The Pope's creation of 32 new cardinals (TIME, Dec. 31) was a tremendous gesture of spiritual empire. The new cardinalates, in 19 countries, scattered over six continents, showed, as no Protestant gesture could, the worldwide character of the Roman Catholic Church. The action was also one of the most sweeping adaptations to circumstance in the Church's long history.
The Pope slashed the ratio of Italian members in the College of Cardinals from 63% to 40%. For the first time since the Papacy's 14th-Century "Babylonian captivity" in France, Italians were in the minority. For the first time, every continent had a cardinal. The next Pope might well be non-Italian—which has not happened since the 1522 conclave chose short-reigned Hadrian VI of Utrecht.*
Next day, the Pope made his first major speech since the war's end, laid down his program for the peace. Of all the world's leaders, Pius was certainly one of those who had thought long, hard and deep about the underlying requisites of peace. The result was not sensational, but it was basic. It would be preached to the world's 331,000,000 Catholics in many tongues. It could not be ignored, even in the Kremlin.
Taken together, the Pope's two acts, on successive days, staked out for the Church its biggest religious and political role in world affairs since the Crusades. If all roads no longer led to Rome, Pius was yet eager that the roads that did lead there be used to the fullest.
New Peace. The Church, said the Pope, "must be now more than ever supranational." At the same time, it cannot be "in an inaccessible and intangible isolation," but must be in the very midst of mankind. The Pope's moral essentials for a true and lasting peace:
¶ "Collaboration, good will, reciprocal confidence in all peoples."
¶ Do-as-you-would-be-done-by approval for war trials like Nürnberg's: "Anyone, then, who exacts the expiation of crime through the just punishment of criminals because of their misdeeds should take good care not to do himself what he denounces in others as misdeeds or crime."
¶ Rights for the vanquished: "One who seeks reparations should base his claim on moral principles, respect for those inviolable natural rights which remain valid even for those who have surrendered unconditionally. . . ."
¶ Due protection for the individual and the family "against the pretensions of every policy of brute force, against the arbitrary totalitarianism of the powerful state."
¶ Freedom of press and thought, with no "arbitrary censorship, one-sided judgments and false assertions of a so-called public opinion which sways the ideas and will of the electorate like reeds shaken by the wind."
¶ Need to end undiluted national sovereignty: "Within the confines of each particular nation, as much as in the whole family of peoples, state totalitarianism is incompatible with a true and healthy democracy. Like a dangerous germ it infects the community of nations and renders it incapable of guaranteeing the security of individual peoples. It constitutes a continual menace of war."