NIKITARONCALLI Counterlife of a Pope

[InHocSignoVinces]

That officer would later relate to French writer Pierre
Virion that “…I was dumbfounded when I laid my eyes on
those accusatory letters, written on Segreteria di Stato di
Sua Santità’s letterhead” (2).


(2) Pierre Virion will confide the episode to Vaticanist Gabriella de
Montemayor, met in Rome in June 1974, who will receive
confirmation from a high ranking Roman justice, dottor Giulio
Lenti, who had received the information from mons. Domenico
Tardini, to whom he was bound by a long-standing friendship.
Indeed, Pope Pacelli, distraught by that revelation, had
immediately summoned mons. Tardini.
Cardinal Tisserant’s secretary, monsignor Georges Roche,
annotates the episode in his book “Pie XII devant l'histoire”,
published by Laffont of Parigi.


Pius XII collapsed immediately upon reading those papers.
Forced into bed for many days, he disposed the immediate
departure of Montini for Milan, the first vacant diocese that
in that moment of terrible anguish was at hand. The future
Paul VI, who at that time was de facto Secretary of State,
thus departed at moment’s notice his office at the Vatican.
In fact, Pius XII had left that office vacant, after the death,
in 1944, of cardinal Maglione.


Montini departed Rome and the great pain caused to the
heart of the Pontiff, and reached Milan in conformity with
that ancient Vatican norm “promoveatur ut removeatur”
(“promote to remove”). It was the late autumn of 1954. In
order to obtain the much sought-after “Galero”
(cardinalitial hat), the Hamletic monsignor from Concesio
would have to wait, from that day on, for the election to the
See of Peter of his “precursor” Roncalli (3).


(3) Thirty years later will write Antonio Spinosa in “Pius XII, The
Last Pope” (le Scie Mondadori, October 1992, p. 357, 358):
“At the close of that same year 1954, the Pope appointed Montini
archbishop of Milan. Had he wanted to distance himself from him?
In August had died in the Lombard capital the Benedictine cardinal
Schuster, head of the Ambrosian Archdiocese, and by the
beginning of the following November the Pontiff had already
replaced him with Montini. He broke the news to the main
exponents of the Uomini di Azione Cattolica gathered before his
residence at Castel Gandolfo. “You’ve never disappointed me, said
he to those present, turning in particular to Gedda, Father
Lombardi, and to the Association’s assistant monsignor Fiorenzo
Angelini. “And I’m glad of it”. Then he added: “I must now give
you some news: His excellency mons. Giovan Battista Montini is
the new Archbishop of Milan.” Heartfelt and lengthy was the
applause of those present, but the buzz had it that many failed to
grasp the hidden significance of the appointment... Montini was not
happy, rather, he appeared as though bewildered to a friend,
Camaldolese father Anselmo Giabbani, who met him in those
days. “His countenance,” witnessed the friar, “had changed. Even
the tone of his voice was different, and his gestures less
expressive.” It was spoken of a true exile inflicted upon the
monsignor who had dared to “betray” - the term was very strong –
Pacelli’s anti-Socialist, and anti-communist battle. Suor Pasqualina
had seen the Pope weep, disappointed by Montini’s receptive
approach. The monsignor had already drawn the attention of the
pro-secretary of the Sant' Uffizio (Holy Office), cardinal Ottaviani,
a front-liner, with Gedda, of those who accused Montini of plotting
with Fanfani and of aspiring to a Christian Democrat party
autonomous of the Vatican. It was also alleged that the monsignor
had even been present at certain black masses. It was father
Lombardi who broke the news to the Pope.


To be continued...

[InHocSignoVinces]

The Vatican of the new direction, attempted by whatever
means, naturally, to get hold of that collection of
documents. Now forced into a corner, cardinal Tisserant
had to give up his prized archive, but not, however, prior to
having his secretary, abbot Georges Roche, photocopy the
whole lot. For years, after the death of Tisserant, the
Vatican pursued in vain Roche and the niece of the
deceased cardinal in order to acquire, at any price, that
inconvenient double that was abroad.


At length, cement-businessman Carlo Pesenti, who had
managed to acquire from Roche for 450 million lire
($750,000) the precious archive, gave it to the Vatican, in
the person of monsignor Benelli, in exchange for a
facilitated loan of 50 billion Swiss Francs. In fact Pesenti
was in need, at the time, for his banking group and for the
acquisition of two banks at Munich and Monte Carlo, of
foreign currency loans from the Istituto per le Opere di
Religione (Monsignor Marcinkus, monsignor De Bonis,
doctor Strobel).


Pesenti’s interest was that of being able to use that
Vatican institute both as a guarantor or co-guarantor of this
credit, and to profit on the spread between the official
exchange rate and the “black market” rate.

So, the anti-Pacellian front, progressive and advocate of
the “dialogue” and of the “openings,” was already a solid,
disconcerting reality, some years prior to Pius XII’s death.


The agitators of the new times despised Pius XII. They
considered him the most anti-democratic Pope of the
modern Church, with his only two Consistories of 1946 and
1952, and with that fulminating hand-grenade launched
between the legs of Marxism, which was the
excommunication of the communists. And the Italian
Republic born of the Resistance could not forgive Pope
Pacelli his excessive love for the German-speaking peoples,
from 1914 to 1945.


In observance, expectedly, of the teachings of the “Soviet
Encyclopedia,” at the voice of “Catholicism” (Vol. 20, p.
379) wherein Pius XII is presented as Germanophile.


To be continued...

[InHocSignoVinces]

His enemies lay in wait for Eugenio Pacelli’s death. It
was necessary to debunk the figure of Pius XII, of the
“Pastor Angelicus” and of his twenty-year-old pontificate.
It was imperative to render it miserably human to the eyes
of the masses. So it was started, that terrifying direction,
that transformed the death of a Pope into a grotesque
tragedy, to feed the vulgar, voracious and inextinguishable
curiosity of the man of the consumer world. Unscrupulous
editors spared no efforts to buy Pontifical Archiatra (Pope’s
personal physician) Riccardo Galeazzi Lisi, called “The
crow with the Leica,” whom with his camera searched and
fixed on celluloid, with callous coldness and precision,
moment after moment, the face of Eugenio Pacelli
devastated by agony. So, in full standing, on the front pages
of the newspapers, the image of a dying Pius XII, supine on
the pillows, the gaunt face darkened by the growth of days,
the eyes closed and sunken, the mouth open in the rattle of
death, sold like hot cakes amongst the throngs famished
with desecration, traveled despoiled on coffee-shop tables,
between empty “cappuccino” cups and cigarettes stumps,
hanged for days at newsstands amidst pin-up girl
magazines and tabloids, finally ending up in trash-bins.


Even the television had its jackal-share in that fierce
tearing to pieces of a myth. So that the agony of Pius XII,
complete with its hallucinating details, entered the Italian
homes, was observed from behind the set tables, between a
“forchettata” (forkful) and another of spaghetti, between a
glass of wine and another. The most reserved Pope in
modern history — when he walked in the Vatican gardens
the guards on detail were ordered to conceal themselves
behind the trees; and no one, other than Suor Pasqualina,
ever violated the intimacy of his apartments, of his work
desk, of his papers — was thrown, dying, to the world. All
the dramatic intimacy of his agonizing humanity, of his bed
muddled by the starts of death, all was meticulously and
pitilessly and despicably tossed to the public feeding frenzy
of prying eyes.


The recollection of that death overwhelmed me, as I had
slowly started up the sounding stony steps and was
approaching this other Papal death. And yet what an abyss
divided them. The “Pastor Angelicus” had died in a climate
of Greek-tragedy. Concluding or wrapping up a chapter of
the history of the Church and humanity that spanned much
longer than the twenty years of his pontificate. He had lived
and operated luminous, as a sun of spirituality. That new
world that was about to appear on the scene of History had
transformed his human death, with studied measure, into an
iconoclastic slaughter. John XXIII, reformer and
progressive, responsible, with the Council, for the doubts
and obscure destinies toward which were plunging the
entire Church and humanity, had passed away in an
atmosphere oozing serenity, optimism, almost happiness;
loved or flattered by his own people, in the Vatican.
Exploited as no other Pope ever was, in the world;
applauded by the Marxists to whom he had unexpectedly
opened the doors of the Christian citadel.


To be continued...

[InHocSignoVinces]

Only a few years had passed since the passing of Pius XII.
As I now recalled it, in that my solitary ascending to the
papal apartment, it seemed to me as though a century had
gone by. I recalled with blinding lucidity that afternoon of
waiting on the Church yard at St. John’s basilica. The
squad of the Noble Guard drawn up before the gates, with
the sun flashing on the gilded helmets and the scarlet coats.
I recalled, next to that line up of Roman aristocracy, the
aspect irremediably “petit-bourgeois” of the representatives
of the Italian State. There were, naturally, the Christian
Democrats in full ranks. Precisely all those who, years
later, would take the historical leap into the arms of the
communists. “The verbose pigmies “ of Italy’s politics, as
general De Gaulle, jokingly, defined them, crowded as
schoolboys, in their brand new tailcoats, holding their top
hats behind their backs, visibly uneasy amidst so much
nobility at arms. Then the arrival of the coffin from Castel
Gandolfo, and the winding of the long funeral cortege
through the streets of old Rome, amidst the dull rumbling
of the bells and two overflowing wings of silent crowd:
clapping the dead became popular only later. The Roman
Pope was returning, dead, to Rome among his children. The
Pope of my youth, the Pope of the war, who had risen like a
white apparition through the smoke and the rubble of
San Lorenzo devastated by the American bombs, when the
rumble of the “liberators” still vibrated in the azure Roman
sky, with his arms open in an embrace toward his people
lashed by iron and fire, that squeezed him from all sides,
pressing about him to touch him, dusty and bloodstained, as
the white tunic of the Pope crimsoned itself with that
blood.


But in what a state was he coming back! The embalming
process had gone wrong, and so the body borne on shoulder
by the “sediari” in their costumes of scarlet brocade, before
the horrified gazes of the cardinals of the Court, appeared
unrecognizable, swollen, bluish, and fetid with
putrefaction. We were a small group, around the
Confession, in a St. Peter deserted and immersed in the
shade. Night had descended. The great doors of the Basilica
had been shut onto the piazza illuminated by the blazing
flares of the mute and solemn crowd. In that atmosphere
loaded with death and eternity, we paid the last respect to
the transfigured remains of Pius XII, clothed with the
sumptuous pontifical dresses, escorted by the Swiss
halberdiers and by the dignitaries of the Court to the three
traditional biers in wait, wide open, beneath the Berninian
bronze canopy. The cardinals paraded before their defunct
Pope bestowing their benediction, before those features,
with no remnant of the ascetic countenance of Pius XII,
would disappear forever under the first, heavy cover.


To be continued...