THE TOPE'S ACTIVITY.

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 40, 15 August 1918, Page 2

THE TOPE'S ACTIVITY.

Cardinal Bourne, Archbishop of Wsstminster, at St. Dominic's Catholic Fed oration :—

"The statement has been made that j the Holy Father lias never raised his voice against any of the atrocities that have been committed at the hands of our enemies. Of course, that is untrue. At the beginning of the war every single paper in Italy was under the control of the Gennaiv,. am] every business organisation in Rome \v;is undfir German control :nio. fn'l "of Ofirmans. Kavly in November. 1914, the Pope protested in various fonn.v-snd has been prctestiniT ever since—but it must bo understood that the Holy Father, who has to -weigh every word he uses, cannot protest except on fads fully established. He cannot act as a newspaper <faes. On' ths feast of Cm-pus .Cbristi 111 1916 a party of Allied airmen—not British—went to Karlsruhe during the nrocession and killed 120 people, and 146 were wounded, mostly women and children. That was a fact as far as could bo ascertained. 'The Germans naturally pat their own interpretations on this affair. What I believe to be the cause of this affair was that a hospital had been bombed' D> r v'"ay of reprisal, and the French, very naturally, bombed a German town. Then, on tho Saturday beteo WhitSunday, for the first time, Cologne was bombed. Another ; point raised by the newspapers is that the Pops made no request to the Germans not to bomb the French on the occasion of the samefeast. That again is untrue. The telegram that the Holy Father sent was : 'His Holiness is persuaded that all the j belligerents will have special regard to the solemnities of that day.' In France, I Corpus Christ i was kept, not, on Thursj day, but on Sunday, but that circumstance was not mentioned in the allusions that had been made."