President Loubet’s Visit to Rome
An event of some note is about to occur in Rome. President Loubet, of France, is to make his long-expected visit to the king of Italy, and state officials are busily preparing for his reception. The papacy holds coldly aloof. The French president, comments the Catholic Mirror (Baltimore), will be “the first head of a Catholic state to enter the Eternal City as the guest of the Houses of Savoy since the pontiff was despoiled of his rights. For over three years continual efforts have been made to obtain the acquiescence of the pope for this visit. This has been refused from the beginning, and it is refused now.” The Vatican, says the Mirror, touching the reason of this refusal, will not change its fixed code of etiquette “just to oblige France. That country knows the rules of the Vatican quite well; that the heads of Catholic nations visiting Rome will not be received by the pope if they go previously to the Quirinal. For this cause the emperor of Austria and the king of Portugal carefully avoid a visit to the Eternal City. If M. Loubet does not choose to follow their example, he must take the consequences. If he visits the king of Italy, he will not visit the pope. He is the head of a Catholic country, and as such must fall into line with the requirements of Catholic custom.” It was in 1870 that the pope was deprived of his temporal power, and this visit of President Loubet will be the first instance of the visit of the head of a Catholic nation to the Quirinal since that time. President Loubet has evidently decided not to be bound longer by the Vatican’s code of etiquette, and his example will perhaps be followed by other Catholic powers. Newspapers of March 2 chronicle the death of Noah Raby, of Piscataway Township, New Jersey, who at the time of his death was nearly one hundred and thirty-two years of age. For many years past ‘Uncle Noah’ had been an inmate of the county poorhouse. His father was an Indian, and his mother a white woman. He was never married. Mr. Raby’s memory went back to events connected with the Revolutionary War. The event that remained most firmly fixed in his early recollections, he said, was a speech he heard General Washington make at Norfolk, Va. The general was very earnest in his remarks, and at one point in his speech touched on the danger of politics getting into the pulpit, saying that if this should occur, there would certainly be very serious trouble. What the father of his country might be moved to say if he could see what has gotten into the pulpit in these latter days, must be left to the reader’s imagination.