Aroused Rome's Wrath

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 30, 1908

Aroused Rome's Wrath

THERE occurred in the city of Rome, Italy, on April 20, an incident which forcibly illustrates Rome's intolerance of unbelievers in her doctrines and practises. A German professor and his family, visiting Rome, entered the Sistine Chapel, where the pope was administering the sacrament to the communicants. They unexpectedly found themselves among the communicants, and a wafer was placed in the mouth of each by the pope. Not being Catholics, and apparently not understanding the meaning of the rite, they spat out the wafers upon the floor. To the Catholic, believing that the officiating priest or pope has turned the wafer into the very body of Christ, the act of rejecting the wafer was an act of terrible sacrilege upon the person of the Lord. For the act mentioned the German professor and his family were taken into custody by the church officials, and threatened with dire punishment. They were finally released, and the dispatch of the following day, which follows, indicates that they did not consider it safe to linger in Rome:—

LONDON, April 21.—A Rome dispatch to the Telegraph says that Professor Feilbogen and his family, who yesterday in the Sistine Chapel, after the sacrament had been administered to them, spat the wafers on the floor, have left Rome to escape punishment for sacrilege. Professor Feilbogen is a man of high character

and he could not have committed the sacrilege voluntarily.

The fact that the so-called sacrilege was committed unintentionally seems to have had no weight with the papal officials, whose spirit convinced the professor that his stay in Rome would put himself and family in great danger. The dispatch is headed “Flee from the Wrath of Rome.” If Rome had the power she once exercised, it would not be so easy to flee from her wrath.