Odyssey for the Millennium

Under the wings of a U.S. Army transport Iran's high, hot plateau flowed past. In the wasteland below Special Passenger Francis Joseph Spellman, Archbishop of New York, Roman Catholic Military Vicar and unofficial envoy of the Vatican, lay tumbled the ruins of palaces built by ancient Persian conquerors; across it snaked a railway and motor road pulsing with Lend-Lease for Russia.

Near dusty Teheran, where cargo from the U.S. and Britain is taken over by the Russians, the plane slid down. Briefly the public eye caught the Archbishop in a characteristic pose. In an open-air chapel, once the Shah's garden, he celebrated field mass. A portable organ played; a U.S. servicemen's choir sang. The hands of the Archbishop held aloft in benison were speckled red with the bites of Iran's hungry sandflies.

The Weaver. What had brought the Archbishop to Teheran, to the southern gateway of the first Communist State? In an amazing four-month odyssey Francis Spellman had journeyed about 15,000 miles, stopped in 16 lands;* he would go on to India and China. He had chatted with soldiers in Britain, given alms in Malta, scanned the front in Tunisia, prayed in Jerusalem. Yet he had spent many hours in secret talk with statesmen and dignitaries, and around his plump, energetic figure swirled a fog of rumor and speculation. In that fog last week the Allied and the Axis world thought it could see great significance: the Vatican expected and desired a United Nations victory.

Technically, as the laymen understood it. the Church was above the war. The Vatican maintained ties with Germany, Italy and Japan. But its relations with the Nazi Reich had never been worse than they were this week. Its relations with the United Nations seemed never better. In the muffled, intense activity of Vatican diplomacy, Francis Spellman, the grocer's son who may wear the red hat, seemed to have a key role.

The Threads. From St. Peter's throne the prospect before and after stretches into centuries and millenniums. The Vatican's long-range purpose is its timeless spiritual mission. Its immediate concern is the welfare of 331,500,000 followers. The layman has seen it bend to temporary expediency. But, as in its disagreement with Nazi Germany over the meaning of the 1933 Concordat, the Vatican has never been known to surrender rights it considers basic: to educate the youth, guide the family, govern the bishops.

In the diplomatic threads that Francis Spellman was helping to weave, many an observer saw the tint of the Vatican's age-old wisdom. The threads were certainly many, and these might be among them:

> Perhaps in a half-dozen audiences granted by Pius XII to Francis Spellman, there had been talk of the possible adjustment of Allied "unconditional surrender" policy to the Vatican's desire for a stable, conservative, loyally Catholic Italy.

> Perhaps Francis Spellman had talked over the project of a Catholic Federation of Central Europe with envoys in Rome and Ankara.

>But the most absorbing speculation concerned a rapprochement between the Vatican and the Kremlin, involving, rumor said, a visit by the Archbishop to Moscow, perhaps from Teheran. It was a dizzy prospect to dwell on, for Communism and Catholicism have been archenemies through a bitter quarter century. Yet Francis Spellman may have talked to Russian envoys in Ankara. The dissolution of the Comintern (TIME, May 31) had come in the midst of his mission, and it must have pleased the papacy. The Vatican radio had begun broadcasts to Russia, friendly in nature and designed to dispel the Russian people's "complete spiritual isolation." Moscow had not objected.

If Francis Spellman were promoting a rapprochement, his activity would stem from realism. In postwar Europe, home of 220,000,000 Roman Catholics, or two-thirds of the Church's world flock, Russia will play a considerable role. Further, Soviet influence will probably be dominant in the Balkans, where the Roman and Orthodox Churches share sway. The Vatican and the Kremlin may well find their affairs somewhat mixed up together.

> Francis Spellman knew the temper of America's 23,000,000 Catholics, among the most intransigent foes of Communism. Whatever he could do to further rapprochement between the Vatican and the Kremlin would make it that much easier for the future of U.S.-Russian relations.

* Spain, Italy, Vatican City, French Morocco, Algeria, England, Eire, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Malta, Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran.

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