Pope’s Death Leaves Conflict with Totalitarianism Unsettled

The death of Pope Pius XI leaves unsettled the Catholic Church’s greatest current problem — its increasingly bitter combat with the totalitarian civilization now developing so rapidly in Germany and Italy and threatening Spain and other traditional strongholds of the faith. That problem will rank as a major question in the forthcoming discussions of cardinals arriving here to elect a new Pope.

With the German press today mixing its encomiums with condemnation of the late Pontiff as unsympathetic to the dictatorship system, and hostility between some sections of the Italian press and the Vatican still echoing over the racist question, the choice of the next Pope has become a matter of grave international importance transcending many previous elections.