28 GERALD P. FOGARTY
fore the judgment seat of God.” Khrushchev noted that he was
not afraid of “the judgment of God,” for, “as a Communist and an
atheist, I do not believe in ‘Divine Providence,’ but I can say one
thing firmly: the Governments’ great responsibility before their
peoples and before mankind require that they make all possible
efforts and begin jointly to search for ways to liquidate the re-
mains of World War II, to eliminate points of tension, to curb the
torchbearer of a new general conflagration.”1
John XXIII actually took the next step. He dispatched Father
Giuseppe De Luca secretly to meet Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the
Italian Communist Party, who was about to go to Moscow. The
priest’s mission was to discuss how to improve Soviet-Vatican rela-
tions. He suggested—and Togliatti concurred—that Khrushchev
should send a telegram congratulating John XXIII on his eightieth
birthday, a type of message that would be cordial, but would not
commit the Soviet Union to any particular course of action.2
On November 25, 1961, John XXIII turned eighty. Through
the Soviet ambassador to Italy, Khrushchev congratulated the
pope and expressed his “sincere wishes of good health and of suc-
cess in his noble aspiration to contribute to the strengthening
and consolidation of peace on earth and to the solution of inter-
national problems through frank negotiations.” To the conster-
nation of some of his advisers, the pope thanked the premier
for “the good wishes and on his side expresses also to the whole
Russian people cordial wishes of increment and consolidation of
universal peace through happy understandings of human frater-
nity; and to this end raises his fervent prayers.” Although word
of this exchange had leaked out earlier, only on December 16
- New York Times, September 21, 1961; see Giancarlo Zizola, The Utopia of Pope
John XXIII, trans. Helen Barolini (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1978), 120–21. - Peter Hebblethwaite, Pope John XXIII: Shepherd of the Modern World (Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), 393; see also Andrea Riccardi, Il Vaticano e Mosca: 1940–
1990 (Rome: Editori Laterza, 1992), 223–25. Riccardi suggests that the Soviet ambas-
sador to Italy may have played a more significant role.