equality is the right of all people to honorably live in the place and station that God has assigned them. On 1 June 1946, one day before the 1946 Italian referendum on whether to abolish or keep the Italian monarchy, Pius XII delivered a sermon on St. Peter's Square. While he did not directly mention monarchy or republicanism, given the context, his speech was nonetheless widely seen as endorsing Umberto II in the referendum, with it being difficult to misunderstand his plea. Pius stated: "The problem is whether one or the other of those nations, of those two Latin sisters [elections were taking place in France on the same day] with several thousands of years of civilization will continue to learn against the solid rock of Christianity,...or on the contrary do they want to hand over the fate of their future to the impossible omnipotence of a material state without extraterrestrial ideals, without religion, and without God. One of these two alternatives shall occur according to whether the names of the champions or the destroyers of Christian civilization emerge victorious from the urns". After the referendum was successful and the Italian monarchy was abolished, Pius privately agreed with his envoy Myron Charles Taylor "...that it would have been far preferable for Italy to remain a monarchy, but he also noted that what was done was done". Encyclicals, writings and speeches Pius XII issued 41 encyclicals during his pontificate—more than all his successors in the past 50 years taken together—along with many other writings and speeches. The pontificate of Pius XII was the first in Vatican history that published papal speeches and addresses in vernacular language on a systematic basis. Until then, papal documents were issued mainly in Latin in Acta Apostolicae Sedis since 1909. Because of the novelty of it all, and a feared occupation of the Vatican by the German Wehrmacht, not all documents exist today. In 1944, a number of papal documents were burned or "walled in". Several encyclicals addressed the Eastern Catholic Churches. Orientalis Ecclesiae was issued in 1944 on the 15th centenary of the death of Cyril of Alexandria, a saint common to Eastern Christianity and Latin Churches. Pius XII asks for prayer for better understanding and unification of the churches. Orientales omnes Ecclesias, issued in 1945 on the 350th anniversary of the reunion, is a call to continued unity of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church,