34 GERALD P. FOGARTY
chusetts, for the third in a series of conferences about the issues
confronting statesmen of both nations, especially nuclear weap-
ons. Norman Cousins, the editor of the Saturday Review and head
of the American delegation, had initiated the conferences at the
request of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960. On Octo-
ber 22, the group was just getting acquainted when it recessed to
watch Kennedy’s address on television. After taking a vote, they
decided to continue with the conference, despite the tension be-
tween their two nations.
A few days later, the group received a visitor, Felix Morlion,
OP, rector of Pro Deo University in Rome, a think tank for politi-
cians and journalists from around the world, with a bias toward
Europe. A Belgian, Morlion had founded Pro Deo in the 1930s as
an international group of Catholic journalists. During the Second
World War, he moved his headquarters to New York, where he
cooperated with the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner
of the CIA. He came to Andover not as a participant, but as an
observer and emissary. There he raised the possibility of a papal
intervention in the crisis.
With the encouragement of members of both delegations, he
phoned the Vatican and was informed that the pope was deeply
concerned about the crisis, but wanted assurance that his inter-
vention would be acceptable. In particular, Morlion’s instructions
were to ask if the Soviet Union would cease military shipping in
return for the United States lifting the blockade. According to
his later recollection, Cousins then phoned Theodore Sorensen,
general counsel to Kennedy, who later responded that Kennedy
welcomed the papal offer, but that it was imperative not only
that military shipping to Cuba cease, but that the missiles be re-
moved.16 Morlion conveyed this information to the Vatican. A
- In a letter to the author, Sorensen recalled speaking with Cousins only af-
ter the crisis and had no recollection of a papal intervention in the crisis itself; So-
rensen to Fogarty, New York, December 1, 1994.