Pope Pius XI and Ireland

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 33, 23 August 1923, Page 21

Pope Pius XI and Ireland

(By J.M.H., in the London Catholic Times \

Has it struck the reader, these months, that Italy and Ireland are at one and the same time the oldest and the youngest countries in Europe? Yet so it is. Both countries are engaged in building up industrial enterprises. Italy in the past few months has opened an export market with Ireland, shipping her wines, machinery of all kinds, and macaroni direct from Genoa and Naples to Dublin and Cork. Both countries were up to a little while ago run by foreign capital. Milan and Genoa were run by German capital, and English capital dominated Ireland. To-day thank Heaven, each of them can say: "I now stand on my own resources, willing and able to work out my destiny.'"' Italy's Religious Sympathy. During the dark years between 1916-21 Catholic Italy gave her fullest sympathy to Catholic Ireland. A nation that suffered so much for conscience' sake could not but gam Italy s heart The last public subscription given by lope Benedict XV. was sent to the White Cross Fund opened for Ireland. A few.weeks later his body was laid to rest in the grottoes of St. Peter's. And it is worth our win e to know that during these later weeks of 1923 when civil dissension tore Ireland there was a Mass daily offered up for Ireland s welfare and tranquillity in a small private oratory on the third story of the Vatican Palace The priest who offered up the Holy Sacrifice was Pope Benedict's successor, Pius the Eleventh. eueuici a The Pope Reads and Writes Irish. Since the days of the Popes in centuries long past when wine from the royal Pope" came to Ireland in the shape of arms and money and powder no Pontiff, I venture to •say, has taken a more practical method of knowing the people of Ireland than his Holiness Pius the Eleventh He reads and writes the Irish language. A s a notable historian he made a close study of Erin's history. One of his most charming brochures was penned on St. Columbanus. And not many moons ago he commissioned a prelate from he South of Ireland to collect and publish all the details that the libraries of Italy could yield up on the lives of the old Irish missionary saints who labored and died in the sunny South. From St. Cathaldus, Bishop, who sleeps in his adopted spot on the east coast of Italy (and whose name m plain English, it is not necessary to point out ™ Patrick Cahill, from Co. Waterford, to St. Cdumbanus at Bobbio-they are all as well known to the present occupant of the Chair of St. Peter as they are to most Celts. The Celebrations at Bobbio It was at Bobbio, one of the suffragan dioceses of Genoa that Father Achilla Ratti drew the LpiralTtha urged him to learn the native tongue of St. Columbanus No wonder, then that the people and clergy, of the diocese are observing this very month the recurrence of the thirteen h centenary of the death of St. Columbanus *ith as much solemnity as if the sturdy old Irishman died amongst them only yesterday. His death occurred in 615, and therefore the centenary should have been .observed in 1910. But a * Italy entered into the European arena in this year, Bobbio had to defer the observance of it until 1923 Not until next September will the official observance of the centenary be duly held. Italian Lectures on the Life of St. Columbanus But m preparation for this the Bishop of Bobbio, Right Rev. M. Calchi-Novati,.has organised a cycle of lectures to be given in his diocese on the Irish Abbot, Patron of Bobbio by the greatest orators in Italy. The first of these lectures was delivered by the Hon, Achille Pellizari, Deputy of the Second Chamber, member of the Popular Party and Professor of the University of Genoa, at the beginning of May in presence of the Bishop,, his Vicar-General, and the elite of the clergy and people of this ancient diocese. And at the conclusion of his account of the life and labors of the old Irish Abbot in Bobbio the Italian orator, amid a scene of intense enthusiasm, prayed that the clouds over the native land of Columbanus had now lifted for ever. Italy's Political Sympathy. More sympathy was shown by political Italy towards Ireland during the 1916-21 period than by any other State

in Europe. Other States on the Continent had had more reason, because of historic ties, to manifest openly sympathy with this small nation. But the fact remains that public sympathy was more open and spontaneous among Italians. It seems their warm, quick sympathies felt compelled to leap out to bleeding Ireland. The cry of "Viva l'lrlanda" was sure to set the Chamber ablaze. And on the evening that news of the death of Terence MacSAviney, Lord Mayor of ' Cork, became known in the Chamber of Deputies at Rome a large number of the members rose to their feet in silence as a sign of homage to the great dead.' Let me add that on that same day the Auxiliary Bishop of Paris refused the parish priest of the Madeleine permission to have a Solemn Requiem for the soul of Lord Mayor MacSwiney on the plea, forsooth, that "we cannot enter into politics." Pius XI. in Ireland. It is generally known that Don Achille Ratti visited England at least once. But it is not generally known that the future Pope was in Ireland. His visiting card has been found among those of distinguished visitors in past years to the library of the Royal Irish Academy. It is scarcely likely that an ecclesiastic who went to the trouble of learning one of the most difficult languages in Europe would neglect inspecting the ancient manuscripts of Ireland.