Rome

LESS than two weeks before the arrival in Rome of President Kennedy on the first of July, Italy had no government and the Vatican had no Pope. Eighty cardinals from all over the world, seated before Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, were locked in conclave performing the task of finding a successor to John XXIII.

Italian politicians, assembled in less secret and less dignified conclaves at their party headquarters, were trying to solve the longest government crisis and one of the worst political impasses in the country’s post-war history. It seemed as though Kennedy would step into a vacuum, and there was some talk of canceling the visit. But then, on the same day, June 21, both gaps were filled — one very firmly, the other provisionally.

The lean, ascetic, able, and dynamic Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, was elected Pope, assumed the name of Paul VI; and was solemnly crowned in St. Peter’s Square the day before Kennedy flew in. Montini had entered the conclave a favorite. But this did not mean that his election was certain. When the crowd was waiting in St. Peter’s Square for the puff of white smoke that would announce that a new Pope had been elected, an old woman in peasant clothes was heard saying, “I want one exactly like John.” A priest standing next to her commented, “He needn’t be exactly the same. The cardinals sitting in conclave are inspired by the Holy Ghost. They will make a good choice. The important thing is that he shall be a good Pope.”

“No, no,” answered the old woman stubbornly. “I want one exactly like John.” This small episode epitomized a much more widespread feeling. Because of both his engaging character and his policies, John XXIII had been more popular than any other Pope in the present century.

If the cardinals had deliberately tried to choose somebody who was exactly the contrary of what the old peasant woman expected, they could not have done better. John looked like a peasant, was fat, friendly, easygoing, and full of fun, and had a good sense of humor; while Paul is thin, aristocratic, reserved, meticulous, and very serious. But the contrast ceases with personality and appearance. In regard to policies, Paul VI made it very clear that he was determined to follow closely in John’s footsteps.

Nevertheless, Paul VI will not be merely a pale imitator of John XXIII. If he supports and advances most of what John did and said, it is because the ideas of the two Popes had coincided for a long time. When Montini was Archbishop of Milan and Roncalli was Patriarch of Venice, they often exchanged suggestions and impressions. Montini was both an authority in the field of social studies and the leader of the more progressive trend of the Italian episcopate. In those days the future Pope John was a follower of the future Pope Paul.

A firm hand in the Vatican

On a fundamental question, the Ecumenical Council, Paul VI will not follow submissively the directives of his great predecessor. When John was still alive, the Archbishop of Milan, in a series of speeches and writings, had very respectfully and very diplomatically expressed reservations and criticisms on the way the Ecumenical Council had been organized and was being conducted. He found that the preparation of the Council had been superficial and that there was lacking a general perspective that would harmonize the work of the various committees in the various fields. It is therefore to be expected that Paul VI will give the committees his own coordinating directions and that the Ecumenical Council will be continued longer than John had planned.

Paul VI at sixty-six is a relatively young Pope and hides under a frail appearance a very strong constitution. He has an almost prodigious capacity for work — from six o’clock in the morning to one or two at night, with intermissions for a very frugal breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and an occasional brief siesta. He is a good organizer, has a good memory, a flair for languages; and the fifteen years he spent at the side of Pius XII as his right-hand man have given him a complete knowledge of the central administration of the Catholic Church. One can therefore safely say that the Church of Rome is in very firm and competent hands.

Political instability

The picture changes completely from stability to instability on the other side of the Tiber. Paradoxically, this instability can partly be traced to the policy of John XXIII. For a better understanding of the situation, it is necessary to go back to February, 1962, when Signor Amintore Fanfani, the ambitious, sharpwitted leader of the Christian Democrat left wing, did his by now famous svolta a sinistra, or “turn to the left.” He became Prime Minister of a center-left coalition which was formed by the Christian Democrats (273 deputies), by the Saragat Socialists (23 deputies), and by the Republicans (7 deputies), and which was supported from the outside by the Nenni Socialists (84 deputies).

Under Pius XII a collaboration, even if not complete, between the Catholics and the Nenni Socialists, who describe themselves as Marxists, would have been inconceivable. But under John XXIII, with his policy of disentangling the Church from politics, it became feasible.

The two main aims of the turn to the left were to give the government a wider basis of support both in Parliament and in the country in order to carry out social reforms, and to isolate the Communists by attracting their friends, the Nenni Socialists, into the democratic sphere. But when a general election was held at the end of April this year, it appeared that Fanfani’s gambit had been a flop. The Communists, instead of suffering by isolation, gained one million votes and reached the 25.3 percent mark, which means that of every four Italians, one voted Communist. The number of Communist deputies went from 140 to 166.

The Christian Democrats lost one million votes and dropped from 45 percent to 38.3 percent. The number of their deputies fell from 273 to 260. This meant that the more cautious and conservative Catholic voters had not approved of Fanfani’s bold turn to the left. A further confirmation of this came from the fact that the Liberals, who had been the more determined and coherent opponents of the turn to the left, more than doubled their votes, placing in the House of Deputies 39 members instead of the previous 16. The Saragat Socialists did very well, increasing their parliamentary scats from 23 to 33, while Nenni’s deputies number 87 instead of 84.

The Christian Democrat defeat and the Communist progress were partly attributed to the leniency Pope John had shown toward Communism. His exchange of messages with Khrushchev; the private audience he had granted to Khrushchev’s daughter, Rada, and her husband, Adzhubei, the editor of Izvestia; the negotiations carried out with the Communist regimes of Poland and Hungary to reach a modus vivendi; and the encyclical Pacem in Terris, which said that Marxism, although based on wrong materialistic assumptions, had something good in it and could eventually evolve in the right direction, were the most spectacular but not the only examples of this trend. Skillfully exploited by Communist propaganda, these developments made a great impression on the Italian electorate, especially among simple peasant women, who constituted the backbone of the Christian Democratic Party. Instructed by their parish priests, they used to identify Communism with the Devil, but now this belief has become considerably shaken.

The effort to compromise

Fanfani had to pay for his electoral losses, and the President of the Republic, Antonio Segni, instead of asking him to form a new government, entrusted the task to the Secretary of the Christian Democrats, Aldo Moro. Moro is forty-seven years old, and had he succeeded, he would have been the youngest Italian Prime Minister since Mussolini.

Moro is a soft-spoken, able lawyer who has a genius for compromise and for clouding his aims in obscure, involved, high-sounding terms which everyone can interpret to suit himself. For the last few years, Moro has been the real power behind the scenes of the Italian Parliament through his tight control over the party machinery of the Christian Democrats.

The irony of the situation was that the electoral switch that had driven Fanfani out made it even more necessary than before to continue in the policy he had inaugurated. The Christian Democrats had lost seats; the Saragat Socialists, who refuse to collaborate with the right, had increased theirs; and to form a working majority Moro had to knock at Nenni’s door again.

Moro carried out, with Byzantine skill and patience, complicated negotiations with Pietro Nenni, Giuseppe Saragat, the Republicans, and also the leaders of dissident trends within his own party. His aim was to repeat the turn-to-the-left experiment, and this time to involve the Nenni Socialists more deeply in supporting the government and make their divorce from the Communists final.

The negotiations were being carried on for more than three weeks, from the end of May until the middle of June, to the indifference of Italian public opinion and press, whose interest was monopolized by the more dramatic events in the Vatican. When it looked as if everything had been settled, quite unexpectedly the left wing of the Nenni Socialists, headed by Riccardo Lombardi, rebelled and threatened to split the party in two if Nenni carried out his deal with Moro.

After a stormy midnight debate in the executive, Nenni resigned, but he was later persuaded to withdraw the resignation. He finally decided to postpone all decisions until the Party National Congress in October. Moro found himself at an impasse, and on June 18 he gave up the task of forming a government.

Stopgap government

The situation was getting very serious. Not only was Kennedy’s visit approaching — and it would have been a loss of face to have him come at a time when Rome was without a government — but also the whole state machinery was threatened with paralysis, since the budget still had to be passed by Parliament and no money could be allocated to the various ministries until it was. The President of the Republic then asked the Chairman of the House of Deputies, Giovanni Leone, to form a caretaker government to last until October, when the Nenni Socialists will make up their minds and clarify the situation.

Leone, who is fifty-five years old, is respected for the impartiality with which he has been conducting the debates and is liked for his Neapolitan bonhomie and common sense. Leone was as fast as Moro had been slow. He concluded his consultations in one day and presented the list of ministers to the President of the Republic on June 21. He formed a Cabinet all of Christian Democrats, confirming nearly all ministers in their previous posts and replacing the Saragat Socialist and Republican ministers with experts.

Fanfani was kept out, but in any case he probably would not have agreed to be included, since he is waiting for the next round. Leone went to the House and in a short speech made it quite clear that his was just a stopgap, emergency government with no special political ambitions. His program was approved with 255 yeses, 225 nos‚ and 119 abstentions. This meant that only the Christian Democrats had voted for it; that the Nenni Socialists, the Saragat Socialists, and the Republicans had abstained; and that all the others, including Communists, Neofascists, Liberals, and Monarchists, had voted against him.

In such precarious circumstances there is not much one can say about the Leone government. It will be necessary to wait and see how the Socialists will jump. But it can be noted that while extreme uncertainty prevails in Italy’s internal situation, its foreign policy is not likely to change. It is a policy based on firm allegiance to NATO, on European political integration and the Common Market, on the admission of Great Britain to the Common Market, and on encouraging disarmament, in agreement with Italy’s allies. Italy’s prompt signing of the atomic-test-ban treaty was an example.