The Popedom | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Jul 29, 1862

The Popedom.

By the Popedom we mean the temporal power of the Papacy. This now exists only in the merest shadow—having been reduced down to the nominal control of Rome and a very limited outside territory. And even this is now held by a most tenuous grasp. Archbishop Hughes, of N. Y. city, now in Rome, has written a document in defense of the Papal temporal dominion, which has been signed by some three hundred cardinals and bishops, and has made quite a sensation in Italy. The following item, clipped from some source to us unknown, by the Boston Journal, thus speaks of the effect of this address on the parliament of Victor Emanuel:

“The remarkable address was written by Archbishop Hughes, of New York, in behalf of the Catholic world, and more particularly of Italy, affected more than any other country upon earth by the question of the temporal power of the pope, and signed by the three hundred cardinals and bishops now congregated at Rome. In this address archbishop Hughes asserts that the temporal power of his Holiness, being granted to him by a peculiar desire of divine Providence, all the nations of the earth combined are powerless against it; that Rome and the Papal domain do not belong to Italy, but to the Catholic world, and that they can never cease to be its property.”

These arguments seem to have wounded to the quick the patriotism of the Italians, for on the 18th of June last the parliament of Turin presented an address to Victor Emanuel, stating that, “assembled for the purpose of making the rights of their country respected, they hoped his majesty would take the necessary measures to stop such pretensions as those announced in the cardinals’ address, and to prevent the Roman question to be any longer a cause of trouble for consciences, and of danger for the peace of the world.”

Every indication betokens the near end of the Popedom, so far as any temporal power is in question.—Ad. Herald.