George Weigel on the Communist infiltration of the Vatican

Fascinating article on Communism vs. the Church:

The election of Angelo Roncalli as Pope John XXIII in 1958 marked the beginning of a new phase of this war. Roncalli was concerned that the Church had experienced a certain sclerosis in the latter years of Pius XII. In the first decade of his pontificate, Pius XII had been something of a reformer, encouraging the liturgical movement, giving new impetus to Catholic biblical studies, and trying to get the Church to think of itself in biblical and theological, rather than canonical and legal, categories. If these tentative movements toward reform were to take hold, Roncalli believed, the energies they represented should be focused through an ecumenical council. This papal concern for the renewal of Catholicism’s internal life quickly bumped up against the problem of the communist war against the Church: How were the bishops behind the Iron Curtain to participate in the Second Vatican Council?

This turned out to be less of a problem than anticipated, because the KGB and its sister intelligence services throughout the Warsaw Pact saw Vatican II as a golden opportunity to penetrate the Vatican, deploy new intelligence assets throughout Catholic institutions in Rome, and use the council’s deliberations as a means of strengthening their own grip on restive Catholic populations behind the Iron Curtain. John XXIII’s concerns about central and eastern European participation at Vatican II, and the new pope’s conviction that it was time to test the possibility of a less frozen relationship between the Holy See and Moscow, combined to give birth to what was known as the Vatican’s new Ostpolitik. The Ostpolitik, in turn, seemed even more urgent when the opening of Vatican II coincided with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Where the pope and the Vatican sought a new dialogue in the interests of world peace, however, the KGB and other Soviet-bloc intelligence agencies sought a new beachhead inside Vatican City in their war against the Catholic Church. The atmosphere of cordial hospitality extended by the Holy See to observers and “separated brethren” at the council created an ideal atmosphere for this communist effort to penetrate the Church’s central administration.