ROME LETTER

New Zealand Tablet, 19 August 1915, Page 15

ROME LETTER

(From our own correspondent.) June 9. A great many false rumors have' been circulated and offered to credulous readers concerning the Holy Father and the European war. One tells us that the Pope is about to call a European Peace Congress over which he himself will preside. Then comes the approaching departure of the Pope from Pome, and the transferring of the Apostolic See to Switzerland, or may be to the island of Malta. The burden of the song of the third of the series is the compilation of a work by a celebrated jurist and a high ecclesiastic to prove how legitimate is the intervention of the Holy Father in the Congress of Peace. According to a fourth we may soon expect from the Holy Father a White Book of an apologetic nature, in which all Papal documents on the European war will be given. This last originates, 1 believe, not from enemies of the Holy See, but from well-meaning people. On rather good authority, it has been stated that the Pope is preparing a species of White Book on the* diplomatic negotiations initiated bv the Vatican on the exchange of prisoners of war. Mow far tins may he true time will tell. THE COMMANDANT OF THE POPE’S NOBLE GUARDS. This morning the Confraternity of the ‘ Sacconi,’ after chanting tire Office for the Dead in their little church of San Teodoro at the foot oi the Palatine, and after attending the Solemn Requiem for the sold of Prince Camillo Rospigliosi, Commandant of the Pope Noble Guards, bore out to San Lorenzo the body of their confrere and laid it in their own vault beneath the yew trees. lie was an ideal type of Catholic gentleman, this head of an ancient and powerful Roman family. The hours spared from the management of his estates were given to the promotion ot the interests of religion, of charity, and of Rome. lie was a councillor of the Societv of St. Vincent de Paul and many similar societies; president for ten years of the Primary Roman Society for Catholic Interests; member of the Confraternity of the ‘ Sacconi,’ which is exclusively of noblemen and priests, and which buries its dead with a degree of poverty that even the PoorMan of Assisi could not but approve of ; artilleryman on the walls of Rome in 1870 in defence of Pius IX. against Victor Emmanuel’s army and Commandant of the Pontiff’s special guard for the past fourteen years. This head of the great Rospigliosi family has had a truly grand career. When his end came his family sent for the ‘ Sacconi ’ to lay out the body as the rules of this pious society prescribe. They did not vest it in the magnificent uniform of the Commander of the Noble Guards, nor did they place on the broad breast the decoration of the Order of Christ, the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta, or any of "the others given to Rospigliosi by several of the crowned heads Of Europe. But they robed the body in the habit of the ‘ Sacconi,’ made of brown canvas, and they laid it upon a linen sheet on the floor. A candle was lighted at the head, and another at the bare feet. This is how Prince Don Camillo Rospigliosi, like all the other ‘ Sacconi, lay in state in one of the large halls of his palazzo on the Quirinal Hill. FROM ROME TO THE SEA. Were Julius Caesar in Rome this week his heart should feel glad, not because the war cloud grows

blackermuch as the conqueror would enjoy taking a hand in it—but because one of his dearest plans is about to be realised. Rome is about to be joined to the sea. From the City Fathers on the Capitol the fiat has gone forth: an electric train is to run from the Piazza Venezia to Ostia in less than an hour. Everybody feels glad. The masses will be enabled to breathe the ozone occasionally. For though the sea, as the crow flies, is only a dozen or fifteen miles from the Eternal City, I feel inclined to think half of Rome’s 600,000 inhabitants never laid eyes on the ocean wave except from the heights of the Alban Hills on the ‘ festa ’ days when they went to Albano, Frascati, and Castel Gandolfo. But things have not worked out on Caesar’s plan. Julius Caesar paid no attention to such new-fangled things as steam trams or electric trains. His idea was to deepen the bed of old Father Tiber and thus enable substantial triremes —which should be rowed, of course, by slaves from Gaul, Anglia, and the banks of the Danubeto ply between Rome and the sea. Time is more precious now than when Caesar crossed the Rubicon. THE FUTURE. Are we at the beginning or in the middle of the European conflagration? Who knows? All 1 know is that the mails are often late and spasmodic, and that -frequently this Romo letter, which is mailed net nail v each week, plays queer tricks on the way. Though there was a, thought of suspending if- for some time, 1 think now it is well to continue as usual, even though it arrives late. People always like to hear of things in Rome, particularly when they hear the truth. There is no city in the world like ‘ the world of Rome. At least this is mv experience, and I have seen most cities that are worth seeing. NOTE. Among those received recently by Benedict XV. in private' audience wore Father Cimino, General of the Friars Minor, and Father Genocchi, Institute of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.