Dateline ROME — from ALAN McELWAIN

COUNT Giuseppe Dalla Torre, who died recently, at 82, in Rome, was for 40 years editor, tinder four Popes, of the Vatican City newspaper, Osservatore Romano. Throughout the reign of Benedict XV (who appointed him), Pius XI, Pius XII and John XXIII, he was the nearest the Vatican came to having an official spokesman.
In his newspaper's news columns and often in blunt, acid editorials, he expressed the views of the Papacy and its closest advisers, and revealed "Vatican trends."
By its very nature, Osservatore Romano is unlike any other newspaper in the world. It was founded in 1861 to uphold the Church's position in a struggle against anti-clericalism at a time when the Pope was losing his temporal powers and the Papal States were to be absorbed into a unified Italy. Osservatore Romano was first published in Rome outside the Vatican, but after the signing in 1929 of the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and Benito Mussolini, which guaranteed the sovereignty of Vatican City, it moved in there. By that time, Dalla Torre had been its editor for nine years.
Although founded with the idea of keeping to the field of religion and the defence of the Catholic Church's rights rather than of entering directly into politics, Osservatore Romano inevitably clashed with Italy's Fascist regime, especially when Mussolini's Black Shirts launched a planned attack on Catholic Action.
Dalla Torre slashed back at gy Fascism, along with Nazism and Communism, so effectively that Fascist thugs once ambushed him outside St. Peter's Basilica. He narrowly escaped serious injury and for weeks afterwards went home by a route confined to the 105acre Vatican City.
Apart from his anti-Fascist line, Dalla Torre infuriated the Fascists during the Second World War by being the only editor in Italy to publish Allied war bulletins along with those of the Axis. In this, he had the full approval of Pope Pius XII. The move shot up Osservatore Romano's circulation to a record 400,000. It also caused distributors to be beaten up and the paper to be burnt in various public squares.
The Della Torre touch got its real chance when Hitler came to Rome for a muchpublicised visit to Mussolini in May, 1938. To avoid contact with Hitler, Pope Pius XI pointedly left the Vatican just before his arrival and went to his summer villa at Castelgandolfo, in the hills outside Rome, where he stayed until Hitler returned to Germany. Explaining the Pope's move, Osservatore Romano slyly pointed out that he preferred the Castelgandolfo air to that of Rome. Thereafter, it completely ignored Hitler's presence.
Although he could use plain. direct language to score a point, the traditional policy of using flowery, exotic language in references to the Pope "illuminated, benificient. inspired Sovereign Pontiff" and the rest — was maintained under Dalla Torre, until Pope John came to the Papal throne. He told him to refer to him simply as "the Pope" and to say that he had "done", not "deigned to do." this and that. Osservatore Romano, being the official channel through which news of the Papacy teaches the world, gets first chop at reporting many important events and statements and has thus brought off memorable scoops.
Pope Leo XIII once said that if the paper could not always be first with the news, "it would be nice at least for it not to be always last." Pope Benedict XV drew up a monthly appraisal of the paper and marked each day's mistakes, even typographical errors. Pope Pius XII used a red pencil to correct proofs of his speeches.
The late Cardinal Domenico Tardini, who was Pope John's Secretary of State, got off what is rated the best crack about Osservatore Romano's circumscribed policies and presentation. "When we were young seminarians," he said, "we al