Letter from Joseph P. Walshe to Seán MacBride (Dublin)
(Personal and Confidential)

My dear Seán,
With so much on your hands after your recent successful journey to America,¹ and your home worries,² I feel very guilty writing to you at all; but you have been told about the President's intended visit, and will have seen my telegram.

Nobody here has any doubts about the ineptitude of the visit. We shall lose face enormously, if it takes place. It is inappropriate, unwanted, and absurd. It has never happened that a Head of State paid two visits to the Holy See, in the course of a single year. The Beatification in their view is no occasion for it. The reason given by the President, namely that he presented an address to Pius X in 1908 on behalf of the Corporation, is so ridiculous that I daren't mention it, (if it comes to the point that the P. insists), without appearing to have lost my senses.

When I put them the purely hypothetical case, they just smiled and trotted out a dozen reasons against it. If we aren't careful we shall become classified with the more savage of the S. American states.

It is useless to conceal the fact that the return of the President apart from striking a discordant note de facto, would revive the irritation and annoyance felt last year at the President's Paris indiscretions.

You know that I did my best to gloss the whole business over, and I didn't want to add to your worries by telling the full extent of their annoyance. Tardini was so furious that he gave me the enclosed photostat of the interview with the President's corrections and signature and he said he had hoped that no Irish statesman could do such thing. You may be quite certain he was just reflecting the annoyance of the Holy Father who has a complex (perhaps quite rightly) about such indiscretions.

Can't the President let sleeping dogs lie, and give the Vatican people time to forget. The real difficulty is the Holy Father Himself, whose reaction, if he were told the President were going to ask for an audience, you can well imagine. He would be quite capable of refusing. Naturally, He wants to forget the incident, and he must feel He has the right to be let forget it. And who can control the irresponsible Roman Press who most certainly will recall the incident.

What a pity there is not somebody in the President's household, who could put an end to such projects as soon as they begin to germinate.

I am now going to reply to his letter received yesterday morning and I shall advise him to forego this visit, and to go direct from Naples (or Amalfi) to the Italian Riviera without stopping in Rome - unless he does so completely incognito (and that would hardly be possible). With all good wishes,

I can't help feeling, after recent talks in the V. and entourage that we should abstain from official visits for some considerable time - even in the case of Ministers. Of course, there could be no objection to visits in forma privata if they don't seek an audience. The Vatican is very much inclined to attribute motives of a non-pious character - and we should avoid giving them the opportunity. And Felici has probably encouraged the P. in his project. He has lost all sense of responsibility.