FOLEY: A MAN OF HIS TIME
Contextualizing Father Theodore Historically
Correspondence between Fr. Theodore Foley to his mother, Marie, and Caroline
On the public’s reaction to the death of President John F. Kennedy:
November 29, 1963:
“In my five years over here I have not witnessed a response to any event like the reaction of Italians to the loss of our President. We did not realize how much they liked Jack Kennedy and the great confidence they had in him. There was genuine grief everywhere. Everything, Marie said, stopped in the States. It was close to being as true over here. Padre Timotheo, the Consultor, in commenting on the national sorrow here in Italy remarked that in no place in Europe did the people love and esteem the first Catholic President of the U.S.A. as did the Italians… I don’t know what the judgment of American historians will be, but for these people, he was one of the great Presidents of the U.S.A.
There was the common bond of catholic faith for one thing, and also the fact that he gave the Free World the leadership they felt President Eisenhower never exercised as they expected him to do. Finally there was his courageous standing to Kruschev and his fight for civil rights…Already they have started to name squares and streets after him. The bella strada in Naples over which he rode on the day of his tumultuous welcome there last June is now named in his memory.”
On life behind the Iron Curtain in Communist Poland:
August 28, 1966:
Yesterday I emerged from Poland after three weeks behind the Iron Curtain...I feel a little uneasy working my way thru customs yesterday, fearing to be held up at the last moment by some failure real or alleged to comply with formalities. The airport is more like a police station than a meeting ground of holiday and commercial travellers... A Jewish fellow passenger who had been in Warsaw for a week attending a convention, set down beside me and gave a contented sigh and said "Am I glad to be on my way out of this country ."