The Pope in Extremis

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 6, 1870

The Pope in Extremis.

Now that Napoleon is fallen, what is to become of the pope? Will his infallibility save him when the temporal arm that sustained him is removed? All the French troops that guarded him from his own people are removed, and he sends a piteous cry to Eugenie for just one ship to protect him. But there is no help for him, except by throwing himself upon the mercy of Victor Emmanuel, his mortal enemy, who has sequestered the rich revenues of the church, and whom the pope has excommunicated with all the solemnities of book, bell, and candle. Of this perverse heretic he will soon find, if he has not found already, that he, Heaven's vicegerent and prince of all earthly potentates, is as really a subject, as the archbishop of England is the subject of Victoria.

We hold it for certain that nothing will be allowed to stand in the way of realizing the long-cherished dream of Italian unity, to which the military occupation of the French has been for many years the only barrier. The national instincts and traditions all cluster around Rome as the proper capital of the kingdom, and when Victor Emmanuel takes up his residence there, what place will there be there for the pope? It is not likely the king will persecute the poor old pope for having excommunicated him, for he doubtless looks upon the whole proceeding as a well-gotten-up farce; but how can the pope consent to such humiliation as to hold his residence and walk back and forth under the shadow of his enemy? . . . .

The papal power, though it may still exist for a time, must be only nominal. It exists by sufferance; the proclamation of infallibility has made it the jest of nations; while the kings and kingdoms that once sustained the Papal Babylon are making her desolate and naked; eating her flesh and burning her with fire. Sincerely do we hope that the time for “apostles and prophets” to “rejoice over her” is nigh at hand!—American Baptist.