Letter from Frederick H. Boland to Maurice Moynihan (Dublin)
(Confidential)

Dear Moynihan,
I am sending you, as arranged, the text of the U.P. report of a statement made by the President during his stay in Paris, as printed in the Italian paper 'Il Tempo' of the 24th May, together with the text of the comment made on this U.P. report by the 'Osservatore Romano' on the following day.

In sending us these texts, the Ambassador to the Holy See reminded us that it is an invariable rule of the Vatican that persons who have audiences with the Holy Father never refer to the conversation in public except in so far as the Holy Father may request the person concerned to convey a blessing or other message on His behalf. The Ambassador adds further that it is an unwritten rule that members of Governments and other official personages visiting Rome for audiences with the Holy Father during the Holy Year avoid Press contacts before and after their audiences. It may be that these rules and understandings are not always honoured strictly in practice. But, no doubt, the Ambassador is accurately interpreting the wishes of the Vatican authorities in laying stress on them, and probably people in this country would wish to be more punctilious than others in paying regard to them.