![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Notes
1. There is a controversy within the literature whether, by the end of his pontificate, Pius XII already sought to move from his alliance with the West and advocate “co-existence.” While Coppa (Citation2003, 63) claims that by “1958 and the end of Pius XII’s pontificate, the Vatican was moving to reach some sort of accommodation with the Soviet system,” Pollard (Citation2014, 413–414) asserts that “there is little evidence that, in the last few years of his reign, he did much that would have prepared the ground for his successor's ‘Opening to the East.’” See also Brechenmacher (Citation2017), who tends to side with Coppa.
2. The major holdings of primary sources on the Commission are the archives of the COIC at the Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire in Fribourg, Switzerland (henceforth COIC). They are processed in this article for the first time. Particularly relevant is a folder in Box N08 named “Eglise-Témoin 1960-64” (henceforth COIC-N08-ET). Further relevant source material on the Commission is found among the records of the Misssion Catholique Suisse at the State Archives of Fribourg, Switzerland (henceforth MCS). Useful introductory overviews over the Commission, although without regard to the main holdings of primary sources, are provided by Grossmann (Citation2014a, 451–458); Grossmann (Citation2014b, 91–92). The “Commission pour l’Eglise Persécutée” was renamed “Commission Delta” in 1963 and called “Commission Eglise-Témoin” from 1964 onwards.
3. For an excellent overview over the “Religious Cold War” see Kirby (Citation2013). Kirby concludes that religion offered the West “a stick with which to beat, and a means of subverting, the new communist regimes” (564).
4. As Minvielle reports, between 1945 and 1957 a dozen of new OIC were set up, often through the federation of movements already organized on the national level. In 1955, there were 30 OIC and about 1000 national Catholic groups, of which on average 50 new organizations had been created a year.
5. The other two relevant categories of revenues were contributions by the COIC’s member organizations as well as external donations. The COIC’s revenues and expenses are rather well documented by its archival depositions. For the numbers presented here see especially COIC (Citation1956b), COIC (Citation1960), and COIC (Citation1963).
6. Veronese was the international Vice President of Pax Romana and the leader of Italian Catholic Action in the 1940s.
7. From 1947 onwards, an increasing number of COIC member organizations were granted “consultative status” at various UN agencies. See Ahern (Citation2013, 52–53).
8. Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage, established in November 1944. In 1954, the SDECE was headed by Pierre Boursicot and subordinated to the President of the Conseil de la République, the upper house of the French legislature. The SDECE was replaced by the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE) in 1982, which still operates today.
9. The Gehlen Organization, which was formally established as the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the West German foreign intelligence service, in April 1956.
10. The good Cyrenian refers to Simon of Cyrene, the man compelled by the Romans to carry the cross of Jesus taken to his crucification.
11. The Echo des Persécutés was renamed Témoins in April 1963. Starting from January 1964, the magazine was called Eglise-Témoin.
12. The languages in which Pius XII’s Prayer for the Church of Silence was printed were German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Slovakian, Romanian, Croatian, Slovenian, Albanian, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, and Vietnamese. For the text of Pius XII’s Prayer for the Church of Silence and various material relating to its dissemination see MCS-272.
13. In 1960, the offertory of the “Sunday of the Persecuted” in Luxembourg brought the Commission more than 600,000 Luxembourg Franc (>100,000 2017 USD). See Bernard (Citation1960).
14. If not indicated otherwise, the following section on Radio Omega is based on a summary analysis of the documents in COIC-N08-ET.
15. Congregatio Immaculati Cordis Mariae, engl. Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a Catholic religious order established in 1862 by the Belgian priest Theophiel Verbist.
16. The Russian service of Radio France International started in 1963, the year after Radio Omega first went on air. See Brunnquell (Citation1992, 96).
17. A copy of the encyclical can be found at http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem.html (accessed June 15, 2017).
18. Tellingly, the Commission itself took up the “human rights” discourse, e.g. through devoting the February 1972 issue of Eglise-Témoin to “Human Rights in the Soviet Union.”
19. For useful theoretical reflections on a “histoire croisée” of the multifaceted and complex transfers between the “religious field” and the “political field” see Graf and Grosse Kracht (Citation2007, 33–37).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Adrian Hänni
Adrian Hänni is a historian and since 2015 lecturer for Political History at Distance Learning University Switzerland. Simultaneously or previously he has been a post-doctoral fellow at Leiden University, a lecturer at the University of Zurich, and a visiting fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC. His research interests include the history of propaganda, intelligence services, and terrorism as well as the Cold War. His latest monograph, Terrorismus als Konstrukt, will be published in late 2017.