German Jesuits Robert Leiber, Wilhelm Hentrich and Ivo Zeiger. His personal confessor Augustin Bea was a German Jesuit and Mother Pascalina Lehnert and the other German speaking sisters of the papal household added to this element. The American bishop Aloisius Muench wrote in November 1948 that Pius XII was 'more interested in affairs of the Church in Germany than in any other part of the Church' and resolved to make the postwar German crisis a top priority – 'its refugee crisis, poverty, hunger and disease, the fate of prisoners-of-war and accused war criminals, the disruption to the internal organization and communal life of German Catholicism, and Germany's uncertain political future'. He was concerned too about the potential spread of Communism in Western Europe and the Americas. As he sought to secure resources from abroad to aid post-war recovery, believing deprivation fuelled political agitation, so he also sought to influence Italian politics. In January 1948, Luigi Gedda, of Italy's Catholic Action movement, was called to the Vatican as the campaign for the first parliament of Italy's post-fascist republic was underway. Pius XII was rather distrustful of Alcide de Gasperi and Italy's Christian Democrats, considering the party indecisive and fractious – reformist currents within it particularly, which tended to the moderate Left – represented by the Sicilian priest Luigi Sturzo for example – he considered too accommodating to the Left. On the eve of the 1952 local elections in Rome, in which again the Communist and Socialist parties threatened to win out, he used informal connections to make his views known. Pius XII stated that the war against Communism was a holy war and excommunicated members of the Communist Party. Having decided to encourage the Christian Democrats to consider a political alliance with the Rightist parties as part of an anti-left coalition, he asked the Jesuit, Father Riccardo Lombardi, to speak with de Gasperi to consider such an alliance – an electoral alliance with those even of monarchist and neo-fascist tendencies -including the Italian Social Movement. Adopting a domino theory he warned that, if "the Communists win in Rome, in Italy, it will cast a shadow on the entire world: France would become Communist, and then Spain and then all of Europe." Later life, illness and death Late years of Pope Pius XII A long illness in late 1954 caused the Pope to consider abdication. Afterwards, changes in his work habit became