On reading David Dandria’s interesting feature (‘The rise and fall of the Order’s fleet’, The Sunday Times of Malta, December 27, 2015), a curious analogous wartime episode I read about sprang to mind.

At the height of the Battle of the Atlantic German Admiral Karl Doenitz’s U-boat, strategic offensive targeted against North American supplies reaching Britain peaked to unprecedented proportions.

Barely outside American territorial waters, UK-bound convoys from the US and Canada were relentlessly sunk by U-boat packs strategically positioned. This was just before Pearl Harbour and with US was still officially neutral in the war. The US at that time, like neutral Spain, was full of Nazi spies and shipping information easily reached the Axis powers.

It happened, either by chance, but more likely by design, that US President Franklin Roosevelt highlighted his concerns to the all-powerful Archbishop of New York, Mgr (later Cardinal) Francis Spellman, a former Rector of the American College in Rome, who was close to Pius XII. In no time the rate of sunken shipping plummeted!

There has been speculation about the possibility of Spellman contacting his good friend Mgr (later Cardinal) Ernesto Ruffini of Palermo who, in turn through contacts, conveyed Roosevelt’s misgivings. Ruffini was an old personal friend of Archbishop Michael Gonzi.

I have always wondered whether all this could ever be true, or whether it was just another piece of wartime gossip. It is worth recollecting, however, that the US Ambassador to London, Joe Kennedy, an influential Catholic Democrat, and Spellman, were close.