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Joseph Stalin (at Teheran) : How many divisions has the Pope?
Pius XII (later, to Winston Churchill) : Tell my son Joseph he will meet my divisions in heaven.
An old man who commands no military divisions rode through the streets of Rome one day this week. Once he would have ridden on a white mule, but in 1953 he went in a black Cadillac. Crowds jammed the lovely, narrow streets of the city of Augustus, of St. Peter, of Garibaldi, of Comrade Togliatti. The cheers shook the ancient stones. Women wept. Children, perching on their fathers' shoulders, waved and repeated the shout they heard all about them: "Viva il Papa, Viva il Papa!"
The old man waved back, his pale, sharp face bearing an extraordinarily charming smile.
The office which this man embodies is the oldest witness of Western civilization. One of his predecessors faced Attila on his march to Rome; another preached the first Crusade against Islam; another excommunicated Martin Luther; another was taken prisoner by Napoleon.* It is an office that has often been near destruction, often corrupt, often hated. Nevertheless, Viva il Papa, Viva il Papa! shouted the crowds in Rome. They were cheering not only the office, not only a faith, not only the past in which they glory. They were cheering not only the Pontifex Maximus as they have almost always cheered him, but a man. For Eugenio Pacelli, for the past 15 years known as Pius XII, Bishop of Rome and Vicar of Jesus Christ, is a new kind of Pope.
He is a man of his city, the first Roman to wear the triple crown in two centuries. He is also a man of the world, in the sense that he has seen more of it and knows it better than any other Pope in history. He is a man of his time, in the sense that he uses its technology (he put a radio station and a power house in the Vatican) and understands its social needs (he allowed Mass to be said in the afternoon so that more workers could attend). He is also a man of reality, for he is one of the world's leading spiritual fighters against Communism.
More than any other Pope in history, Pius XII is heard outside his own Church, for millions of non-Catholics—disagree as they might with Roman Catholic dogma —have come to expect from him an occasional, tonic reminder of Christian morals, phrased with a lofty sense of verities.
Above all, he is the Pope of the people, in the sense that he is accessible to all. He has met more people than any other Pope in history—hundreds of thousands, of all nations, all stations and all faiths: Italian miners and French peasants, Hindu holy men and Baptist ministers, soccer players, bicycle racers, mezzo-sopranos, movie stars, perfume manufacturers, poets, bakers, boilermakers and, undoubtedly, thieves.
He is, to Romans and to much of the world, something of a living and familiar saint.