To 3,000 pilgrims the Holy Father expressed his hope "that the nations in conflict today may as soon as possible sheathe their swords and attain a sure peace based on justice."

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