Word: papally
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Russian Revolution had just begun) Pacelli went as Papal Nuncio to Munich, tried (and failed) to talk the Kaiser into a peaceful frame of mind After the Kaiser fled, Pacelli lived through the Bavarian Soviet Republic. On one occasion he faced down a band of armed revolutionaries who had broken into the Papal Embassy, intending to loot the building...
...Soon he had equipped the Vatican with a short-wave radio station ("for research and propaganda"), a new electric powerhouse, a fleet of modern automobiles (gifts of the manufacturers) to replace the old carriages, electric elevators, 800 telephones (the Pope's telephone is solid gold stamped with the Papal Arms and the trade-mark of International Telephone & Telegraph Co.), a telephoto apparatus, an electric device to replace the bell ringers at St. Peter's. "The fabric of St. Peter's," said a Catholic commentator, "became as modern as the fabric of New York...
Cardinal Pacelli was chosen Pope on the third ballot. No Pope had been chosen so quickly since 1623. Pacelli was the first Papal Secretary of State to become Pope since 1775. He was elected on his 63rd birthday. Said one Cardinal, who watched Pacelli while the votes were being counted : "I have never seen anyone look so pale and yet continue breathing...
...Papal Politician. Cardinal Pacelli's pre-pontifical travels were facilitated by the fact that he talks fluently in eight languages. What he talks about in them, and whom he talks to, would constitute a key-to the most sinuous and controversial politics pursued by any world power - the Church Temporal's diplomacy. It would also constitute a cryptogram of current history...
People who believe that Vatican politics are good morals (and these include most Catholics and a scattering of non-Catholics) defend papal diplomacy with pleas of necessity, adaptability, the ancient wisdom of the Church, and the long view, which in the case of Catholicism embraces eternity - a perspective so vast that differences between democracy and dictator ship sometimes blur to the ecclesiastical...