Truce of God?

To protect the things of God from the violence of men, the Christian church once used to declare a "Truce of God." Churchmen in the U.S. and Europe have long been doing their best to bring about a modern Truce of God to protect the holy places of Palestine from destruction in Arab-Jewish fighting. This week as Arabs, Jews and U.N. officials negotiated their way toward a permanent truce for all Jerusalem, the Vatican sent one of its expert trouble shooters to the Holy Land.

Tall, rubicund Msgr. Gustavo Testa gained credit at Rome for his quiet oiling of troubled Franco-German waters in the Ruhr after World War I. In 1935 he became Apostolic Delegate to Egypt and Arabia. Testa is the first man to bear his new title: Apostolic Delegate to Palestine.

Delegate Testa will do his best to have at least three holy places--Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth--internationalized and placed under U.N. mandate. Contact man with U.N. for the negotiations will be New York's Cardinal Archbishop Spellman. Once the Palestine question is settled, say Vatican officials, a gradual extension of Cardinal Spellman's U.N. middle-maneuvering "is not unlikely."

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