The Apostolic Basilicas

New Zealand Tablet, 26 January 1911, Page 169

The Apostolic Basilicas

Few feasts (writes the Rome correspondent of the Catholic Standard and' Times ) are observed with greater solemnity than that of the anniversary of the dedication of the Apostolic Basilicas, viz., St. Peter’s, the temple of Christendom, where the Prince of the Apostles sleeps, and St. Paul’s, on the Ostian Way, where he who ‘died and suffered more than all the other Apostles ’ finds rest at last. We need not dwell on the majestic ceremonies that characterised the feast; those only remotely acquainted with the elaborate details and magnificence with which such occasions are surrounded in the centre of Catholicity wdl readily understand all that. Let us dwell for a minute on the two great edifices themselves.

It is pretty difficult for some to realise that it took one hundred and seventy-six years to build St. Peter’- • that the main building alone cost £10,000,000 (at an era when labor and material were much lower than now) and that the annual expense of repairs alone runs into £SOOO, Hie interior, says Eaton’s Home , ‘burst upon our astonished gaze, resplendent in light, magnificence, and beauty beyond all that the imagination can conceive. ’ Its apparent smallness of size, however, mingled some degree of surprise, and even disappointment, with my admiration. But as i walked slowly up its long nave, empanelled with the rarest and richest marbles, and adorned with every art of sculpture and taste, and caught through the lofty arches opening views of chapels and tombs and altars of surpassing magnificence, I felt that it was indeed unparalleled in beauty, in magnitude and splendor, and one of the noblest and most wonderful works of man.’ No wonder Madame do Stael called St. Peter’s une musique fixee. The wealth of art that characterises St. Peter is not to be found in St. Paul’s, which is comparatively a modem building. .But still it is a veritable little world of marbles and painting. Space will not allow me to dwell upon the temple where the Apostle of the, Geniles lies, but there is one fact which should be proclaimed from the mountain tops to expose the shame of a degraded mi l corrupt Government. Like all the churches in Rome, except St. Peter s and St. John Lateran’s, which are still, by the Law of Guarantees, Papal territory, St. Paul’s' has been taken under the protection of the Italian Government and declared a national monument. The. Benedictines serve the Basilica, but dare do nothing to change the existing.order of things. Some twenty years or si ago the Government powder magazine exploded in the vicinity and shattered the windows of the magnificent edifice, and they have never been replaced. There is monev for evervtlnng but for the venerable church. For a monument to \ ictor Emmanuel 11., which has almost impoverished the peasants; for new zoological gardens that nobody asked for in Rome, while so many are on the brink of starvation ■ for archaeological ideas that are costing the ratepayers millions; in fact, for everything a Government built on fraud and violence finds money of late years, but to keen out the rain and wind from the Basilica of St. Paul there is not a sou. And yet tourists bring to Italy £20,000 000 a year! . . ; 3