The Pope's Mail

Jubilant Communists this week were busily plastering Rome's walls with the picture of a Roman Catholic priest. The caption: "One vote the Christian Democrats won't get. Monsignor Cippico, Vatican official, can't vote because he's in jail. He would have voted Christian Democrat --if he hadn't been caught!"

"Very Surprising." Monsignor Cippico's exposure, the only major Vatican scandal since 1915,* began last August. Pope Pius was at his summer retreat of Castel Gandolfo, deep in the Alban Hills. Beneath his long hand on the light walnut desk lay the morning's mail, with all the envelopes personally addressed to the Pope still unopened. Many begging letters Pius XII marked with a gold pencil, so that help should be sent immediately. Then he came to a letter from an industrialist who complained of the excessively high commissions charged by the Vatican for personal loans of $450,000 and 90,000,000 lire; he mentioned interest rates as high as 45%. Incredulous, the Pope glanced at the clock which, together with a tall white crucifix and a telephone, was the only ornament on his desk. There was just time to reach Monsignor Domenico Tardini, State Secretary for Extraordinary Affairs, before Tardini's daily siesta. Shown the letter, Tardini raised his eyebrows. "Banking and industry!" he exclaimed. In all his long diplomatic career he had never had anything to do with either. "Very surprising!" he said.

Tardini summoned tall, bent Monsignor Giulio Guidetti, administrator of Holy See property. Hobbling in on his cane, Guidetti said yes, he had supplied loans to the industrialist, but had taken no commission whatever. He had handed the money to Monsignor Cippico as directed in orders signed by Tardini and Monsignor Giovanni Montini, Substitute Secretary of State.*

Afternoon by the Bay. A five-man papal inquiry commission soon established that Tardini's and Montini's names had been forged to the orders. Their findings led directly to blond, youngish Monsignor Eduardo Prettner Cippico, a well-born native of Trieste and a Vatican archivist. Though his salary was meager, Cippico owned an 18,000,000-lire apartment in Rome, an Alfa Romeo, a Fiat and a Chrysler. He liked to entertain expensively. The day before Easter last year, waiters at a fashionable restaurant at Posillipo, near Naples, had their hopes of an afternoon off dashed when Cippico phoned that he would be lunching there at 3. He spent the afternoon beside the Bay of Naples with an operatic soprano. He said she was a relative.

While under investigation, Cippico gave his word not to leave a suite in the Vatican, and a papal gendarme was placed at his door to bar strangers. One evening last week Cippico asked his guard to help him move some books from one room to another. Loading the obliging gendarme's arms with volumes, Cippico held open the door. When the guard entered, Cippico closed the door and locked it. He slipped into the shadows of Saint Peter's and out into the Piazza di San Pietro, where a waiting automobile whisked him off into the Roman night.

The Vatican had moved slowly; but Cippico's flight spurred it to action. Less than an hour after his escape, Cippico was unfrocked, i.e., forbidden to perform priestly offices, except in extreme emergency. In his lay status he could be arrested by the Italian police, to whom the Vatican reported his flight.

The carabinieri found him in his sumptuous apartment, wearing a lilac dressing gown, hustled him off to jail. There another charge was placed against him: theft of jewelry valued at 100,000,000 lire. The jewels had been entrusted to him during the German occupation by the Salem d'Angeri family of his native Trieste.

The leftish press went wild with the Cippico scandal.

Sad State. Then another Vatican scandal broke. At week's end, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano announced the forced resignation of Monsignor Guidetti, Administrator of Holy See property. Pope Pius had received another letter from an Italian businessman: "The undersigned Alessandro Rossini of Vicolo Massimi 6, Rome, humbly informs Your Holiness that he has carried out three financial operations with the administration of the Holy See. ... In filial confidence in your justice this writer begs Your Holiness to appoint an expert to solve this sad state of affairs."

The sad state of affairs described in the letter told how Rossini had made three loans totaling more than half a million dollars on notes signed by Guidetti on Vatican stationery. Rossini thought he was lending money to the Holy See, but Guidetti, a wealthy landowner, had used the money for private speculation.

The Guidetti scandal would make another busy week for Communist billposters. Apparently Communist Boss Palmiro Togliatti and friends were not the only people in Italy making votes for the Reds.

*When German Monsignor Rudolf Gerlach, Assistant to the Papal Master of the Chamber, was unfrocked for having written to Germany concerning the movement of British ships in Italian harbors. Gerlach abjured the Catholic faith, became a Protestant minister in Germany.

*In the nine years since his elevation to the papacy, Pius has not been able to decide who should take his place as Papal Secretary of State.

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