Paolo Zanini. Israel Studies. Volume 22, Issue 3, Fall 2017.
Introduction
This article examines the attitude of Mgr. Angelo Roncalli, at that time Nuncio to Paris, toward the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. This subject is of particular note, considering the important changes in the Catholic perception of Judaism that were introduced during and following the papacy of Angelo Roncalli, who became Pope John XXIII in 1958. At the same time, during the second half of the 1940s, when Israel was established, Paris was a perfect place to observe the developments of the Middle Eastern political situation.
The important role played by Angelo Roncalli, at that time Apostolic Delegate to Istanbul, in helping many persecuted Jews during the Second World War is well known. Certainly, he was one of the most involved Vatican diplomats in this humanitarian effort, as has been fully documented.
Subsequently, on becoming Pope John XXIII, he immediately started to eliminate many anti-Hebrew aspects from the Catholic liturgy. These two factors and the results of the Vatican II Council reinforced Roncalli’s image as very sympathetic to the Jewish world and Israel itself. Actually, the most significant decision regarding the traditional anti-Judaism stance was not made by the Council until 1965, with the Declaration Nostra Aetate, two years after Roncalli’s death and under the pontificate of his successor, Paul VI.
While the picture describing Roncalli’s views on Judaism is certainly correct from a general point of view, it is however difficult to precisely define Roncalli’s thinking regarding the Zionist project and the creation of the new State of Israel in the post-WW II period. Only full accessibility to the Vatican Archives and the possibility to investigate all the communications between Roncalli and the Secretariat of State and other Vatican Congregations will clarify, in a definitive way, his attitude toward Zionism during the crucial Forties.
It is only possible to note that during WW II Roncalli was still worried by the possibility that his humanitarian efforts could reinforce the Jewish presence in Palestine, putting the Catholic influence in that region in danger. In September 1943, when he was deeply involved in these humanitarian efforts, he wrote to the Secretariat of State showing some reservations about the Holy See’s involvement in sending displaced Jewish people to Palestine:
I must confess that the involvement of the Holy See in the movement of the Jews toward Palestine, to re-establish a Jewish kingdom, causes my spirit to be unsettled. What their compatriots and political friends are doing is understandable. But it doesn’t seem to me to be in good taste that the simple and generous act of charity by the Holy See could give the impression that it is involved, at least initially and not directly, in the realization of the messianic dream. All this, however, is perhaps no more than my personal scruples, and it is sufficient to confess it to make it go away. In fact, it is certain that the reestablishment of the kingdom of Judah and Israel is no more than a utopian dream.
There are different interpretations of this. The Italian historian Alberto Melloni, the most authoritative biographer of Roncalli’s period in Istanbul, underlines how this stance has been instrumental in overwhelming Vatican resistance and making the Jews’ emigration from Nazi Europe easier, emphasizing the tactical meaning of this sentence. Actually, Giovanni Miccoli, one of the scholars who most thoroughly studied the attitude of the Holy See during the Shoah and the Catholic role in the development of modern anti-Semitism, sees in it the difficulty for the entire Catholic hierarchy in accepting the idea of a Jewish State sited in Palestine, the Christian Holy Land, or, in any case, to increased support for the Yishuv, even among the prelates most sympathetic with the Jews’ tragedy. It’s evident that Roncalli’s position was, at that time, quite similar to the thinking of Cardinal Luigi Maglione, the Vatican Secretary of State. In a letter on 23 May 1943 to Amleto Cicognani, the Apostolic Delegate to Washington, Maglione confirmed his hostility to directing the Jewish refugees to Palestine, contributing to creating the conditions for the establishment of the Jewish State.
In considering the post-War period, when he was Nuncio to Paris, recent studies and the memoires of some protagonists underline how Roncalli’s attitude changed after the end of WW II, becoming more favorable to the possibility of a Jewish State in a part of British Palestine. This was due to the tragedy of the Shoah and it must mean that Roncalli’s thinking on this issue had evolved in a similar way to that of Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, the Secretary of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, who became more and more sympathetic to the possibility of a Jewish State in the Christian Holy Land after the end of the war and, in particular, after the proclamation of Israeli independence.
In all Roncalli’s papers, notes, and correspondence, which can now be consulted, there is little in the way of a clear political stance or personal opinion regarding Zionism and the State of Israel. When he became Pope, Roncalli was not able to fully establish normal diplomatic relationships between the Holy See and the State of Israel. Formal relations between the two states were not established until December 1993-January 1994, after the first Gulf War and the beginning of the peace process between the PLO and the Israeli government. Despite John XXIII demonstrating openness and respect for the young State, the time was not right to give it full recognition without serious consequences within the Catholic Church, and its relations with the Arab countries, and the Pope did not want to force the issue. The Vatican establishment was not unanimous on this: some prelates, and among them Cardinal Tisserant, would have liked to establish better relations with Israel and grant diplomatic recognition; due to this, they tried to influence John XXIII. The majority of Vatican diplomats, and in particular the Secretary of State Domenico Tardini, were opposed to this. This attitude resulted from their perception of Arab hostility and the deeply held prejudice still alive in some Catholic circles against the Jewish State.
However, it is less easy to define Roncalli’s political thinking regarding the Palestinian question and the Zionist movement during the 1940s and, in particular, at the moment of Israel’s establishment. For this reason, we shall divide this issue into the three following topics: two regarding Roncalli’s cultural attitude toward the Holy Land, the Middle East and his personal links with the Zionist leadership, and one dealing directly with the establishment of Israel and his role as papal Nuncio in Paris.
The Personal Links Between Roncalli and the Holy Land
Firstly, we must look at the links Roncalli established with the Holy Land, visiting Jerusalem and the surrounding area as a pilgrim when he was a young priest. His first contact was during the third Italian National Pilgrimage to the Holy Sites in 1906. Roncalli was personal secretary to Mgr. Giacomo Radini-Tedeschi, Bishop of Bergamo, who led the pilgrimage. This came about as a result of the renewed interest in the Holy Land that characterized the early years of the twentieth century in Italy: a revival that saw a rebirth in interest in both the religious and political-economic spheres. These pilgrimages were not only seen as a way to rediscover the connection with the religious history of the Holy Land, which had been brought to the fore by archaeological research led by Franciscan and Dominican friars, but also as a way to increase commercial and cultural ties and, consequentially, Italian political influence in the region.
Underlying this were similar hopes for an improvement in the relationship between the Church and the Italian State, after the period of serious disharmony over the “Roman Question” due to the annexation of the Papal State by the Italian army in September 1870 and the end of the Pope’s temporal power. This positive development restored hope in many observers that this rapprochement could provide an opportunity to present a united religious and political front in order to reinforce Italian interests in the Middle East, following the model used by France, the historical protector of the Middle-Eastern Catholic communities.
The young Roncalli felt this way. This was reflected in some articles he wrote describing the pilgrimage, published by the daily newspaper of his diocese: L’Eco di Bergamo. Other thoughts which the young priest had regarding his Middle-Eastern journey were more important to him. In his articles, Roncalli showed great enthusiasm for the Holy Land, underlining its strong Christian character and emphasizing the positive role played by the Custody of the Holy Land: the Franciscan institution, established during the fourteenth century, which has been responsible for safeguarding Latin rights over the Christian shrines since then. On the other hand, due to a stereotype still common among European observers, he expressed reservations about the Ottoman Empire’s governance, which was openly described as unjust and barbaric. Equally, Roncalli showed profound skepticism regarding the Armenian and Greek-Orthodox Churches, presenting them as enemies of the Catholics’ right to the sanctuaries.
This harsh criticism of the Ottoman government and of the ancient traditions of the Eastern Churches reveals the cultural attitude of an Italian priest from Bergamo at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is evident that Roncalli had extremely limited knowledge of the Levant before leaving for Sofia, where he acted as Apostolic Visitor in the period 1925-35. This lack of worldliness mirrored mainstream thinking among Western European Catholics, reinforced by the mistrust of the Ottoman Empire and the role of Islam, and by the continuing quarrels with the Eastern Orthodox Churches, considered as schismatic.
Taking into consideration this hostile background toward the other religions and confessions, it is interesting to note how Roncalli’s articles made no mention of the Jewish presence in Eretz Israel, which had begun to take on more importance, particularly in Jerusalem, concentrating his attention on the Biblical history of Israel. This omission may have come about because the young priest was too deeply involved in the religious focus of his pilgrimage, and therefore oblivious to the rapid and ongoing socio-economic transformation that Jewish immigration was bringing about, in particular in the Western area of Jerusalem.
After this pilgrimage, the second direct contact that Roncalli had with the Holy Land was in a completely different phase of his life. During May and June 1939, while he was Apostolic Delegate to Greece and Turkey, he went to Beirut to take part in the International Eucharistic Congress. The proximity of Palestine allowed him to make a short visit to Jerusalem, from the 6th to the 8th of June, during which he met the Latin Patriarch Luigi Barlassina and had a long and pleasant meeting with his counterpart, Mgr. Gustavo Testa, Apostolic Delegate to Jerusalem and Palestine.
It was he who had always been, and would continue to be, Roncalli’s most important personal connection in the Holy Land. In 1934, Testa, one of Roncalli’s closest friends since they were schoolmates, was appointed Apostolic Delegate to Egypt and Palestine, after the unexpected deaths of the two previous Delegates, Riccardo Bartoloni and Torquato Dini. With this nomination Testa became the most important Vatican envoy in the British Middle East. During WW II he had to return to Italy because the British authorities became suspicious of his pro-Italian sentiments. In 1948, after five years of diplomatic inactivity, he was reappointed as the Apostolic Delegate to Jerusalem, becoming at the same time Apostolic Administrator of the Latin Patriarchate, which was vacant after the death of Barlassina in 1947. During his entire mission in Palestine, in particular between 1934 and 1939, a period better known due to the full accessibility to the Vatican Archives, Testa showed moderate anti-Zionism: an attitude quite common among Vatican diplomats, who considered Zionism symptomatic of communist ideology, given the secular and atheistic roots of many Zionist leaders. At the same time, he was unenthusiastic toward the Palestinian Catholic community, both Latin and Melkite, concentrating all his attention on the diplomatic effort to defend Catholic rights to the Holy Places. For this reason, Testa focused much of his energy on an ambitious project to rebuild the Holy Sepulcher, which was never realized.
The continuous exchange of letters between Testa and Roncalli very rarely touched on Palestinian political issues: these aspects were mentioned only during the periods of the highest tension, as for example 1938, in the middle of Arab uprising, or 1948, during the first Arab-Israeli War (1948-49), but always in a very summarized and vague way, sometimes using their vernacular expressions as a sort of code. Despite this, it seems highly probable that Roncalli’s attention was particularly focused on the Palestinian situation given his friend’s role in the region. We can conclude therefore that the two men spoke freely about the Middle Eastern situation during their meetings in Sedriano, a small village not far from Bergamo, where both used to go during the summer vacation, or anywhere else they could meet.
For all these reasons the influence of Testa on Roncalli’s attitude toward the Palestinian situation was probably deeper than it appears from the written documents.
The Fruits of Long Diplomatic Service in the East
Roncalli was deeply influenced by the long period during which he lived and operated in Bulgaria as Apostolic Visitor (1925-35) and then in Turkey and Greece as Apostolic Delegate to Istanbul (1935-44). These two long missions on the Eastern borders of European Christianity had profound effects on Roncalli’s thinking and spirituality and contributed to bring about a profound change to an ecclesiastical career which, until that time, had been almost entirely Italian.
There are two consequences of Roncalli’s Eastern missions and of his long acquaintance with places where the Catholics were powerless minorities that relate to this research: the network that he established in Istanbul with the Zionist leadership during WW II and the more positive perception of the Middle Eastern issue and his pioneering openness toward religious pluralism, developed during this long period in partibus infidelium.
During the War, Istanbul, which was no longer the Turkish capital, remained the main city of the area, assuming an important role. The Bosphorus metropolis had a strategic position, being sited on the south-eastern border of Nazi occupied Europe, not far from the Soviet Union and on the route to the Middle East controlled by French and British forces: a location which became the center for intrigue between the intelligence services, the military attaché, and the diplomats of both neutral and belligerent countries.
Taking this historical background into account it is possible to better understand the importance of Roncalli’s attempts to rescue persecuted European Jews. From the Apostolic Delegation in Istanbul, he was able to keep an eye on what was happening throughout the theatre of war. He could gather information from the Eastern European countries, allied to or occupied by Germany; he could stay in direct contact with the Holy See and with Vatican diplomats located in the Mediterranean area. From our point of view, the most important were the contacts that Roncalli developed within Jewish and Zionist circles, also considering that, at that time, the Jewish community of Istanbul was the biggest in the entire Mediterranean area with the exception of pre-State Yishuv in British Palestine.
The Apostolic Delegate had several meetings with the emissaries of the Jewish Agency in Istanbul. Between 1943 and 1944 he met Chaim Barlas many times. At that time, Barlas was the official delegate of the Jewish Agency in Istanbul where he was trying to coordinate the rescue efforts for the Jews escaping from occupied Europe. The meetings between Roncalli and Barlas were really affable and the Apostolic Delegate tried to support Barlas’ initiatives in any way possible. In February 1944 Roncalli had two important meetings with Yitzhak Herzog, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine and one of the main figures of religious Zionism. He met Roncalli to thank him for the Catholic humanitarian effort. Even if the situation and the historical moment were tragic, the meetings were very positive and even friendly, becoming the starting point of a long relationship. After the War, Roncalli, successively Nuncio to Paris, Patriarch of Venice, and Pope, and Herzog, who in 1948 became Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, kept a loose but significant link through telegrams and messages. In October 1948, Roncalli received a visit from Yaakov Herzog, son of Yitzhak, who was in charge of the Christian Affairs bureau at the Israel Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
These last points bring to light an aspect that is important to note: the rescue effort carried out by Roncalli during his mission in Istanbul did not only contribute to his growing reputation in the Jewish world as one of the Vatican’s most sympathetic representatives toward the tragedy of the Shoah but also meant that he was in direct and frequent contact with many Jewish and Zionist leaders: contacts that would prove very important during his French mission.
The second point that is worth noting regarding the period 1925-1944, is the open-minded attitude which Roncalli developed toward the culture and traditions of other religions and confessions. During the conflict and the years leading up to it, Roncalli also had the opportunity to acquaint himself with many Eastern Catholic communities, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Churches, and secular Muslims such as those in the Turkish Republic. These experiences did not directly determine his position toward the Palestinian question, but certainly contributed to giving him a better understanding of the Middle East, its problems and peculiarities. The most important consequence of this experience was his familiarity with many significant figures of the other confessions and religions: knowledge which contributed to developing Roncalli’s pioneering openness toward the other religious communities and his affection for the non-Catholic world and, in particular, for the Levant.
This long explanation may not seem pertinent in defining Roncalli’s attitude toward the establishment of Israel. Effectively, his relations with the Eastern world didn’t directly determine his thinking regarding the Palestinian question. Naturally, on this point it is interesting to note that, during the first Arab-Israeli War and during the period immediately after, the few voices in favor of Israel within the Roman Curia were expressed by the Congregation for the Eastern Churches and in particular by the Congregation’s chief, Cardinal Eugene Tisserant. This fact seems to confirm the hypothesis that, at that time, in the Catholic world a good knowledge of the Middle East and of the Levantine world was quite often at the origin of a moderate pro-Israeli attitude or, in any case, at the base of a more open approach to the issue of the Holy Land that was not considered, as normally happened in Catholic circles, as only a Christian problem. This approach was due to change during the following decades.
Roncalli: Nuncio to Paris and the Establishment of the State of Israel
The State of Israel was founded while Roncalli was Nuncio to Paris. He arrived there in December 1944 to replace the previous Nuncio, Mgr. Valerio Valeri, who was considered to have been too involved with the Vichy regime by the new post-Liberation French government.
This new position was clearly useful in helping him to understand Palestinian events, because the French city was at the same time the capital of the last big Catholic power, traditionally very involved in the protection of the Middle Eastern Catholics; the main center of Arab and Jewish political maneuvering in Western Europe; and a city with significant Eastern Christian communities.
There, Roncalli had direct contact with many French political leaders and diplomats. The relationships he developed with many Catholic political figures were difficult, in particular because many of them, who were associated with the Mouvement républicain populaire (MRP), wanted to bring about a complete change in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the French Church, after the compromises that had characterized the Church’s attitude during the Vichy regime. Paradoxically, his relationships with the moderate right and the Gaullists and also with some figures of the non-Communist secular left were better. He developed particularly close ties with Vincent Auriol, the Socialist President of the Republic, and Édouard Herriot, the Radical President of the National Assembly and long-standing Mayor of Lyon. One of Roncalli’s first meetings with Herriot in 1945 shows his attention was still focused on the Middle East and would remain so: a principal topic of their conversation was the Syrian and Lebanese situation— both Levantine Republics became independent from France immediately after the end of WW II—and that of Palestine, where the situation among Zionists, Arab nationalists, and British rulers was increasingly tense.
Beyond this were other significant relationships that Roncalli formed that influenced his views on the Middle East. At that time, Paris was a hub for many players on the Middle Eastern stage: among them religious leaders of the Eastern Catholic communities, with whom Roncalli established affable ties. He also met Arab politicians who were travelling through Europe or who lived in Paris. Almost all of them backed the Arab position in Palestine and opposed any partition. Despite this, the divisions that existed in the Arab world regarding Palestine manifested themselves in the political and religious circles of the French capital and Roncalli could see this: the Nuncio had a number of contacts in the Maronite community in Paris, many of whom were pro-Zionist, as was the majority of the Maronite Diaspora.
In May 1948, a few days before the establishment of Israel, Roncalli met the Archbishop of Beirut Mgr. Ignatius Mubarak, who he had met twice during 1947 and who he would meet again in June 1948. Mubarak was known to be a strong supporter of Zionism and a champion of the alliance between a Christian Lebanon and a Jewish State in Eretz Israel. During 1948, he was temporarily in Rome and Paris after his banishment from Beirut where his political position had provoked protests by the growing Arab nationalist sector and the concern of the Holy See. It is well known that after WW II the Maronite community was profoundly divided over the Arab-Jewish question. The majority of the Maronite clergy, the Patriarch Antoine Pierre Arida, and the Archbishop Mubarak, were strongly pro-Zionist, while nearly all political circles, more involved in the growing pan-Arabism, were oriented toward supporting Arab mobilization. The only exception among politicians was the former Maronite nationalist leader, Emile Eddé, who was almost completely marginalized after the end of WW II, Lebanese independence, and the election of Bishara al-Khuri, his old adversary, to the presidency of the Republic.
Regarding the meeting between Roncalli and Mubarak in May 1948, it is impossible to know precisely what transpired between the two prelates, but, from the short notes written in Roncalli’s diary, it can be surmised that he encouraged the Lebanese Archbishop to be more moderate and to maintain the separation of politics and religion. This was always Roncalli’s reaction toward any attempts by Arab clergy to involve themselves in the politics of the Palestinian question.
This attitude was particularly evident in his relations with the pro-Arab advocates among Catholic clergy. During his long diplomatic mission to Paris, Roncalli also met some Arab prelates who were in Europe to protest against the partition of Palestine and the establishment of the Jewish State. In particular, he met the Greek-Catholic Bishop of Galilee George Hakim, several times, who, during the summer of 1947, led an Arab delegation to Rome seeking the Pope’s intervention in favor of Arab rights in Palestine. The Bishop’s mission and role did not make a favorable impression on Roncalli, who stressed in his notes that he considered this kind of mix of religion and politics dangerous. On 11 August 1947, after meeting Hakim twice in a few days, Roncalli wrote in his diary:
Yesterday evening, I received the so called Archbishop of Galilee […] Mgr. George Hakim, and the Jesuit father Haarout […] for dinner. They are good people, but involve themselves too much in political activities that are nonsense. Hakim went to visit the Pope and now he is passing through Paris to promote the Palestinian Arab cause against the Jews, speaking in the name of the Muftì. A poor crusade for the Holy Land!
This quotation clearly shows the Nuncio’s irritation with this kind of behavior, both political and religious: a criticism that Roncalli reiterated after a subsequent meeting with Hakim in October 1948. However, Roncalli’s skepticism toward any alliance between Muslims and Christians against Zionism in Palestine was also clear. This coalition, which had started to develop during the early 1920s, within nationalistic Muslim and Christian circles in Palestine, regained its popularity after WW II, with the purpose of creating a common Muslim-Catholic front against the spread of Communism in the region. This policy never received the Vatican’s full approval, but it is a fact that it was quite popular among Catholic circles in Europe, who were impressed by the positive attitude toward the Holy See shown by many Arab and Islamic countries after the end of the conflict.
Roncalli’s relations with the Arab envoys in France were important, but even more significant appear to be his contacts and ties with pro-Zionist representatives in Paris. From a personal point of view, his relationships with some of the more notable supporters of the Jewish cause in France were particularly friendly. He showed a particular liking for Alexandre Glasberg, a Catholic cleric of Jewish origin, who had helped many persecuted Jews during the war and who was in close contact with the envoys of the Jewish Agency in France, helping the organization of illegal Jewish immigration into Eretz Israel, the so called Aliyah Bet. At the same time, the Nuncio showed himself to be highly impressed by Maurice Fisher, the secretary of the European board of the Jewish Agency and, after the establishment of the State, the first Israeli ambassador to Paris.
Despite his personal esteem, it is more difficult to understand how much political weight Roncalli wielded to facilitate dialogue between Zionist envoys and the Holy See. Some facts are significant. On 23 January 1948, Roncalli met the Sephardi leader Eliyahu Eliashar. At the beginning of the month, he had sent a letter to the Nuncio calling for the Vatican’s intervention to protect Jerusalem, which had been declared international territory by UN Resolution 181 in November 1947, because of the growing Arab military threat. Roncalli showed that he had a good grasp of the situation by doing his best to arrange a private audience for Eliashar with the Pope. Unfortunately, he did not succeed. In April, Fisher once again asked Roncalli to denounce the apparent disinterest of the Christian world in the security of the Holy City. But this attempt, also, did not bear fruit.
Of potentially greater political consequence was Roncalli’s dialogue with Moshe Sneh, the official envoy of the Zionist Executive to Paris, who had been the main coordinator of the Aliyah Bet in France. The Nuncio met Sneh for the first time on 9 August 1947: he was introduced by the Abbé Glasberg who, a few weeks before had made clear his thoughts regarding the Middle East in a memo entitled The Palestinian question analyzed from a Catholic point of view, in which he supported the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine, underlining how such a solution could be useful for Christian interests.
Roncalli, Glasberg, and Sneh met again a few weeks later, at the beginning of October 1947, in Rome. Here Roncalli had a long and cordial meeting with Mgr. Domenico Tardini, one of Pope Pius’ closest aides, who was at that time secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affaires and was well known as head of the pro-Arab camp within the Secretariat of State. Glasberg met Tardini that same day; the content of their meeting is unclear. It is highly probable that Sneh, who had arrived in Rome on 30 September with Glasberg to seek an audience with the Vatican Secretariat of State, succeeded in meeting Tardini. More uncertain is what transpired during these meetings. It is probable that the discussions centered around the Vatican stance on Palestinian partition and on the imminent debate in the UN General Assembly regarding the UNSCOP partition plan. Unfortunately, with current documentation it is impossible to confirm this supposition and know precisely what occurred during these meetings.
His frequent contacts with the envoys of the Jewish Agency, his close ties with Glasberg, and his attempts to facilitate meetings between the Zionist’s representatives and the Secretariat of State, would appear to confirm the idea of Roncalli’s favorable attitude toward the creation of a Jewish State in the Middle East, contrary to predominant views in Vatican circles. However, this impression needs to be contextualized. First, is important to remember that the Holy See remained silent regarding the Palestinian issue all through 1947 and the first few months of 1948. A stance that resulted from the Vatican’s reticence to declare its official position before the decision of the UN Assembly and, after it, from Catholic satisfaction with UN Resolution 181 of November 1947, which established international status for Jerusalem and its surrounding areas, including Bethlehem. As is well known, the Vatican looked positively on this solution, as their main fear was unilateral Arab or, even worse, Jewish control over the Christian Holy Sites. Second, the meetings between Roncalli and Israeli envoys became rarer after the establishment of the State, in May 1948, and, above all, after the beginning of the quarrelling over the status of Jerusalem between the Israeli government and the Catholic world. Despite his esteem for Glasberg, the Nuncio was not always enthusiastic toward the Abbé’s initiatives. For example, during March 1948, Roncalli wouldn’t approve Glasberg’s mission to Jerusalem.
It is most likely that Roncalli wanted to minimize the political involvement of the clergy in the Middle East: a concern which we have seen quite clearly with regard to the pro-Arab Eastern-Catholic clergy present in France and Europe. Consistent with this view, in Glasberg’s case Roncalli was skeptical toward his purely political initiatives and only wanted to support the humanitarian ones, as he had done in the case of the Abbé’s involvement in the Aliyah Bet.
These facts support the conclusion that Roncalli had no fixed position on the political future of the region. Based on currently available documentary evidence, his opinions were very few and extremely cautious with regard to Middle Eastern politics. In one of the most significant of these, written in his diary on 5 January 1949, during a new outbreak of fighting between Israel and Egypt for control of the Negev region, he showed himself to be in line with the official Vatican position, underlining the need for a rapid return to peace and for a much more stable governance of the Christian shrines:
Unfortunately this war is still being fought. They are all barbarians. The Holy Father is worried about the Holy Places. And the Lord seems too late to deal with it. They are an earthly problem. His kingdom is not of this world. This is a truth that too few recognize.
Words such as these show Roncalli’s agreement with the Holy See’s political line, but also a certain skepticism toward the possibility of success using a solely diplomatic approach and the tendency to consider the Middle Eastern situation in a spiritual rather than political context.
This attitude also seems to emerge during Roncalli’s involvement in the Catholic international campaign in favor of the internationalization of Jerusalem—the last aspect that we have to consider. This campaign attracted great support during the last months of 1948 and during the whole of 1949, involving Catholic public opinion and the episcopates of many countries until UN Resolution 303 of December 1949. In France, this campaign was particularly relevant. First of all, it underlined the traditional role played by the country as protector of the Middle Eastern Catholic communities and its ties with many Catholic institutions in the Holy Land. Second, the Catholic movement for the internationalization of Jerusalem and the Holy Places not only had wide public support, but also was able to obtain support of many French diplomats, due to the fact that in the summer of 1948 Robert Schuman, well-known for his sympathy toward Vatican aspirations, had replaced Georges Bidault as foreign minister.
There were two main Catholic goals: the first was certainly the issue of Jerusalem and the effort to implement the planned internationalization of the Holy City; the second, only seemingly unconnected to this, emphasized the necessity to help the Arab refugees, among them numerous Christians, victims of the 1948 war. From this perspective, the idea of internationalizing Jerusalem would have made possible the settlement of Christian refugees there, strengthening the precarious Catholic presence in the city.
The French Catholic campaign for internationalization reached greater intensity in three stages. The first, on the occasion of publication of the encyclical letter In Multiplicibus Curis, during autumn 1948, when French public opinion and government showed strong support for the idea of internationalization, their fervor surpassing that of the Vatican, which at that time was still undecided and cautious regarding the future of the city. The second moment was in the late spring of 1949, immediately after the publication of the encyclical letter Redemptoris Nostri by Pius XII. During this period, French attention was focused on the issues of internationalization and Arab refugees, due to Belgium’s clergy and episcopate’s charitable efforts, which the French Bishops wanted to support and emulate with a series of initiatives. The third instance was in autumn 1949, during the UN General Assembly discussion regarding the status of Jerusalem, when Catholic attention was entirely focused on the future of the city, its surrounding areas and international guarantees for the other Holy Places and sanctuaries in the region. To this end, the French Catholics and the episcopate promoted many public initiatives and a “crusade” of prayer and penitence. These efforts, and in particular those of autumn 1949, were directly promoted by the Holy See and part of a precise Vatican strategy to influence the governments and to back the idea of transforming Jerusalem into an international corpus separatum.
Because of this, we can understand why Roncalli was involved in this effort, acting as a link between the Vatican desiderata and the initiatives of the French episcopate. However, the level of the Nuncio’s personal involvement and feelings in this campaign is less clear, as is his attitude toward Israel and the Middle Eastern question and how it changed as a result of the counterposition between the Catholic world and the Jewish State regarding the issue of Jerusalem.
Answering this question it is not easy. It seems that Roncalli’s support for the pro-internationalization campaign did not show any clear change in his attitude toward the State of Israel, but it meant only the normal loyalty of a Vatican diplomat to the Holy See’s political line. In addition to this, it is necessary to underline that Roncalli’s role in this campaign does not appear particularly relevant, probably due to his diplomatic position, which required discretion. The Catholic campaign for the internationalization of Jerusalem was led directly by the various national episcopates, which tried to influence their governments to act in favor of the Vatican’s claims, which the Pope himself intimated in several official documents. Certainly the most evident result of these complex dynamics was that the mention of Arab-Israeli conflict in Roncalli’s diary and notes were diminishing during the whole of 1949, the year in which the struggle over the political asset of the Holy City was most violent.
In any case, it is possible to affirm that in none of the Nuncio’s documented positions can any anti-Zionist, or even anti-Semitic, rhetoric be found. On the contrary, propaganda of this kind was being spread mainly by the French Catholic press, during this period of bitter dispute between Catholic and Israeli interests regarding the Holy City. In fact, in these months the French Catholic daily La Croix and Jesuit journal Etudes compared Zionism to Nazism, using the expression Nazi to characterize the actions of the Israeli army during the first Arab-Israeli War and to underline the intolerant character of the new State, in particular toward the Christians. Such a vitriolic definition was used for the first time by the press agency of the Congregation De Propaganda Fide, Fides, on 7 May 1949, even causing embarrassment in the deepest anti-Zionist circles of the Vatican Secretariat of State. During the following months, this expression and this kind of inflammatory language spread on the pages of many Italian, French, and international Catholic dailies, weeklies, and magazines. It is clear that Roncalli did not approve of such language and this kind of rhetoric, which were the opposite of his thinking and actions.
Conclusions
During the period immediately after WW II Roncalli was certainly one of the most sympathetic Vatican diplomats toward the Zionists’ efforts and, after the establishment of the State, he showed understanding and sympathy toward Israeli diplomats. At the same time he met Arab officials and politicians, showing respect and esteem for many of them. On the other hand, he was very suspicious of the clerics who were too involved in the political conflict between Arabs and Jews. For this reason he did not appreciate the pro-Zionist stances of the Maronite Archbishop of Beirut, Mubarak, as well as the anti-Israeli claims of the Greek-Catholic Bishop Hakim.
These facts support the conclusion that Roncalli’s attitude toward the establishment of Israel was not primarily determined by political considerations. On the contrary, the Nuncio’s affection toward Israel and its envoys was driven by different factors, partly personal and humanitarian and partly religious. This positive attitude came from Roncalli’s personal perception that Zionist aspirations in Palestine would provide a solution to the problem of displaced people in Europe. For this reason he viewed the creation of the Jewish State from a humanitarian perspective more than a political one and therefore he was initially sympathetic toward Glasberg’s initiatives, only becoming skeptical once the French Abbé started to act in an openly political way, risking compromising the Church’s impartiality.
Roncalli certainly had no anti-Jewish sentiments: this clearly emerged from the examination of his personal documents and notes, which contain no reference to traditional Christian anti-Judaism. This factor, far from being exclusively theological, is in reality of great importance as far as Roncalli’s attitude toward Israel is concerned. Some of the harshest criticism by the Catholic world toward Israel was at that time the natural consequence of a long tradition of antipathy toward the Jewish faith, but conversely many Catholic observers, sympathetic toward the new State, were also pioneers of a new understanding between Christians and Jews.
The last issue, which should be emphasized, is Roncalli’s involvement in the campaign for the internationalization of Jerusalem and for the Arab-Palestinian refugees after the 1948 war. Also, in this case, until such time as fuller access to the Vatican Archives is granted, it will not be possible to be certain of the precise role of Roncalli in promoting these political and humanitarian efforts. The impression is that the Nuncio did not play a central role and that the majority of the initiatives were directly led by the French episcopate. This was probably for two reasons: his diplomatic position, which required him to be more circumspect in his public statements, and his perception of the Holy Land question essentially as a spiritual and theological one more than a political one.