Crossed keys are depicted on the coat of arms of the Vatican. With one key, the Catholic Church, as it were, opens access to everything that interests it, and with the other it locks up everything that contradicts it. This image on the coat of arms is very symbolic.
In order to have access to everything intimate in international politics, the popes created a widely ramified intelligence organization.
The Vatican's intelligence service is actually served by the entire Catholic church hierarchy. Over fifty "diplomatic" representatives of the pope and fifteen hundred archbishops and bishops leading the Catholic clergy in different parts of the world systematically collect a variety of information from tens of thousands of lower church officials subordinate to them and send it to the Vatican. Numerous monastic orders established by the Vatican are engaged in the acquisition of intelligence information. Finally, for this purpose, the Vatican uses many different Catholic organizations united by the Catholic Action Association, as well as Catholic political parties.
The most important organizing centers of Vatican intelligence are the residences of papal diplomats - nuncios (ambassadors), internuncios (envoys) and apostolic legates (church representatives of the pope).
The entire stream of collected information goes to a special department of the Vatican - the "Congregation of the Sacred Chancellery", established in 1542 and replacing the "Great Roman Inquisition". The huge apparatus of officials scrutinizes and classifies the incoming information every day. Thomas Morgan, author of a book about the Vatican, aptly named "The Eavesdropping Fast," writes: "Good and bad news flows to the holy throne day and night from the most remote corners of the world."
In October 1939, a month after the outbreak of World War II, the Vatican created under its state secretariat the so-called "Bureau of Information", headed by the former Catholic bishop in tsarist Russia, Evreinov, one of the Vatican's oldest espionage figures. This bureau organized its branches in the most important centers and especially in areas where hostilities took place. The branch network was systematically expanded. They were present in Washington and Tokyo, in Cairo and Bangkok, in neutral countries and in many points of the territory occupied by the Nazis. Hundreds of special agents were busy with the bureau's missions every day.
Under the guise of "searching for prisoners of war and refugees", "aid to the starving," etc. The Bureau of Information has expanded its activities to all theaters of war. Disguised as "charitable" purposes, the Vatican agents infiltrated the prisoner of war and internees camps, established contacts with refugees and emigrants, supplied them with radios, literature, and musical instruments. All this served as a screen for espionage work. By the end of the war, the "Bureau of Information" of the Vatican had grown into the largest intelligence organization serving both the United States and England and Nazi Germany, with a center numbering up to 150 people in its apparatus. The Bureau was an auxiliary organ of the Vatican intelligence, which is the so-called "Information Center for God" ("Centro information pro deo").
At the very beginning of the Second World War, the Vatican began to seek the establishment of "interaction" of its intelligence with the relevant American authorities. One of the Catholic hierarchs in the United States, Bishop James Ryan, published an article in the New York Times on May 12, 1940, in which he argued that it was expedient for the United States to establish diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Pointing to the political benefits of this, the bishop emphasized that the Vatican is the most informed organization in the world.
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The United States willingly agreed to establish unofficial diplomatic relations with the Vatican. In 1940, the personal representative of the United States, Myron Taylor, arrived in the Vatican - the former president of the United States Steel Corporation, director of the First National Bank in New York and the head of several other firms controlled by the Morgan banking house.
“One of the goals pursued by Taylor,” writes the American journalist Chanfarra, “was to collect as much information as possible … The fact is that from the very beginning of the war, the Vatican all the time had very significant and uninterrupted information about the internal situation in various regions of Europe, excluding the USSR.
It can be unmistakably stated that Taylor was given information that was immediately passed on to President Roosevelt."
The Vatican, according to Chanfarr, at the same time tried not to spoil relations with Mussolini and delivered information to his opponents.
After the end of the war, the Vatican's intelligence was reorganized, merging with the intelligence service of the Jesuit Order. The newly created body, headed by General of the Jesuit Order Janssen, was subordinate to the acting secretary of state of the Vatican, Cardinal Montini. Janssen's deputies were appointed director of Centro information pro deo Morlion - a monk of the Dominican order, Belgian by origin, and director of the Jesuit spy organization.
According to the anonymous author of The Secret Documents of Vatican Diplomacy, published in Italy in April 1948, the intelligence activities of the Catholic Church were directed directly and personally by Pope Pius XII. He often hosted meetings with Cardinal Montini and other Vatican leaders.
On June 29, 1948, the Prague Telegraph Agency reported that a secret agreement had been concluded between the US government and the Vatican, under which the United States assumed the funding of the Vatican's "anti-communist" activities. Pope Pius XII, for his part, undertook to maximize the activity of the Vatican against the countries of people's democracy and the USSR. In fact, the US has funded the Vatican before. According to press reports, in 1947, the United States provided about 500 thousand dollars for the Vatican's intelligence activities in Europe alone.
At the end of April 1948, an article was published in one of the Romanian newspapers entitled "Activities of the Vatican's spy service", which outlined the essence of the new directives given by Pius XII to his intelligence. The Pope demanded that all Catholic organizations, monastic orders and individual church leaders make the most of their intelligence gathering capabilities, so that the entire peripheral network of the Vatican intelligence immediately establishes contact with the local American and British intelligence stations and communicates to them all information of a general nature that can be used to strengthen the fight against communism. The pope suggested sending information of a particularly secret nature to the main center of the Vatican intelligence.
US intelligence exerts its influence on Vatican intelligence through the Jesuit Order, of which a significant number of members are Americans. Of the 28,234 Jesites in the world by the end of 1946, 6282 were in the United States and their New York organization had 1,200 members, 4973 in Spain, 4,566 in England, Canada, Ireland and Belgium, 3154 in Germany, and Holland, 3100 in France, 2450 in Latin America, 2353 in Italy and 1356 in other countries.
The German magazine Weltbühne has published an article by Giuseppe Navarra entitled “Heavenly Men,” which describes the subversive activities of the Jesuits.
“This is the main, most efficient, most dangerous detachment of the Pope's“strategic reserves,”the author writes. - The Jesuits do not have a specific scope, they are assigned, so to speak, "special" tasks … They represent a special strike force. The Jesuit Order is the crown of the Pope's power and at the same time its most effective weapon. Where it is necessary to make a breach for the penetration of the policy of Catholicism, where it is necessary to eliminate a breakthrough in one's own ranks, where the "heavenly regiments" begin to stagger under the blows, there the Jesuits appear in the arena. These are the executioners and inquisitors during the struggle against the reformation, these are educators in princely houses before and after the French revolution, this is the vanguard of imperialism in the colonies, these are submachine gunners in the battle against socialism."
The order of the Dominicans, or "brother-preachers", also plays an important role in the Vatican's intelligence activities. In the past, representatives of this militant Catholic order usually led the inquisitorial tribunals and other organs of the Vatican investigation, as well as led the highest censorship. The nature of the activities of the Dominicans is accordingly reflected in their coat of arms, which is engraved with a dog carrying a burning torch in its mouth, and the patron of the Order of St. Dominica pressing her finger to her lips. Hence another name for the Dominicans - "the dogs of the Lord." It is also curious that, according to the charter of the order, his brothers have the right to talk to each other only two hours a day.
Despite centuries of experience in the field of all kinds of secret struggle against progressive movements, the Catholic Church suffers one defeat after another on this front. Therefore, the Vatican pays a lot of attention to the selection and training of personnel for its spy apparatus. The case is run by two Vatican bodies, the Congregation for Seminaries, Universities and Research and the Congregation for the Propaganda of the Faith.
The main task of the Vatican's intelligence is to train agents to conduct subversive work in the people's democracies and in the Soviet Union.
Revelations of Alighiero Tondi
Speaking of the Vatican, one cannot ignore the revelations made by the former professor at the Vatican Gregorian University, Alighiero Tondi. Coming from a bourgeois family, an architect and artist by training, Tondi was 16 years old, from 19366 until the spring of 1952, was a member of the Jesuit order and reached a very high position in the Vatican hierarchy. Most recently, he served as vice director of the Institute for Higher Religious Culture at Gregorian University. His last activity in this post was associated with a very important task of the Vatican.
Tondi was commissioned to study Marxism, the situation in the USSR and the countries of people's democracies in order to "prove the groundlessness" of this teaching and to give a theoretical direction in the struggle against socialism. Fulfilling this order of the Vatican, Tondi, after a long and difficult internal struggle at the 44th year of his life, abandoned Catholicism and joined the Communists.
In 1952, in the organ of the Italian communist party "Unita", Tondi published a series of exposing articles about the Vatican, later published as a separate brochure entitled "The Vatican and Neo-Fascism." At the beginning of 1953, Tondi's book "The Jesuits" was published in Florence, and a few months later, his new work entitled "The Secret Power of the Jesuits" was published in Rome.
Interestingly, Tondi's revelations about "Catholic Action" ("Action Cattolica") - this largest political organization of the Vatican. According to him, on paper "Catholic Action" should not be involved in politics, but the facts show that in its "institutions, at meetings, at lectures - in a word, politics and the most violent, ferocious anti-communism, bloodthirsty even in terms, reigned everywhere." The head of Catholic Action, Luigi Jedda, initiated the creation of a new type of "religious" organization. We are talking about "Civic Committees".
These committees were founded in February 1948 and immediately took an active political part in the preparation of the election campaign in Italy. The so-called Civic Committees are literally the Vatican's outreach organizations. This is easy to see when you refer to such a document as the "Organization and work plan of the local Civic Committee", published in 1951. The named document specifies exactly what kind of information should be collected by the executive bodies of the "Civil Committees". Such information includes data on overt or covert activities of political parties, on public opinion on local and national issues of common interest. Such information is collected as a result of observing the news, carefully reading the press, and collecting information and documents. Public opinion,as it is written in the said document, it is being reconnoitred by formulating precise questions of interest to the "Civil Committee" and sending these questions to a significant number of people of different social status. Answers are neatly annotated.
In one of his books, Tondi points out the enormous financial support provided by the American monopolies to the Vatican.
“Monsigner Fallani of the Vatican Foreign Office,” writes Tondi, “once told me frankly:“Now America is sending us as many dollars as we need, because it needs us as a political force.” Leiber, the pope's personal secretary, also told Tondi that the Vatican "gets a lot of dollars from the United States … Cardinal Spellman and the White House are helping us in every way."
Vatican agents
The Vatican has a wide network of agents. One of the main tasks of this entire network is subversion in the countries of people's democracies. Perhaps Czechoslovakia attracts the most attention of the Vatican.
In bourgeois Czechoslovakia, the positions of the Catholic reaction were very strong. The Catholic princes of the church contributed to the capture of the country by Hitler's Germany. During the years of the Nazi occupation, they actively helped the invaders. Foreseeing the defeat of fascist Germany, the Vatican intelligence planted an espionage and sabotage network on the territory of Czechoslovakia with the expectation of using it in the post-war period.
As the organizer of this network in 1943, the most experienced spy Demislav Kolakovich was sent to Czechoslovakia under the guise of an anti-fascist. A Croat by nationality, this "professor of theology", having settled in Slovakia, developed extraordinary activity. During the popular uprising in Slovakia in the fall of 1944, with the help of the Catholic Bishop Škrabik, he entered the ranks of the rebels. Eliciting military secrets from the wounded during confessions and obtaining information in other ways, Kolakovich passed them on to the Nazi invaders through an espionage point located in the episcopal residence itself.
A seasoned Jesuit spy created an espionage and sabotage network in Slovakia, which bore the conspiratorial name "Family". Members of this intelligence organization served both the Vatican and Hitler's intelligence services.
From the time of the formation of the Czechoslovak Republic, the Vatican wove intrigues, the purpose of which was to overthrow the people's power. Around the top of the Catholic Church, the leaders of the dissolved and forbidden fascist and pro-fascist parties united.
During the February events of 1948, when the Czechoslovak reactionaries were preparing a coup d'etat, the Vaticna agents acted in full contact with the conspirators. Archbishop Beran of Prague promised them the full support of the Pope. After the failure of the reactionary plans, the Vatican intensified its espionage and sabotage activities against Czechoslovakia even more. Without the consent of the Czechoslovak government, a new papal nuncio, Verolino, widely known for his subversive work in People's Democratic Hungary, was sent to Prague. On his instructions, a secret meeting was held for all Catholic bishops in Czechoslovakia, at which Archbishop Beran demanded on behalf of Verolino to intensify the subversive work. He invited the bishops to create new underground espionage and sabotage groups.
But not everywhere the papal nuncio met “the obedience of the corpse” (the Jesuit motto, characterizing unquestioning obedience) from the side of the lower church hierarchy. Many priests refused to follow the instructions of the Vatican's messenger. Verolino tried to influence some of them by applying various punishments, but this provoked protests from the ordinary mass of Catholics.
In 1950 and 1951. followed by the trials of several groups of Vatican secret agents exposed in Czechoslovakia and convicted of subversive activities against the republic. In the dock sat Lyuli in black, brown and white cassocks.
The court found that some of the accused during the Nazi occupation, being agents of the Vatican, simultaneously collaborated with the Gestapo. In fact, the closest contact existed between the Gestapo and the Vatican intelligence in the fight against the national liberation movement. With the help of the Gestapo, the Vatican got rid of the priests he disliked.
It has been proven that in many Catholic monasteries and churches in Czechoslovakia, weapons were hidden and they served as a refuge for foreign spies and terrorists. Thus, a Catholic church in the city of Znojmo was turned into a center for the transfer of traitors to the Czechoslovak people abroad, who then, after appropriate preparation, were sent back to Czechoslovakia for espionage and sabotage work.
The abbot of the Premonstrant Monastery, Abbot Mahalka, kept weapons and ammunition in secluded corners of the monastery, and in organ furs and other places he hid about a million Czechoslovak crowns, American dollars, Italian lira, gold and silver things. Makhalka kept his pistol in the confessional. Sylvester Brian, a Dominican order minister and Catholic seminary teacher in Olomouc, distributed anti-state leaflets and used the seminary department to sow discontent and incite believers to anti-popular demonstrations.
The acts of three Slovak bishops - Jan Voyteshak, Michal Buzalka and Pavel Goidich, who were tried in Bratislava, are just as unsightly. These princes of the church hid bandits who had fled from Poland, set up arms depots, printed counter-revolutionary literature, installed secret radio transmitters in their residences, and prepared terrorist acts.
The Jesuits, whose leaders in Czechoslovakia František Shingal were caught in systematic espionage activities, were extremely active in subversive slavery against the Czechoslovak people.
In other countries of people's democracies, in particular in Poland and Albania, the Vatican's agents also contributed to the implementation of aggressive plans of international reaction.
In 1952, Polish state security authorities exposed in Krakow a large spy organization set up by the Vatican and the Polish reaction.
The spies in cassocks were led by priest Jozef Lelito. Even during the years of the Nazi occupation, this "shepherd" organized a fascist gang. After the liberation of Poland from the Nazi occupation, Lelito, with the help of Cardinal Sapieha, committed many bloody crimes. Therefore, he was forced to hide for a long time under a false name.
At this time, Lelito established contact with the American intelligence center in Munich, from which he began to receive instructions for organizing espionage and sabotage operations. Soon he attracted some of his fellow priests to espionage activities. The stronghold of the spy organization was the Cracow Curia, within the walls of which the spies kept foreign currency and other valuables, as well as weapons.
The former notary of the Archdiocese of Krakow, detained in this case, Priest Pohopen, confessed that he had worked closely with Priest Lelito. Every day the archbishopric received from 50 to 100 reports from Catholic priests, from which Pohopen drew the necessary espionage information, which he then passed on to priest Lelito for sending abroad.
Kovalik, one of the members of the espionage gang, admitted that he did not hesitate to recruit even children for espionage.
At the beginning of 1950, a special meeting was convened in the Vatican, at which measures were discussed to increase espionage and sabotage activities in the countries of the people's democracies. At this meeting it was decided to organize a two-year school in Rome. Those who graduated from this school were intended to perform the functions of residents in the countries of people's democracies, where they were to be formally sent as priests. In addition, it was decided to open courses in Milan and Venice for the training of radio operators and ransomware with a one-year term of study. Participants in these courses were also assigned to work in the People's Democracies.
Educational institutions are equipped with the latest American equipment, and American intelligence officers serve as teaching personnel. The contingents of listeners are selected by the Vatican mainly from among the clergy.
Catholic reaction seeks to disrupt the building of socialism in the people's democracies. She believes that an extra dozen spies and saboteurs "highly qualified" or a thousand traitors belonging to a variety of so-called "mass agents" will be able to do something decisive in this direction. The vigilance of free peoples breaks these sinister plans.
"Congregation" in the fight against communism
From the first days of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Vatican took an irreconcilable, sharply hostile position towards the Soviet state. For a number of years after the formation of the Soviet Republic, Lysakovsky, the representative of the Provisional Government at the Vatican, called himself "the representative of Russia" and communicated with the Vatican with various White Guard organizations. At the same time, Lysakovsky's mission served as a supplier of spy information on Soviet Russia for the papal throne. During the same period, the Vatican began to carry out various measures aimed at undermining the international and domestic political situation of our country.
A special role in this subversive activity was and is played by the "Congregation of Eastern Churches" formed at the Vatican back in May 1917, which was entrusted with the leadership of the spread of "Catholicism of Eastern ritual" in countries with Orthodox populations. After the October Revolution, the "Eastern Congregation" turned from a center for the leadership of "the reunification of the Christian world in the bosom of a single (that is, the Catholic) church" into the headquarters of the Vatican to fight communism and organize anti-Soviet intrigues.
In 1918, Pope Benedict XV appointed Bishop Achilles Ratti "Apostolic Visitor for Russian Affairs." The Soviet government refused Ratti permission to enter the country. Then he was appointed to the post of emergency nuncio in Warsaw. The son of a Milanese manufacturer who went through a Catholic school, Ratti turned out to be a clever and cunning organizer of anti-Soviet espionage during the war.
Acting in close contact with the "second department" (the so-called "two") of the general staff of bourgeois Poland, Ratti launched subversive activities against the Soviet country. With his direct participation, special courses were organized in Warsaw for the training of spies and saboteurs from among the Catholic priests. A printing house was set up in Lvov to print anti-Soviet leaflets and proclamations in Russian and Ukrainian. Agents were sent to the rear of the Soviet troops who established contact with local priests and, using their help, collected spy information and prepared all sorts of provocations.
Ratti's anti-Soviet activities were not limited only to Poland. His authorized and secret agents operated in all states bordering on Soviet Russia and in the Balkans. Ratti himself and his henchmen have established close ties with many émigré White Guard organizations. He also directed the activities of the “Apostolic Visitor for Ukraine” appointed by the Pope.
In 1920, Ratti returned to Rome, and the following year, for his "merits" received the title of cardinal, becoming the most likely candidate for the papal throne.
In 1921-1922. a number of regions of our country suffered crop failure and famine. The Vatican appealed to the Soviet government with a proposal to send a mission to Russia, ostensibly to provide "aid to the starving."
On August 25, 1922, the Vatican's mission to help the hungry arrived in Crimea. The mission consisted of 11 people, including 3 Jesuits. It was headed by an American Jesuit, director of one of the colleges of this order in the USA, "Ph. D." Edmund Walsh.
At the beginning of 1924, the Soviet government demanded the recall of the head of the mission, Walsh, who was accused of anti-Soviet activities. To replace Walsh, the Vatican sent the "holy father" Herman, but the nature and content of the "work" of the Catholic "mission of help" did not change one iota from the change in its leadership, on the contrary, the mission intensified its subversive activities. In view of this, in the summer of 1924, the Soviet government was forced to expel its personnel from the country.
Under various pretexts, Catholic reaction tried to create its strongholds in the Transcaucasus. In September 1918, negotiations were held between the Vatican and the Catholicos of Georgia Kyron II on the merger of the Orthodox and Catholic churches. As a result of the betrayal of Cyron II, the Vatican received the right to appoint a Catholic archbishop in Tbilisi. The Pope appointed the Dominican Moriondo to this post, calling him "the apostolic vicar and administrator of the Caucasus." At the same time, the Pope instructed the "Neapolitan province" of the Jesuit Order to expand their activities to Georgia. In 1921, after the establishment of Soviet power in Georgia, Moriondo was replaced by Archbishop Smets, who stayed in Tbilisi until August 1924. Smets's activity in Georgia, which had nothing to do with the preaching of the "word of God", ended with his participation in the Menshevik adventure,after the elimination of which the Soviet government expelled Smets.
Russicum
Convinced of the impossibility of "peaceful" penetration into the USSR, the Vatican tried to intensify the sabotage and espionage work of the Catholic clergy within the Soviet Union and launched the training of special cadres of spies and saboteurs intended to be sent to the Soviet country.
The question of preparing secret agents for sending them to the Soviet Union and organizing work “to study Russia” was raised by the Vatican in the early 1920s. On November 12, 1923, the Pope, in his message, pointed out the need to "found and inspire an Eastern Catholic Institute" in order to study the East and prepare Catholic preachers for the USSR.
The initiators of the creation of this institute were the Jesuits. Under the Jesuit Order, the so-called Oriental Institute was created, headed by Abbot Michel d'Herbigny, the son of a French banker. At the end of 1925, d'Herbigny made a trip to the USSR and spent three weeks in Moscow. Apparently, this trip was necessary for d'Herbigny for personal acquaintance with the country. The fruit of this trip was a vile little book, full of the most insolent slanderous fabrications about our country.
Then, on behalf of Pope d'Herbigny, he traveled to some countries to raise funds for the opening of a "Russian College" at the Oriental Institute. Many capitalists put considerable funds at the disposal of d'Herbigny. By 1928, the Jesuit Order received 4 million lire, of which about half was awarded by the American Catholic organization "Knights of Columbus".
The Vatican and the Jesuit order very carefully prepared for the opening of the "Russian college", to which the Catholic reaction attached great importance. In Rome, a four-story building was erected for the college. In 1930, the Russian Catholic College named after St. Teresa”was opened.
The first director of Russicum was d'Herbigny, and his deputy was a former royal officer, Prince Volkonsky, who converted to Catholicism. Among the teachers were: Jesuit Yavorno - a former officer of the Austro-Hungarian army, a former Wrangel officer, monk Nikolai Bratko, priest Sipyagin and others.
The first contingent of Russikum listeners consisted almost entirely of white emigrants. Each of the listeners underwent the most thorough examination. Certain materials published in the foreign press testify to the real face of Russikum. So, the Austrian newspaper "Linzer Volksblatt" reported the following about him: “This is one of the strangest houses in Rome. Its windows never open and its doors are always locked. Pets of this institute throughout the entire period of study, which is from two to three years, do not have the right to receive visitors and correspond with their relatives. Only a few persons belonging to the Jesuit order have access to the gloomy house on Carlo Alberto Street. " School graduates, according to the newspaper, “are sent under a false name to the zones occupied by the Soviets” and travel not in monastic dress, but as ordinary tourists. Before leaving, the Pope gives each of them a special audience. The Russian College is run by the Austrian Jesuit Schweigl, who, as the newspaper pointed out, lived in the USSR for a long time. His assistant is the Austrian Jesuit Vetter. College students are selected mainly from among the Russian White emigrants and displaced persons.
The Russkium also has its own propaganda apparatus - the Propaganda Bureau, which publishes the weekly magazine Lettre de Rome. For many years, the magazine was run by Jesuit Father Ledith - Canadian, Russian by mother. All of Russikum's propaganda has an anti-communist and anti-Soviet direction.
In addition to Russikum, the Vatican uses the Gregorian and Western Ukrainian institutes, founded in 1883, and the second in 1897, to train anti-Soviet agents.
In order to find the appropriate contingents for such institutions as "Russukum", Gregorian and Western Ukrainian institutes, the so-called "Russian Catholic missions" have been established in some cities. These missions are looking for people who want to convert to Catholicism among the White emigre rabble and Hitler's war criminals. After some processing, those who agree are sent to Rome for special education or practical use.
One of the lecturers at the Institute for the Study of "Russian Modernity" at Fordham Catholic University in New York, a white emigrant, former prince Andrei Urusov, in a conversation with A. Tondi, told about many facts of anti-Soviet espionage activities of the Jesuit Order.
“I remember,” writes Tondi, “with what care the Jesuits organize a network of their agents all over the world, trying to embrace and take control of the emigrants who fled from Hungary, Czechoslovakia and other democratic countries, but especially the White Russian emigrants. This obviously provocative affair is being carried out by the Orthodox Jesuits, who are prowling wherever there are significant groups of emigrants."
According to Tondi, a large number of White émigré organizations conduct anti-Soviet espionage activities under the leadership of the Jesuits. Such organizations include the Russian Anti-Communist Center, the Supreme Monarchist Council, the Russian Anti-Communist Association, the Union of St. Andrew's Flag, the Committee of the United Vlasovites, the National Labor Union, the Russian People's Power Movement, Union of Struggle of the Russian People's Movement "," Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia "and others.
Even earlier, the Pope created a special body "for the study of Bolshevism" - the "Commission for Russian Affairs", headed by Abbot d'Herbigny. The Pope entrusted this commission with the task of "studying the state of religion" in the USSR and conducting anti-Soviet propaganda. In a short time, the commission became the largest center for the dissemination of the most vicious slander against the Soviet Union.
During the war
A few weeks after the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR, the Vatican concluded an agreement with Hitler to send specially trained priests to the occupied Soviet territory. The German fascists considered the Vatican ambassadors a very valuable aid to themselves. With their help, they believed, they would be able to "reconcile the Russians with the German occupation."
In 1949, the book The Vatican Conspiracy against the Czechoslovak Republic was published in Czechoslovakia. It contains facts showing that the Vatican was aware of the impending attack by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union.
The facts are as follows. By the time Nazi Germany attacked the USSR, the Vatican had already printed prayer books intended for citizens of the USSR, and the first prayer was a prayer for … Pius XII and the Russian tsar. In advance, the Vatican began to publish the magazine "Orthodox Rus" in Slovakia, the editorial office of which was later relocated to the occupied territory of the USSR. During the war, the Vatican's intelligence service maintained close contact with Hitler's Security Service (SD). SD Commissioner for Church Affairs Bauer regularly traveled to Rome, where he conferred with the head of Vatican intelligence, Montini. During these meetings, information was exchanged and the further nature of cooperation between the two systems was outlined.
After the defeat of the Nazi hordes by the Soviet Army at Stalingrad and as the victorious offensive of the Soviet Armed Forces was deployed, the Vatican intensified its anti-Soviet subversive work. He created strongholds of the Vatican intelligence on the territory of countries adjacent to the USSR, from where it was more convenient to secretly transport spies to the Soviet Union. At the same time, the Vatican is stepping up its anti-Soviet propaganda. On April 20, 1943, Vatican Radio began broadcasting in Russian, which contained malicious attacks against Soviet power, provocative and slanderous fabrications.
The trials of the Vatican agents exposed in the post-war period in the People's Democracies have revealed a picture of their subversive anti-Soviet activities. One of the agents, the already mentioned "professor of theology" Kolakovic, who betrayed dozens of Czechoslovak patriots to the Gestapo, illegally crossed the border of the USSR in 1945. The Vatican instructed Kolakovich to establish contact with reactionary elements from among the Greek Catholics, or the so-called Uniates living in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR, to supply them with money and weapons in order to use the Uniates for
Support of Stepan Bandera's anti-Soviet gangs operating in Western Ukraine.
Having penetrated the Soviet territory, Kolakovich had a meeting with the bandit Bandera. This Hitlerite mercenary, on whose conscience the blood of thousands of innocent peaceful Soviet people, met on a large forest lawn near Przemysl with a man dressed in a priest's cassock. The representative of the "Holy Roman Church" persuades the leader of the gang of murderers to intensify their robbery operations. Kolakovich promised the bandits weapons, ammunition, food, radio transmitters and dollars.
The Vatican used representatives of the Greek Catholic Church of Czechoslovakia to help the Bandera gangs operating on Soviet territory in Poland, in Czechoslovakia. With the direct assistance of the Vatican in Czechoslovakia, a courier and information and intelligence service of the Banderaites was created. Along a special road that ran from the Polish border through the entire territory of Czechoslovakia and ended in the American occupation zone of Germany, points were created that served as a place of shelter for passing couriers, supplying them with food and documents.
Such strongholds were the residence of the Greek Catholic Bishop Goidich (Slovakia), the convent near this city, the Greek Catholic Church in Prague and many other parishes. Greek Catholic priests assisted the Bandera gangs in their operations against the Soviet, Polish and Czechoslovak armies. With the direct participation of these priests, bandit raids by the Banderaites were planned, the priests obtained spy information for them, fabricated forged documents, ensured illegal crossings across the border, etc.
Who has not heard the name of the fiery revolutionary writer, active public figure of Soviet Ukraine Yaroslav Galan! His indomitable, sharp pen mercilessly exposed the true activities of the Vatican. In his angry pamphlets, the sanctimonious, hypocritical masks of the fathers of the holy church were torn off, and they appeared in all their ugliness - vicious, insidious enemies of freedom and democracy, sold to the American imperialists.
Galan was terrifying to the Vatican. They decided to buy it. The fighter writer angrily rejected the attempt. They tried to intimidate him. He responded with a new passionate pamphlet. Then the Pope blessed the Bandera bandit Stakhura, and on October 24, 1949, in his apartment in Lviv, the glorious Soviet patriot Yaroslav Galan was brutally murdered.
The Vatican is actively involved in the Cold War against the Soviet Union and the People's Democracies, and supports the policy "from a position of strength." In West Germany, the Vatican creates various Catholic youth associations. These associations are financed by the "Union of German Catholics", headed by people who were close to Hitler in the past.
Among Catholics, dissatisfaction with the Vatican's policy and its subversive activities against the socialist countries is growing. In this regard, the "church fathers" began to mask their agents even more. However, the vigilance of the workers is growing, and even the secret policy of "obedience to the corpse" will fail.