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Gothic Figure. Above and beyond his diplomatic and intellectual role there was always the Pope's incandescent personality. In a prayer to Mary he once asked that all men be made to "feel the attraction of Christian goodness." That was what most men felt in the presence. It was in a sense ironic that this sophisticated diplomat, member of old Roman aristocracy, should become so popular a Pope. Before World War II, a papal audience for a layman was a prestigious and protocol-encrusted enterprise. Under Pius XII, however, a visit to the Pope was heartwarming and almost informal (he often studied the sports pages of newspapers as carefully as the political news, because at many audiences he was required to talk more about sports than politics).
Through the big Portone di Bronzo at the right of St. Peter's and up the broad staircase to the audience chambers on the second floor trooped bobby-soxers and Brahmins, camera-slung tourists, oilmen and stenographers and schoolteachers. One need be neither Catholic nor Christian to be received, and the white-robed Holy Father walked among them all, making brief small talk in six languages, handing out holy medals, even exchanging his white silk skull cap with some visitor who had brought one for the purpose. The New York Times's late Anne O'Hare McCormick described him thus: "He is straight, strong, taut as a watch spring, thin as a young tree, but tranquil and tranquilizing —a Gothic figure whose vestments fall about him in Gothic folds, whose long hands are raised in Gothic gestures, both stiff and graceful."
The Cunctator. Pius XII was the only Pope to have visited America (in 1936 when he was Vatican Secretary of State), and his pontificate was notable for its strengthened ties with the U.S. Five U.S. cardinals were named during his reign (James Cardinal Mclntyre, Edward Cardinal Mooney, Francis Cardinal Spellman, the late Samuel Cardinal Stritch, the late John Cardinal Glennon). Two close personal friends of Pius XII were Americans—Cardinal Spellman and Boston Tycoon Joseph P. Kennedy, onetime Ambassador to the Court of St. James's.
In his preoccupation with the world at large and with his diplomat's tendency to avoid sharp edges, Pope Pius often neglected the Vatican itself. He seemed to shrink from making much-needed appointments to the central machinery of the church. Result, at the time of his death: 15 vacancies in a superannuated College of Cardinals, no Secretary of State, no governor for Vatican City, no camerlengo (see The Succession). Said one of his closest advisers sadly last week: "He provided badly for his successor."