The right of an Italian drama troupe to present “The Deputy,” the Rolf Hochhuth play about the late Pope Pius XII and the Nazi destruction of European Jewry, will be discussed in Parliament tomorrow when Interior Minister Emilio Taviani will reply to complaints filed with Premier Aldo Moro against a police ban on the play here.
Rome officials invoked the Vatican Concordat, the 1929 agreement between Mussolini and the Catholic Church as a reason for banning the play, which accuses the late Pontiff of remaining silent during the wartime mass murders of Jews. Under the Concordat, police said, “The Deputy” could be banned as being in conflict with the Government’s recognition of Rome as the “episcopal seat of the Supreme Pontiff.”
A troupe tried to stage a rehearsal of “The Deputy” before an invited audience Sunday night but police barred the audience. The play was performed last night in the balcony of a Rome book store. The Sunday night effort led to a riot in which some persons were injured in trying to fight past the police to enter the theater. The groups yielded to the ban today as the issue moved toward Parliamentary consideration. L’Osservatore Romano, official organ of the Vatican, voiced strong objections to any performance of the play in Rome.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
