The Vatican Treasury - The Pope and Italy's Bankruptcy
The Vatican Treasury — The Pope and Italy's Bankruptcy Archbishop Spellman Letters Suggest New Financial Maneuvers By LAWRENCE FERNSWORTH Former correspondent far the London Time* and New York...
...The resolutions include such as these: to prevent teacher dismissals...
...General Haskell as Governor would carry on the great tradition of Roosevelt and Lehman...
...In early September, we are informed by obscurely placed press dispatches, that Enrico Galeazzi...
...On February 2, 1943, there was adopted a resolution introduced by Councilman Louis Goldberg of Brooklyn and Councilman Ninfo of the Bronx...
...Anyone conversant with the juvenile delinquency situation will realize the importance of this measure...
...Archbishop Spell' man throws no light on the matter...
...Van Loon's Diary Peg of Old Sewery By HENDRIK WILLEM VAN LOON I FEEL terribly sorry for Westbrook Peeler...
...That is bad...
...traveling both as governor of the Vatican and as a special delegate on a pontifical mission, haa made a speedy visit to New' York and Washington...
...What Mrs...
...Judgej is Bronx and Mosbeftan THE American Labor Party has five distin* guished candidates for positions on the bench...
...American men lying amid the endless white crosses of French battlefields died for this principle...
...so will the Italian population...
...The State of New York has 47 electoral votes...
...At that time the Bank of Rome, in which the bulk of Vatican funds were on deposit, was bankrupt...
...to reinforce prise control...
...Indeed, Archbishop Spellman himself tells us bluntly, in the aeries of his letters which Collier'* magazine is publishing under the title, "Action This Pay," that "Obviously, I am not writing all my thoughts or describing all I saw...
...Pegler having no sorts of his own in any array and being undoubtedly exempt from actual service by either age or "IndispensibHity" can hardly understand what it means to have dose relatives "somewhere in the Pacific...
...The plain fact is that Archbishop Spellman in all his statements concerning his visits has been lacking in candor, and he cap, therefore have no cause for complaint if fellow citizens, like myself, who are legitimately interested in the purpose of his activities, choose to ^form judgments on the basis of available data and the probabilities inherent therein...
...These holdings, and who can say what else of the Vatican's financial ramifications, are obviously once more in jeopardy...
...Archbishop Spellman was unnecessarily brusque—if not rude—it seemed, when i reporter at a press conference attempted to draw him out...
...And,'monover, it is understood that tbay.rsmletenjt mote than the citizens who votes) Ser them...
...Han ley should be fleeted, we should have a mere Republican hack in the Governor's chair...
...until five o'clock," whereafter: "I went again to the Holy Father...
...He was baiting a woman and he was baiting the one woman in our Republic who, on account of her position, cannot answer either slander or libel...
...Roosevelt...
...People warn what the ALP stands for...
...Stmt*) Sesofe aad Assomtyly In Brooklyn the American Labor Party has two first class candidates running in special elections to-the state legislature...
...Roosevelt only .slightly and as I was born abroad (the only face about me which Mr...
...Pegler m see ef the meat brilliant writers ef oar time...
...If a New Dealer gets that bloc of votes next year it will do a lot to place him in the presidential c^hair...
...It was a dangerous trip and a tiring one and it was undertaken by a woman old enough to have all of her sons in the armed forces of the United States...
...But not a single one of these stalwart Roosevelt haters has thus, far expressed the opinion that, in this instance at least, Mrs...
...The churches will be poor during the post-war period...
...The Cffy Ceeecii THE City Council has a lot to do with the * way life goes in this city of ours...
...I refer, of coarse, to Mrs...
...Judge Samuel Orr is candidate for the position of County Judge of Bronx County...
...Those familiar with the ways of Vatican politics and with certain political issues in which the Vatican is deeply concerned—relating- to the future* of Italy, of Spain, of France, cf Poland and to the political status of Russia-—will see that such issues as thaw cannot remain outside the purview of any parleys in which the Vatican may engage with our government through any intermediary whatever...
...The record which these three have made is something to shout about The only reason that people have not shouted is that they have not known anything about it ' Pearl Will en is running for the Council in Manhattan...
...Hoskell far Lmereaoaf wwessaea Ia its bearing upon the 1944 election chief importance goes to, the candidacy of William N. Haskell...
...Those who are deeply disturbed at these activities, and see in them a recrudescence of an all too familiar side door diplomacy, are amply justified in their fears...
...This evening a casual visitor left a eopy of the World Telegram in our house and while waiting for Jimmie to come down to dinner (she was telephoning, bless her heart, about a lost dog), I picked the sheet up and read it...
...Often they combined forces in introdoonsg bills or resolutions...
...Aa nrministrator of relief in various European countries after the first World War, he obtained experience which will prove valuable in dealing with post-war conditions...
...September 23 found kirn back in Lisbon on the return trip...
...Archbishop Spellman does write interesting letters...
...Above all, such a claim would cauae the people to lose all respect for the clergy, but it would likewise cause them to hate ' both the clergy and the principles which they represent" -t Here we have a- -glimpse of the Pandora's box of confusion that may be opened if the demarches of Signers Galeazzi and Fummi, following upon the Vatican parleys of Monsignor Spellman, shall have for effect the underwriting of the Vatican's financial affairs directly or indirectly by one or more of the allied governments...
...The effort which must be made to avoid all bankruptcy will benefit the churches but will impose enormous sacrifices upon the whole nation...
...Vof/con Holdisgs la Jeepordy IX/hen Mussolini made his treaty with the " Vatican, it was accompanied by a finencial arrangement whereby the Fascist government paid over directly to the Vatican 750 million lire in cash, and made over to it one billion lire worth of S^r state>bonds...
...And I am sentimental enough to believe there is such a thing as keeping faith with our dead...
...Voters will take notice...
...Conservative or reactionary members of the Council are pushed toward liberal and labor ideas...
...Everyone interested in municipal welfare should mark these names well and work to gather what support he can for these candidates: Brooklyn: Louis P. Goldberg sad Frsnk Monaco.—Bronx: Salvatore Ninfo and Gertrude Wei) Klein.—Manhattan: Pearl Willen...
...to curb juvenile delinquency...
...Salvatore Ninfo and Gertrude Weil Klein are from the Bronx...
...But what we can do next year depends partly on what we do this year...
...I know Mrs...
...It most he one thing, of course, to be known aa the dirtiest fighter within the realn of contemporary American literature, but it is something else again to be so conscious of that fact that yen moat forever accentuate it and reiterate it and rub it in...
...Here it is: 1. Immediate action to curb juvenile delinquency 2. Immediate action to secure people's markets net black markets...
...The wife of our President has just returned from a long hazardous trip...
...so will the Italian people...
...There ensued secret interviews between Mussolini and Cardinal Gasparri...
...Louis P. Goldberg comes from Brooklyn...
...This is as it should be...
...But all of them are discussed...
...I have never denied that Mr...
...There it was stated in his behalf that his visit had related to "suppliev" Another dispatch from London, dated September 4, in the meantime related that the Italian banker, Giovanni Fommi, had reached London from Rome aa the financial adviser to Pius XII "to discuss Vatican finances with British capital...
...We shall be in a position to wage a powerful campaign in 1944...
...He gives added point to this statement by quoting Cardinal Gasparri's...
...Golsoxx/'s Mission Te Mew Ymrk Klot withstanding...
...the Pope's secretary, after which the Fascist state bolstered up the bank by pouring into it one and one-half million lire—at the expense of the Italian economy...
...I was particularly interested in his description of his first visit to the Vatican after arriving in Rome...
...during the period ef the great pro- aad anti-slavery debates, aa ., honorable member of Congress referred to another equally honorable mimber of that same Congress as "a being ae brilliant yet so corrupt that like a rotten mackerel in the moonlight...
...It shows that the voters are half asleep...
...Every member of this small body will have a lot of power over things that...
...In more than 20 years of Fascism, Mussolini managed to increase the state's indebtedness from 93 billion to 600 billion lire, an amount equal to the national wealth...
...It was eight o'clock before I returned to the villa after a day that I shall never foret" Archbishop Spellman does not mention the fact, but his old friend Eurico Gafeaxxi is the governor of the Vatican...
...Her campaign platform puts into snappy form what the ALP stands for...
...Queens: A. Joseph Donnelly...
...It requested the Board est Earn, mate to restore special investigators to the Juvenile Aid Bureau and to add probation officers to the court personnel...
...To some extent it has control of courts, police, schools, hospitals, welfare work...
...Everyone is up to fever pitch over what will happen in 1944...
...And just as obviously, one may conclude, the question of how to salvage them most have occupied a large part of the conversation between Archbishop Spellman...
...If Governor Dewey becomes the Republican candidate for President in 1944, we could have no better man than General Haskell to take over the guidance of the affairs of this state...
...reply on being asked to write his memoire: "The interesting things I cannot tell, and the things which I can tell are not interesting...
...The letter describing the visit to the Vatican is dated February 28...
...6. Vigilance in protecting democracy at home...
...Thst sounds fine...
...And it is a first class, sounding-board for ideas...
...But I realise that she undertook this perilous peregrination because she felt it te be her duty...
...The purpose of these visits remain shrouded in secrecy...
...In New York City the registration fell tto just about onehalf of what it was in 1940...
...For that shows that you are really ashamed of voorself aad how much you wish that jwst for once in your life you might hit an opponent above the belt—a piece of puglilistic dexterity of which nobody, to my knowledge, has ever accused Mr...
...If Mr...
...Signor Galeazzi and, in the aftermath...
...And I believe there are passages in them which are very revealing when considered in conjunction with certatf^raw ascertainable facts...
...Civilized human beings however are able to do this and they realise what it must have meant to some poor devfl of a kid, lying badly wounded in some lonely hospital at the other end of the world, to have the wife of the President of the United States come to his bedside and smile at him (and no woman can smile a friendlier smile than this very great lady) and tell him that he is a fine felitev...
...Because the number of voters has slumped, there will probably be fewer than 20 city legislators in the new chamber...
...Even those of us who sometimes regret that she is apt to let her enthusiasms ran away with her commonsense will agree (without a single dissenting voice) that this visit of her to the Pacific was really a wonderful thing...
...The Italian clergy will feel the pinch of economic distress...
...a veil seems to the lifted...
...Often the discussion is reported in the press...
...a constant devotion to strengthening the four freedoms in the homes, factories and street* ef New York City...
...i » • The fever charts, the night after Eleanor Roosevelt's visit, must have dropped with s rapidity which can oaly have brought joy and satisfaction to the hearts of the' good nurses and doctors who are takutf care ef our sons aad friends and many a boy who had about given up the struggle moat have decided to change his mind aad to go on living half a century longer Being a Harvaaa) man, I am thrown more or less with th* kind of people who are not exactly exuberant about that branch of the Roosevelt tribe which has occupied the White House, these laat ten or eleven years...
...Pegler to remain a mucker and to freely insult his betters without ever being called upon to accept the responsibility for the insults he so gratuitously heaves at those who have incurred Ma drunken displeasure...
...4. No false economy through curtailment of necessary educational and welfare services...
...It will be most illuminating in this connection to quote what Professors Salvemini and La La Pi ana have to say on this subject: "As we have seen, the new democratic [Italian] government will inherit from the Fascist regime a disastrous condition of financial bankruptcy...
...With a strong and active ALP, laborites, liberals, democrats, have a fine chance of winning next year...
...If the very class which is supposed to live according to the rules of renunciation and self-mortification, and to look after spiritual rather than wordly values, were to claim privileges and exemptions from the common misery, the whole purpose of religion would be defeated...
...If a state of bankruptcy should be declared, either indirectly or directly (by removing all barriers to inflation and by cancelling the 600-lire debt at one stroke), the largest part of church investments and endowments, as well as those of other ecclesiastical institutions, would be wiped out, together with the savings and investments of all Italian people...
...Roosevelt's voyage of mercy was anything but what it was meant to be—a charming and humble gesture of homage and cratitude to the men who are fighting and dying that we may maintain a social and political system which allows Mr...
...In the Ninth Senatorial District Hyman Waldman, a well known Social Democrat, is contender for a place in the State Senate...
...November Elections - Rehearsal for'44 fy WILUAkt E. tOHN f T IS time for citizens to get hot about this . New York campaign...
...During the past two years we have had three American Labor Party representatives among the 28 councilmen...
...Roy Howard's pet minstrel...
...The struggle for those 47 electoral votes in 1944 will depend largely on the power and standing of this party...
...Ideas are set affoat...
...Actually they stand for the illHrmd of millka...
...In Washington it is no longer remembered...
...In the First District of the Bronx Harry Ksvesh is running for the position of Municipal Court Justice...
...He waa chosen as the candidate ef the Democratic Party after consultation with ALP leaders and with President Roosevelt The Republican candidate for thia office inadvertently reveals the importance of this campaign by the peculiar sort of campaign which he is conducting...
...Galeazz...
...His whom argument is that Governor Dewey must be supported, that the Republican Party must be strengthened for neat year's campaign...
...te provide a "Wagner Act" for city employees...
...What will labor do...
...accepted and goes on the statute books...
...Under oar system of proportional representation we have, roughly, one council member for every 75,000 voters...
...West brook Pegler was indulging in his favorite pastime...
...And, as sll newspsper readers know, Judge Matthew M. Levy is the leading candidate for the Supreme Court in the First Judicial District, including the Bronx and Manhattan, opposing Magistrate Aurelio, who has been denounced by all bar associations...
...Occasionally one of these proposal...
...Then he went into confer|nc^"Vtth His Old friend Enrico...
...It must be aimed partly at the 50 per cent who registered this year and partly at the other 50 per cent who will register and vote next year...
...General Haskell is well known as an efficient executive, a man with wide social vision and a devoted adherent of the New Deal...
...5. Securing of national and state cooperation to bring industry to New York City...
...Wifji Judge Levy on the ticket, running definitely ss ALP candidates, are Copal Mints and George Salvatore...
...This was the beginning of the financial tieup between the Vatican and the Fascist state...
...and that we are all terribly proud of him and that when she comes home she will write his mother and tell her that she saw him and need not worry as he was doing fine...
...matter, things tied in with the everyday welfare of all of us...
...Those who are deeply concerned for the future of peace have a right to state' their anxiety concerning the drift of the secret diplomacy which obviously is concerned about many things that are very much the people's business—as this is...
...In the Twenty-second Assembly District—also in Brooklyn—Philip Haber, a good trade union man, is candidate for the Assembly...
...The Vatican Treasury — The Pope and Italy's Bankruptcy Archbishop Spellman Letters Suggest New Financial Maneuvers By LAWRENCE FERNSWORTH Former correspondent far the London Time* and New York Time* in Spain /yiE of the peace points of President Wilson, in fact, the very first on his list, ^read as follows: , . „ . "Open covenant* of peace, openly arrived at: after which there ¦hall be no private international understanding of any kind, bat diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in public view...
...But there are plenty of positive arguments...
...It both shine* and Stiaks...
...It passes the local laws...
...te demand ratification in New York of the federal child labor amendment...
...Will Roosevelt run...
...to freeze rents (in July, 1943...
...to prohibit the salt of disloyal and subversive literature...
...We have a state election going on right now in which American Labor Party members and Democrats are trying out the very machinery with which they wjjl go into next year's contest The American Labor Party is the only all*out New Deal Party in thia city and state...
...Here is the list of ALP candidates for the City Council...
...And now, at the end of the Fascist regime—that this is the end, let us fervently hope—the state is bankrupt again...
...His Holiness...
...Most of these bills art simply refgftmT t* committee, filed or printed...
...During the paat two years this body has been made up of 26 members...
...Is there any reason why ecclesiastical institutions and persons should not bear their share of these sacrifices ? "If the churches are heavily interested in saving Italy from bankruptcy, why should they be exempted from contributing to the common effort...
...That's where you are wrong...
...But if we turn to the book, "What to Do Witk Italy," by Professors La Pian and Salvemini...
...This went to the Board with the full authority of City Council behind it...
...Willea hap set down in her program they have worked for in definite and effective ways...
...Not the least disturbing'political maneuvers recently observed have been the comings and goings of Archbishop Frances Spellman—his two visits to Spain, where surely no American boys are bivouaced, his friendly visits to the Spanish dictator Francesco Franco and the Portuguese dictator Salazar...
...I have just been looking over the record made by our tiny ALP delegation of three in the present council of 26 members...
...There'is a considerable similarity between the financial predicament of the Vatican now and at the time of the appearance of the Italian Fascio back in 1921...
...Now look over the record which these tarda have made...
...These three have •a b en able to do things because they have ratelhjremje, character, political undesamMwftwg...
...I aa* quoting from memory bet once ¦ ¦ana a Ome...
...What are the financial and business matters in which these two hommt d'affaires for the Vatican may be interested...
...You may think that numbers of the City Council have nothing to do with all of these important things...
...If the ALP falls off, slips back, the keystone ef the whole liberal voting power will drop out The drawing power of the ALP depends on what citizens think of it If, during the coming year, we have a "strong group in the CityCouncil, if we place our candidates on the bench, then we can make a record...
...Good campaign work is all the more necessary...
...Will the Republicans nominate Willkie or a reactionary...
...But that ia net all...
...3. Immediiate consideration of fall employment for demobilized soldiers and »ar workers...
...to provide a minimum wage for city employees...
...to provide a "Beveridge Plan" for city employees...
...After a general audience between the Rope and.members of the college of Cardinals, Archbishop Spellman remained and talked with the Pope for two hours...
...This pies should be enough by itself to convince any New Dealer, any liberal, that he should vote for General Haskell...
...Pegler ever got correctly), 1 can never be President of the United States and therefore I am not greatly interested in practical polities...
...Here ere sense of the bills which they have introdueed: te protect the five cent fare...
Vol. 26 • October 1943 • No. 43
