THE GOLDEN HAMMER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 9, 1 March 1900, Page 28

THE GOLDEN HAMMER.

'1 lie {/(/Men hammer which the Pope uses is a precious piece of goldsmith's work, and, besides a work of art. is a manifestarion of symbolical talent that the Italian episcopacy offers to the Pontiff. Hut besides this there are three other hammers offered him for the opening of the doorways in the other churches. The French Catholics hi\e given that for St. John Lateran, the work of a celebrated goldsmith of Lyons ; the clergy and Catholic laity of Italy that tor St. Mary the Greater, made on the design of the architect Collamarini ; and the Catholic laity of the German Empire that for St. Paul's. The last opening of the holy doorway was celebrated, as we have said, in ]S2.~> and a copperplate engraving of the ceremony of that year exhibits the Pontiff, Leo XII., in the act of striking with his golden hammer the fragile wall which closed up the doorway. Some old people now living, who were then in Rome, remember the ceremony of that year, when the Pontiff, in penitence, proceeded barefoot to the tomb of St. Philip Neri, and went also to \va«h the feet of the poor in the hospital of Trinita dei Pellegrini, and to perform other works of charity and humiliation.