Brooklyn Blast

"To bomb Rome constitutes an outrage on Humanity itself . . . a foul and dreadful desecration of the Cross of Christ, the relics of His Crucifixion, of the Christian Martyrs, the shrines, and even the bodies of the Saints."

Thus wrote New York City's Judge Herbert A. O'Brien (of Domestic Relations court) in the Tablet, official weekly of Brooklyn's Roman Catholic diocese. Anglophobe O'Brien, who supported Father Coughlin, and once told a Congressional committee hearing that passage of the Lend-Lease act would cause "civil war" in the U.S., had just read that the R.A.F. had bombed two Rome suburbs.

Cried he: "That airplane bombing had all the appearance of a tryout to test if the Catholics of America would be alarmed or enraged at the implied threat to bomb the Capitol of Christendom.

''Shall we the Catholics of America remain silent. . . ? The communists, athe ists and pagans . . . will exult if Rome . . . with its churches, tombs, altars, monuments, relics . . . becomes a huge conflagration and the sacred bones of its holy Martyrs consumed and lost forever.

"Let every Catholic individual, priest, professional man and woman, society, organization, layman, businessman, write . . . expressing indignation and demand ing that no bombing or other military plan threaten the eternal city of Rome"

Some of the Tablet's readers took the instruction. By last week's end Senator Tom Connally, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, had received "from 50-100 letters," mostly from New York and Long Island. Their burden : Rome must never be bombed; even near by attacks must cease.

Judge O'Brien and his Tablet readers were not likely to have much effect. Rome and suburbs are studded with legitimate bombing targets--industrial plants, military camps, shipyards. Besides, the most recently received letters were beginning to show disagreement with the Judge. These writers, also Tablet readers, suggested that the Senator refer the protesting letters to the Bishop of Coventry and other clerics whose historical churches were blown to bits by the Luftwaffe.

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