The Pasternak affair of last autumn tended to throw into obscurity the awards of the other Nobel Prizes for 1958. Normally, it is ‘peace’ rather than ‘literature’ which attracts the notice of the press and the other organs of publicity. But this time the roles were reversed, and it was ‘literature’ which offered a rich store of acceptable copy by providing a significant chapter in the development of something that really interests us more than peace, namely the ‘cold war’. After all, one could hardly grudge the journalists their excitement that at long last the U.S.S.R. had dropped practically its first point in the ‘world propaganda’ competition with the West, even if maturer reflection could not but see this as only adding a deeper shade to the personal tragedy of Dr Zhivago’s creator.

That Boris Pasternak, then, should eclipse Père Pire in the press as a whole is understandable enough. What is surprising is that the award of such a widely prized honour to a priest should have raised so little attention in our Catholic press. After all, even bears—or so the apocryphal story runs—can hit the headlines simply by eating nuns on the way to Mass. Yet, at the time of writing, only the briefest notice has been taken of this award, only the baldest details of Père Pire’s life and work given.

To give an explanation of this silence would be easy enough. It would have to be in terms of ignorance; an ignorance, I hasten to add since my present intention is far from being a criticism of the Catholic press, which is shared by all of us, Père Pire’s own Dominican brethren in England not excluded.