Downfall of the Pope

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 12, 1871

Downfall of the Pope.

The Italian inhabitants of New York, assisted by delegations of their countrymen from other cities, celebrated on the 25th inst. the unity of Italy accomplished by the occupation of Rome and the displacement of the temporal power of the pope. The tone of the participants was earnestly anti-papal. Prof. Corradi made a brief address from which we make the following extract:

“Rome, the Eternal City, is now in the possession of the Italians—the legitimate owners. This fact, we think, is of great material importance to Italy, and is the natural result of what occurred before the fall of despotic power, and the precipitate descent of the pope, who was believed invincible, but whose rule was only founded on falsehood and corruption. It had the hate of the people because it strove to dominate by ignorance, and was protected by tyrants. By a strange coincidence of human vicissitudes, two colossi sustaining each other—Napoleon and the pope—fell at the same moment, the fall of the one causing the fall of the other, never, we hope, to rise again. Both are execrated and forgotten. When the ideas of progress and liberty shall make way through the darkness of despotism, and join all nations as one family, the bayonet and other instruments of oppression to keep the people down will be powerless. I hope the day will come when the people can pay back with usury the tyrants who have oppressed them. The cry then will be, ‘Beware of the vanquished!’ [Great cheering.]”