Word: lateran
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Communists held their last big rally before the ancient Church of Saint John Lateran. From a ten-ton truck decorated with cardboard doves of peace, Palmiro Togliatti spoke to 100,000 Romans. Said he: Alcide de Gasperi had called him a cloven-hoofed man, and he had a good mind to take off his shoe to show that this was a lie. "But it is better to put hobnails in the shoe and kick De Gasperi...
...climax of this sweetness-&-light campaign conies when "Father Palmiro" and his Communist Curates vote for the reaffirmation of the Lateran Pact (TIME, April 7), thus depriving the Christian Democrats of their most effective antiCommunist weapon-the charge that the Communists fight Christianity. Says a Communist observer: "You might say that Togliatti decided for the moment to dispense with the crude sickle in favor of the more delicate rapier. And instead of the hammer, we find Terracini's parliamentary gavel more effective...
...Parties. Last June, the Christian Democratic Party, Communism's strongest enemy, polled over eight million votes. But it slowly dissipated this advantage by failing to carry out any of its promised social reforms, by letting the Communists steal its thunder on every major issue (such as the Lateran Pact), and by being just plain badly organized...
Then two weeks ago came the electrifying news that the Communists in Rome had voted for the Lateran Pact. In Anticoli, Eugeni crowed cruelly, guffawed to speechless Don Vittorio: "Ha! Now you've got to work with me, just the way Togliatti has made De Gasperi work with him! Qui comando io!" In Roviano, wise old Scacchi said to his village priest, Don Mario Sargenti: "Now we must work together-I like all workers of the spade, you like all workers of the robe." This week in both towns another political party seems to be following the Socialists into...
Then Togliatti removed all doubt: he and his party would vote for confirmation of the Lateran Treaty because, he explained pontifically, "We are rightly considered the most advanced working-class party and . . . the working class does not want the country divided for religious reasons...