This event I believe occurred at the Fourth Moscow Conference in 1944:
In 1944, at a time when the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the struggle against Nazi Germany, it was important to convince Stalin that the Western democracies accepted him as an equal. “‘In the world of the future, for which our soldiers have shed their blood on countless fronts”, the British Prime Minister said in his bombastic style, “our three great democracies will demonstrate to all mankind that they, both in wartime and in peacetime, will remain true to the high principles of freedom, dignity, and happiness of the people. That’s why I attach such paramount importance to good neighbourly relations between a restored Poland and the Soviet Union. It was for the freedom and independence of Poland that Britain went into this war. The British feel a sense of moral responsibility to the Polish people, to their spiritual values. It’s also important that Poland is a Catholic country. We can’t allow internal developments there to complicate our relations with the Vatican…”
“How many divisions does the Pope of Rome have?” Stalin asked, suddenly interrupting Churchill’s line of reasoning.
Valentin Berezhkov, Stalin’s interpreter, in his memoirs recounted this.
The response of Pius XII I have been unable to source as to time and place, but it has become immortal: “You can tell my son Joseph that he will meet my divisions in heaven.”
The divisions that Stalin put so much faith in are as dead and buried now as he is, as is his Communist State that lasted merely one long life time. Dictators come and go, Christ remains.
Back in 1989, I usually picked up a copy of the Reverend Moon’s Washington Times as I could not stomach the Compost. I saved an editorial cartoon portraying the Polish people erecting a statue of Milton Friedman, while nearby a Stalin statue lay on the ground in pieces. Next to the pieces was an old lady with a babushka who gave the statue pieces an unceremonious salute of “BAH”.
The little old ladies who came to Mass every Sunday, or every day, and prayed the Rosary had more power than Stalin did in the end.
The comment of Pius XII may well have been true but in the case of Stalin, it is also possible that he viewed the divisions from a different vantage point.