Rome’s Communist Daily Applauds Paul VI – Folha de S. Paulo, July 16, 1977
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
On the fourth of this month, during the audience at which the new Brazilian ambassador, Mr. Expedito de Freitas Resende, presented his credentials to Paul VI, the pontiff responded to the diplomat’s words with a widely discussed speech.
On the fifth, as the Brazilian press published Paul VI’s text, initial reactions to His Holiness’s speech began to emerge in our environment with respectful, prudent slowness. However, already on the sixth, Rome’s daily L’Unitá, the mouthpiece of the Italian Communist Party—which evidently has respectful slowness only toward Moscow—published a news commentary on the pontiff’s words, welcoming them with frank applause.
I mentioned “news commentary.” Readers who know what news and commentary are may not understand what I mean by this. I use this expression to describe certain journalistic articles that are essentially news stories, but in which the facts are arranged so that each news item carries an underlying commentary. Furthermore, the structure of the article unfolds very naturally into brief predictions: there is no more expressive way to comment on a fact than to define the effects it will normally produce. Therefore, “news commentary” is the term that best conveys this hybrid genre of journalistic production to the reader.
Yes, hybrid but not illegitimate, since the genre is not intrinsically fraudulent. It also offers the advantage of conciseness by condensing a lot of material into a small space.
Therefore, I will not criticize the news commentary in L’Unità as fraudulent or untrue. On the contrary, impartiality compels me to say that, strictly in terms of interpreting the papal address, it seems objective and astute. However, the news commentary contains distorted information and assessments of the current socio-political situation in our country. Distorted, of course, from the standpoint of communist ideology and interests. In this respect, the news commentary in L’Unità is entirely unacceptable.
I summarize the news commentary as much as possible, giving greater emphasis to its interpretation of Paul VI’s words that are directly relevant to this article.
The communist paper begins by painting its own picture of the situation in Brazil. “Difficulties in the political and economic arenas” are multiplying.
Inflation continues to accelerate. As a result, discontent grows, and the government responds with a “hard line.” The prospect of a presidential succession further worsens the outlook. Fearing the opposition, the government removes Representative Alencar Furtado from office. Dialogue between the MDB, “the only opposition party allowed by law” (the word “only” expresses L’Unità‘s dissatisfaction with the fact that the BCP is not allowed to operate legally), and ARENA is at a standstill.
I have no party affiliation, am not a politician, and write this article in that capacity. Nevertheless, I affirm what is obvious to any reader: the Brazilian panorama described by L’Unità is one-sided, simplistic, and biased. It is marked above all by a geometric mentality, quite understandable among hyper-theoretical communists and foreigners unfamiliar with Brazil or our famous “jeitinho” (street-smart resourcefulness). This “jeitinho” enables us to find agile, flexible solutions to political and even economic crises, so we usually avoid upheavals, or, when we do have them, “the upheavals that convulse here do not convulse as they do there.” There, that is, anywhere outside Brazil.
The fact is that, after describing the critical situation, which is misleadingly presented as dramatic, L’Unità states, rubbing its hands with glee: “In a situation marked by so many sources of tension, the words spoken by Paul VI … easily became an element of internal debate within the dictatorship [as the newspaper refers to government circles] and among those who oppose it.”
On this point, L’Unità saw clearly. The pontiff’s words are likely to further heighten tensions among us. If they had been spoken by Pius XII or Pius XI, they might even have thrown Brazil into turmoil, with the “jeitinho” unable to prevent it.
L’Unità continues, citing the following topic as an example of the forceful tone of Paul VI’s speech: “The pursuit of efficiency and the concern to ensure the necessary public order must not create situations of arbitrariness or violations of the inalienable rights of the human person.”
How could such a call to order, addressed to our government through its ambassador, fail to be a source of tension in a Catholic country sensitive to every word from the Chair of Peter, even under the current pontiff? Human rights are man’s natural rights as a creature of God, and the rights of Christians, as Pius XII, Pius XI, and all their predecessors would say, without any concession to secular language. Now, if the Holy See had evidence of so-called “human rights” violations, how holy and appropriate it would be to bring them to our government’s attention confidentially. If the government ignored this evidence, nothing could be more just than for the Holy See to place it in the hands of the Brazilian episcopate so it could bring it to the government’s attention and, if necessary, to public opinion. If none of these measures had any effect and the Holy See found itself reduced to making a great public protest, let it do so.
But—always subject to the necessary evidence—this protest could be accepted only as a noble, impartial, and paternal gesture of pastoral concern if the pontiff first condemned with greater emphasis the unspeakable atrocities committed by other governments, specifically communist governments.
Since this is not the case and since the Holy See is in open détente with communist leaders whose regimes continue to commit the most egregious barbarities, the question is: Why did he choose Brazil for this rebuke? Why? And once again, why?
The Italian communist paper did not need prophetic gifts to foresee that the perplexing questions arising from this serious issue, which remained unanswered, would increase tensions between us.
But at this point in the reasoning, another question is inevitable. Didn’t Paul VI, long trained in one of the highest and most illustrious schools of diplomacy, namely the Vatican school, foresee what the communist daily did?
It is entirely unlikely that he did not foresee it, and it does not do justice to his discernment.
If he foresaw it, what was his goal in intervening so unusually and hastily in our internal affairs?
One can understand the perplexity this question causes among any Catholic or any Brazilian with even the most basic understanding of the matter.
The perplexity increases when L’Unità, extending its comments to all of South America, reaches the limits of its perspective: “In the case of this statement by the Pope, as well as others of similar content by Carter and his Secretary of State, it is noticeable how South American dictatorships, ideologically orphaned, see day after day the source of their ideological and cultural raison d’être drying up. For Catholic and American countries … the US president and the Pope are the symbols with which the ruling power has always sought to identify itself. That such symbols speak out against dictatorships … causes instability among the ruling classes.”
Hence, according to L’Unità, there are coups and countercoups between the government and the opposition that, in the medium term, favor communist goals. The newspaper gleefully echoes a Uruguayan leftist politician’s words, “Everything will depend on our friends around the world.” From the context, it is clear that one of these friends, already shaking up the country, is Paul VI.
Of course, the communists’ sinister hope did not escape the political acumen of our highly intelligent people. Hence, the warm and enthusiastic approval that reached my attention regarding the telegram I sent to Paul VI, president of the TFP National Council. As the reader already knows, the telegram was published by several newspapers in this capital, including Folha da Tarde and the free section of Folha de S. Paulo.
