THE POPE V. THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 27, 24 October 1884, Page 31

THE POPE V. THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT.

The Roman correspondent of the New York Sun writes as follows : Tbe SuDreme Court of Aucona has given a judgment by which the Pope has recovered half-a-million of francs which had been seized by the Bureau of Crown Lands and the Department of Public Worship in 1861. The history of this lawsuit is as follows : Three abbeys, San Lorenzo in Campo, San Gaudenzo in Barbara, and Castelleone in the Marches were suppressed by Gregory XVI. The spiritual jurisdiction of the abbots wa9 transferred to the Bishop of Pergola, and the three titles were reduced to only one— San Lorenzo Then by a special Bull QBonorum Omnium) May 20, 1837, the Pope leased all the estate of the said abbeys for ever to the Cistercian Order fur annual payment of 4,500 dollars to the Propaganda. When Signor Valerio, the Commissary of Victor Kmanuel, took possession of the Marches be abolishei all the religioiu orders, seized their estates, and consequently the annual lease of 4,500d015. fell into the hands of the Government. This money had been kept before by tbe Cardinal Administrator of the Propaganda as a special fund for the remuneration of literary or scientific works published in the Pontifical dominions, or for the support of old or infirm prelates who had been in the service of the Holy See. . The Cardinal Administrator of the Propaganda protested against the arbitrary seizure of this annual payment, which belonged directly to the Pope himself, and which was only kept for administration by the Propaganda manager. But the bureau pretended that this income came originally from estates belonging to religious orders, and therefore had been duly confiscated by the Government like the other propeities oE the same kind. Now after some useless attempts to persuade them that the abbeys could not exist in 1861, since they had already beenjmppressed by Gregory XVI. in 1837, a lawsuit was brought against the bureau, and the result is that Bignor Magliani, the Minister of Finance, has been ordered to pay back all the money unduly collected for the Propaganda, and to pay all the damages to the Cardinal Randi, actual administrator. . This order, together with the lo>t one given by the Supreme Court in favour of the^Neapoiitan Jesuits, will force oat of the Italian Government the sum of several millions, because many other arbitrary confiscations of the same kind have been committed, which must, of course, all be restored, with the payment of damages.