THE POPE AND THE ALLIES

New Zealand Tablet, 29 March 1917, Page 31

THE POPE AND THE ALLIES

A sensation has been caused in Rome (says the Universe) by the eloquent sermon of Father Draghetti, a Franciscan friar, which ended with a prayer for a victorious peace for Italy and the Allied armies. The peculiarity of this event is that for the first time such a sermon has been openly preached in the Pope's own diocese, and, as the Franciscan friar gave his congregation to understand, with more or less direct approval by the Pope. The sermon was delivered in the church of Sant Andrea della Valle, before a crowded congregation, and the preacher, after thrilling his hearers by his words of patriotism, faith, and enthusiasm, was applauded spontaneously by the entire congregation, who rose to their feet as he concluded with an impassioned appeal that all the blood shed on the battlefields for the cause of humanity and Christian civilisation by the Allies should not be shed in vain.

Such a demonstration is extremely unusual in Catholic churches, and is all the more striking because it occurred in Rome. Many officers and soldiers were in the congregation, and they were the first to rise and applaud. The preacher's concluding words, as he turned towards the image of Christ, were:

' I pray for our soldiers and sailors on land and on sea, who, for their fathers and their mothers, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, for their country, and for true Christian civilisation, face the enemy like walls of steel, and I pray that they may have victory which will bring peace to our country, a victorious peace for all the Allies.'