POPE A PRISONER

Waikato Times, Volume 132, Issue 22153, 27 September 1943, Page 5

POPE A PRISONER

STATEMENT BY ARCHBISHOP NEW YORK, Sept. 26 The first authoritative confirmation that the Pope is held as a prisoner in the Vatican is given by Archbishop Spellman, says the New York Sunday News. “The Pope’s position is most difficult,” Archbishop Spellman said. “He is a prisoner and is not free to communicate with his archbishops throughout the world. We have no positive concrete way of helping him.”

According to the London correspondent of the New York Times, Britain’s Minister to the Vatican, Mr F. D. G. Osborne, and the American representative, Mr H. H. Tittman, are communicating fairly regularly with their Governments, but the Germans are determined to halt the practice. The New York Times, speculating on the political consequences of the fall of the Vatican, points out that it would not be as drastic as centuries ago, since the nations most shocked—ltaly, France and Spain—are least able to do anything. The newspaper adds: “High Catholics in London estimate that the reaction would be sharpest next in French-Canada, South America and Australia, with dismay and anger in the voices of Britain and America.”