Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 27 August 1914, Page 21

Current Topics

* 1 Bless Peace * | The late Holy Father was an earnest and powerful advocate of the cause of peace, and the interesting autograph letter on the peace movement which he not long ago addressed to Hie Delegate Apostolic in the United States will be fresh in the minds of all. Apropos of his attitude on the subject, what could have I been finer, or more characteristic of the man, than his beautiful reply to the Austrian request for his blessing on the troops about to fight. It is thus recorded in Monday’s cables: ‘At the beginning of the war the Austrian Ambassador saw the Pope and asked him to send his blessing upon the Austrian troops about to fight. The Popo did not reply. The Ambassador put the question three times, and the Pope replied: “I bless peace.” I The Pope's Estate \ From time to time the public arc regaled by antiCatholic writers with fairy tales about the fabulous wealth of the occupant of the Holy See. The actual facts tell a very different story. /Reuter’s correspondent,’ says a cable in Monday’s papers, ‘ advises that the Pope | left nothing to his family except an insurance policy I of 50,000 francs (£2000) in favor of his sisters.’ How | that policy came to be taken out is recorded in . our biographical sketch of the late Holy Father. The noble-hearted Pontiff knew money only for the good it would do in spreading Christ’s Kingdom on earth, and, instead of the miser’s selfish and solitary joy of possession, ho had the keener joy of dispersion, and of seeing earth’s dross work the work of heaven. He was of the truly great i ‘ Who live again , j In minds made better by their presence, live I In pulses stirred to generosity, | ' In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn iI j For miserable aims that end with self.’ I The Pope’s Face I Longfellow loved a face that had a story to tell. | ‘How different,’ says he in his Hyperion, ‘faces are in I this particular ! Some of them speak not. c They are I books in which not a line is written, save perhaps I a date.’ A glance even at the counterfeit present- | ments of Pius X. shown in our supplement amply S shows that his face was a face that speaks. The distinguished artist, A. Muller Ury, who painted the Holy Father’s portrait from special sittings, said: ‘ His face is one beautiful to a painter, for it combines the spiritual with a pleasing virility. The head' is one but seldom matched. He has the brow of a thinker. | Rut his eyes attract me most of all his features. They I , arc greenish, bluish, greyish in color, both large and | singularly and beautifully luminous. I have never || , seen a man with eyes quite like those of Giuseppe Sarto. j : Always kindly benevolence shines through them.’ Those l: who have seen the late Pontiff assure us that no portrait I 1 can convey the spirituality and benignity which illu- | mined his mobile countenance. Yet our engravings will |j enable the reader to understand what was meant by H Cervantes when he said of a good man whose bene- |l k volenco breathed from his countenance, that ‘he had a j|| » face like a benediction.’ ;| ! The Conclave j; I | Although by reason of the war, the time is, |1 humanly speaking, untoward and unpropitious, the I] arrangements for the conclave to elect a successor to I] Pius X are being quietly proceeded with. At this juncture ft] the following particularswhich have been abridged B| from the popular article on the subject in the Catholic |i Dictionary— precisely what those arrangements ft] are, how a conclave is conducted, and exactly under, B what conditions a papai.l election is carried out, will be read with interest. As everyone knows, the conclave H commences on the tenth day after the death of a Pope; H

but the proceedings may extend over quite a lengthy period. In the election of a Pope, there are certain conditions, the exact fulfilment of which is of the utmost consequence. These are such as the followingThat all those qualified to vote, and only those, should take part in the election that the election should not be unnecessarily delayed; that it should not be precinifnfed; that the electors should be in no fear for their personal safety, which would prevent the election from being free; lastly, that they should bo subjected to no external persuasion tending to make them vote, or at east come under the suspicion of voting, from motives lower than those which ought to actuate them. All these conditions, the regulations for the conclave fixed in 12 s endeavor, so far as human forethought can ensure it, to cause to be observed. After the death of a lope the Cardinals who are absent are immediately to be summoned to the conclave by one of the secretaries of the Sacred College the election is to begin on the tenth day after the death. In whatever city the Pope dies, there the election must be held. Within the ten days the conclave must be constructed in the Papal palace, or in some other suitable edifice. The large halls of the -palace are so divided by wooden partitions as to furnish a number of sets of small apartments (two for an dinary Cardinal, three for one of princely rank), all opening upon a corridor. Here the Cardinals must remain until they have elected a Tope. ♦ On the tenth day a solemn Mass of the Holy Ghost is said in the Vatican church, and after it the Cardinals form a procession and proceed to the conclave, taking up their respective apartments as the lot has distributed them. For the rest of that day the conclave is open; crowds of persons flock in and circulate among the apartments and corridors; and the ambassadors and delegates of foreign States, besides their personal friends, visit the Cardinals for the last time. In the evening everyone is turned out except the Cardinals and those authorised to remain with them, and the conclave is closed. This is done under the superintendence of two guardians of the conclaveone a prelate previously appointed by the Sacred College, who is called the Governor; the other a lay official, designated the Marshal. Each Cardinal is allowed to have two members of his household in personal attendance upon him ; these are called conclavists . A number of other attendants and minor officials a carpenter, a mason, a sacrist, a monk or friar to hear confessions, two barbers; eight or ten porters and messengers, and several others— are in the common service of the whole body of Cardinals. All the entrances to the building but one are closed ; that one is in charge of officials who are partly prelates, partly officials of the municipality, whose business it is to see that no unauthorised person shall enter, and to exercise a surveillance over the food brought for the Cardinals, lest any written communication should be conveyed to them by this channel. After three days, the supply of food sent in is restricted ; if five more days elapse without au election being made, the rule used to be that the Cardinals should from that time subsist on nothing but bread, wine, and water ; but this rigor has been somewhat modified by later ordinances. Morning and evening, the Cardinals meet in the chapel, and a secret scrutiny by means of voting papers is usually instituted in order to ascertain whether any '.candidate has the required majority of two-thirds. A Cardinal coming from a distance can enter the conclave after the closure, but only if he claim the right of doing . so within three days of his arrival in the city. Every actual Cardinal, even though he may be under a sentence of excommunication, has the right/ to vote, unless he has not yet been admitted to deacon’s orders. Even in this case, the right -.of voting has sometimes been conferred by special Papal indult. There are three valid modes of election scrutiny, by compromise, and by what is called quasi - inspiration (or acclamation). Compromise is, when all the Cardinals agree to entrust the election to a small committee of two or three members of the , body. Scrutiny is the ordinary mode ; and although, since the thirteenth century, elections have usually been made

by this mode with reasonable despatch, yet in times of disturbance, the difficulty of obtaining a two-thirds majority has been known to protract the proceedings over a long period, as in the celebrated instance of the conclave of 1799, described in Consalvi’s Memoirs, which lasted six months, resulting in the election of Pius VII.