STORY OF A TRAGEDY.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1838, 5 January 1920, Page 8

STORY OF A TRAGEDY.

"BAPTISM OF BLO0&" WAS POPE PIUS X. MURDERED? ALLEGATION OF GERMAN INTRIGUE. !• Mr Walter Littlefield, writing in the. /'New York Times" on November 9y iasks: Waa Pope Pius X. murdered?! IA French war priest, who has intimate connections with ihp Vatican, seems to i think he was, and has written a book to prove it. The priest is Abbe Daniel. jHe calls his book "Le Bapteme de Sang"—the baptism of blood —and | Michel, of Paris, publishes it. I To a well-known Italian prelate, now |in the United* States, the Abbe's story of tragedy was made known, and he jsaid:

"lam not'competent to pass on Monsieur I'Abbe's evidence. He presents, however, a plausible array of circumstantial evidence. Rumours of what he charges so directly have been afloat in our circle for some time. For example—and this is not a matter of rumour—it is known that until the great Consistory of 1911, the trend, of the Vatican, under the gentle ministrations of Cardinal Merry del Val had been distinctly away from English-speaking Catholics. His Eminence, as Papal Secretary of State, had taken the initial step which made an equitable adujstment of the French Concordat of 1801 —such as had been the ardent desire of Leo XIII. and Cardinal Rampolla—impossible. In the year before Consistory, which created two new American Cardinals, as well as a successor to Cardinal Vaughan at Westminster, his diplomatic manoeuvres had prevented"* the only living ex-President of the United States from having an audience with Pius X. "That, as subsequent consistories show, ended one phase of the Vatican's policy. Its complement, however, the | Teutonic "drang naeh Vaticano," continued until the spring preceding the War, when his Holiness, recovering from a. sudden, mysterious illness, began to assert himself. Wo all know he made an extraordinary effort to free himself from his Secretary of State, who had come to be known both in French and Italian circles as the "malfattore del Vaticano," and from the AustroGerman prelates who had gradually ; come to the Vatican. Rampolla being | dead, he sent in haste for Rampolla's I disciple, Cardinal Ferrata, who served the new Pope, Benedict XV., as Secretary for a few weeks. He survived Pius X. only about seven weeks—from August 20 till October 10, 1914r-and then died.

Pleading with Austria. "As to Mgr. von Gerlach, the fact that he was convicted by an Italian Military Court in June, 1917, for having conspired to blow up the battleship Leonardo da Vinci the year before, in the harbour of Taranto, is a matter of record. So is the fact that after he fled from the Vatican in January, 1917, two Italian agents ransacked his safe in Vienna and secured the documentary evidence which caused his conviction "in eontumacia" six months later and dealt a death blow to Austria's campaign of "sabotage" in the Peninsula. '' Nor is it any secret that Pius X., a few days before his death, is believed to have sent one—some say two —letters to Emperor Francis Joseph, imploring him to end the War, and threatening him with excommunication unless he did so. '' That last letter is said to have been composed by his Holiness, assisted by Cardinal Ferrata, on August 17. That night he was taken ill. He died on August 20 at 1.20 o'clock in the morning. According to the published report of the death scene there were with him at the end one of his sisters and Cardinals Merry del Val, Bisleti, Cagiano, Ferrata, and della Volpe. The last, who was Camerlengo, had been hastily summoned from Imola the day before. We have a report, nothing more, that the Holy Father said just before .his death: '' ' Now I begin to think, as the end is approaching, that the Almighty in His inexhaustible goodness wishes to spare me the horrors Europe is undergoing.' '' Those horrors were left for Benedict XV. to face. Mgr. von Gerlach was a private chamberlain under the late Pope. He retained that office under Pius's successor. When the Austrian fled to Vienna r Benedict, who had been loath to believe evil of him, said: "'lt is too bad. Gerlach was always so jolly, and seemed so frank and loyal.'

The Spanish Veto. "That is all I know, except, of course, the Spanish veto .-which was invoked by Emperor Francis Joseph at the demand of the German Emperor at the conclave of August, 1903, which elected Pius X. Eampolla had already received 62 votes, and would certainly have'been elected had it not been for the veto. It was eternally abolished by a Papal bull in the following year, with the heavy penalty of major excommunication for any Cardinal who should attempt to use it, or even venture to exert influence at a conclave at the behest of a foreign Government. But all .this is a matter of history. I may sayj however, that PAbbe Daniel would be more convincing if he had restrained somewhat the violence of his obvious modernism." Abbe Daniel declares that there was an Austrian plot at the- Vatican to bring impious and corrupt Prance back to the fold by a baptism of blood. All other considerations, even the Balkan diplomacy of Vienna and St. Petersburg, are not mentioned. The late- German Emperor, working through the Catholic Habsburgs, appears, in the story, to have been the cause of it aIL It began by the attempt to divert the obvious pro-French policy of Leo XIIL, who, after a pontificate of a quarter of a century, died in 1903, at the age of 93, and of his Secretary of Cardinal Mariano Eampolla der Tindaro. The first move was to prevent Eampolla from becoming Pope. The' second was to install the Spaniard, Merry del Val, at the Vatican as Secretary of State to Pius X. Both moves succeeded. For 10 years, I'Abba Daniel tells lis, Merry del Val ran the Vatican in the interests of Germany and Austria, subsidising newspapers, organising antiFrenen propaganda, selling, preferment.

German Gaolers. When the benign Fope; wh» had been Patriarch of Venice,, awoke he found himself "practkaJfy tire prisoner of his German gaolers. He found that he had broken with France and had alienated the English-speaking' world, and that the only policies his gaolers had allowed him to indulge in were an attempt to have Gregorian music prevail, the elevation of the United States from a "missionary country,'' a condemnation of the tangs, the specification of the kind of oil to be used is sanctuary lamps, and the regulation of Lenten meala. >''k • Amazed at the situation, the Pope summoned Bampola to ask his advice. This was on December 16, 19-13. On that day tile Cardinal had taken part in a religious ceremony; within 24 bonis he was dead. A strong box containing his private papers had. disappeared; als» one ■i&t ' T i»" servants. Neithel" waV evel traced. There "was talk of a post-mortem, bat

nothing came of it. Ami that is-all the evidence I'Abbe Daniel produces to confirm his assertion, that Rampolls,. % the Friend of France, "was murdered. Pins X. is described as living in constant fear of assassination. His peasant sisters brought him his meals-, which ha took- from their, hands ajeae.- "When he fell ill, fax the spring; the War, ha summoned to his bedside a physician of Venice, an; ohl friend*. That is .said to have annoyed del Val. But the Pope .soon recovered 1 " his hea'lth. He sought every possible means for dismissing his Secretary of State. /All were thwarted by; his German gaolers. . When the. Germans invaded, Belgium he had a violent seene. with Merry del Val, and declared that he waa going to the Front with an olive" branch in his hand and fling himself between the contending armies. The Secretary and the German prelates with .difficulty restrained him.- Then he sent a secret messenger to the Lateran Palace to bring Cardinal Ferrata, another to Vienna with a letter to Emperor Francis Joseph,- Ferrata came and was closeted with his Holiness.

"Not as Pope, but as Father." From August 6 until August 17 the* two old 4 men waited for news of the other messenger and the letter. Then they wrote another, which, in part, is said to read as follows:—

"I write not as Pope but as father. . . . I kiss your feet and implore you to forsake this impious War, this horrible iniquity. . . . O my erring son, all covered with blood, drenched in the tears of mothers and widows and orphans. . . . If I do not excommunicate you the curse of heaven shall yet fall upon j r our head."

They were interrupted in their composition, writes l'Abbe Daniel, by the Cardinal Secretary of State, his Eminence Merry del Val. Ferrata arose. The Pope waved him back to his seat and said in tones of thunder to the intruder: "He remains with me."

"Then it is I who must go," said Merry del Val quietly. That night the Holy Father fell ill. In three days he was dead. Ferrata had only onee left him; when he returned he found Mgr. von Gerlach leaving the chamber And that is all the evidence I'Abbe Daniel offers to support his assertion that Pope Pius X. met the alleged fate of Eampolla. Immediately, he tells us, steps were taken by the German and Austrian prelates at the Vatican to secure a Pope favourable to the Kaisers. The fatal veto, however, was a thing of the past, and at the conclave Ferrata was the favourite. Delia Chiesa, whose name came up in the last day, was elected as the result of a compromise and on the explicit understanding that he should have as Secretary of State Cardinal Ferrata. The new Pope, who took the name of Benedict XV., so appointed him.