A Means to Peace

Pius XII upset Vatican tradition, turned a new papal face to the world last week.

One evening soon after the fall of Rome, hobnailed boots clumped into the plush-gold Throne Room at the Papal Palace. Some 200 war correspondents, army PRO's, photographers and gate-crashers crowded the hallowed consistorial chamber. Promptly at 7 p.m. His Holiness opened the most unusual press interview ever granted by a Pope.

Liveried Vatican attendants blinked and motioned frantically as cameramen, still and newsreel, darted about, crouched on the carpet, "shot" the Pope from every possible angle. Movie cameras whined. Reporters stamped and jostled.

Unperturbed, high on the dais in front of his massive gold throne, stood the Vicar of Jesus Christ. In heavily accented but clearly understood English, the tall Pontiff blessed the newshawks, gave them fatherly counsel:

"Peace should be your motive. . . . Write on war as a means to peace ... a peace which can be stamped with approval by every well-meaning individual and all people, a peace which can assure to one and all the conditions necessary to live in a manner befitting the dignity of human nature."

Then the Pope stepped down from the dais and mingled with the newsmen. His watered-silk sash brushed against the uniforms of battle-soiled pressmen. His white-silk skullcap shone among battered steel helmets. Benignly he overlooked the breach of Vatican neutrality implicit in the side arms carried by a few army men. He smiled when he saw U.P.'s hefty Eleanor ("Pee Bee") Packard bulging in army slacks. "I haven't anything else to wear," said Correspondent Packard.

To each visitor the Pope spoke a mellow word or two. To each he presented a lithographed photograph of himself, a black-and-silver rosary in a small olive-green packet bearing the Papal seal.

Pius XII evidently remembered some of the things he had learned about the press when as Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli he toured the U.S. (1936). Soon after their unique session last week, newsmen heard that the Vatican would open a pressroom. The Vatican was missing no legitimate opportunity to put its case for peace before the world.

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