The Pittsburgh Press (January 30, 1946)
Nazis outwitted by archbishop
NUERNBERG (UP) – Archbishop Francis J. Spellman of New York was identified today as the member of the papal secretariat of state’s staff who smuggled the pope’s denunciation of Nazism into Germany in 1937.
Archbishop Spellman flew from Rome to Paris, pretending that he was on “normal business,” it was learned, and then went on to Germany where he got in touch with Catholic leaders.
To the Catholics he handed a papal encyclical, which for the first time in hundreds of years was not in Latin but in German for the German Church alone.
At Fulda, seat of German Catholic bishops’ conference, the encyclical was duplicated and distributed to central points throughout Germany. On a given Sunday it was read simultaneously in all Catholic pulpits.
Archbishop Spellman returned to Rome. The Nazis traced the source of the document and let it be known to the Vatican that, unofficially at least, he was persona non grata.