Free The Pope's Last Crusade by Peter Eisner Page A

Pius said he had been searching for just the right person to work with him on his next foray into politics and the most pressing, dangerous matter of the moment. And now, providentially, LaFarge has come to Rome. “We will issue an encyclical on these matters, one which you must prepare,” Pius told LaFarge.
    LaFarge was to write an encyclical that would use the same reasoning he employed when discussing racism in the United States. He needed to convey that Hitler’s increasing assault on the Jews was based on a myth. The myth and the barbarity and inhumanity being unleashed in Europe must be challenged. He was to write a papal declaration such as never had been seen before, one that firmly and categorically represented the church’s vision of the conflagration facing Europe. This would be the church’s strongest statement ever, an encyclical that rejected anti-Semitism and the Nazi doctrine that espoused it. So doing, LaFarge would articulate church policy, and his thoughts and words about race and humanity would be inscribed in Catholic doctrine and would be parsed for guidance worldwide. This was overwhelming, a step that a humble Jesuit from Newport could hardly dream of. LaFarge was dumbfounded and flooded with doubts.
    How, he asked Pope Pius, could he do such a thing? The pope smiled and gave him free rein. He said: “ Dites tout simplement, ce que vous direz si vous etiez Pape, vous-meme, ” LaFarge wrote, recalling the pope’s exact words. “Say simply, just what you would say if you yourself were pope.” LaFarge said he felt unable and unworthy to carry out such a project. The pope would hear none of it. “I could have chosen someone else to write this, more senior, better known writers within the Church,” the pope told the Jesuit. He told LaFarge he certainly was capable of writing what needed to be said. And it was an assignment that might amount to the greatest opportunity the pope had to rally world opposition to the Nazis. “I decided you are the right person for the job,” he told LaFarge. “God has sent you to me to do this. You are heaven-sent.”
    The pope expected the statement to be as strong and unyieldingly direct as he thought LaFarge’s words were about racism in the United States. Pius made it clear that no one in the curia knew about his decision to issue the encyclical, likely not even Pacelli, and certainly not Wlodimir Ledóchowski, the leader of the Jesuit order and therefore LaFarge’s superior. “Properly, I should have first taken this up with Father Ledóchowski before speaking to you,” the pope said. But he had not. “I imagine it will be all right . . . after all a pope is a pope.”
    The pope told LaFarge that he expected him to complete the job in secret and directly for him. “It is said that a secret of the pope in Rome is Punch’s secret,” a secret that everyone knows but no one admits they know. “But it should not be like that. And in this case, this is a true secret that we are sharing with you,” the pope said. The pontiff told him he would await the final document.
    AS LAFARGE drove back to Rome that afternoon, the same words kept coming back to him: “I am mystified” by what has happened. LaFarge was now in the service of the pope. The time was short, and he was to begin work immediately. He was surrounded by a web of shadows and shrouded schemes, and he still could not even fathom how he had come to the pope’s attention. Now, the Vatican was directly asking him to act on a dangerous world stage. “Frankly, I am stunned,” LaFarge told friends in confidence. The task was great and there was little time. “The Rock of Peter has fallen on my head.”
    POPES HAD BEEN called “Prisoner of the Vatican” for more than half a century. Locked into ritual and an image and surrounded by acolytes, many popes had dreamed of walking again