Mourning over Leo

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 38, 17 September 1903, Page 2

Mourning over Leo

It has been said that Leo XIII. was the first Pope that the Protestant world has known. Leo gave to the Papacy a temporal prestige such as it had never known since the Piedmontese troops entered the Eternal City through the breach in its walls in 1870. The mantle of his far-spreading charity extended to the separated Churches of East and West, and, largely through him, the Protestant denominations, for the first time since the Reformation, laid aside to a great extent the old bogie fear of the Papacy, forgot to refer to the occupant of St. Peter's Chair as the ' Man of Sin ' and ' Son of Perdition,' and joined in eulogy and sorrow around his open grave. When the last and long-expected summons came, the aged Pontiff received it in the spirit which found expression in the words of the Catholic poet Davenant :— ' O harmless death, whom still the valiant brave, The wise expect, the sorrowful invite, And all the good embrace, who know the grave A short, dark passage to eternal light ! ' The mails during the past two weeks convey a pleasing idea of the wondrous change which has come over the spirit of the non-Catholic world in reference to the Papacy. Not alone the secular papers, but the Protestant press and pulpit, and non-Catholic officialdom, in Great Britain, America, etc., ha\e vied with each other in eulogies of the late Pontiff. Of the many poetic tributes to hisi >mory that appeared in the non-Catholic press of Englana and America, we extract the following stanzas from the pages of ' Punch, the London Charivari ' :— ' The long day closes and the strife is dumb, Thither he goes where temporal loss is gain, Where he that asks to enter must become A little child again. ' And, since in perfect humbleness of heart lie sought his Church's honor, not his own, All faiths are one to share the mourner's part Beside the empty throne. ' High Guardian of the mysteries of God, His circling love enwrapped the human race ; For every creed the Pontiffs lifted rod Blossomed with flowers of grace. ' The nations' peace he had for dearest cause ; Kings from his counsel caught a starry sign ; Cluisthke he fostered loyalty to laws, These earthly, those divine.' And it concludes by saying that ' so shall the heart of grief not soon be cold ' for the venerable old Pontiff who woiked his work and went to his rest in the fulness of labors, years, and honor.