JUSTICE EVEN FOR THE POPE

New Zealand Tablet, 31 October 1918, Page 10

JUSTICE EVEN FOR THE POPE

(By J. C. Walsh, in America.)

LIGHTEN THE GERLACH CASE.

• . What Pope Benedict XV. himself thinks of the campaign of calumny waged against him. he has permitted the world to know,-if the world wants to know. On May 18, 1918, in a letter to Cardinal Ferrari ' and the bishops of ' Lombardy (Italian bishops accused like himself), his Holiness speaks of “the insidious and crafty campaign of calumny and hatred against Our person and Our work. In the words of the Sacred Scriptures; ‘What, is there that I ought to do more to my vineyard that I have not done to it?’” He expresses resentment against “the crazy and absurd calumnies which, under many and varied forms,. licly and secretly, by word of mouth and in writing, are being spread everywhere.” With reference to Italy, first, naturally, in his affections, the Pope, prisoner of the civil power though he holds himself to be, describes a condition which is more or less existent in every country where these attacks, first upon the Papacy and eventually upon the Church, are made: “At the very moment when Italy should have so much need of peace and concord among all citizens, the enemies of religion, actually taking advantage of this unhappy , time, are striving to stir up the ignorant and simple multitude against this seat of truth and justice, against the clergy, against the Catholics, sowing the seeds of discord among the different social classes,” Allowance made for difference in degree, the description fits conditions found much nearer home than Italy. And the answer Benedict XV. makes to all this is precisely what every Catholic would wish the answer to be: ‘‘Against this diffusion of calumnies and hatred we protest anew, and we. denounce it before the conscience not only of the Faithful but of all honest men wherever honest men are found.” The classification ■evidently does not include those who are continuously employed in criticising the Vatican, for there is absolutely no indication that any of them have taken the slightest notice of this letter to the Bishops of Lombardy. It is useful to note that the. Pope’s protest is not directed against the constituted political authorities in Italy. There is good reason. Wherever and whenever the constituted political authority has had to express an opinion concerning the Vatican itself or the Church in Italy, the verdict has been unequivocal. If there was a real grievance against the Vatican the military court that had the Gerlach case before it had an unequalled opportunity for proclaiming the grievance to the world. Had the Church in Italy really been in conflict, active or passive, with the civil power, the Prime Minister had a most favorable opportunity, during the panic after Caporetto. to affirm the Church's contumacy. The facts are that the military tribunal went out of its way to exonerate the Vatican, and that Signor Orlando went out of his way to proclaim the loyalty of the Italian Catholic clergy. In the weeks before the Gerlach case was cleared up there must have been many dark hours. Mgr. Gerlach was an official in residence at the Vatican. Tie was one of many hundreds, but he was there. His office, chamberlain of the wardrobe, brought him close to the person of the Pope. He abused the confidence that was placed in him. He did consort with a hostile organisation in Switzerland, he did p l ot against Italy’s safety, he did participate in Rome in the execution of plans for the consummation of which some of his associates were shot as traitors. This was a case where the condemnation of an individual was eminently just, but a case also where that condemnation could easily have been extended, as so many of the auti-Papal propagandists have extended it,to include the Papacy,’ the Vatican, the Church in Italy, the Church everywhere. Yet here is the considered judgment of the Italian military tribunal touching the bearing of the case upon the Vatican and the Holy See—- " The tribunal sees no need tf> go Info the question

raised by the defence concerning the objective immunity of the diplomatic mailbag of the Vatican, or concerning the exceptional claim of the impossibility of proceeding with regard to Gerlach from the point of view of the extraterritoriality of the place occupied by the Holy See and of the personal immunity of Gerlach himself on account of his official position. Primarily such an exception in the case of one who is not present to meet the charge against him does not present any judicial interest worthy of notice with regard to the cases of those who are present to meet the charge. > In any case, the evidence given has shown most clearly how Gerlach, successfully evading by means of artful expedients the strict orders of the ecclesiastical authorities,'-..and betraying their confidence, used his own means for the despatch of secret correspondence and for his other unlawful acts and those means were not connected in any way with the arrangements of the Vatican mailbag. Nor is it shown in any way that his guilty acts were carried out in the precincts of the Vatican, much less that they were rendered possible by the fact that they took place in the territory of the Holy See, which is not connected in the slightest way with the events which form the subject of the present judgment. Furthermore, it is established that there is no connection at all between the acts alleged against Gerlach and the ecclesiastical duties, whatever these might lie, with which ho was charged.” So, when Mgr, Gerlach set out to conspire against Italy, for which offence he was condemned, after he had fl u],- to hard labor for life, this Italian court held that his position near the Pope had nothing to do with his acts, that the Vatican was not the scene of his pernicious activities, that he did not work under cover of the Vatican’s diplomatic privilege even in sending letters out of the country, that he ignored and evaded the strict order of his superiors in the Vatican, and that he betrayed the confidence reposed in him by those whose commands he set at naught. And yet a whole year later, for this judgment was rendered in June, 1917, a writer is permitted in the New York Journal of Commerce to make the Gerlach episode a capital indictment against the Pope ; and by so attacking the Pope to cast doubt upon the sincerity of a- patriotic announcement made by the three American Cardinals. Is it fair to the Pope ? Is it fair to the Cardinals ? Is it fair to American Catholics ? Is it fair to the country in its hour of strain ? Could an enemy ask anything more conducive to discord ?

Similarly, after the Italian arms failed at Caporetto, when anger and disappointment sought a scapegoat, when the Government of Italy reeled under the blow, when the Socialists set no limits to their calumny of the Pope and the Church, when panic-stricken war correspondents were frantically cabling the only explanation of defeat they thought likely to find acceptance, when there was talk of driving the Pops to Spain, it would have been easy for the Ministry of the day to transfer the blame to other shoulders than its own. Such things had happened before, not in Italy alone; and such things were to happen again, not in Italy either. It was not known then, it was not known in March of this year, nor in May of this year, that Caporetto saw the first western application, as Picardy saw the second and the Aisne the third, of new tactics devised in the east and tried out at Riga. The military critics know it now, but then they did not know it. Premier Orlando did not know it, and yet Premier Orlando was constrained to say from his place in the Chamber of Deputies—

1 “I deplore the accusations of a general character made by the Hon. Signor Pivolini against high ecclesiastical personages—accusations that tend to hurt the supreme spiritual authorityagainst priests and against the Catholic party. Such accusations are unjust and offensive, because, as the public is aware, the Italian clergy, both high and low, have given noble and beautiful proofs of Italian sentiments, and the great mass of Catholics have known how to reconcile the dictates of faith with their duties towards their country.’

Those who profess to be trying the Pope in the

balance.never .mention this speech by Premier. Orlando. They are still serving up as unchangeable evidence' the statements cabled by American correspondents as the Italian armies in retreat poured back across the Isonzo and the Tagliamento. What they said then is what “everybody knows” now. Signor Orlando’s disclaimer goes for s nothing. The censor was very indulgent towards those despatches attacking'the Pope. If . the censor knew that the mischief done could never be repaired the knowledge did not worry him. How different it was when the blame for dangerous conditions lay elsewhere. In the summer of 1917 there were mutinies in the French army, but we were never permitted by the censor to know of it. The truth came out only the other day, during the trial of Malvy. The blame has been brought close home to the Masonic junta which has made and unmade ministries in France. Not only were the mutinies not explained ; they were not even mentioned. The same elements, Socialist and anti-Catholic, as it turns out, were at work in France in June as were at work in Italy in October. In France they kept their counsel until the real culprits were exposed. From Italy the correspondents were permitted, or encouraged, to condemn in haste those whom time proved to be innocent. But however innocent, the Pope can still rightly complain that “the insidious and crafty campaign of calumny and hatred against Our person and Our work” goes on. Why? Because it is his person and because it is his work ? There is no other allexplaining reason.