Russia at Odds With the Vatican

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 12, 1912

Russia at Odds With the Vatican

RELATIONS between Russia and the Holy See are so strained just at present that a break of diplomatic intercourse is considered imminent, and the recall of Nicholas de Boulatzell, who for three years past has been accredited as Muscovite envoy to the Vatican, is almost assured.

Proselytizing, where it means the weaning of people from the state church of Russia, is sternly forbidden in the czar's dominions and is punished as a crime, and many Roman Catholic priests in Poland have been exiled for this offense.

Nicholas II has endeavored to increase the freedom of worship accorded to non-Russian creeds, and now complains that advantage has been taken of his liberality to convert no fewer than 500,000 persons from the Orthodox Greek rite to Roman Catholicism in Russia.

This looks, of course, as if there might be a revival of rigorous measures on the part of the imperial authorities against the Roman Catholic clergy in Russia, and as if before very long there would be again complaints of persecution, ridiculous as the idea seems now.—Correspondence of the Washington Post, Sept. 1, 1912.