ROME.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 185, 13 October 1876, Page 7

ROME.

i At present there is great misery in Rome, and the hardest thing for the poor is their rent. Formerly a great deal of city property belonged to religious orders, or to chapters who would scruple to | raise the price of these humble rooms for the shelter of the indij gent. At that time a lodging for a whole family could be had for j five, six, or ten francs a month at most. But, since then, things j have been ameliorated. The possessions of the clergy have been ! sold, and the new proprietors, themselves overpowered with exces- | sive taxation, hasten to draw from these resources the greatest J possible profit, so that in any quarter of Borne a little, damp, close j cellar-room costs from 20 to 25 francs a month ; on the first floor i3oor 35 francs ; if there is a kitchen, a second room, the price goes up to 40 or 45 francs. How can the people take lodging at this price ? What follows ? That several families occupy, in common, the same floor, or often even the same rooms, to the great prejudice of their moral and 'physical health. They live therein a fearfully promiscuous manner; the rooms communicate, the beds are insufficient. What a source of depravity! The members of the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, when visiting a family whom they wish to relieve, before reaching the room which they occupy, are often obliged to pass through several i rooms inhabited by a series of other families. Examples are cited of apartments of five or six rooms containing a small cityful of working-people. The Government does nothing to remedy this state of affairs ; even the works which are in progress are of but little advantage to the Eoman population, the preference being given to laborers from Upper Italy. In presence of these facts, it is therefore not surprising that i the number of vagrants and of children half forsaken by their parents is constantly increasing; in the poorer quarters, as for instance that of the Monti, it may be said without exaggeration that their name is legion. They live thus without schools, idle, ragged, and exposed to every danger of soul and body. Under the Pontifical government this state of vagrancy was the exception; when a child was found thus left to itself, there was such a number of protectories, refuges, and institutions of all kinds that the only difficulty was to choose amongst them. Now all is changed ; nearly all the religious orders are dispersed; despoiled of their convents, ! deprived of all resources, what can be accomplished by the few j members who still remain, as if on sufferance, in their poor cells ' beside the churches ? | The protectories which still exist, through, taxes and iniposiI tions, and annoyances of all kinds, are forced to limit their beneficent action. — ' Le Propagateur Catholique.'