p. 51 | CONDITION OF THE POPE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 8, 1878

CONDITION OF THE POPE.

When the Italian government extinguished the civil authority of the pope in the city and suburbs of Rome, it left him the Vatican palace, for the undisturbed exercise of all his prerogatives. Thereupon the pontiff, Pius IX., declared he could not go beyond his palace. He would not set foot on soil where he would be regarded in law as a subject of the king. This is the foundation for the fiction diligently maintained of the imprisonment of the pope. He is a self-restrained prisoner. Rather, in the case of the present pontiff at least, he is restrained by the Jesuits among his cardinals. It is understood that his health is failing, and that his physicians have advised a change of air. To yield to their prescription would be, however, to yield the tacit controversy with the Italian government, and to throw away a powerful appeal to the sympathies of the Catholics. A correspondent writes:—

“I know from a private source that he expressed himself in most discouraged style the other day to a certain monsignore who visited him, saying that it was all over with him, and he was not long for this world. His visitor did his best to cheer and encourage him, but the pope shook his head and replied mournfully that it was useless to try to deceive him. The monsignore added, when making the relation, that it is a very trying business to be shut up in close confinement as is the pope. Trying it is, doubtless, and especially so to a man like Leo, who, as Archbishop of Perugia, was accustomed to breathe mountain air and to wander hither and thither with great freedom. But who is to blame for this trial? Only the wicked hierarchy of the Papal Court, who are determined to carry out their programme at all costs, and to show to the Catholic world that the Holy Father is still the prisoner of the Italian government. The game is to be played to the last. In the absence of temporal power they wield the instrument of sympathy, by which they maintain great power with their remote subjects, and by which especially they succeed in replenishing their empty coffers; and this is the chief consideration. In comparison with this game, what is the life of an old man, even though he be the pope? A priest of some eminence said to me during the Conclave that every cardinal who escaped election would have to ‘thank his stars,’ as the new pope was almost sure to be a martyr. And so it bids fair to turn out, though not in the way the worthy priest would have had me suppose. What is the secret of the power of this hierarchy? By what means have they got supreme possession of their victim, and so quickly reduced him from an independent, strong-minded man into a perfectly limp and pliable tool in their hands? Clothed in pontifical robes, receiving daily most obsequious homage, his hand and foot covered with kisses, lauded as the infallible teacher and guide, I doubt whether there lives a greater slave than Leo XIII.”

A physician who had an audience with him recently says: “Never have I seen such a change in any human being, unless produced by some physical illness. Cardinal Pecci was a tall, erect, well-knit figure. His presence was imposing, his gestures commanding, his voice sonorous and vibrating. Leo XIII. is a bent old man. His hand shakes as with palsy, his voice is hoarse, and the glance of his eye uncertain and suspicious.” He finds spies on his track at every turn, and he could not have a private conference with Father Curci without using artifice.

The following statement made last week, may have some connection with the facts recited above: “The pope has ordered a congregation of cardinals to study the laws of the guarantees, and the speeches that have been made in the Italian Parliament concerning them, with a view to define the position of the pontiff, the Sacred College, and the Pontifical Court, it being no longer possible to proceed on the present provisional footing.”—Christian Statesman.