It is more than a week since last I put pen to paper. We were then
at Lucerne, amid the eternal hills. We are now in the Eternal City.
Into this short space much has been crowded--too much even to touch
on here or give in barest outline. There is the sublime scenery of
the Alpine Passes between Lucerne and Como, with the passage through
the great tunnel at St. Gothard's. There is Milan with its
marvellous Duomo, "a dream in marble," as some prose poet has
pictured it. There is the vast plain of Lombardy, stretching for
miles and miles from the foot of the Alps to the Mediterranean, the
garden of Italy, as Italy is the garden of Europe. Then there is
Venice, Queen of the Adriatic, the city of doges and of gondolas.
The doges are dead; we visited the church where monuments in marble
and in bronze enshrine their ashes and perpetuate all that now
remains of their former greatness--a fugitive and fitful memory. The
gondolas are still there, with their graceful, swan-like shape and
movement--just such as they were in the days when the Republic of
Venice was mistress of the seas. There, again, is Padua, with its
shrine of St. Anthony, whose incorrupt tongue still witnesses to the
power with which this "trumpet of the Gospel" heralded Christ and Him
crucified. There, too, is Loreto, with its Holy House, where the
Word was made Flesh--a most gracious shrine. Lastly, as we hasten
Romeward, midway between Ancona and Rome, amid the Umbrian hills, yet
another shrine draws us to itself--Assisi, where live the memories of
St. Francis and the spirit of St. Francis--live, too, as fresh and
fragrant as are the blood-bedewed roses that bloom on thornless
bushes in his garden, where he fought the good fight against
temptation and won for the men of all time the Pardon of the
Portiuncula.
Those of us who spent Wednesday in Assisi did not reach Rome until a
late hour that night. Imagine our surprise and almost consternation
when we were told that all the pilgrims were to be received in
audience by the Holy Father at eleven the next (yesterday) morning.
We had counted on being at least a day or two in Rome before the
audience took place, and we were not ready. We ran about for two or
three hours in the morning, buying medals, etc., to be blessed--I
with no little difficulty, getting English gold for the cheques
containing the Peter Pence offering of our diocese, some two thousand
one hundred and fifty francs. By eleven o'clock we are at the
Vatican, and half an hour afterwards Pope Leo enters the Sala
Clementina, borne on a chair, amid the 'evivas' of the assembled
pilgrims. There are two pilgrimages, the Brazilian, ranged along one
side of the great hall, and the Canadian along the other. First the
Pope receives the Brazilians, then the Canadians. He is carried in
his chair right around the hall, in front of the pilgrims who line
the sides. To each he gives his hand to kiss; to each his blessing
and some gracious token of tenderness--a word, a smile; to all, at
the close, the Apostolic Benediction. Pope Leo is of course changed
since I saw him last, sixteen years ago; the white hair is scantier
and whiter still, the lines on the face are deeper, the hands are
more tremulous, the voice has lost its resonance. But the light of
the coal black eye is not dimmed, there is more of pathos in the
voice, and the whole face has melted into tenderness. There has come
into it a gentler and more winning look, which one likens to the
mellowness of ripe fruit when it is ready to drop from the tree.
This fruit is surely meet to be gathered, one says to oneself, yet
none but the Master's hand may pluck it from the stem.
The scene in the Sala Clementina, at the close of the audience, as
the aged Pontiff blessed the pilgrims, I will not attempt to
describe. I shall never forget it, and no one who was there ever can
forget it. When the Pope raised himself on his chair and stretched
out his hand to give the Apostolic Benediction, there was a stillness
as of death throughout the vast hall--a stillness soon broken by
sobs, for tears filled the eyes of all that were there, and many wept
aloud. The first words were spoken in distinct though somewhat low
tones, but as the last words, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus
Sancti, were being uttered the Holy Father himself broke down
completely. The voice grew husky with emotion, the eyes closed, and
great tears rolled down the aged cheeks. Leo XIII felt that he was
blessing for the last time these faithful children of his from the
two Americas, and we felt that never in this life should we look upon
his face again. I must close abruptly, without as much as one word
about Rome itself- -Rome to which I have come, not merely as a
pilgrim from afar to a holy place of pilgrimage, but as a son comes
to his mother after long years of separation. For Rome is to me the
mother of my soul.
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