Vietnam
why did we go?
The Religious Beginnings of an Unholy War
By Avro Manhattan
1984
Published by Chick Publications
P.O. Box 662, Chino, CA 91710
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 84-70684
ISBN 0-937958-19-0
First Printing
Digital Edition corrected and reset by
Central Highlands Congregation of God
8th August, 2021
Published by
Central Highlands Christian Publications
PO Box 236 Creswick Vic 3363 Australia
info@chcpublications.net
Dedication
To the people of the U.S.A.
as a warning:
trusting that the tragedies of the past,
no less than the hopes of the future,
may soon bind them together
in brotherly love.
The political and military origin of the war of Vietnam has been described with millions of written and spoken words. Yet, nothing has been said about one of the most significant forces which contributed to its promotion, namely, the role played by religion, which in this case, means the part played by the Catholic Church, and by her diplomatic manipulator, the Vatican.
Their active participation is not mere speculation. It is an historical fact as concrete as the presence of the U.S., or the massive guerrilla resistance of Asian communism. The activities of the last two have been scrutinized by thousands of books, but the former has never been assessed, not even in a summarized form.
The Catholic Church must be considered as a main promoter in the origin, escalation and prosecution of the Vietnamese conflict. From the very beginning this religious motivation helped set in motion the avalanche that was to cause endless agonies in the Asiatic and American continents.
The price paid was immense: thousands of billions of dollars; the mass dislocation of entire populations; political anarchy; military devastation on an unprecedented scale; the disgrace upon the civilized world; the loss of thousands upon thousands of young Asian and American lives. Last but not least, the wounding, mutilation and death of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. [CHCoG – Current estimates of the total death toll range from 1.3 to 3.9 million, with most of the deaths being civilians. And people are still dying there daily from mines and unexploded munitions left behind.]
The tragedy of Vietnam will go down in history as one of the most pernicious deeds of the contemporary alliance between politics and organized religion.
Factors of a political, ideological, economic and military nature played no mean role in the unfolding of the war, but the religion of the Catholic Church was one of its main instigators. From the beginning her role has been minimized when not obliterated altogether. Concrete facts however, cannot be wiped away so easily, and it is these which we shall now scrutinize, even if briefly.
When in 1940, France was defeated by Hitler, the French surrendered Vietnam to the Japanese who asked them to continue to administer the land in their place. A French puppet, Bao Dai who had already ruled the country during the previous twenty years, did so.
Bao Dai however, came face to face almost at once with a vigorous nationalism. This became belligerently concrete and took the form of an increasing effective guerrilla warfare. It’s ultimate goals were two: riddance of French and Japanese rule, and total independence. The freedom fighters known as the Viet-Minhs, were supported by the general population with the result that they became identified at once with the national aspirations of all the Vietnamese.
At Japan’s defeat in August, 1945, the Vietnamese were in control of most of Vietnam. In September of that same year, the freedom fighters declared Vietnam’s independence. The French-Japanese puppet, Bao Dai resigned. After more than a century, Vietnam was once more free, or so it seemed. The Vietnamese, although dominated by communists, realized that a solid minority of the country were Catholics. Recognizing that most of the Catholics had supported their fight against both the French and the Japanese, they elicited their support by appointing several prominent Catholics to their new government.
Ho Chi Minh, their leader, nominated a Catholic as his economic minister, indeed he even had a Roman Catholic Vicar Apostolic. Furthermore, to prove how, although a Marxist, he was not biased against the Church, he adopted the first Sunday of each September as the official day of Vietnamese Independence. This because it coincided with the National Catholic Day.
Religious liberty was assured to all. The achievements of the Viet-Minhs were so popular that in September 40,000 Catholics demonstrated in support of Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi itself. Indeed four Catholic bishops even appealed directly to the Vatican asking it to support the new independent Vietnam under its new rulers.
It appeared as if a new chapter had been initiated, not only for Vietnam, but also for the Catholics, who until then, although protected by the French, nevertheless had increasingly resented French colonialism.
While the new Vietnamese government in Hanoi was working for the establishment of a democratic republic in North Vietnam, the British, knowing of the surrender of Japan, handed back South Vietnam to the French. The French, smarting under their defeat in Europe, imposed a most drastic colonial administration, with the objective of extending their dominion over the rest of the country. The Vietnamese, affronted, organized guerrilla warfare to prevent the reimposition of French rule.
In February, 1950, the U.S. recognized the Bao Dai government. Almost simultaneously France asked for military help. In March, two U.S. warships entered Saigon to support Bao Dai. Soon afterward, in May, Washington announced aid for the French with a $10,000,000 grant. The U.S. had agreed to let France deal with Vietnam while the U.S. was engaged in a war in Korea. In June, President Truman announced the U.S. was going to finance the French army to fight the government of North Vietnam. By November, 1952, the U.S. had sent 200 shiploads of material, 222 war planes, 225 naval vessels, 1,300 trucks, paying one third of the war bill in Vietnam.
When Eisenhower succeeded Truman in July, 1953, an armistice was signed with Korea, but by 1953 the U.S. financial support had already reached 400 millions a year. In October the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, declared that the U.S. help for France’s colonial rule had been “his brightest achievement of the year.”
By 1954, the U.S. was already paying 80% of the total. The French government itself stated that the U.S. had spent a total of $1,785 billion for their war. By the end of that same year, the U.S. in fact had paid $2 billion to keep French colonialism in power.
The Vietnamese, however, determined to rid themselves once and for all of the French, fought with a ferocity which astonished friends and foes alike. On the brink of defeat in Dienbienphu, France asked for U.S. help. John Foster Dulles demanded U.S. intervention (to defend Indo-China from communism). Then, he announced a plan, the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). In April he called a secret meeting of congressional leaders. The objective: to give Eisenhower power to use U.S. air and naval forces to help the French in Vietnam. The plan was called appropriately “Operation Vulture.” Lyndon Johnson, later president, objected to committing American troops and most of the congressional leaders agreed with him. By November, however, (that is from 1950 to 1954) the U.S. had already sent 340 planes and 350 warships.
In May, 1954 the French surrendered Dienbienphu. The following July, the Geneva Agreement was signed. The 17th parallel was indicated to be the provisional demarcation line between the Vietnam Republic of the North and the French in the South. On July 21 at a “Final Declaration,” nine countries endorsed the agreement with the exception of the Bao Dai government and the U.S.
The Declaration pointed out that the north-south division of Vietnam was only a “military” division, to end the military conflict, and not a territorial or political boundary. This meant that the French had been made the trustees for South Vietnam for a two year period, that is until a general election took place and the people could choose the kind of government they wanted.
In certain quarters, the Geneva Agreement created fear that if the elections were permitted, the Viet-Minhs being so popular throughout Vietnam, would take over also in the South.
The military and above all the Catholic lobbies in Washington set to work, determined to persuade the U.S. government to prevent the election. Pope Pius XII gave full support to their efforts. Cardinal Spellman, the Washington-Vatican go-between, was the principal spokesman from both. The policy of Pope Pius XII and John Foster Dulles eventually was accepted, and implemented notwithstanding widespread misgivings in the U.S. and in Europe.
President Eisenhower, himself, before and after the fatal decision, admitted in a moment of political candor that “had the elections been held, possibly 80% of the population would have voted for communist Ho Chi Minh rather than Chief of State, Bao Dai.” President Eisenhower had stated the truth about the political reality of the situation in Vietnam at that momentous period.
So far the chronological description of events against French colonial imperialism seem to be the logical expression of the Vietnamese people to rid themselves of an oppressive and alien domination, which for centuries had attempted to uproot their traditional culture, identity, and religion.
At first sight it seems incomprehensible for the U.S. to get ever more committed to the deadly Vietnamese morass. The tragic American involvement cannot be properly understood unless we take a birds-eye view of the U.S. global policy following the end of World War II. Only a retrospective assessment of the world which emerged after the defeat of nazism can spell out the reasons which induced the U.S. to pursue the policy which it did.
The policy was inspired by the sudden, awesome realization that the new postwar world was dominated by two mighty giants: the U.S. and Soviet Russia. Both had fought the same enemies in war, but now in peace they faced each other as potential foes. It was a belligerent peace. Communist Russia gave notice from the very beginning, if not by word, at least by deeds, that she was determined to embark upon a program of ideological and territorial expansion. The U.S. was determined to prevent it at all costs. The conflict, fought at all levels, and simultaneously in Europe, Asia and America, became known as the “Cold War.”
That the Cold War was not mere verbal fireworks was proved by the fact that soon the two superpowers were arming at an ever faster rate. Also, that Soviet Russia, following a well defined expansionistic postwar program, was inching with increasing ruthlessness to the conquest of a great part of Europe. Within a few years, in fact, she had gobbled up almost one third of the European continent. Countries which had been an integral part of the loose political and economic fabric of prewar Europe were now forcibly incorporated into the growing Soviet empire.
This was done via naked aggression, ideological subversion, concessions and ruthless seizure of power by local communist parties, inspired and helped by Moscow. Within less than half a decade, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Albania and others had been transformed into Russian colonies. If this had been all, it would have been a bad enough policy, but Soviet Russia intended to promote a similar program in Asia as well. Her ambitions there were as far reaching as those in Europe. Indeed even more so, since she intended to convert the Asiatic continent into a gigantic communist landmass. To that effect, she encouraged Asian nationalism, combined with Asian communism, exploiting any real or fictitious grievances at hand.
If we remember that at the same time the sleeping third giant, China, was on the verge of becoming Red, then the rapid communist expansion in the East seen from Washington was a real menace. Hence the necessity of formulating a policy dedicated to the proposition that world communism must be checked both in Europe as well as in Asia.
The “Cold War,” the child of this tremendous ideological struggle, as the tensions between the U.S. and the communists increased, threatened to explode into a “hot war.” And so it came to pass, that only five years after the end of World War II, the U.S. found herself engaged in the war of Korea, in the opinion of many considered to be the potential prelude of World War III.
Reciprocal fear of atomic incineration restrained both the U.S. and Soviet Russia from total armed belligerency. The conflict ended in stalemate. Korea was divided. It seemed a solution. The confrontation, for the moment at least, had been avoided.
But if it was avoided in Korea, it was not avoided elsewhere. Certainly not in the ideological field, or in that of subdued guerrilla warfare, since the U.S. had given notice without any more ambiguity, that she was determined to stop the Red expansion wherever communism was threatening to take over.
It was at this stage that she started to view the situation in Indo-China with growing concern. The harassed French had to be helped. Not so much to keep their colonial status-quo, but to check the Vietnamese in the South, and in the North. The U.S. could not afford to see the French supplanted by communism, disguised as anti-colonialism, or even as genuine patriotism.
The U.S. strategy was based upon the domino theory. This assumed that, in Asia, once any given country became communist, all the others would become so likewise. Vietnam fitted neatly into this pattern. It became imperative, therefore, that the French should not be defeated by the Vietnamese communists.
The determination of the Vietnamese people to get rid of the French rule, therefore, ran contrary to the U.S. grand strategy, or the strategy of anyone determined to stop the advance of communism in Southeast Asia.
And indeed there was another ready at hand. The Catholic Church had watched the advances of communism in Indo-China with a greater concern even than the U.S. She had more at stake than anyone else, including the French themselves: almost four hundred years of Catholic activities. Seen from Rome, the rapid expansion of world communism had become even more terrifying than for Washington. The Vatican had witnessed whole nations, those of Eastern Europe swallowed up by Soviet Russia, with millions of Catholics passing under communist rule. In addition, traditional Catholic countries like Italy and France were harboring growing communist parties. For the Vatican, therefore, it was even more imperative than for the U.S. to prosecute a policy directed at stopping communism wherever it could be stopped. It became inevitable that the Vatican and the U.S. should come together to stop the same enemy. The two having soon formulated a common strategy turned themselves into veritable partners.
Now the process had to be repeated, since the situation was the same. The urgency of the task was self-evident everywhere. Soviet Russia had emerged from the nazi debacle a more formidable enemy than ever before. She was threatening Europe not only with the ideological Red virus, but also with powerful armies. It became a necessity for the Catholic Church, therefore, to forge an alliance with a lay partner, as it did after World War I.
The U.S. was the only military power sufficiently strong to challenge Russian expansions. In Europe the U.S.-Vatican partnership had proved an undisputed success from the very beginning. The prompt creation of political Catholicism on the part of the Vatican, with its launching of ‘Christian Democracy’ on one hand, and the equally prompt economic help of the U.S. to a ruined continent, had stopped a communist takeover.
But if the U.S.-Vatican alliance had succeeded in Europe, the problem in Asia was more complicated, more acute, and more dangerous. A direct confrontation was possible. Not only on political grounds, but also on a military one. This was proved by the fact that the U.S. had had to fight a true war in Korea, as already mentioned. The lesson of Korea was not easily forgotten. The U.S. saw to it that the vast unstable surrounding territories did not become the springboard from which another ideological or military attack could be launched to expand communism.
When the situation in Vietnam, therefore, started to deteriorate and the military inefficiency of the French became too apparent, the two partners which had worked so successfully in Europe came together, determined to repeat in Southeast Asia the success of their first anticommunist joint campaign. True, the background and the problems involved were infinitely more complicated than those in Europe. Yet, once a common strategy had been agreed upon, the two could carry it out, each according to its own capabilities.
As in the past, each could exert itself where it could be most effective. Thus, whereas the U.S. could be active in the economic and military fields, the Vatican could do the same in the diplomatic, not to mention in the ecclesiastic area, where it could mobilize millions of Catholics in the pursuance of well conceived ideological and religious objectives.
Before proceeding with the chronological events which ultimately were to lead to the direct U.S. intervention into the war in Vietnam, it might be useful to glance at the ideological climate of the years which preceded its outbreak. Otherwise certain basic issues could not be properly understood.
After World War II, the U.S. and the Vatican had forged a mutual alliance, as we have already said, mainly to contain Russian communism in Europe and in Asia. The belligerency of their joint policies plus Soviet Russia’s determination to plant communism wherever she could, produced what was labeled “The Cold War.” The Cold War was seen in many quarters as the preliminary step to a Hot War, which in this case meant but one thing, the outbreak of World War III.
This was not speculation or fantasy, but an expectation, based upon concrete military and political factors. The U.S. and the Vatican became active, each in their own field, to prepare for “The Day.” Whereas the U.S. busied itself with military preparations, the Vatican busied itself with religious preparations. This spelled the mobilization of religious belief, and even more dangerous, the promotion of religious emotionalism.
The Vatican is a formidable diplomatic and ideological center, because it has at its disposal the religious machinery of the Church. During the Cold War, it used such machinery with a skill unmatched by any other church.
Pope Pius XII was a firm believer in the inevitability, and indeed “necessity” of the third World War. To that effect he worked incessantly in the diplomatic field, chiefly with the U.S. itself, with the cooperation of the powerful Catholic lobby in Washington, D.C.
Although we have related elsewhere the intrigues of that body, it might not be amiss to focus our attention upon those of a religious character which Pope Pius XII and certain American politicians carried out in the purely religious area, with the specific objective of preparing for World War III.
Pope Pius XII (1939-58) was a brilliant diplomat, a cunning politician and a religious crusader. These characteristics made him one of the paramount personalities of our times. He transformed the Catholic Church into a global political instrument. He, more than anybody else outside Germany, helped Hitler to power. His pet obsession was communism and he became the main instigator of the Cold War. He was the religious pivot upon which the Catholic crusade against communism revolved. Cardinal Spellman, as his spokesman in the U.S., greatly influenced American politicians and public opinion, giving an almost mystical interpretation to the anti-Russian policies of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Through Spellman, Pius XII attempted to steer the U.S. military power against communism in Korea and Vietnam and kept wholly “silent” when, in 1954, the U.S. military planned to use atomic weapons at the beginning of the Vietnam War.
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This was possible because Pope Pius XII, by now, had succeeded in conditioning millions of Catholics, both in Europe and in the U.S., to accept the inevitability of such a war almost as a crusade inspired from heaven. He justified it on the assumption that the Virgin Mary herself had become his ally. Since, during the Vietnamese tragedy, the Vatican used the religious emotionalism of Our Lady of Fatima for political objectives, we must glance at the background of this cult.
Our Lady of Fatima had first appeared to three illiterate children in Fatima, a desolate locality in Portugal, during the fateful year of 1917, which was also the year of the Russian Revolution.
Her apparition had been accompanied by a somewhat strange miracle:
“The sun became pale, three times it turned speedily on itself, like a Catherine wheel . . . At the end of these convulsive revolutions it seemed to jump out of its orbit and come forward towards the people on a zig-zag course, stopped, and returned again to its normal position.”
The fact that the other two thousand million human beings the world over never noticed the sun agitate, rotate and jump out of its orbit did not bother the Catholic Church in the least.
On the contrary, the Catholic masses were told to believe that the sun, on the appearance of the Virgin Mary, had truly moved on “a zig-zag course” as proof of the authenticity of her presence, and of course, of “her messages.”
The Virgin’s messages had been to induce the pope to bring about “the consecration of the World to her Immaculate Heart, to be followed by “the consecration of Russia.” “Russia will be converted,” she foretold. “The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me.” But, she warned, should this not be accomplished, “her (Russia’s) errors will spread throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions . . . different nations will be destroyed . . .” In the end however, the Virgin promised by way of consolation, that the Catholic Church would triumph, after which “the Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me. Thereupon she (Russia) shall be converted and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”
In 1929 Pope Pius XI signed a Concordat and the Lateran Treaty with Mussolini and called him “the man sent by Providence.” In 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. In 1936, Franco started the Civil War in Spain. By 1938 two-thirds of Europe had been fascistized and the rumblings of World War II were heard more and more ominously everywhere.
Concurrently, however, Europe had also been Fatimaized. The cult of Fatima, with emphasis on the Virgin’s promise of Russia’s conversion, had been given immense prominence by the Vatican. In 1938, a papal nuncio was sent to Fatima, and almost half a million pilgrims were told that the Virgin had confided three great secrets to the children. Thereupon, in June of that year, the only surviving child—advised by her confessor, always in touch with the hierarchy and hence with the Vatican—revealed the contents of two of the three great secrets.
The first was the vision of Hell (something well known to the modern world).
The second was more to the point: a reiteration that Soviet Russia would be converted to the Catholic Church.
The third was sealed in an envelope and put in custody of the ecclesiastical authority not to be revealed until 1960.
The dramatic reiteration of the revelation of the second secret about Soviet Russia immediately assumed a tremendous religious and political significance. The timing of the “disclosure” could not have been better chosen. The fascist dictatorships were talking the same language: the annihilation of Soviet Russia.
The following year, 1939, the Second World War broke out. In 1940, France was defeated. The whole of Europe had become fascist. In 1941, Hitler invaded Russia. The Virgin’s prophecy at long last was about to be fulfilled. At the Vatican there was rejoicing, since by now Pacelli had become pope under the name of Pius XII (1939).
Pius XII encouraged Catholics to volunteer for the Russian front. Catholics—most of them devotees of the Virgin of Fatima—joined the nazi armies from Italy, France, Ireland, Belgium, Holland, Latin America, the U.S. and Portugal. Spain sent a Catholic Blue Division.
In October, 1941, while the nazi armies rolled near Moscow, Pius XII, addressing Portugal, urged Catholics to pray for a speedy realization of the Lady of Fatima’s promise.
The following year, 1942, after Hitler had declared that communist Russia had been “definitely” defeated, Pius XII, in a Jubilee Message, fulfilled the first of the Virgin’s injunctions and “consecrated the whole world to her Immaculate Heart.”
“The apparitions of Fatima open a new era,” wrote Cardinal Cerejeira in that same year. “It is the foreshadowing of what the Immaculate Heart of Mary is preparing for the whole world.” The new era, in 1942, was a totally nazified European continent, with Russia seemingly wiped off the map, Japan conquering half of Asia: world fascism was at its zenith everywhere.
The fascist empire vanished with the collapse of Hitler. In 1945, World War II ended. And Soviet Russia, to the chagrined surprise of Pope Pius XII, emerged the second greatest power on earth.
The cult of Fatima, which had suffered a devotional recess with the defeat of the nazi armies and the suicide of Hitler, was suddenly revived. In October, 1945, the Vatican ordered that monster pilgrimages be organized to the Shrine.
In 1947, the Cold War began. Hatred against communist Russia was promoted, headed by the Vatican which sent a statue of our Lady of Fatima, with her “message” on a “pilgrimage” around the world. She was sent from country to country to arouse anti-Russian odium. Whole governments welcomed her. Within a few years, as the Cold War mounted, the statue had gone to Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Australia and had visited fifty-three nations. The East-West split continued to widen.
The following year, in 1950, the “pilgrim statue” of our Lady of Fatima, who had started to travel in 1947, the very year of the outbreak of the Cold War, was sent by airplane, accompanied by Father Arthur Brassard, on the direct instructions of Pope Pius XII, to . . . Moscow. There, with the warm approval of Admiral Kirk, the American Ambassador, she was solemnly placed in the church of the foreign diplomats. For what specific reason? “To wait for the imminent liberation of Soviet Russia.”
American warmongers, led by prominent Catholics, were meanwhile feverishly preparing for an atomic showdown with Russia. Top Catholics in the most responsible positions were talking of nothing else.
On August 6, 1949, Catholic Attorney General MacGrath addressed the Catholic “storm-troopers” of the U.S.—namely the Knights of Columbus—at their convention in Portland, Oregon. He urged Catholics “to rise up and put on the armor of the Church militant in the battle to save Christianity.” (Christianity, of course, meaning the Catholic Church.) He further urged “a bold offensive.”
In that same year another Catholic, one of the most highly placed personages of the U.S. government, James Forrestal, the crusader against communism at home and abroad, helped Pope Pius XII to win the elections in Italy by sending American money, plus money from his own pocket. James Forrestal, who was in very frequent contact with the Vatican and with Cardinal Spellman, knew better than anybody else what was going on in certain Catholic and American quarters. For one simple reason: he was none other than the American Secretary for Defense.
Fatima Statue on Parade. The Fatima cult is derived from the alleged appearance of the Virgin Mary to three sickly children at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. With the appearance of Bolshevik Russia and world communism, the cult soon was transformed into an ideological crusade. It was used extensively in the anti-Russian ideological war carried out by Pius XII, Cardinal Spellman and John Foster Dulles. The statue [idol] of the Virgin was sent on a global pilgrimage to the capitals of the world to rouse religious fervor. One of the capitals she visited was Moscow itself, under the veiled sponsorship of Western embassies led by the U.S.
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James Forrestal, U.S. Secretary of Defense, a loyal and selfless American, was one of the most tragic highly placed victims of the Cold War. Stalin’s ruthless intransigence and the West’s fear of communism were skillfully exploited by Pope Pius XII. This he did with the use of religion and the unscrupulous promotion of the Fatima cult. The cult’s paramount prophecy: Orthodox Russia would become Catholic. The prophecy’s fulfillment implied the military invasion and occupation of Russia by the West.
Forrestal, methodically briefed by the Vatican on the communist menace, was convinced that a U.S.-Russian atomic showdown was inevitable. He was killed in May, 1949 when he jumped from a 16th floor window of the Bethseda Naval Hospital.
His successors continued with Forrestal’s obsession with communism, going so far as to ask for “an American atomic preventive war.” Her meddling in Southeast Asia, although not directly involved, nevertheless, helped to escalate the ideological conflict there and, therefore, the military escalation of the region.
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The following year another fanatical Catholic was appointed to another important post. Mr. Francis Matthews was nominated Secretary of the American Navy. On the morning he took the oath of office (in June, 1949), Mr. Matthews, his wife and all their six children contritely heard Mass and received Holy Communion in the chapel of the Naval station in Washington, D.C.
A few months afterwards (October, 1949) Cardinal Spellman was summoned to Rome by the pope, with whom he had repeated and prolonged private sessions. Although giving rise to sharp speculation, it remained a well guarded secret.
The new Catholic Secretary of the U.S. Navy, strangely enough, soon afterwards began unusually active contacts with other prominent American Catholics. Among these, Father Walsh, Jesuit Vice-President of Georgetown University, Cardinal Spellman, the head of the American Legion, the leaders of the Catholic War Veterans and with Senator McCarthy, the arch-criminal senator, who upon the advice of a Catholic priest, was just beginning his infamous campaign which was to half paralyze the U.S. for some years to come. The Catholic press began a nation wide campaign of psychological warfare. Open hints of a quick atomic war were given once more.
While the people of the world shuddered at the monstrous proposal, George Craig of the American Legion declared (August, 1950) that, yes, “the U.S. should start World War III on our own terms” and be ready when the signal could be given “for our bombers to wing toward Moscow.”
The fact that the advocacy of a “preventive atomic war” was first enunciated by a Catholic was no mere coincidence. Mr. Matthews, the head of the most important branch of the American armed forces, the American Navy, the largest naval war instrument in the world, had become the mouthpiece of his spiritual master, Pope Pius XII.
Yet Catholics approved of its use. Father Connel declared that the use of the hydrogen bomb by the U.S. was justified, because “the communists could utilize their large armed forces . . . to weaken the defenders of human rights.”
Advocacy of a preventive atomic war by a Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus—i.e. Mr. Matthews—assumed horrifying significance when it was remembered that the Secretary of the U.S. Navy’s war speech did not come as a surprise to certain selected Catholic leaders or, even less, to the Vatican. How was that? Simply that Mr. Matthews had disclosed the contents of his Boston speech to top Catholics several days prior to its delivery. Chief among these top Catholics was the head of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, Cardinal Spellman.
Now it must be remembered that Cardinal Spellman was in continuous personal contact with Pope Pius XII, whose intimate friend and personal advisor in political matters he had been since the Second World War. Cardinal Spellman, moreover, was the counselor and personal friend of most of the influential military leaders of America. So that whatever of importance was known at the “Little Vatican” in New York, as Cardinal Spellman’s residence was called, was instantly known at the Vatican in Rome, and vice-versa.
Pius XII not only was cognizant of the Boston “preventive atomic war” speech delivered by the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus but he came out in the open to magnify its message in one of the most astounding performances ever staged by any modern pope. That is, he mobilized the Catholic world to support Catholic Matthews’ preventive atomic conflict, indeed to condition hundreds of millions of members of his own Church to accept it as the necessary measure ordained by Heaven itself, so as to further his own long-range political schemes. How did he do it? By staging the greatest fake miracle of the century.
Only three months after his Privy Chamberlain, Mr. Matthews, Secretary of the American Navy, had called on the U.S. to begin the war against Bolshevik Russia, Pope Pius XII was visited at the Vatican by none other than the Virgin Mary herself, in person and with no little commotion. It happened in October of that same year, 1950. Pope Pius XII kept the celestial visitation to himself for a short while. Then he disclosed it to a few Vatican inmates, after which, being the skillful strategist that he was, he set in motion his religious machinery with the specific intent of coming to the help of Mr. Matthews’ “preventive war” policy.
Pius’ objective was a logical one. Once he had made sure that Mr. Matthews’ war seeds had sunk well into the minds of political and military leaders, he gave himself the task of implanting them with equal effectiveness in the minds of the Catholic millions, not via politics or propaganda, but directly via religion. To that end, after the Virgin had ‘visited’ him at the Vatican, he ordered that her coming celebrations at Fatima, Portugal, should be the most spectacular ever staged. The papal ordinance was fulfilled to the letter. The following year, in October, 1951, a monster pilgrimage of well over one million people was convened before the shrine.
To mark the exceptional character of the celebration, Pius XII dispatched there his own personal representative, a top cardinal. He charged Cardinal Tedeschini with a most extraordinary task, namely, to disclose to the millions of devotees that the Virgin Mary had visited him, Pope Pius XII.
Here are the exact words of the cardinal, sent there specifically by Pope Pius XII himself to disclose the story to the world:
“Pope Pius XII was able to witness the life of the sun (author’s reminder: a huge burning sphere 866,000 miles in diameter) . . . under the hand of Mary. The sun was agitated, all convulsed, transformed into a picture of life . . . in a spectacle of celestial movements . . . in transmission of mute but eloquent messages to the Vicar of Christ.”
This did not occur once, but on three successive days: October 30 and 31 and November 1, 1950. [And again on Nov 8.]
The one million pilgrims, at the cardinal’s disclosure, became ecstatic. So did countless millions of Catholics throughout the world. If the Virgin Mary had appeared to the pope, obviously then her promises about Bolshevik Russia being converted to the Catholic Church were about to come true. And how could they be fulfilled if not via the “preventive war” preached by Catholic leaders in the U.S.?
Prayers, novenas and talk of the forthcoming “liberation” of Russia were renewed at Fatima and in hundreds of churches in many lands. The Catholic press, meanwhile, went on reminding its readers of the Virgin’s second prophecy concerning that poor atheistic country.
Having mobilized religious fanaticism, Pius XII and his friends in the U.S. set to work in the more practical fields of open and secret diplomacy and politics.
The Immaculate Heart of Mary statue in the facade niche at the shrine of Fatima. The white statue in the niche above the entrance of the Basilica of Our Lady of Fatima is the work of an American priest. He sculpted the idol on the detailed instructions of Sister Lucia, one of the three children who originally saw the Virgin Mary in 1917, the same year as the Bolshevik Revolution.
When Cardinal Spellman was actively promoting the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the American Catholic Church stressed the ideological message of Fatima. This message, which promised that Soviet Russia would be converted to Catholicism, was used to build anti-Russian and anti-Communist sentiments. It helped to give a mystical flavor to the anti-Soviet policies of Cardinal Spellman and Pope Pius XII. Millions of Catholics thus were recruited into the promotion of the Cold War and the Vietnam conflict.
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Only one week after the disclosure of Pius XII’s greatest ‘miracle,’ the U.S. was stunned by the announcement that the first American ambassador had been appointed to the Vatican (October 21, 1951)—something strictly forbidden by the American Constitution’s article of Separation of Church and State.
Ten days later, in November, 1951, the first American ambassador designate to the Vatican busied himself as one of the leading military men directing atomic maneuvers in the Nevada desert; the first atomic warfare exercises in history in which troops were stationed near the atomic burst detonated by atom bombs of a new type.
Almost simultaneously, another no less important American personage was given a new assignment. Mr. George Kennan was appointed American Ambassador to Moscow. Mr. Kennan was none other than the head of the Free Russia Committee, a body, as its name implies, set up to promote the liberation of Russia from communism—most of its supporters, of course, being leading Catholics.
The new ambassador was not the only one to lead such bodies. The American ambassador who early in 1950 had welcomed the pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Fatima in Moscow, Admiral Kirk, subsequently became chairman of the American committee for The Liberation of the People of Russia.
‘Religious freedom,’ of course, meant that the Catholic Church, which had been preparing for just that, would have the lion’s share, which with the help of the Virgin of Fatima and of American Catholics, would turn into an obvious monopoly. The “conversion” of Russia, as predicted by the Virgin, would thus become a reality.
To foster even further the Catholic zeal for a “war of liberation,” a few months after Pius XII’s “miracle” the Vatican’s official organ, the Osservatore Romano, related with all its massive authority how Pius XII had truly witnessed a “miracle of the sun,” as referred to by Cardinal Tedeschini when he told the story at Fatima, Portugal, on October 13, 1951.
And the pope’s newspaper, to prove the authenticity of the miracle, published on its front page two “rigorously authentic” photos showing the original prodigy of Fatima. The captions were even more matter of fact:
“At 12 o’clock the vision began. At twenty minutes past 12, the rainy weather cleared up and soon afterwards a voice cried: ‘Look at the sun!’ The two ‘authentic’ photographs clearly show the black spot in the sun caused by its rapid whirling, and the position reached by the sun almost level with the horizon, although the photographs were taken at 12:30 p.m.” “This position,” commented the sober Osservatore Romano, “would have been absolutely impossible at the hour when the pictures were taken at 12:30 p.m.”
The sun, in other words, was on the horizon when it should have been where any well behaved sun is, at an ordinary common noon. An even greater miracle, which the Osservatore, having no proofs, did not mention, was that apart from the photographer, the rest of mankind never noticed the sun falling to the horizon at noon on October 13, 1917.
The signs were in that same year (February, 1951) that Pius XII had warned Catholics of the “barbaric invasion.” The U.S. and sundry other Catholic Hierarchies followed suit. Pius XII’s [warning] was not mere rhetoric. It was the colorful wrapper of a colossal promotion of religious mass superstition, directed at fostering ideological fanaticism via the cult of Fatima, the miracles of the whirling sun, and the divine messages direct from heaven to the pope, as complementary aids to the diplomatic, political and, above all, military activities which, meanwhile, had been set in operation throughout the West.
In Europe super-Catholic Chancellor Adenauer, who daily recited the rosary to Our Lady of Fatima, in November 1951 went to Paris to meet another Catholic leader, also a devotee of Our Lady, French Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister Schuman, to plan the building of a supranational army “to fight to save Christian [meaning Catholic] civilization.”
Simultaneously with all these sinister events, a gloomy world press reported that the head of all the American and European armed forces, General Eisenhower, had arrived in the Holy City, preceded and followed by the Foreign, Economic and War ministers of twelve European nations, meeting in Rome to organize the “anti-Russian military front.” General Eisenhower informed the war ministers of the twelve nations that they had met to rearm the West as fast as possible, because of the imminence of a new Dark Age and of a “new barbaric invasion,” the very words used by Pope Pius XII.
Their task? The prompt organization of an American-led European Army of forty fully-armed fighting divisions by 1952 and of one hundred by 1953, the very same dates that Collier’s special issue had so confidently predicted for the invasion and occupation of Russia.
Sundry Army, Navy and Air Force saturation-bombing experts from Spain, France, England and, above all, the U.S., continued to be granted audiences by His Holiness, Pius XII. To read the official lists of war leaders visiting him at this period is like reading a list of war leaders going to be briefed at a global super-Pentagon.
The following year (June, 1952), the Vatican protested that communist agents had tried to steal secret documents from the Vatican Radio Station. These consisted of a “cipher book,” which according to the radio director, Jesuit Father F. Soccorsi, “did not exist.” Yet scores of Vatican staff were thoroughly fingerprinted. Cominform agents had, indeed, been ordered by Soviet Intelligence to get hold of the “nonexistent” Vatican Radio’s cipher book. Why? Simply because Vatican Radio was beaming code messages to anti-communist intelligence and Catholic underground elements in sundry communist countries. At that time it was broadcasting in over twenty languages, most of them those of Russia’s satellites, such as Albanian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, etc.
The reality of the situation, of course, was that the Vatican was communicating with its most active agents, as well as with some of the members of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (very often the same persons), ready to combine their efforts for the forthcoming “liberation” of Russia and other communist countries. In this manner, the Vatican was acting not only for the U.S. but as the top intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency itself.
Rome, claiming to be a center of peace, had become a vast, sinister center of war. The ever more imposing procession of generals, admirals, war ministers, and saturation bombing experts, clanking their boots along the Vatican’s marble corridors, was the damning demonstration that these individuals, professional war leaders, were there to see another war leader, Pope Pius XII—who, by way of a most ominous contrast, at this period had hardly received a peace delegation, either from the East of from the West. The skillful amalgamation of papal diplomacy, religious administrative might and organized superstition had made of the pope one of the supreme war leaders in the active promotion of a third World War.
It was. For as the promise of Our Lady was the occupation and liberation of Russia, resulting in that country’s ultimate conversion to the Catholic Church, so the sundry war leaders of the West, by planning an atomic war, had become the instruments of a vast politico-religious plot directed at the final attainment of that very objective. At the center of it all stood Pope Pius XII, repeatedly telling the Catholic millions that Our Lady had again performed the miracle for him personally in Rome in 1950, in order to cause him to go ahead with fulfilling her Fatima promise: the occupation, liberation and conversion of Soviet Russia. Thus, he had come squarely on the side of those lay forces which had decided to risk an all-out conflict to further their own plans.
The cult of Our Lady of Fatima, therefore, independently of its purely mystical factor, in the hands of Pope Pius XII had been expressly transformed into a psychological weapon of war directed at conditioning millions of Catholics to accept the outbreak of an atomic conflict. This, so as to carry out one of the most sinister designs of conquest of the Catholic Church in modern times. All this to potentially repeat, on a colossally large scale, all the horrors of Croatia. That Pius XII knew very well that his sinister activities with the many generals and politicians with whom he was continually dealing was not mere political bravado but terrible reality was proved not only by the secret disclosures at the Australian Parliament. It was authenticated by a person, who, more perhaps than anybody else, knew what was going on in the sacred corridors of Washington and the Vatican. Namely, none other than the president of the United States himself.
This, it must be noted, was while Pius XII was telling Catholics to prepare to fight “the barbaric invasion” and had disclosed to them how the Virgin of Fatima had personally sent him a message concerning the conversion of Russia to the Catholic Church, with all the horrific implications of a war holocaust in it.
The launching of an “atomic preventive war” miscarried. Yet the attempt to unleash it upon the world should not be forgotten. It might have succeeded.
The background to the oncoming Vietnamese War could not have been more somber or ominous. It was consonant with the fast deteriorating situation in Indo-China, where the French were being soundly defeated by the relentless Vietnamese guerrillas, and the U.S. had started to side with the French forces by sending them ever larger consignments of war materials.
Within a relatively short period American aid had become more than substantial. From 1950 to 1954, in fact, the U.S. had dispatched more than 400,000 tons of war material, 150,000 fire arms, 340 airplanes and 350 warships as already quoted. Notwithstanding all this, however, the French were finally routed. There followed the Geneva Agreement, when the 17th Parallel was defined as the “provisional” demarcation line between the Vietnam of the North and the Vietnam of the South, as we have already seen.
It was a fateful compromise. At that time however it appeared to be justified, in so far as it gave breathing space to the U.S. and to the signatories of the Geneva Convention. With good will on both sides, it was reasoned, a final and just solution would eventually be found. The Vietnamese people in the long run would decide for themselves what form of government they wanted by means of a general election as proposed by Geneva.
The compromise however, had been reached without taking into account the reality of the joint long-range Asian strategy of the two major anti-communist partners, the U.S. and the Vatican, which they had already set in motion behind the scenes. Their joint strategy as already indicated had been inspired and promoted by religious and ideological interests which transcended any localized conflict, no matter how strategically important.
The formulators were ready at hand on each side of the Atlantic. In Rome there was the most formidable and relentless anti-communist crusader of the century, namely Pope Pius XII. In Washington there existed his political counterpart, the U.S. Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. John Foster Dulles was the center of powerful anticommunist groups and anti-Russian lobbies, whose chief objective was in total harmony with that of the Vatican. These groups were disproportionally influenced by the Catholic elements and with few notable exceptions, were supported by the Catholic Church in the U.S.
The Catholic anti-communist crusade burst out into the open, with a virulency unmatched for decades and it externalized itself with the phenomenon of McCarthyism, which adumbrated American domestic and foreign policy for years. McCarthyism gave an unprecedented impetus to the U.S. anti-communist strategy. It was in the interest of the Vatican to see that such strident anti-communism be maintained at home, the better to influence the U.S. to carry on a similar aggressive anti-communist policy abroad. This meant an anti-communist strategy in Asia.
When therefore, the Vietnam problem came increasingly to the fore, both the Vatican and the U.S. focussed their joint activities toward that country. The chief formulators of the strategy were Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in the diplomatic field, and Cardinal Spellman in the ecclesiastical. The importance of the latter was paramount, since Cardinal Spellman was the linch-pin between Washington and the Vatican. This was so because Spellman had the ear not only of powerful politicians and military men with the U.S. but equally that of the pope, a personal friend of his. Other Catholic individuals played no mean part, one of these being John Kennedy, the future president. “It is important that the Senate demonstrate their endorsement of Mr. Dulles’ objectives,” declared Kennedy at a secret meeting of Congressional leaders on April 3, 1954. “If necessary, the U.S. will take the ultimate step—war.”
John Foster Dulles was Secretary of State under President Eisenhower. Generally considered the most powerful and controversial Secretary of State in U.S. history. A deeply committed anti-Communist, he willingly joined Pope Pius XII and Cardinal Spellman in promoting the Cold War. He placed great faith in treaties and established several NATO type pacts with pro-American Asian nations. He enjoyed the complete confidence of President Eisenhower and went beyond the normal duties of the State Department and originated foreign policy on his own. Normally this was strictly the function of the Presidency. He relished brinkmanship, three times steering the U.S. to the very brink of a preemptive atomic strike against Russia.
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J.F. Kennedy was speaking as the political exponent of the powerful Catholic lobby in Washington. Prior to this in January of that same year, Admiral Arthur Radford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had demanded that the U.S. intervene directly in Vietnam, as had done John Foster Dulles himself.
Their demands were supported by similar requests from the Vatican wanting to help the French in order to prevent Vietnam from becoming communist. After the French failed however, and the communists took over North Vietnam, the Vatican and the military and Catholic groups in Capitol Hill renewed their activities at such feverish tempo, and with such effect, that a radical new policy was finally formulated and adopted. The new policy was simplicity itself. The Vatican and the U.S. had concurrently determined to prevent South Vietnam from holding the promised elections in accordance with the Geneva Declaration.
One of the first moves directed at the implementation of this secret policy was carried out by General Collins. In December, 1955 the general signed an agreement with France in the name of the U.S. The U.S. was taking over military duties in South Vietnam. France agreed to leave the country altogether, although theoretically France was to stay in South Vietnam another two years.
The new policy had the promise to fix the worsening situation. The general strategy had to be carried out simultaneously in the religious, political and military fields. It had to be staggered, according to the reaction of North Vietnam, of the guerrillas in the South and of American and world opinion.
It was divided into three principal subsections: The prevention of the elections, the setting up of a man who could rule with an iron fist and the swift Catholicization of South Vietnam.
One of the first moves was the selection of a man fit for the task. This was ready at hand. His name Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem had been carefully groomed by the Catholic establishment, was an ardently religious person, a fanatical anti-communist, and a ruthless religious and political dogmatist. He had been watched for some time, both by the Vatican and certain individuals in the U.S. When the moment for the choice came, the decision was taken, mostly by American Catholics, the best known of these being Cardinal Spellman, Joe Kennedy and his son—the future President John F. Kennedy, and last but not least, by John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, and their secret entourage.
Diem was a genuine ‘believer,’ so he considered the Catholic religion the only true religion, and had dedicated his life to its maintenance and propagation. He was so religious from his earliest childhood, that at one time he wanted to become a Catholic priest; indeed a monk. Curiously enough, he did not enter the priesthood, because the life of a priest was—too soft. At fifteen he spent some time in a monastery. He prayed two whole hours every day and attended mass regularly. He worked for the French Administration holding responsible posts. Then when aged 33 he left and went into self-exile for about 15 years.
In 1946 Diem retired into a Catholic monastery near Hanoi. In 1947 he moved near Saigon to be next to his brother. While there, he organized a movement which advocated not only resistance against the French but also against the Vietnamese [communists]. Diem’s chief objective at this stage was significant. It indicated the shape of things to come: to organize and increase Roman Catholic strength to obtain the real unity and independence of Vietnam. His activities came to nothing, but his objective was duly noticed in two important centers—the Vatican and in Washington.
Following his failure, Diem started to travel. In 1950 he went to Japan and then to the U.S. He pilgrimaged with his brother, Ngo Diem Thuch, who was a Roman Catholic archbishop to Rome. While there, he was seen by Pope Pius XII. When he returned to the U.S., he lived in various Catholic seminaries.
President Ngo Dunh Diem of South Vietnam was a practicing Catholic who ruled South Vietnam with an iron fist. He was a genuine believer in the evil of communism and the uniqueness of the Catholic Church. He had originally been “planted” into the presidency by Cardinal Spellman and Pope Pius XII. He transformed the presidency into a virtual Catholic dictatorship, ruthlessly crushing his religious and political opponents. Buddhist monks committed suicide by fire, burning themselves alive in protest against his religious persecutions. His discriminatory persecution of non-Catholics, particularly Buddhists, caused the disruption of the government and mass desertions in the army. This eventually led to U.S. military intervention in South Vietnam.
In this terrorization he was aided by his two Catholic brothers, the Chief of the Secret Police and the Archbishop of Hue.
The U.S. finally decided to discard him as an ally. Agents of the CIA engineered a coup against him, and he, with one of his brothers, was murdered immediately after hearing Mass in 1963.
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He went frequently to New York and to Washington, D.C., where he met influential individuals, including John F. Kennedy, then Senator. It was Diem who allegedly persuaded Kennedy to make a speech in 1954 against a potential negotiated peace in Vietnam.
Diem was in the U.S. till 1953. Afterwards he went to France and then to Belgium, where he lived in another Catholic monastery, St. Andre-les-Burges. There he met Father Jaegher, who later became his private advisor in political matters. Diem’s self-imposed exile lasted about 21 years.
Diem had convinced himself that he had been chosen by God to fulfill a definite task, and that a day would come when he would be ready to carry out his mission. When he judged the time to be appropriate, he approached Cardinal Spellman, at this time the confidant not only of the pope, but equally of powerful political figures in the U.S. Spellman introduced Diem to William O. Douglas of the Supreme Court. The latter introduced Diem to Mike Mansfield and to John F. Kennedy, both Catholics and Senators. Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA adopted him—following the decision of his brother, John Foster Dulles and of Cardinal Spellman, who was acting for Pope Pius XII. Diem became their choice; he was going to be the head of the government in South Vietnam.
The decision having been taken, Dulles advised France to tell Bao Dai to appoint Diem as prime minister. France, having by now decided to abandon Vietnam, agreed. Diem became premier in June, 1954. The 19th of that same month, Bao Dai invested Diem with dictatorial power. This entailed not only civilian but also military control of the country. Diem arrived in Saigon on June 26, 1954 and on July 7 set up his own government.
Diem started at once to set in motion the Vatican-U.S.-CIA grand strategy, directed at the preservation and consolidation of South Vietnam. His eagerness as a political protegé of America, and his zeal as a fervent son of the Church were seldom displayed with such concrete immediacy.
Stringent legislations, bylaws and edicts, all consonant with what he had in mind, were formulated and enforced, almost at once. The Catholic hold at all levels of the administration took many—including certain Catholics themselves—by surprise. In the army, Catholics were inexplicably promoted to commanding positions. The police likewise soon became the inner monopoly of zealous Catholics. Diem’s own brother became the head of the secret police, with unlimited power. Within the shortest possible time, the whole machinery of the Diem Administration was inspired and was made to function by the tightly knit structure of the Catholic community.
The object of the exercise was a well calculated preparatory step to strengthen Diem’s hand during his forthcoming most objectionable move; refusal to hold the elections commanded by the Geneva Declaration. Diem, having decided long ago in secret accordance with the U.S. not to have the elections, had to build a reliable police machinery, in case of trouble, not only in the domestic but also the international fields. The refusal might have provoked the north to take drastic military actions; while in the South, guerrillas and discontented patriots might have risen up in revolt against Diem’s breach of the solemn Geneva agreement. When finally the time came for the election to be held, Diem, backed by the U.S., refused. Following vague general protests abroad, the fait-accompli was accepted by an indifferent world public opinion.
Having succeeded in his first act of defiance, Diem then set out promoting another no less spectacular move. The basic idea was to disrupt the North Vietnamese government by engineering a vast internal dislocation of North Vietnamese population. The machination had three main objectives:
1) the weakening of the North
2) a damaging smear campaign against the communists and
3) the immediate strengthening of South Vietnam by the mass absorption of fellow Catholics.
The policy had the gravest implications, both for the North as well as for the South. The scheme had been conceived not in Vietnam but simultaneously at Washington and at the Vatican. It was the brain child of Cardinal Spellman, of Pius XII, the two Dulles brothers, Diem and certain American military elements who God-fathered it at once. The participation of Pius XII had an even more sinister objective which we shall look at presently.
The necessary moves were taken almost immediately. The vast propaganda, hierarchical, religious and sabotage machineries were promptly set in motion. In different circumstances and with a different religious background, the plan would have succeeded. Without the full participation of the Catholic Church, it would have been a total failure.
The scheme of mass dislocation indeed became possible, thanks exclusively to the Catholic Church. This was due to the fact that the vast majority of Catholics lived in North Vietnam. The Catholics there were numerous, powerful and had enjoyed exceptional privileges for decades. The French saw to it that it was so, the better to rely upon them for the continuance of their colonial administration. French colonialism and the Catholic Church had been identified as two inseparable twins for a very long period, as we have already seen.
When the Vietnamese started to fight the French, most Catholics in the North fought on behalf of the French and against the Vietnamese [freedom-fighters] because the latter were communists. Once the French had been defeated however, these same Catholics, instead of submitting themselves to the new administration, retained their own para-military groupings, para-military organizations, ammunition and the rest. This they did in many parts of the North, especially at Phat Diem and Nam Dinh in Tonkin.
Following the Vietnamese take-over, they refused to cooperate, except on their own terms. The situation became a very dangerous one, since the Catholics being so well organized and commanded by Catholic priests, unless propitiated could put up an effective resistance.
This state of affairs had originated in the days of Bao Dai, when the Catholic bishops had fully cooperated with him in all matters, and had been appointed as his representatives. The bishops, protected as they were by the government, took full advantage, and set up their own civil and military units, transforming themselves into the rulers of their own regions. The Catholics, in short, within a very brief period, had turned themselves into a state within a state.
The Vietnamese administration, therefore, upon taking over the North, came face to face with this extraordinary situation. Realizing that unless they dealt very carefully there might be an internecine war, they set about handling the anomaly with the greatest care. This they did by avoiding antagonizing the Catholics on religious grounds, going so far as to appoint Catholic priests and even Catholic bishops to their administration. Ho Chi Minh himself had a Catholic bishop as his chief advisor.
Soon Vietnamese legislation, however, began to disturb the state of armistice between the Catholics and the regime. The many privileges which the Catholic Church until then had enjoyed were abolished. All religions were put on the same footing. Buddhism, the predominant faith of the majority, was given the same status as the Catholic Church. In August, 1953, to prove that the regime was not against the Catholic Church, there was organized a National Congress of Religions. Its main message: assurance that all religions would enjoy equality.
The Catholics objected most strongly to these measures. They expected and wanted special treatment. Only their church was the “true church.” They started to resist, and to stultify the measure. When the law was invoked against them, they accused the authorities of religious persecution. Violence ensued. Arrests were made. The new legislation of equality for all religions, and the arrests, were called at once by the Catholic machinery at home and abroad as unprecedented persecutions. The incidents were magnified beyond recognition by the Catholic and American propaganda apparatus everywhere. To promote even more confusion, the U.S. and Diem sent sabotage workers inside North Vietnam. These promoted demonstrations, blew up bridges, and harassed the authorities, with no end. Rumor inspired by Diem and the CIA to the effect that the Catholics would be arrested and executed spread like wildfire. Their own salvation was to escape to the South, where any Catholic from the North would be welcomed, given food, shelter and a job.
To accelerate the exodus, or rather the disruption, the religious factor came to the fore. Suddenly all the villages were flooded by millions of leaflets. These told the faithful that Jesus Christ had gone south. When some Catholics expressed their doubts about Jesus’ migration, additional millions of leaflets appeared all over, declaring that His mother, the Virgin Mary, had departed from the North. Why had the Virgin Mary left the North?—Because the Mother of God wished to go south and live under a Catholic premier, Diem.
Catholics Fleeing North Vietnam, following the intense religious and political propaganda from the South. They were told that if they stayed under a communist atheistic government, they would be atom bombed out of existence and they would lose their souls. Catholic President Diem wished to create economic and political disruption to the North with an accelerated population dislocation. Catholic priests and the South Vietnamese radio declared that the Virgin Mary and even her Son, Jesus Christ, had gone to South Vietnam to live under Catholic Diem. Ultimately three-quarters of a million North Vietnamese Catholics fled their homes and villages within a few months. The authorities in the North tried to stop the human flood but were helpless against the religious emotionalism used by the Catholics of South Vietnam.
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Since many still expressed their unwillingness to migrate, other rumors, no less sensational, were heard: the North was going to be atom-bombed. Only the South was safe for Catholics. A Central Evacuation Committee was set up. It was headed by a Catholic priest, and was financed directly by the U.S. One of its leaflets read as follows: “Dear Catholic brothers and sisters, hundreds of gigantic airplanes are waiting to transport you free to Saigon, in the South . . . There you will be given fertile rice fields . . . By remaining in the North, you will experience famine, and will damn your souls . . .”
Similar and other types of religious terrors, literature and manufactured fear news flooded the Catholic population, creating as much confusion and incertitude as they could, by spreading rumors of all kinds. Indeed, it created panic. This was done chiefly by the distribution of emotional books, many written by U.S. Catholic priests, in which atrocities were described and narrated. Their titles helped to inflame odium against the enemy—“Deliver Us From Evil” being one of the most popular. Such literature appeared from nowhere, financed by U.S. Catholics who distributed propaganda, disguised as news, to the American public all over the U.S. The media was saturated by a slanted Catholic version of the whole story. This flood of Catholic literature had one main objective: to create sympathy for Diem and his Catholic regime. The additional religious fire was added from the Vatican itself, and although done indirectly, was nevertheless highly effective.
The Catholic-CIA-Diem emotion-making machine came to the fore, with its most potent weapon: it enrolled our Lady of Fatima, promising an evacuation campaign. We have already seen what role our Lady of Fatima had been made to play in the religious-ideological strategy in the grand design of Pope Pius XII at the height of the Cold War and its aftermath. Now at the height of the Catholic mass dislocation from North Vietnam, Our Lady came once more to the forefront, as the standard bearer of religious ideological objectives.
A statue of Our Lady of Fatima was paraded in long meaningful processions in villages and cities. The statue had a particular significance, for it had been given by Pope Pius XII, himself, to the Catholics of Haiphong during their pilgrimage to Rome. The pope had given his personal blessing to it after explaining that Our Lady had a unique significance for Asia, especially for the Catholics of Indo-China, namely Vietnam.
At this delicate juncture the statue was given added dramatic significance by the skillful use of further emotionalism. The Catholic-CIA-Diem propaganda machinery came out with the disclosure that the blessed statue “had been rescued” from the evil intents of the atheistic communists. What the communists intended to do to it was never disclosed. The individual and collective sense of relief experienced by the already disturbed Catholics of North Vietnam, about the mother of God having escaped probably a fate worse even than death, however, was tremendous. [Oddly, as it had never been alive.]
The statue of the rescued Lady of Fatima, now safe and sound in the hands of her worshipers, was paraded again and again in long emotional processions, as priests and others were reminding the populace that she had a special message for them, that she had been personally blessed by the Vicar of Christ on Earth, and above all that she had been rescued from the communists, because she wished them to leave the North and go south to live under a Catholic president. The participation of the Virgin was the last straw. Thousands upon thousands who until then could not make up their minds, finally, seeing how the Virgin of Fatima herself was leaving, plunged southward. The North Vietnamese government, alarmed at the scale or the migration, tried to stop it by giving assurances of all kinds. It was too late.
The first thousands were joined by the fast growing crowd. Within a very short time, the whole of the Catholic population appeared to have decided to leave, and it became a veritable mass exodus. Catholic priests, and Diem agents mingling with them, encouraged those who were still uncertain what to do. The emotional impact of the religious pressure, however, became so irresistible that whole villages, led by their bishops, left en mass. Repeated rumors of impending atomic attacks hastened their departure.
As the rivulets of fleeing Catholics became a flood, Catholic Diem sent personal messages to President Eisenhower: Could the U.S. help with the evacuation of the persecuted Catholics from the North? Answer: Yes, the U.S. would help the Catholics. The Seventh Fleet was sent in. French warships joined in the mass exodus. A well organized Flight to Freedom was commenced. Catholic organizations, Catholic newsmen, and Catholic priests came over from the U.S., some of them with the American Navy itself. During the three days voyage, masses were celebrated by Catholic priests in the American ships. The religious emotionalism was kept at boiling point with emotional sermons and admonitions of certain Catholic padres of the U.S. Navy.
When the first vessel with the Catholic refugees arrived in Saigon, the brother of President Diem, Bishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, Vicar Apostolic, and therefore the official representative of the pope, went to meet them and to bless them. The American ships had Catholic brethren from the North. Then to cap it all—at Christmas, Spellman himself went to Saigon as the special envoy of the pope, and the official representative of the American armed forces, where he gave the first check of $10,000, a gift from the U.S. Catholics. The many-branched efficient Catholic propaganda and charitable machinery meanwhile had set to work in earnest. Funds were raised to help the refugees, headed by the American Roman Catholic Welfare Fund. The Catholic lobby pestered President Eisenhower to give more and more money and more transport to the poor Catholics, the victims of unheard of religious persecutions; their plight was compared to that of the early Christians under Nero. The Catholics of the North were escaping, as the U.S. Catholic propaganda machinery was never tired of repeating, “to preserve their faith.”
Certain unscrupulous personalities in Washington joined in the humbug fanfare, eager for political favoritism. This was headed by Vice-President Nixon, who persuaded the president to “put across the first American aid to Catholic Diem.” When it was all over, between 800 and 900 thousand North Vietnamese Catholics had fled from the North to be welcomed by Diem in the South.
Catholics Fleeing North Vietnam and Boarding a French Vessel sent to take them to South Vietnam where President Diem had promised them they would be welcomed. They were promised food, shelter and jobs. The mass exodus of Catholics from the North had been engineered by President Diem, by Cardinal Spellman and by John Foster Dulles, as a scheme by which to weaken the Communist regime of the Viet-Minhs and, at the same time, to strengthen that of Catholic Diem in the South. Religious and ideological pressure was exercised at all levels. Rumors were spread that unless the Catholics left the North, they might be atom-bombed. The Church declared that Christ had left North Vietnam to go South. Hundreds of thousands left because of such double pressure. The U.S. sent the Seventh Fleet to help in the operation. Catholic priests were on board to receive and bless the refugees and to say mass.
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The colossal influx of Catholics created problems of all kinds. These however were going to be solved with the goodwill of all concerned, beginning with those who had engineered the whole campaign, namely the Catholics of South Vietnam, certain elements of the U.S., the CIA and the Vatican, since the ultimate goal was worth any sacrifice, be it of suffering, of principles, or even of lives. The real promotion of the campaign, however, had come not from the U.S. Catholics and the politico-military of Washington, but from the pope himself, in conjunction with the communist leader of North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, in a secret deal, as we shall see presently in a subsequent chapter.
The ultimate objectives of the operation, in addition to those already described, were two:
1) The creation of a solid homogenous Catholic community upon which Diem and the U.S. could rely for the prosecution of the war against the North, and against domestic guerrilla units.
2) The erection of a Catholic controlled state, from which the Vatican could operate its many-branched religious administration in Asia.
The U.S., as the Vatican’s principal ally, supported both objectives in so far that it regarded them as the necessary instruments via which it could carry out its main strategy. At this stage, its goals were the hastening of the end of the Vietnamese war, the future pacification and subsequent stabilization of the entire region.
While to the Vatican, these objectives, in political and military terms, were worthy of support, yet, behind and beyond them, it had a scheme of far more import than either, as far as its long range religious global policy was concerned. The scheme could be summarized as the setting of a model Catholic state in the heart of Southeast Asia. Its creation entailed an administration which was totally Catholic, which was inspired by a nucleus of Catholics who were 100% reliable, religiously and ideologically, notwithstanding the fact that they had to rule a vast majority which practised Buddhism. The achievement of this goal necessitated first the neutralization of those who might object to the scheme; secondly the elimination of those who would actively oppose it; and ultimately the removal of anyone or anything which did not accept the Catholicization of South Vietnam.
The scheme had been the brain child of Pope Pius XII, and had been supported by Cardinal Spellman, and had been abetted by John Foster Dulles. It had been approved by sundry U.S. politicians of the inner circle of the Catholic lobby in Washington, not to mention by certain elements at the CIA, many of whom were non-Catholics. Also by certain political strategists at the Pentagon, whose main concern was that as long as the scheme served American strategic objectives, everything went.
Operation Resettlement began in earnest. Agencies of all kinds were set up for the purpose. The Diem government spawned them daily. The most efficient and the most effective were provided by the U.S., or rather by the American taxpayers, the majority of whom are Protestants. U.S. money was poured in at once. The U.S. gave an instant 40 million dollars to resettle the Catholics. This meant that every Catholic who had left North Vietnam was given about 89 dollars each by Protestant America to reinforce the Catholic administration of Diem. This, it must be remembered, was in a country where the income of the average Buddhist was only 85 dollars per year.
The U.S. taxpayer supported the Catholics for more than two years. In addition to pouring out millions of dollars, it sent millions of tons of food, surplus agricultural instruments, vehicles and uncountable goods of kinds, everything covered and paid for by the U.S. “Relief Program.” This American never-ending abundance was distributed and therefore controlled by the “Catholic Relief Services,” a branch of the Diem machinery. The government and the Catholic hierarchy worked hand in hand.
Cardinal Spellman, one of the ablest of the American cardinals. He was a skillful financial operator and a vigorous politician. He became one of the main inspirers of the Cold War because of his belief that Bolshevism, as incarnated in Soviet Russia, was intrinsically evil and must be contained and if possible, destroyed. He was a personal friend of Pius XII since the days when Pius was Papal Nuncio in Germany and helped the nazis form a legal government in January, 1933. Pius XII used Spellman as the spokesman for the Vatican in America to influence politicians, businessmen, military leaders, and the Catholic lobby. He was active in persuading the U.S. to select Diem and support him as president of South Vietnam. He was made Vicar General of the U.S. Armed Forces and called the GI’s the “Soldiers of Christ” in his frequent visits to the Vietnam war front. He was convinced that the war was a just war to save Christian [Catholic] civilisation.
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Pope Pius XII and Cardinal Spellman. Pius always had deep affection for Cardinal Francis Spellman. Pius raised him from Archbishop of New York to Cardinal in February, 1946. These two consistently promoted the Cold War, never condemning the U.S. plans to use the atom bomb, even after President Truman’s declaration that “it looks like World War III is near.”
Pius XII continued to support the U.S. lobby advocating “an atomic preventive war.” When in 1954 the U.S. Army planned a nuclear attack on the Vietnamese besieging the French at Dien Bien Phu, the same Vatican lobby gave their approval of the proposal. During the Eisenhower Administration, when the Dulles brothers, Spellman and thus Pius XII helped formulate U.S. policies, the U.S. military considered dropping from one to six 31-kiloton bombs on the Vietnamese forces. The weapons were three times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. This scheme to use nuclear weapons against Vietnam was disclosed in declassified material in the first volume of a 17-volume official history of the Vietnam War published in 1984 by the Army’s historical office.
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State officials consulted the Catholic priests as to where the U.S. relief or money should go, or to whom it should be given. The result was that the Catholics got everything, whereas those who were not Catholic were lucky if they got a meal or a few cents. This was in contrast to the Catholic communities, which got the bulk of the U.S. donations.
Individuals or Buddhist villages were practically ignored, whether they had come from the North or were native Southerners. The result was that the U.S. aid, food, technicians and general assistance was given almost exclusively to Catholics. The latter, to court the favor of the American Relief Fund Authorities, organized themselves into paramilitary militias “to fight the communists and all those who supported them,” meaning the Buddhists.
These Catholic armed groups were encouraged by American personnel, with the help of the Vietnamese Catholic bishops. The latter inspired and blessed numberless local self-defense Catholic groups. These became known as “Mobile Catholic Units, for the Defense of Christendom”—that is, for the defense of the Catholic Church. They sprang up everywhere and were soon labeled the “Sea Swallows.”
In addition to the above, Diem saw to it that the new Catholic immigrants were given key positions in the government, the regular army, and the police, from the top down to provincial and district levels. Soon many officials and officers who were not Catholic were replaced or downgraded, if not dismissed altogether. The Catholicization of the state machinery was being promoted in record time, it must be remembered, with the active approval of the U.S.
That the U.S. was behind this incredible sectarian operation was demonstrated by the fact that the U.S. mission itself set up the Vietnam Bureau of Investigations. This open para-military unit was supported by a rural Catholic militia composed of more than 40,000 men.
Every echelon of Diem’s new administration was filled with practicing Catholics. To make sure that only Catholics got all the key positions, Diem terminated the 500 year democratic tradition of the local villages by which chiefs were elected by the population and replaced them with the Catholics who had arrived from the North. His personal slogan: “Put your Catholic officers in sensitive places. They can be trusted.”
To add more weight to such undemocratic structure, Diem then charged the Catholic priests with the administration of the land owned by the Church, which meant that in almost every village, the local Catholic priest became a quasi-public official, endowed with religious, administrative and political powers.
Besides this, Diem then hastened government aid to Catholic organizations of all kinds. He gave extra help—to Catholic units—for good work. The vigilantes and the para-military groups, including sections of the army were employed to build and to repair Catholic buildings. Catholic propaganda was transmitted by the national radio. Catholics were hastily promoted to the top ranks in the Army and in the bureaucracy. The bishops were treated as state ministers in all public ceremonies.
The main result of this blatant partiality for anything or anybody who was Catholic was that many decided to join the Catholic Church. More than 33,000 people became Catholic by the end of 1954. Officials in the national or local administration were converted to avoid endangering their careers. Ambitious individuals did the same. Others became Catholics, having discovered that Catholics got the best food, clothing and money, indeed having found out that even when the U.S. sent relief—food for the Vietnamese population at large, only the Catholics were assured of help; the Buddhists more often than not got nothing.
This outrageous favoritism eventually came into the open in the U.S. when finally it was discovered how all the aid which had been sent to South Vietnam and which had been distributed mostly by the “Catholic Relief Services” during two whole years, had been deliberately used to persuade Buddhists to become Catholics. Having proved such mishandling of American aid, the U.S. officials at long last refused to give more aid to Catholic Relief Service.
The inner Catholic and military cliques in South Vietnam and in the U.S. exercised pressure on Capitol Hill to such effect that eventually the ruling was changed. Yet, notwithstanding their efforts to hide the scandal for fear of Protestant reaction at home, it came to light that the hundreds of thousands of tons of food sent by the U.S., and meant for an estimated 700,000 people—“of all denominations”—was received by only 270,000 individuals.
One American general involved in the request for food to be given to the Catholic Relief Services was none other than General William Westmoreland. Curiously enough, this leading general became himself a convert to the Roman Catholic Church while conducting military operations in South Vietnam, an illustrious victim of Diem’s Catholic proselytizing. It was eventually discovered that, whereas the Catholics got their food absolutely free, the Buddhists had to pay for it. This applied not only to funds which had been sent by Catholic organizations from the U.S., but also to funds which had been sent by the U.S. administration to be used for the relief of all independently of their religious affiliations.
The result of such deliberate discrimination was that thousands of individuals, families and indeed, in many instances, entire villages became Catholics, encouraged by the Catholic authorities, or by the Diem government. Many changed their religion not only to retain their jobs but to avoid bodily transfer, better known as ‘resettlement.’ Resettlement, more often than not, spelled the loss of the houses, and/or of the land of those who had been resettled. By being transferred elsewhere, they had to leave behind all they had in terms of physical assets, and of social, family and religious ties.
Diem’s main objective was a fundamental one as far as his short and long range policy was concerned. He wanted to strengthen Catholic communities with additional Catholic communities, to transform them into reliable centers from which to promote his religious and political objectives.
Having consolidated the State machinery with loyal Catholics, and feeling sure of their loyalty, not to mention the tacit and indeed active support of his protector, the U.S., Diem took the second step to make his dream come true. He undertook a systematic and well calculated policy against the non-Catholic religions.
His policy was directed at the neutralization, disruption and finally elimination of the Buddhists or Buddhist inspired religions of Vietnam. These sects, many opposing each other on religious and political grounds, could nevertheless equal, and indeed effectively oppose any Catholic administration, had they created a united front.
Diem’s policy was a subtle one. He encouraged their dissensions. This he did by giving bribes, by sending agents in their midst, by promising official protection, and by denying the same to others. The result became apparent in no time. The religious sects fell into the Diem trap. They began to fight one another with increasing bitterness. This culminated with the internecine religious-political feud, between the Binh Xuyen, and the Hao Hao and the Cao Dai groups. Their enmity was not only religious, it was concretely real. Their battle was a bloody one. At one time various quarters of Saigon itself were devastated. The Buddhists set up a committee to give aid to the victims. Diem suppressed them at once.
The struggles between the opposing religious-political rivals gave a sound excuse to Diem to do what he had in mind long ago. He set about arresting the leading members of the hostile religions. The arrests eliminated the most potentially dangerous of his opponents. As a result, in due course opposition from the religious quarter had almost vanished.
Having made sure that the indigenous religious political opponents had been neutralized, Diem then took a further step, the consolidation of his political power. To that effect, he organized a referendum and replaced Bao Dai, who until then had been the official head of government. Thereupon he proclaimed a Republic of Vietnam. Having succeeded in this, on October 22, 1955, he became—or rather he made himself—its president.
The next year, October 26, 1956, he promulgated a new Constitution. Imitating Mussolini, Hitler, and also Ante Pavelich of Catholic Croatia, (not to mention Franco of Catholic Spain, and Salazar of Catholic Portugal,) he inserted an article, Article 98, which gave him full dictatorial powers. The article read in part as follows: “During the first legislative term, the president (that is Diem) may decree a temporary suspension of . . . (there followed almost all the civil liberties of the nation) to meet the legitimate demands of public security, etc.”
The article should have expired in April, 1961, but it was maintained indefinitely. But even more dangerously ominous was a decree that Diem had issued before that. In January, 1956, he had promulgated a personal presidential order, which was already portending the shape of things to come. The Order 46, read as follows: “Individuals considered dangerous to the national defense and common security may be confined by executive order to a concentration camp.”
Although some American “advisors” had blinked at the decree, it was taken for granted. They were mere threatening words. Others, however, knew they were meant to be preparatory measures to be taken once the transformation of South Vietnam into a total Catholic State started to be put into force.
Buddhist Monks and Nuns in a Concentration Camp outside Saigon. The Buddhists behind bars were arrested after a demonstration against the government, when President Diem issued laws grossly discriminating against the Buddhists and the Buddhist religion. They were arrested by the hundreds and sent to detention camps, where many of them were ill-treated. At one time, thousands of monks and nuns were behind bars. The anti-Buddhist discriminatory regulations of Diem divided the country into denominational lines, with the result that the effectiveness of the war was seriously impaired. Thousands of Buddhists started passive resistance against the Diem regime, while thousands of Buddhists in the army refused to fight for a government which was persecuting their religion.
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The campaign began with a mass denunciation of communism. That is, it was given a purely ideological undertone. It was officially called “The Anti-Communist Denunciation Campaign.” The operation was acceptable and, in view of the circumstances, was even a plausible one. Yet, behind its facade its real objective was the Catholicization of the country. It was [enhanced] McCarthyism transplanted into Vietnam. The campaign, in fact, had been inspired and promoted by the same elements which had supported McCarthyism in the U.S. Chief amongst these were the Kennedy brothers, Mr. Richard Nixon, Cardinal Spellman and certain factions of the CIA.
Steel-helmeted Combat Police Pull Down a Buddhist Banner and attempt to encircle Buddhist monks and nuns with barbed wire. More than one thousand monks and nuns attempted to escape the barbed wire wall which the police had erected to separate them from a large crowd of Buddhist demonstrators. Many tried to crawl under the barbed wire, but the police beat them back. Even so, many were arrested while others managed to demonstrate in spite of the police brutality. Such scenes became almost a daily occurrence as the discrimination against the Buddhists continued to escalate. It was reckoned that at one time more than one third of the Buddhist population of monks and nuns were detained, confined or otherwise deprived of their liberty.
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The Vietnamese McCarthyism turned even more vicious than its American counterpart. It was brought down to street and denominational levels. Sections of villages denounced other sections because they were not as Catholic as themselves, under the excuse that they were not as anticommunist. Students, and indeed children, were encouraged to denounce their parents. School teachers instructed their pupils to listen and to report members of their families who criticized either Diem, or the bishops, or the Catholic Church.
Parents, grandparents, professors, monks, Buddhists were arrested without any warrant or legal formalities. Soon searches and raids were organized in a systematic scale all over South Vietnam. A fearful pattern came quickly to the fore: denunciations and arrests of suspects, interrogations by the police, regrouping, the encirclement of whole villages, the disappearance of individuals, without leaving any trace. Brutal interrogations, deportations, and indiscriminate tortures were used wherever those arrested did not cooperate in denouncing others.
The jails were soon bursting with prisoners. The mass arrests became so numerous that finally it was necessary to open detention camps followed by additional ones euphemistically called internment camps. The reality of the matter being that they were veritable death camps. To mention only one by name, that of Phu Loi, in Thu Dai Mot province, where there occurred a mass poisoning of more than 600 people, there were over 1000 confirmed dead.
There followed other massacres within and outside such detention sites, like those which took place at Mocay, Thanhphu, Soctrang, Cangiuoc, Dailoc, and Duyxuyen, to mention only a few. Religious sects and racial minorities were persecuted, arrested and whenever possible eliminated. To save themselves from arrest or even death many detainees had to accept the religion, language and customs of the new Catholic South Vietnam, as did the minority of Chinese and the Khmer whose schools were closed down. Minor groups accepted the Catholic Church to save their lives or were exterminated.
Whereas a democracy is inspired by certain basic democratic principles, and a communist dictatorship is erected upon the tenants Of Marxism, so Catholic totalitarianism must be promoted by the doctrines enacted by the Catholic Church. Because of this, Diem became determined to create a model Catholic State in Southeast Asia. The tenets which inspired him most were embodied in the social teachings of three of Diem’s favorites; Pope Leo XIII, Pope Pius IX and Pope Pius XII.
Diem took the teaching of these popes literally. For instance, he firmly held, as Pope Pius IX declared in his Syllabus of Errors, “that it is an error to believe that the church is not a true and perfect society.” For the Church to be perfect, the state must be integrated with her so that the two become as one, because quoting again Pius IX “it is an error to believe that the Church ought to be separated from the State and State from the Church,” a principle which went totally against the Constitution of the U.S., his sponsor.
Elements preventing such union, therefore, had to be eliminated. These meant the Protestants, at that time numbering about 50,000, mostly Baptists and Seventh Day Adventists. Diem had planned to eliminate them chiefly via legislation by prohibiting their missions, closing their schools, and refusing licenses to preach or have religious meetings. This he would have done legally in accordance with the future concordat to be signed with the Vatican modeled upon that of Franco’s Spain. Such anti-Protestant legislation would have been enforced once the war was over and a Catholic state had been firmly established.
That this was no mere speculation, curiously enough, was confirmed at that period in London, England. The present author at that time lived only a few hundred yards from the Embassy of South Vietnam, Victoria Road, Kensington. He called at the embassy a number of times to find out the reason for the Diem regime’s “harassing certain disruptive Buddhist sects.” Documents, all official, were given justifying the harassment. The official explanation was that the Buddhists were “prosecuted” not on religious but on political grounds. When the present author mentioned the Protestants, an official explained that they were a special case. Since they were Christians, their “prosecution” would be justified once the domestic situation had become normal, on the ground that a state—in this case the Catholic State of South Vietnam—had to be inspired by the tenets upon which it is founded. A perfect Catholic State, therefore, could not tolerate Protestants nor Christians who did not believe in the uniqueness of the Catholic Church. This, it should be pointed out, was at the time when Pope John XXIII had launched the era of ‘ecumenism.’ The high official who gave the explanation should have known, since he was none other than President Diem’s own brother, also a staunch Catholic, Ambassador Ngo Dinh. Another official, a former Baptist, subsequently confirmed that there existed already a blue-print for the formal elimination of Protestantism in a future United Vietnam.
That these were no mere theoretical plans for the future was proved by the fact that Diem started his program in earnest. Prior to eliminating any Protestant or Buddhist, he had first to Catholicize the fabric of Vietnam. One most important section of this is education. The Catholic Church is adamant on the subject.
To create a total Catholic State one has to shape its youth, the future citizens of tomorrow. It is a tenet which has created no end of trouble in many lands, including the U.S. itself, with her problem of parochial aid and the claim of the Catholic church for special educational exclusiveness. Since Diem had no restrictions, he saw to it that the command of his Church be strictly enforced.