Prayers for Stalin?

Orthodox Russian and U.S. Communists, good atheists all, were shocked last week to hear Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen coolly announce that he prayed every morning for Russia's Joseph Stalin. Monsignor Sheen is professor of philosophy at Washington's Catholic University of America and an archfoe of Bolshevism. Speaking to some 2,500 members of Brooklyn's Catholic Teachers Association, the Monsignor said: "We can hate Communism without hating Communists." He added: "Every morning after Low Mass I pray for Joe Stalin and for Russia, as does every Catholic priest in the world."

Shocked as the Communists, Roman Catholic priests hastened to point out that nowhere in the Mass are there specific prayers for Russia or for Stalin. What every Catholic priest recites are prayers "for the [Roman Catholic] Church in Russia" (prescribed by Pope Pius XI in 1934), including a petition that God may "thrust down to hell Satan and all wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls."

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