The Western Watchman of January 28 prints a prayer that was offered in a blasphemous paper in Messina. The Watchman remarks that the Italians “have naturally an intense faith, and in their religious life they are either mixed in the chorus of angels or devils. It declares that ‘there are prints in papers, publicly exposed in the book-stalls of Rome that would make the very demons of hell cry out: “Fie, for shame.”’ And this Messina paper, in its issue of December 25, devoted considerable space to the Bambino, an image of the child Jesus, and the devotions of which it is the object on Christmas morning, and translates the prayer in this way:
People fleeing from the scene of terror.
“O, my little Bambino;
True God and true man, I know:
For love of the Cross and thy dolorous
way,
Please answer the prayer we say.
That is, if thou art not a myth. If
more than a myth, then crush us
under an earthquake.”
On the third day after, the city was destroyed and nearly all its inhabitants perished in the ruins. The Watchman declares that Messina was a very bad city, the worst perhaps on the globe. Not that there were no good people, but there were outlaws from every land. “The yellow devils and the white devils held their stated orgies together in Messina. Whole sections of the city were given up to impiety and immorality, and public opinion did not seem to have a vestige of natural modesty left. The best and purest were surprised at nothing that appeared in private and public life of the soiled Queen of the Strait. There was some religion in Messina; but it was of that boisterous, flamboyant sort that finds expression in processions and fiestas. The people brooked no restraint from the clergy, even in their most unbridled extravagances of devotion.” The Watchman concludes with these words: “Was the earthquake a judgment? It would be madness to say it was not. Did God consign to instant death two hundred thousand people for no purpose at all?” And yet the reflection comes to us that for centuries Rome has had these under her instruction.
