861.404/5–1448
Memorandum of Conversation, by Mr. Richard H. Davis, Acting Assistant Chief of the Division of Eastern European Affairs
| Participants: | EUR—Mr. L. E. Thompson1 |
| EE—Mr. Francis B. Stevens2 | |
| EE—Mr. Richard Davis | |
| Mr. Michael Francis Doyle—Philadelphia3 | |
| Father Braun4 | |
| Father Dufault5 |
At the request of Mr. Doyle, a meeting was held this afternoon to discuss the Soviet visa application of Father Dion6 which was made [Page 868] approximately July 3, 1947. Mr. Doyle opened the discussion by reviewing the case and asked whether it was not time that some more positive action be taken, particularly with reference to the Litvinov Agreement,7 to obtain Father Dion’s visa.
Mr. Stevens outlined the numerous steps that had been taken by the Ambassador and the Embassy, both written and oral, vis-à-vis the Soviet Foreign Office to obtain favorable action on Father Dion’s application. He read to Mr. Doyle a telegram which had just been received from the Embassy reporting that despite these frequent approaches to the Foreign Office, the answer had invariably been that “the application was under consideration.” Mr. Doyle commented that he had called several times on Mr. Bruslov, Chief of the Consular Section of the Soviet Embassy, Washington, D.C., and his reply had been similar.
Mr. Doyle asked Mr. Thompson whether he had any advice or suggestions to offer as to what should be done now. Mr. Thompson explained he did not wish to influence any opinion or decision which Mr. Doyle and his colleagues might wish to reach independently. However, he would say that in consideration of a number of factors he did not feel that the present was the moment to deliver anything in the nature of an “ultimatum” to the Soviet Foreign Office based on the Litvinov Agreement or to give any publicity in regard to the Soviet delay.
After further discussion, it was mutually agreed that Father Dufault would write a letter requesting that the State Department ask the Ambassador in Moscow to take up again personally with the Foreign Office Father Dion’s visa case, stressing that for reasons of health and owing to the length of time he had already been in the Soviet Union, it was desirable that Father Laberge8 be replaced as soon as possible. In this event, consideration would be given to asking the Ambassador to refer to his recent conversations with Mr. Molotov concerning Soviet-American relations and the desire to improve them, and to the Ambassador’s own reference in his last interview with Mr. Molotov to the provision in the Litvinov Agreement providing for the presence of an American clergyman in Moscow.9
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
- Llewellyn E. Thompson, Deputy Director of the Office of European Affairs.↩
- Francis B. Stevens, Chief of the Division of Eastern European Affairs.↩
- Michael Francis Doyle, of Philadelphia, Pa., was an influential Catholic layman.↩
- Father Leopold Braun of the Order of the Assumptionists, a religious congregation called Augustinians of the Assumption, founded in 1844.↩
- Father Dufault was the Superior of the Order of Assumptionists.↩
- The Reverend Louis Ferdinand Dion was a member of the Assumptionist Order. With regard to the problem of obtaining a visa for the presence of a priest in Moscow, see Foreign Relations, 1947, vol. iv, p. 560.↩
- This agreement had been made between President Roosevelt and Maxim Maximovich Litvinov, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, on November 16, 1933, at the time of the recognition of the Soviet Union by the United States; Foreign Relations, The Soviet Union, 1933–1939, pp. 29–33.↩
- The Reverend George Antonio Laberge had been in the Soviet Union since October 26, 1945; Foreign Relations, 1945, vol. v, p. 1131 and footnote 10.↩
- The request for a visa for Father Dion was fruitless at this time. Father Laberge was eventually succeeded in 1949 by his assistant, the French Catholic priest Jean de Matha Thomas.↩