Chapter 7
by John Gavin Nolan
To every bishop, with a letter marked “Confidential, not for publication,” Father Walsh mailed a digest of a book entitled International Golden Rule Sunday, in which George Vickrey, General Secretary of Near Easy Relief, listed the names of church groups and public officials who supported NER’s annual appeal. “Many of them are of national or international reputation,” commented Father Walsh, using the Kelley technique, “but it is also apparent at a glance that they are allied in some cases with anti-Catholic forces.”40
CNEWA’s protector, Cardinal Hayes, had promised the Holy Father his full support and now, announcing himself as one of the first in the hierarchy to authorize the roll call for CNEWA, he set the date of 10 March 1929 and encouraged the priests in his archdiocese to promote it enthusiastically.41 At the February meeting of CNEWA’s executive committee he also authorized Father Walsh to write again to the bishops who had not responded to his January letter asking that the roll call be made.42 Apparently, some bishops simply were not interested. Financial records for 1929 are not available, but early receipts from the roll calls and the direct-mail appeal must have indicated that, with so many problems at home, the bishops were not in a mood to support unreservedly an organization which seemed to be in competition with the S.P.F., especially since Father Walsh and the Vatican appeared to hold diverging views about its purpose.
In July 1929, Father Walsh left again for Rome, this time “to make a complete report to His Holiness ... on the state of our Association in aid of Russia and the Near East.”43 By then he must have realized that his Vatican Red Cross was not to be. The pope suggested simply that Father Walsh, as CNEWA president, propose to Monsignor Quinn of the S.P.F. that his agency and CNEWA collaborate in a national collection once a year for the missions overseas. The collection’s purpose, the Holy Father emphasized, was to be “exclusively missionary.”44