AN IMPORTANT INTERVIEW.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 43, 14 February 1890, Page 11

AN IMPORTANT INTERVIEW.

(Liverpool Catholic Times').

Me. Stead's " Letters from the Vatican " have, on the whole, been a very poor performance. When he went to Rome his admirers declared that he was going to emulate Mr. Beatty-Kingston's fea 1 ; of interviewing the Pope, and that he would secure from Leo XIII. some communications at least as epoch-making as the famous Gordon interview at Southampton. Well, Mr. Stead has come back without interviewing the Pope. Instead of giving him a special audience with his Holiness, the people at the Vatican hurt his feelings by giving him a pamphlet with which he could not agree, and so he returned proclaiming his disgust at reactionary Cardinals and Monsignori who did not appreciate the power and importance of the Press, and especially of the Pall Mall Gazette. But he held a tramp card in reserve, and this week he has played it, and it takes the form of a really important interview with Cardinal Parocchi, the Vicar General of Rome. This interview is the one grain of wheat in that huge bundle of chaff, the " Letters from the Vatican." Unable to interview the actual Pope, Mr. Stead natters himself that in Cardinal Parocchi he has interviewed the man who has tb.2 best chance of being the next Pope. The interview 19 important because the Cardinal has been so good as to reid the proof Bheets before it waß published. He pkased Mr. Stead by speaking strongly of English injustice to Ireland, whilst at the bauie time declaring himself an admirer of English ideas. In some thin'. 6, be haul, Englishmen were more C <mervative than he hitmclf was; thus ho could never understand the English objection to a codification ot the law. Then ilr. Strtiu, who naturally regards all Italian (Jaulinal.s <-n obsearintists and reactionaries, was sin prised to near the Cardinal-Vicar declare that his idea ot liberty was " Liberty a<3 111 London and New York." He further agreed with his interviewer on ilu great power of tho Pret-8, and told how at the Vatican a pioject had been recently entertained, and mi^ht be still realised, of a greU Catholic-news-paper having an official charactei. 'Ihe tcheme had been po<tponed, but, said the (Jaidinal, "a bhort time aj;o we ha-l arrangements almost completed for the public Uion of a great internauujal journal at Rome which was to have been tetraglot — tnat is to have been published in four languages Italian, French, English, German — a journal whoso function would have been to have disseminated the truth, and to have defended the Holy Sjc a^aiast its enemies, and still more against its friends, who are much the more uangerouh." Mr. Stead did not prcis tr.e Cardinal tor ?n explanation of this last phrase, but he drew fiom him what one may call advanced opinions on more than one social gui sUon. The editor of the Pall Mall tiazciii has decidedly "scored" wnh this interview. The only awkward point for him is that Cardinal Parocchi's statements, and his own commeuts thereon, are somewhat at variance with his previous descriptions of the hopeless backwardness of all at the Vatican from a political point ot view. Mr. Stea lis just beginning to discover that there are men at the Vatican, and in ihe immediate entourage of his Holiness, who can real the bignp of the times, and are in vouch with the great movements ot the day, This interview with Cirdinal Parocchi bhows that Mr. Stead has alriady learned a little of this. Catholics knew it long ago.