Letter from Joseph P. Walshe to Seán Nunan (Dublin)
(Secret and Personal)

You can’t imagine how relieved I was to receive your letter of the 11th March,¹ last night, and, especially, to read the sentence ‘the Minister is not in favour of the proposal’. How right the Minister is.

Of course, knowing the President’s boyish ways in such matters, the procedure adopted is as clear as the noon-day sun. He told the Nuncio he wanted to come, then suggested that the Nuncio should get the backing of the Holy See and tell the Taoiseach, as if he, the P., had nothing to do with it.

In 1949 and 1951 he wrote to me, personally, in time for me to prevent the disaster, and this time he knew perfectly well that I should also write advising him most strongly not to come. At a later stage, again with his incredible boyish ways, he wrote me that really he never wanted to come.

Of course, we must never forget that the intimates of Popes, Kings and Presidents never give good advice. They flatter their patrons for their own purposes, and, of course, they have no responsibility. I think I know the individual who suggests a presidential visit to Rome almost every year. If you only knew the harm that has been done to the Pope and the Church by flatterers even since I came here, you would be horrified.

I can imagine Montini and Tardini throwing up their arms in horror when they read O’Hara’s recommendation, and commenting on the ‘pietismo politico’ of the Irish Government, because, in effect, they would naturally blame the Government and, unfortunately, especially our Minister, to whose authority I always refer in my talks. Now, for them ‘pietismo politico’ means Maria Duce² politics, and, no doubt, they hope something will happen to prevent ‘the visit’ (and I shall certainly receive hints with that end in view). But if the event (which may the Lord and the Minister forbid) does happen, we shall be branded, primarily by the Holy See people, and, of course, by all sensible Governments as playing politics with the Holy See. Moreover, and this is worse, they will all say, with one voice, that we are immature and don’t know how to act. One very high up person said in 1951, such a visit would be inopportune, unwanted and absurd. It has never happened that a Head of State made a second visit in so brief a space. And four years is still a very ‘brief space’ in the circumstances.

The alarming part of the President’s project is that he is still apparently completely innocent of the terrible gaffe he made in an interview in Paris, and reported in the ‘Osservatore’ of the 25th May 1950.³ Look at my reports during that period and at the time of the second threatened visit, when I sent home the photostat. I enclose a cutting from ‘The Tempo’ of 24th May, 1950 to recall the incident to your mind.

The Minister may require further arguments to support his view. Some of his colleagues, whose natural affection for the President, and whose belief that the Vatican consists of just a group of pious priests, dying to embrace the President on his arrival, might easily say ‘why not let the President satisfy his pious feelings’. Not once, since the last visit, did the Pope ask for the President, at my official audiences. In the past, because I felt there was no danger of another visit, I am sure I did put into the mouth of the Holy Father the words He ought to have said.

I have done my very best, while here, to represent faithfully the virile and independent attitude in regard to the Holy See, which characterises the policy of our Minister and of the Taoiseach, and I can’t tell you how strongly I am convinced that it is the only conceivable policy for Ireland. The proposed visit (even to Spain) would be entirely out of harmony with that policy.

God knows the Minister knows better than I do that a presidential visit to Spain and Portugal would be misunderstood and will take a lot of good will from us everywhere. The error committed by the Holy See in making the Concordat, making Franco a Proto-Canonico of St. Mary Mayors, and giving to him the Collar of the Supreme Order of Christ, continues to receive bitter adverse comment from all our best friends, especially the Americans, because they see in this treatment a contradiction of all the Holy Father said about democracy, tolerance (Church & State) and many other things. Moreover, they know that tomorrow or next day the Spanish system will collapse like a house of cards, and the instrument which the Holy See has allowed to be forged for the glory of Franco, will be used to crush the Church itself.

Why should we encourage the President to make a tour in the Iberian Peninsula? It cannot be unofficial, and the Spaniards are past masters at using such occasions.

And what a fatal summer to embark on such a joyous expedition! The danger of the Americans being obliged to stage a Pearl Harbour against the Russians increases every hour. There is now, surely, nobody in the Allied hierarchy, political or military, who thinks you can give even remote notice of an atomic war. Berlin made an early War certain. The British and Americans now know that Russia means to stay where she is until she develops some new and powerful weapon giving her even a week’s superiority, when she will move the rest of the way to the Atlantic. Nobody remains sitting on a bomb that may go off any moment.

I am very sorry to have to inflict this long letter on you and the Minister, but you will conclude from it that, from this angle, another visit from the President would be a shocking ineptitude. And I owe too much to the Minister for his constant kindness to me not to be completely honest with him.

[handwritten postscript]

The sooner the Minister makes certain that the P. is not to make the visit the better. He must by now have told lots of people, quite innocently, that he has an invitation from the H. See – and he may well use the argument that the Minister by maintaining his objection, will let him down before his friends.

I cannot insist too much on my loyalty to the President, but, Great Lord, my specific duty to the Minister comes first. It’s a bloody business.