Abstract
In the discussion of Cold War diplomatic events, very little mention is made of the Catholic Church and its role in foreign affairs. Some historians have argued that as the Second World War era closed, the sovereign state of the Holy See, or the Vatican, closed in on itself when Pope Pius XII was rebuffed from affecting the post-war peace negotiations sponsored by the ‘big three’. During the Cold War, Pope Pius XII, still sceptical of United States’ intentions in a bipolar world, attended to ecclesiastical restructuring and the reorganisation of his own diplomatic corps. On the whole, the Vatican and the Western powers worked cordially through the Cold War period, but in an understated and usually non-public way. While there was a common philosophical aversion to the rise of world communism, there were no treaties signed, no mutual statements made, or any agreements concluded that marked an explicit East—West ‘Holy Alliance’ between the Western powers and the Vatican.1
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Notes
While John Cornwell’s biography of Pope Pius, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York: Viking-Penguin, 1999), argues that Pius wielded extraordinary power in the realm of international affairs, historian Michael Phayer has chronicled accurately that by 1943, Pope Pius was ‘sitting on the diplomatic sidelines.’ See: Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 60.
Stella Alexander, Church and State in Yugoslavia Since 1945 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1987), ch. 4; Pedro Ramet [Sabrina Petra Ramet], ‘The Catholic Church in Yugoslavia, 1945–1989,’ in Pedro Ramet, ed., Catholicism and Politics in Communist Societies (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 182.
Protest Against Yugoslav Attack on American Plane and Detention of American Personnel’, Department of State Bulletin 15 (1946), p. 415.
Gerald P. Fogarty, The Vatican and the American Hierarchy From 1870 to 1965 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1985), p. 313; Johnathan Luxmoore and Jolanta Babiuch, The Vatican and the Red Flag: The Struggle for the Soul of Eastern Europe (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 2000), pp. 37–49.
Archbishop Amleto Cicognani to Stettinius, 31 Jan. 1945, records of the Department of State, RG 59. File 860h.404/I-3145, US National Archives, Archives II, College Park, Maryland (hereafter National Archives).
The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, eds Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelley, s.v. ‘Muench, Aloisius Joseph’; Colman J. Barry, American Nuncio: Cardinal Aloisius Muench (Collegeville, MN: St. John’s University Press, 1969); Richard D. Wiggers, ‘In the Service of Rome: An Expanded Role for American Catholics After 1945’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association, Chicago, Illinois, 7 Jan. 2000).
US Office of Strategic Services Foreign Nationalities Branch Files, confidential report number N-204, 16 Feb. 1945, microfiche copy no. INT 33 GE-79 (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1988).
Dianne Kirby, ‘Divinely Sanctioned: The Anglo-American Cold War Alliance and the Defense of Western Civilization and Christianity, 1945–1948’, Journal of Contemporary History 35 (2000), p. 389; idem, ‘Truman’s Holy Alliance: The President, the Pope and the Origins of the Cold War’, Borderlines: Studies in American Culture 4 (1997); George J. Gill, ‘The Truman Administration and Vatican Relations’, Catholic Historical Review 73 (1987), pp. 408–23.
The diplomatic position of Regent is seldom used in Vatican diplomacy because the appointment is made only by the pope as sovereign of his country. As Regent, the diplomatic agent is accredited full powers to act in the name of the sovereign. The Regent may give instructions, negotiate and ratify treaties, sign Letters Under Seal, and create councils of state. A Regent is afforded the full virtue of normal diplomatic credentials. See: Ernest Satow, A Guide to Diplomatic Practice (London: Longmans, 1957), p. 117; Gordon Ireland, ‘The State of the City of the Vatican’, American Journal of International Law 27 (1933), pp. 285–7.
Franklin C. Gowen to Secretary of State, 8 Jan. 1946, Record Group 59, Myron Taylor papers, box 28, Confidential Correspondence File (hereafter CCF), National Archives.
Franklin C. Gowen to Secretary of State, 15 Jan. 1946 [telegram], RG 59, Taylor papers, box 28, CCF, National Archives.
Harold Shantz [Belgrade] to Secretary of State, 13 April 1946, Records of the Department of State, RG 59, 860h.404/4–346, National Archives.
In May of 1943, Pope Pius XII wrote a personal letter to President Roosevelt beseeching him to desist from an Allied aerial bombardment of Rome. This manoeuvre, which met with unmitigated failure, was a public one and quickly drew a great deal of press reporting. See: Pierre Blet, SJ, Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican, trans. Lawrence J. Johnson (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), pp. 203–9; it is difficult to gauge if the United States entertained the interests of the Holy See on other occasions since the published six-volume Vatican collection on the Second World War, Actes et Documents du Saint-Siege relatifs a la Seconde Guerre mondiale, eds Pierre Blet, Angelo Martini, Robert Graham and Burkhart Schneider (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 1965–8), fails to contain non-Vatican ambassadorial correspondence.
Lt. Col. William P. Maddox [Trieste] to Richard C. Patterson [Belgrade], 7 May 1945, Records of the US Department of State, RG 84, Belgrade Legation and Embassy, post files, box 54, file 840.4, National Archives. On Maddox see: Julius Mader, Who’s Who in CIA (Berlin: Julius Mader, 1968), p. 114.
Anne Lane, Britain, the Cold War, and Yugoslav Unity, 1941–1949 (Sussex: Academic Press, 1996), p. 64.
David L. Larson, United States Foreign Policy Toward Yugoslavia, 1943–1963 (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979), p. 106.
David Alvarez and Robert A. Graham, Nothing Sacred: Nazi Espionage Against the Vatican, 1939–1945 (London: Frank Cass, 1997), pp. 140–73.
J. Graham Parsons [Rome] to Walter C. Dowling, 17 July 1947, box 1, folder 2, J. Graham Parsons Papers, Special Collections Division, Georgetown University Library, Washington, DC.
For extended treatments of the Stepinac case see: Stella Alexander, The Triple Myth: A Life of Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987); Alexander, ‘Yugoslavia and the Vatican, 1919–1970’, in Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994); Carlo Falconi, The Silence of Pope Pius XII (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1970); Richard Pattee, The Case of Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing,. 1953); Menachem Shelah, ‘The Catholic Church in Croatia: The Vatican and the Murder of the Croatian Jews’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 4 (1989), pp. 323–7.
Stella Alexander, ‘Croatia: The Catholic Church and Clergy, 1919–1945’, in Catholics, the State, and the European Radical Right, 1919–1945, eds Richard J. Wolff and Jorg K. Hoensch (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 52.
Concerning the rank injustice of the trial proceedings see: Sabrina Petra Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to Ethnic War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2nd ed., 1996), pp. 140–3; Stella Alexander, ‘Archbishop Stepinac Reconsidered’, Religion in Communist Lands 6 (1978), pp. 77–9.
Peter Constan, ‘The Zagreb Trials: Trial of the Archbishop of Zagreb, Dr. Aloysius Stepinac’, General Records of the Department of State, RG 59, Myron Taylor Papers, box 34, miscellaneous subject files: ‘Stepinac Case, 1946.’
David P. Currie, ‘The Constitution in the Supreme Court: The Second World War, 1941–46’, The Catholic University Law Review 37 (1987), p. 23.
Hohenthal [Zagreb] to Secretary of State, General Records of the Department of State, RG 59, Myron Taylor Papers, box 34, File: ‘Stepinac Case, 1946’, National Archives. The ‘Archbishop’s Memorandum’ is enclosure no. 2 of dispatch no. 1 dated 26 Sept. 1946.
Dianne Kirby, Church, State and Propaganda: The Archbishop of York and International Relations, A Political Study of Cyril Forster Garbett (Hull, UK: The University of Hull Press, 1999), p. 163.
Position paper, Walworth Barbour, ‘Trial of Archbishop Stepinac’, 1 Nov. 1946. Records of the Department of State: RG 59, Records Relating to Yugoslavia, box 1, file 660, National Archives. Released through USFOIA.
Foreign Relations of the United States (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1969), IV [1948], p. 1073.
Telegram (secret), Harriman to Marshall, 7 July 1948, W. Averell Harriman Papers, box 271, file: Marshall Plan, Country File: Yugoslavia, Manuscript Division, US Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Transmittal letter, Robert Borden Reams [Belgrade] to J. Graham Parsons [Rome]. Quoted in Parsons to Secretary of State, 14 Feb. 1948, Records of the Department of State, RG 59, 860h.404/2–1448, National Archives. For a similar assessment of the value of Vatican intelligence see Trevor Barnes, ‘The Secret Cold War: The CIA and American Foreign Policy in Europe, 1946–56’, The Historical Journal 24 (1981), pp. 401–2.
John R. Lampe, Russell O. Prickett and Ljubisa S. Adamovic, eds, Yugoslav—American Economic Relations Since World War II (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 13.
Lorraine M. Lees, ‘American Decision to Assist Tito’, Diplomatic History 2 (1978), p. 410.
Charles G. Stefan, ‘The Emergence of the Soviet—Yugoslav Break: A Personal View From the Belgrade Embassy’, Diplomatic History 6 (1982), p. 388.
Ibid.; This was not the last time that Marshall Tito became visibly irate over the Stepinac issue. In a 1955 discussion with Secretary of State Allen Dulles regarding Stepinac, Dulles noted ‘in connection with this matter, Tito showed the first sign of emotionalism that he had during the entire visit. He spoke with considerable heat.’ Memorandum of a Conversation, US Department of State, 6 Nov. 1955, accessed from Internet on 30 Oct. 2000 from Primary Source Media, World Governments Document Archive/Declassified Documents Reference System website at http://www.ddrs.psmedia.com/tplweb… g+ddrs_img+51695+++(stepinac):text.
Lorraine M. Lees, Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War (State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press), p. 66.
Paul Blanshard, American Freedom and Catholic Power (Boston: Beacon Press, 1949). The book’s anti-Catholic tinge was so popular that it underwent a revision as John F. Kennedy announced his intention to run for the presidency in 1958. Blanshard’s 1951 book, Communism, Democracy, and Catholic Power argued that Catholicism — and specifically the Vatican — presented the foremost threat to democracy in the United States.
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Gallagher, C.R. (2003). The United States and the Vatican in Yugoslavia, 1945–50. In: Kirby, D. (eds) Religion and the Cold War. Cold War History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403919571_8
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