Pius XII declares in a speech to a group of parishioners of Marsciano, Perugia, Italy, on June 4, 1953:
“It is necessary that you truly feel like brothers.
“It is not a matter of mere appearance; you are truly sons of God, so you are really brothers to one another.
“Now, brothers are not born equal, nor do they remain equal; some are strong, others weak; some are intelligent, others inept; sometimes one is abnormal or actually becomes a disgrace.
“A certain material, intellectual and moral inequality is therefore inevitable even within the same family.
“To claim absolute equality for all would be like wanting to assign the exact same function to different parts of the same organism.”
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII: A Theme Illuminating American Social History (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Documents V, pp. 485-486.
