AN "INDIFFERENT'S" VERSION OF THE OUTRAGES ON THE PAPACY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 13, 18 July 1884, Page 9

AN "INDIFFERENT'S" VERSION OF THE OUTRAGES ON THE PAPACY.

.» A vert remarkable article recently appeared in the"* Paris Mgaro, "HhelFigaro is a paper like tbe New York Herald, not to be trusted. We give this extract, kindly furnished by " J. C.." to show that even Indifferents are moved to indignation by the position of the Holy Father— a position which Liberal Catholics misrepresent : — The enemies of the Papacy effect to be amused at " the prisoner of the Vatican in his thousand rooms." They confidently assure us that his imprisonment is wholly voluntary ; that there is no Italian law forbidding the Pope to come out of his " prison." Is this true ? No 1 The truth is, the Pope not only dare not leave his palace, but he dare not even show himself at one of the windows of that palace. This has been proven by notorious acts, and by witnesses above all suspicion. For instance : One day in 1874, Pius IX, appeared for a moment at an open window ; some young men, crossing the piazza of Bt. Peter "s, saw tbe white garments of the Pope, and saluted him by trying : Viva Pio Nona! Some of the rabble following of the Piedmontese usurpers protested. The youDg men who saluted the Pope were placed under arrest by the Piedmontese authorities, and some of them were actually banished from Rome ! Could Pius IX., then, who dare not show himself at one of the windows of his palace, leave his '• prison," if he pleased ? Again, in 1877, on the day of his election, Leo XIIL had the authorities asked if they could guarantee that order would be preserved, in case he, the newly-elected Pope, following the ancient r.ustom, should give iivhi et orbi, his benediction from tbe loggia of Vatican Basilica. What was the answer? Sr. Crispi, who was then Minister— the same Crispi who has lately uttered such violent threats against the Papacy— hastened to " decline the responsibility for any. thing tbat might happen." And 3urely the world does not forget the disgraceful scandal of the night of July 13, 1881, on the occasion of the translation of the body of Pius IX. from St. Peter's to St. Lawrence, without the walls. The funeral procespion was met with jeers and outrage, and attacked and stoned by the rabble. And in this same city of Borne where the Pope's freedom and respect were " guaranteed," the Lcga delta Democrazia could publish the next morning, with impunity, that the carcass of Pius IX. had been transferred to its last restingplace," and declare that " Pius IX. was an old imbecile." And it added : •' He personified the Catholic Church, to-day reduced to a state of the most monstrous stupidity. His funeral procession was hissed ; we applaud these hisses ; and we would applaud still more if the remains of the old imbecile had been flung from the St. Angelo Bridge into the Tiber." These outrages elicited from the Italia, a journal that certainly cannot be suspected of hostility to the Quirinal, this significant admission :"It is plainly evident that. the Pope is really a prisoner in the Vatican, and that he dare not leave it. If a dead Pontiff is exposed to such outrages, what would not hap Den to a living Pope, if he dared to show himself in public V And still, every day, there arc witnessed fresh outrages, attacks and provocations, on the platform and in the Press, with regard to' ! the Pope and the Holy See, that the Piedmontese spoliators solemnly) engaged to respect and defend. One day they demand "the abolition of the Papary ;' the nexr, they characterize Pius IX. as aa " infamous Pontiff," and his successor as a " liar " and " calumniator ;" or they call for " the suppression of the law of guarantees ;" or they proclaim, as did Crispi, a former Minister, and, for aught we know, a

future Minister, that " the Papacy is the enemy and the Pope the real enemy 1" It is" only tbe other day the Diritto demanded "a resolute application of the laws against the Pope and his partizans." At the same moment the Jfhnfidla, which is regarded as the organ of the Court of the Quirinal, spoke of " the incompatibility of the Vatiein with Rome." The violence of the usurper is daily growing bolder and more outrageous ; the situation of the Pope is becoming more and more " intolerable." It is no longer such brigands as Garibaldi and Alberto Mario, for instance, who outrage and threaten the Pope ; it is Crispi. the former Prime Minister ; it is no longer the revolutionary Lega : it is the Fmfidla and the Diritto. Senor Bongbi himself admitted as much nearly three years ago. in the Nuova Antologia of the 15th of August, 1881 : " Injuries and outrages," he wrote, " have been committed against the Pontiff time and again,' and in every shape and form in which the law could be violated, and I do not remember of a single instance in which these outrages have been punished." What would Senor Bonghi say to-day ? Since that day the Italian Government has not feared to violate even the law of guarantees, whose " opportunism," it appears, no longer seems quite so certain. It violated it in the Martinucci affair, when the Italian courts assumed to take cognizance of a case of purely Pontifical administration, and consequently outside their jurisdiction. And again, to-day, the Italian Government has violated the socalled law of guarantees in a still more flagrant manner, by its seizure of the Propaganda property. Despite the vehement protests of the Curia, and tbe notes of Cardinal Jacobini, the Court oC Cassation has coolly declared that the property of the Propaganda shall be converted into Italian bonds, that is to say, confiscated ; to be devoted, perchance, to the defrayment of a war against J?ranc«, by way of reward for her having created a •' united Italy," and permitted the spoliation of the Papal States 1 This latest attack of the Italian Government on the Papacy is all the more outrageou*, as the property of the Propaganda belongs to the Catholics of the whole world, by whose contributions for centuries it has been built up. The action of the Italian Government in confiscating it is exactly on a par with the acts of those professional Italian brigands who seize foreign tourists and cut their throats, if their friends do not ransom them. Are not all these acts, then— so many formal attacks on the sovereignty, liberty, and independence of the Holy See — in violation of the most solemn declarations and engagements 1