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When he arrived in Paris January i, 1945, Nuncio Roncalli found the country in postwar ferment. Gaullists were unforgiving toward Vichyites and at odds with the Catholic-oriented M.R.P. The Communists were riding high. Yet during his eight years' stay. Nuncio Roncalli became one of the most popular men in Paris. One example of his talent for smoothing out differences: only three Vichy archbishops lost their jobs, despite the Gaullists' bitter feelings about them as collaborationists. In addition to respecting his ability, the French also liked his cuisine. Roncalli is known as what the Italians call "a powerful fork" (his filling favorites: raviolini, polenta with small birds, hare in salmi, chamois in salmi, deviled chicken, tripe Bergamasque).
Gondola Greeting. In 1953 came news that the Pope had made Archbishop Roncalli a cardinal. The heads of Catholic states have the privilege of awarding the red biretta to nuncios created cardinals while abroad, and Cardinal Roncalli received his biretta from his friend Socialist French President Vincent Auriol. thus underlining the good relations between church and state. Three days later the Pope appointed Roncalli Patriarch of Venice.
Venice welcomed its 44th patriarch and 139th bishop with a gala flotilla of gondolas, and Cardinal Roncalli welcomed Venice with something that sounded like a sigh of relief. In his first sermon from the pulpit of St. Mark's he said: "Do not look upon your patriarch as a politician, as a diplomat, but find in him a priest."
The Venetian clergy, smarting from the autocratic patriarchate of the late Cardinal-designate Agostini, called Roncalli "calm after the storm." Venice was soon used to seeing his square, black figure almost everywhere, riding in the motor-launch buses and stopping for a chat in the cafes. His door was always open, and his secretaries disapproved of the amount of time he gave to visitors ("Let them come in," he would say. "They may want to confess"). At the Venice music festivals in 1953 and 1956, he filled St. Mark's with music such as the great cathedral had not heard since the 16th and 17th centuries, including the world première of Stravinsky's moving Sacred Canticle to Honor the Name of St. Mark.
Crocodiles & Tourists. Though an ardent supporter of Catholic Action and the Demo-Christian Party, Cardinal Roncalli won the admiration of many a Venetian leftist for his progressive outlook. He shocked conservatives by proposing that some marble panels be removed from the interior of St. Mark's to give worshipers a better view, but he was dead against a proposal to set up gambling facilities in St. Mark's Square. Once he aimed a shaft of wit at the scantily clad tourists who swarm the city in the summertime: "People need not come to Italy in furs or woollens. They can come dressed in that modern American silk, fresh and soft, which is a veritable refrigerator at low cost. Italy, on the other hand, is not on the equator, and even there, by the way, lions wear their coats, and crocodiles are lined with their most precious hides."