Memorandum from Charles Bewley to Joseph P. Walshe

In the course of my stay in Rome, a number of matters arose about which it would in my opinion be well that the Minister should be informed. I have therefore ventured to set them forth for his convenience under separate headings in order to avoid the unnecessary detail which would be involved in any attempt to describe the course of my activities from day to day.

The Irish College

I understand that the Secretary of the Department¹ has already written a report on the reception given to him and myself by Mons. Curran on the occasion of our visit to the Irish College on June 15. It is therefore unnecessary for me to give any details of our conversation with him, as it will probably already be clear from Mr. Walshe's report that his attitude can only be described as one of deliberate discourtesy. He persisted in treating us as two tourists who were visiting the Irish College as one of the sights of Rome, made no reference to the fact that either of us held any official position, advised us if possible to take one day in the week in the country after our week's sightseeing, and expressed not the slightest desire or expectation of meeting us again. In the month which elapsed between June 15 and my departure from Rome on July 17, Mons. Curran did not visit, or even leave a card upon me; he refused an invitation from Fr. Canice O'Gorman, the head of the Irish Augustinians in the College of St. Patrick, to a lunch given in my honour, and omitted to invite me to a reception at the Irish College on the feast-day of Blessed Oliver Plunkett at which Cardinal Capotosti,² Mons. Paschal Robinson and all the more prominent Irish clergy in Rome were present. On the only subsequent occasion on which I met Mons. Curran (a tea given by Mons. Pisani) his attitude was substantially unchanged, though his manner was necessarily somewhat modified by the presence of other persons.

It appears to me obvious that Mons. Curran's intention is entirely to ignore the existence of an Irish Legation to the Holy See, and it may be safely assumed that such an attitude would not have been adopted without the instructions of Mons. Hagan, who was absent from Rome during the whole of my stay. While it is unnecessary for me to enlarge on the unprecedented action of the authorities of the Irish College in refusing to recognise the lawful government of their country in the person of the Minister of that government, I desire to indicate the practical difficulties which will arise therefrom.

Firstly, when Mons. Hagan has returned to Rome in October, the question arises whether, in view of my former reception, I should call on him or not. Personally I am of opinion that I should visit him, even at the risk of being received with open discourtesy. To omit to call would be represented as a slight, and I would prefer that all the discourtesy should come from his side rather than mine. At present, the only complaint made by Mons. Curran is that I was 'going about with the English'. At the time when he made the complaint, the only function which I had attended was the confirmation by Mons. Paschal Robinson of one of the children of Mr. Randall, the Secretary of the British Legation - a fact which I have endeavoured to put in circulation. I would therefore suggest that I should visit Mons. Hagan and give him the opportunity of deciding whether or not to return my call.

Secondly, if, as seems probable, Mons. Hagan decides not to recognize my existence as Minister, a difficult situation will arise. Mons. Hagan represents most, if not all, of the Irish Bishops for certain purposes, mainly ecclesiastical, in Rome, and the Irish Bishops usually stay in the Irish College when they visit Rome. It is not to be expected that Mons. Hagan will facilitate episcopal visits to me, and I can scarcely persist in calling on guests in an institution where I am not received. On the other hand, it would be fatal to the prestige of the Legation and indeed of the Irish Government in Rome if I were to be ignored by the Irish Episcopate. I would therefore suggest that, pending a change in the control of the Irish College (which would of course be the only satisfactory solution), I should be enabled to come into personal contact with as many as possible of the Bishops before my return to Rome: this will at any rate make it more difficult for them to ignore the Irish Legation.

Similar considerations will arise with regard to pilgrimages from Ireland. In countries where the moral duty of loyalty to the State is more universally recognized, there is close co-operation in the reception of pilgrims by the ecclesiastical authorities and the ambassador or minister. Such co-operation will in present circumstances be very difficult, and I can only suggest that some effort should be made, before the departure of any pilgrimage from Ireland, to secure that its managers put themselves in touch with the Irish Legation as well as with the Irish College.

It would be difficult to lay too much emphasis on the importance of these questions raised by the attitude of the Irish College. That it is part of a general campaign for the discrediting of the Free State is perfectly clear - even apart from the notorious fact that Mons. Hagan is in the closest touch with the leaders of the Fianna Fáil party. The statement has, for instance, been sedulously repeated in Rome that there is no intention of sending any Papal representative to Dublin. This statement, which was emphatically contradicted to me by both Cardinal Gasparri and Mons. Ottaviani, emanated from the Irish College, and has apparently no foundation in fact. I am therefore driven to the conclusion that the only object in its dissemination is the desire to injure the prestige of the country in the hope that the Government will suffer in the process. I do not consider that anything can be expected from the intervention of Cardinal Sbarretti,³ the patron of the College; although he is reported not to be on the most cordial terms with Monsieur Hagan, I formed the opinion on my visit to him that he would be very unlikely to take a strong line.

In conclusion, I desire to point out the obviously disastrous effect which the attitude adopted by the heads of the Irish College towards the Irish Government must have on the minds of the students. So far as I have been able to ascertain, they are kept in comparative isolation from the other colleges, and, according to one authority, are not even allowed to salute their members in the street. They were described to me by a prominent Irish member of the Benedictine Order as 'Bolshevists', and this, I think, is the general impression which they have created. It is hard to imagine anything more dangerous for the future of the country than the continued training of the future priesthood in a spirit of active disloyalty to the Government, and I would urge that the whole problem of the Irish College should receive the most serious and prompt consideration.

The appointment of a Nuncio

I have already referred to the rumour emanating from the Irish College to the effect that it is not the intention of the Holy See to send any representative to Ireland. This rumour I thought it right to mention to Cardinal Gasparri (I had previously been informed that it had already been brought to his notice), who at once denied it emphatically. When I asked him whether he could indicate at all when the appointment was likely to be made, he would only say that the Holy Father had not considered it at all as yet and that it would be a matter of months, though certainly not of years. Mons. Ottaviani, however, told me later that he had proposed a certain name for the position, and that it was that of someone at present abroad. It would appear, therefore, that there is a genuine intention of appointing a representative, but it is possible that there may be considerable delay. The next consistory will probably not be held until the month of December, and it is possible that after it has taken place it may be easier to find a suitable candidate. The difficulty of finding one is in my opinion perfectly genuine, as, in addition to the necessity of appointing only a dignitary of a certain rank, there is the desirability of sending to Ireland a good speaker of English, which is a rarer qualification than one might expect in the ranks of Italian Monsignori. In the meantime I do not see that anything can be done except to keep the matter as far as possible before the Secretary of State.

The Creation of an Irish Cardinal

As I have already reported, I placed the views of the Government on the desirability of the bestowal of the Red Hat on the Archbishop of Dublin before the Secretary of State. He first suggested that it had always been the tradition that it should go to Armagh. I pointed out that no such tradition existed, and that in fact it had gone to Dublin until for special reasons it had been given to Armagh. I also placed before him the other reasons why the Archbishop of Dublin should be the recipient of the honour. The Cardinal replied, 'I understand what your Government desires - first, that an Irish Cardinal should be appointed, secondly, that, if possible, it should be the Archbishop of Dublin'. As there had been no discussion of the first point between us, and, in fact, he had announced the probability of the creation of an Irish Cardinal without my having approached the subject on a previous occasion, I understood this to be merely a method of enabling himself at a later date to point out that he had complied with the wishes of the Government on the first point, while finding himself unable to do so on the second.

When I called on Cardinal Merry del Val,⁴ he also referred to the probability of an Irish Cardinal and to the 'tradition' that the Red Hat should go to Armagh. I again pointed out the correct facts, of which he stated that he had been unaware.

While fully accepting their Eminences' statements that they were under an incorrect impression with regard to the history of the Cardinalate in Ireland, I find it difficult to believe that this error was their main ground for the apparent intention to bestow the Red Hat on Armagh, inasmuch as it could have been dispelled by a glance at any official reference book. On the other hand, I have heard from more than one Irish clergyman in Rome that the Archbishop of Dublin on the occasion of his last visit gave the impression of being in a poor state of health and, in fact, in danger of a nervous breakdown. My belief is that the preference will be given to Armagh on personal grounds, and that the reason given me is an expedient necessitated by the obvious undesirability of stating the real ground of decision.

The Eucharistic Congress, 1932

I have already reported my conversation on this subject with Cardinal Vannutelli,⁵ as showing the considerations which might possibly influence the decision whether the Congress should be held in Ireland or not. Since then Mons. Pisani referred to the question during the Emancipation Celebrations, and it would appear to have been considerably discussed both in Ireland and in Rome. Mons. Pisani informed me that he had intended to refer not only to the possibility of the Congress but also to the anniversary of St. Patrick, and that in any event he had no authority to give any pledge that it would be held in any particular place. He appeared to be very much disturbed by the fact that the newspapers had made him responsible for the statement that His Holiness would come to Ireland, and told me that he took no responsibility for anything beyond the Pope's message. I obtained, however, very much more satisfactory information from Cardinal Cerretti,⁶who has very great influence and is mentioned as a possible successor to Cardinal Gasparri as Secretary of State (the most probable appointment is said to be Mons. Pacelli, the Nuncio in Germany, who has just completed the Concordat with Prussia). Cardinal Cerretti stated that, although no final decision would be taken until after the 1930 Congress, which will be held in Carthage, it was almost certain that the 1932 Congress would be held in Dublin. Aclaim is being made by the Argentine on the somewhat remarkable ground that the Government in 1932 will be friendly to the Church, but that no one can prophesy whether the Government in 1934 will be equally friendly: this however did not appear to carry much weight with the Cardinal. He also mentioned that the Australian Bishops have petitioned to be allowed to put off their 1931 visit to Rome until 1932, so as to enable them to combine it with the Congress in Dublin.

General

While it would be wearisome to enter into details of the (frequently somewhat conventional) conversations which I had with the various ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, I think it well to say that in most cases they showed a very keen interest and in some a considerable knowledge of the recent history and constitutional position of the Irish Free State. The Italian Ambassador, it is true, informed me that in his opinion the British Empire is the most wonderful thing in the world, and entirely objected to the expression 'Commonwealth of Nations'; it will be of interest to see whether this opinion has been altered by the opening meeting of the Hague Conference. He is however a soldier, not a diplomat, by profession, and insists on speaking Italian on all occasions for the two purposes of vindicating its position as a world-language and of concealing his comparative ignorance of French. I was much impressed by the genuinely favourable opinion which the diplomatic corps in general appear to have formed of Cardinal Gasparri's ability and reliability: the word used by the German Ambassador was 'Gerechtigkeitssinn' or 'sense of justice'. I was however warned that time was of no account in the Vatican, and both the French and German Ambassadors added that they often found it very hard to persuade their Governments of this. The latter told me that in the course of the negotiations for a concordat with Romania the Romanian delegates threatened to break off the proceedings as a protest against the continual delays on the part of the Holy See, whereupon the Secretary of State replied, 'The Holy See has existed for nineteen hundred years without a Romanian concordat, and if necessary it can exist for another hundred in the same condition'. The anecdote is probably an old one, but it serves to illustrate the futility of trying to hustle the Vatican authorities.

It may be worth mentioning that both the German Ambassador and the Bavarian Minister on my first meeting them took the entirely unusual course of addressing me in German and subsequently displayed an astonishing familiarity with the main facts of my career, while the former told me that he had understood that I had been offered the post in Berlin, and inquired why I had not gone there. None of the other members of the diplomatic corps had been documented in the same way by their representatives in Dublin.