Legate to Argentina

Last week without undue ceremony Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, trusted Secretary of State to Pope Pius XI, left Vatican City, drove to Rome's railroad terminal, boarded a train for Genoa. There, next day, he embarked on the S. S. Conte Grande for South America. Last month it had been announced that on the first leg of his trip Cardinal Pacelli would formally inaugurate Vatican City's $1,500,000 railroad system, abuilding since 1929. This plan was abandoned. But the departure of the erudite Cardinal-Statesman was epochal enough.

He was the first Secretary of State to leave Italy since Cardinal Consalvi went to Paris in 1801 to wangle a concordat out of Napoleon. Good reason had Pius XI in sending his good Pacelli across the Atlantic. Fortnight hence (Oct. 10) in Buenos Aires opens the 32nd International Eucharistic Congress, at which thousands of Catholics and scores of bishops and archbishops will join in a variety of pious acts centering around the great theme of the Eucharist. Of all the cities in which such congresses have been held, only London and Chicago are larger than Nuestra Ciudad de la Santisima Trinidad, Puerto de Buenos Aires--Our City of the Most Holy Trinity, Port of Good Airs. And the faithful who will throng the city represent the Pope's largest flock--Latin Americans who comprise one-third of the world's 300,000,000 Catholics. Thus the Vatican was happy to emphasize that in sending Cardinal Pacelli as Papal Legate to the Buenos Aires congress the Pope was expressing his high esteem for his Latin American children. Not mentioned at all by the Vatican was a report that one reason for Cardinal Pacelli's going is the prevalence in South America of morbid, unhealthy cults of the Virgin; that the Cardinal Legate will look into these, take steps to suppress them.

Canada and Peru saw two Secretaries of State before they rose to office--Cardinals Merry del Val and Gasparri. In 1823 there arrived in Chile a priest named Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti. who was to become Pope Pius IX ("Pio Noro"). In Buenos Aires wise Catholics will gaze speculatively on the austere features of Cardinal Pacelli, for he will undoubtedly be a man to be reckoned with when the present Pope, now 77, dies and the Princes of the Church gather in the Sistine Chapel to elect a successor.

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