August 6, 1960: A Sunday Sermon

"MUNICH, Germany, Aug. 6 -- Cardinal Spellman, bitterly attacking the Communist powers, said today the world was living through "the most dangerous summer since 1939.

"The Archbishop of New York, who is attending the thirty-seventh World Eucharistic Congress here, gave his somber judgment of the world situation in a sermon at a pontifical high mass he celebrated for United States pilgrims to the Roman Catholic congress.

"World tension has reached 'an imminently dangerous pitch,' Cardinal Spellman said, as a consequence of 'new and more imminent Communist-promoted crises throughout the world.'

"The Communists, the Cardinal said, have become 'drunken with lust and power.' He compared them to 'a wild beast that has tasted the blood of its prey.'

"'In these peaceless, imperiled times,' the Cardinal said, 'daily we learn of new and more imminent Communist promoted crisis throughout the world -- in Cuba and Latin America; in East Germany and the international waters of the Barents Sea; in China and the Congo.'

"These crises, the Cardinal said, are 'ominous testimonials to the fast-approaching possibility of the death-day to world freedom, the once fantastic now realistic threat of Soviet Russia.'