Catholicism in England. "If there is any Church in the whole
Christian world," he wrote in January 1912, on the occasion of the
founding of the two new ecclesiastical provinces of Birmingham and
Liverpool, "which merits the special care and forethought of the
Apostolic See, it is certainly the Church of the English, which,
happily founded among the Britons by St. Eleutherius[*] and still
more happily established through apostolic men by Gregory the Great,
was subsequently made famous by the numbers of its children
distinguished by the holiness of their lives or by the martyr's death
courageously suffered for Christ."
[*] History scholars seem now agreed that the story of a mission sent
to Britain by Pope St. Eleutherius in the later second century rests
on a misunderstanding. Christianity was certainly introduced into
Britain during the Roman occupation, but the circumstances are not
known.
"It is with the greatest pleasure that I greet you, my dear children
of Great Britain," he said at an audience given to four hundred
English pilgrims presented to him by Cardinal Bourne, Archbishop of
Westminster, "worthy descendants of your Catholic forefathers who
during ten centuries remained constantly faithful to the Church and
the Holy See, and who by the purity of their faith and by personal
holiness gave many saints to God. And although through the blind
passion of an unworthy king your country fell into schism, the Faith
is still alive in her midst, for are you not the children of those
valiant Christians . . . who gave their lives for the truth, and won
for Great Britain her title of the Island of Saints?"
The beatification of Joan of Arc in April 1909 was one more token of
the pope's love of another country that had given so much for God,
and the presence in Rome of forty thousand of her children was a
further proof of her true spirit. And when, borne in the _sedia
gestatoria_ through the crowd, the Holy Father, leaning forward,
lifted the fold of the French flag that had been lowered at his
passage and reverently kissed it, the enthusiasm knew no bounds. That
flag had stood for much that was not noble; the memory of its origin
was still in the minds of many. But by that kiss it was consecrated
for ever.
Monsignor Blanc, a Marist missionary in Oceania, wrote thus to his
clergy after an audience with Pius X: "My attention was completely
captivated by his expression and his eyes. I could not tell you what
the room was like nor what the Holy Father wore; I could see nothing
but those eyes, and the light of them I shall never forget. He made
me sit beside him, and I spoke of our people, our natives, the
country that I love. If the life of the missionary is sometimes hard,
let us remember that the pope has said 'the missions are my great
consolation.' He was full of interest in all I had to tell him of
your work, your zeal and your devotedness. I spoke of our schools and
he was delighted. 'Tell them to devote themselves there without
counting the cost,' he said: 'it is the most important thing of all."
With touching graciousness and cordiality he gave his blessing to
you, to our people, to all for whom I asked it."
"You cannot go near him without loving him," said another priest,
"his kindness and sweetness are irresistible." Father Boevey Crawley,
a South American priest and an ardent apostle of devotion to the
Sacred Heart of Jesus, went to Rome to obtain the pope's blessing on
his mission. His story was a strange one. Attacked while quite young
by a serious form of heart disease, he was sent to Paris to consult a
specialist. The American doctors had told him that he had but a few
months to live; the Paris specialist confirmed their verdict. Father
Crawley had an overwhelming devotion to the Sacred Heart and to St.
Margaret Mary. He went straight to Paray-le-Monial to ask through her
intercession the grace of a holy death. Scarcely had he knelt in the
chapel when he felt himself shaken from head to foot. He was cured.
That night while kneeling in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament he
received a divine intimation that he was to go forth and conquer the
world, family by family, to love the Sacred Heart. To preach love was
henceforward to be his mission, for what is devotion to the Sacred
Heart but love of the love of Christ? The conversion of his father,
who was a Protestant, was the first fruit of his apostolate.
Kneeling at the pope's feet, he told him the story of his life,
asking permission to begin the work to which he was called. Pius
listened with the deepest interest. Then, "No, my son," he said, "I
do not give you permission."
Father Crawley looked up at him in consternation; the pope's eyes
were shining, and there was a little smile lurking in the corners of
his mouth. "But, Holy Father . . ." pleaded the priest.
"No," repeated the pope, "I do not give you permission."--"I do not
give you permission," he said again. "I _order_ you to do it. You
hear? I am the pope, and I command it. It is a splendid work; let
your whole life be consecrated to it."
"He had the greatest heart that it was possible for a human being to
have," was said of Pius X, not once but many times. Even for
treachery he had no condemnation. A betrayal of trust which had
affected him deeply came to his knowledge after the death of the
culprit. Folding his hands he prayed silently for the departed soul.
"He is dead," he said gently, "may he rest in peace." He met with a
sad smile an indignant accusation of treachery against one who was
still living, an accusation which could not be denied. "Traitor is a
hard word," he said, "let us say that he is a man of many skins--like
an onion . . . ."
One more picture drawn from life. A young priest, tortured by doubts,
knelt shaken with sobs at the pope's feet. The white figure bent
compassionately over the kneeling man, the strong and gentle hands of
the Holy Father held the head of the suppliant closely to his heart.
"Faith, faith, faith," repeated the ringing voice over and over
again. "Faith, my son, must be your place of refuge."
XI
THE POPE OF THE SUFFERING
As a young parish priest at Salzano, Giuseppe Sarto during the
cholera epidemic of 1873 had been the stay and comfort of his people.
Consoling the grief-stricken, nursing the sick, burying the dead,
utterly regardless of his own safety, his one thought had been for
his suffering parishioners. This compassion for every kind of pain or
sorrow was characteristic of him throughout his life. Not without
reason was it said that he had "the greatest heart of any man alive."
The very sight of suffering moved him to tears; there was no trouble
of body or soul that failed to awaken his sympathy.
While patriarch of Venice he was walking one day through one of the
poorest quarters of the city when suddenly from a house at the end of
a mean street arose the piercing cries of a child who was being
cruelly beaten by its mother. The cardinal strode down the street and
pulled the bell vigorously. A window opened overhead and from it
appeared the head of a. woman, a regular virago, crimson with fury
"Stop beating that child at once!" was the indignant mandate. The
woman, astounded at seeing the patriarch standing on her doorstep,
shut the window in confusion. For some time there was no more beating.
Anything like tyranny roused his instant indignation. When reports
too circumstantial to be doubted reached him about the condition of
certain Indian tribes in South America and of the atrocious treatment
to which they were forced to submit, the bishops of the country were
exhorted to do their utmost to put an end to what was nothing less
than a cruel slavery. "Every day I receive fresh news of the
persecution in Asia Minor and in Macedonia," he said one day
sorrowfully at a private audience. "How many poor Christians are
massacred! What cowardice and what barbarity are shown by this
Sultan, who trembles with fright and begs that he may not be put to
death, who is always whining 'I have never done anyone any harm!' He
had in his palace a secret room in which he himself killed his
victims, where only a week ago he put a young girl to death!" These
were some of the sorrows that wrung the heart of him "who bore the
care of all the churches."
All the calamities that befell the world awakened his sympathy,
earthquakes, floods, fires, railway accidents . . . . The sufferers
were comforted not only with kind words but with material help. Even
the papers least favourable to the Church noticed his personal
fatherly interest in the joys and sorrows of his people. His appeal
to the charity of Catholics on the occasion of the Calabrian
earthquake in 1908, which in a few moments totally destroyed Messina,
Reggio, Sille and the surrounding villages, burying more than 100,000
people in the ruins, met with a magnificent response. The sum of 7
million francs which was generously offered served to supply the
immediate needs of the survivors, who in many cases were left totally
destitute.
But it was not only to make others give that Pius exerted himself; he
gave himself to the utmost of his power. The day after the Messina
disaster he sent people to investigate and report, to search out the
victims most urgently in need of help and care and to bring them to
Rome. Trainloads of sufferers arrived daily and were taken to the
papal hospice of Santa Marta, the pope making himself responsible for
over five hundred orphans. His Christlike compassion, his grand
initiative and masterly organization of relief won a burst of praise
in which even the anti-clerical syndic of Rome joined, while the
nations of Europe expressed their admiration. "This pope, of whom it
was said that his sole policy was the Gospel and the Creed, and his
sole diplomacy the Ten Commandments, fired the imagination of the
world by his apostolic fearlessness, his humility, his simplicity and
single-minded faith."
"Who that has seen him," wrote Monsignor Benson, "can ever forget the
extraordinary impression of his face and bearing, the kindness of his
eyes, the quick sympathy of his voice, the overwhelming fatherliness
that enabled him to bear not only his own supreme sorrows, but all
the personal sorrow which his children laid on him in such
abundance?" An irresistible impulse seemed to drive the suffering to
seek his presence and to ask his prayers, and they seldom failed to
find the help that they sought.
Perhaps it was his ardent desire to help and comfort pain of any
kind, united with personal holiness and fervent prayer, that made the
touch of his hand or even his blessing so strangely efficacious for
healing. The wonderful graces obtained through the prayers and the
touch of _Il santo_ were the talk of Rome; men and women who had seen
the marvels with their own eyes bore witness to the facts.
Rumours of what was happening came to the ears of Catholics in other
countries, and a young girl in England who had been reading the Acts
of the Apostles was seized with a great desire to go to Rome. Her
head and neck were covered with running sores which would not heal.
The shadow of St. Peter falling on the sick, she said, had cured
them; the shadow of his successor would cure her. Her mother took her
to Rome, where both were present at a public audience. The pope
passed slowly through the crowd, speaking a few words here and there
as he went. To the kneeling girl he said nothing, but as he blessed
her she felt that she was cured; and indeed, when on their return to
the hotel her mother removed the bandages she found that the sores
were completely healed.
More remarkable still because more public was the case of two
Florentine nuns, both suffering from an incurable disease. They made
the journey to Rome with great difficulty, and admitted to a private
audience, they begged the pope to cure them. "Why do you want to be
cured?" he asked.
"That we may work for God's glory," was the answer.
The pope laid his hands upon their heads and blessed them. "Have
confidence," he said, "you will get well and will do much work for
God's glory," and at the same moment they were restored to health.
Pius bade them keep silence as to what had happened, but the facts
spoke for themselves. At their entrance, the two nuns had hardly had
strength to drag themselves along; at their exit they walked like
strong and healthy women. Their cab driver, an unimaginative man of
sturdy common sense, refused to take them back to their convent.
"No," he said, "I will take back the two I brought or their dead
bodies."
"But we are the two you brought," they insisted.
"No," repeated the vetturino, "the two I brought were half dead; you
are not in the least like them."
At another public audience was a man who carried his little son,
paralysed from birth and unable to stand. "Give him to me," said
Pius; and taking the child on his knee, he began to talk to another
group of pilgrims. A few minutes later the child slipped down from
the pope's knee and began to run about the room.
That the touch of a holy man, or the garments he has worn, or even
his shadow falling on the sick should have power to cure them, is
vouched for by Holy Scripture.[*] "Perhaps so," say some, "but the
age of miracles has passed." The age of miracles has not passed, nor
will it ever while there is faith on the earth; for faith, as Jesus
Christ Himself said, alone makes miracles possible. At Nazareth even
His almighty power could not work them, because of the unbelief of
the people. Where the age of faith has passed, the age of miracles
has passed with it, but in the Church of Christ they both endure.
[*] Acts v 15 and vi 12; Matt. xiii 58.
More marvellous still than the graces obtained by the touch of Pius X
were those obtained--sometimes at a great distance--by his blessing
and his prayers.
In one of the convents of the Sacred Heart in Ireland was a young nun
suffering from disease of the hip-bone. For eight months she had not
put her left foot to the ground, as any weight on it caused acute
pain. The disease was making rapid progress. In the October of 1912
the superioress of the convent, having heard of a cure obtained
through the prayers and blessing of the Holy Father, determined to
have recourse to him. She told a little girl of six, the daughter of
the convent carpenter, to write to the pope, asking him to bless the
dear Mother who was ill, and to pray for her. During the night of the
29th October the sick nun suddenly realized that the pain had
entirely left the injured hip--so entirely that she was able to turn
and lie on it. The next morning she sat up in bed and asked to be
allowed to try to walk. She got up, made her bed and walked to the
church, where she knelt for some time in prayer. It was then that she
was told of the letter to the pope. "I did not know what had
happened," she said, "all that I knew was that the pain was gone and
that I could walk."
A railway worker had a boy of two who lay dangerously ill of
meningitis. The doctor, who had given up all hope, asked the priest
to break the news to the young parents, who at once cried out, "We
will write to the pope! We used to go to confession to him at Mantua
when we were children; bishop as he was, he used to hear the
confessions of the poor." A letter was written and posted, and Pius
wrote with his own hand several lines in reply, bidding the young
couple pray and hope. On the following day the child had completely
recovered.
These are only a few of the many graces obtained in the same way. The
cure of a Redemptoristine nun in the acute stages of cancer by the
application of a piece of stuff that had been worn by Pius X was
borne witness to by Cardinal Vives y Tuto. The sudden return to life
and speech of Don Rafael Merry del Val, father of the Cardinal
Secretary of State, at the prayer of his wife who, when death was
declared imminent, tried the same remedy; a French woman dying of
heart disease, who denied the very existence of God, was not only
healed by the pope's blessing, but reconciled to the Church and was
henceforward a fervent Catholic: these are only a few more of the
marvels wrought. Pope Pius did his best to hush the matter up. "I
have nothing to do with it," he continually exclaimed; "it is the
power of the keys."
"I hear that you are a _santo_ and work miracles," said a lady one
day, with more enthusiasm than tact.
"You have made a mistake in a consonant," replied the pope, laughing,
"it is a 'Sarto' that I am." No less witty was his reply to a man who
came to solicit a cardinal's hat for one of his friends. "But I
cannot give your friend a cardinal's hat," said the Holy Father. "I
am not a hatter, only a tailor" (_sarto_).
The Portuguese revolution in 1911 was a fresh heartbreak to the pope,
for the Portuguese Republic was bitterly anti-Catholic and
anti-clerical. The first action of its representatives was to expel
the religious orders and to confiscate their buildings and
belongings. This was done in the most brutal manner, nuns being
driven off to prison after their convents had been looted and some of
the inhabitants put to death. Many died of the privations endured,
while others testified to the humanity of their gaolers by going mad.
Religious instruction of any kind was prohibited in the government
schools; priests were arrested and imprisoned; the Bishop of Oporto
was driven from his diocese. The separation law of church and state
fell more heavily on the Church in Portugal than even that of France,
and its object was the elimination of the Christian faith from
Portuguese society.
These things fell heavily on the heart of the Father of Christendom,
who sorrowed with his sorrowing children, He protested against the
injustice in his encyclical "Jamdudum in Lusitania," in which he set
forth and condemned the oppressive measures of the republic. A
touching letter of thanks expressed the gratitude of the persecuted
clergy of Portugal for the pope's courageous protest. That some of
the harshest features of the law seemed in a fair way to be relaxed
during the years that followed was some small consolation to him.
In the spring of 1913 the health of the pope gave cause for anxiety,
an attack of influenza which had greatly weakened him being followed
by a relapse, with symptoms of bronchitis. From every part of the
world came assurances of prayers and sympathy, while in Rome the
anxiety felt by all lay like a weight on the city. But he made a
quick recovery. He was not a good patient, and his doctors had the
greatest difficulty in keeping him quiet. No sooner was he
convalescent than he accused them of being tyrants, whose only idea
was to make him waste the time that belonged to the Church. Over and
over again they would find that in their absence he had disobeyed
orders and received somebody or settled an urgent piece of business.
"Just think of our responsibility before the world!" said Dr. Amici
one day to his recalcitrant patient. "Just think of mine before God,"
was the energetic answer, "if I do not take care of His Church!" They
began to talk to him seriously, trying to make him promise to do as
he was told. "Come, come," said he with his irresistible smile,
"don't be cross; surely it is my interest to get well quite as much
as it is yours to make me so."
During the winter before this illness Rosa Sarto, the pope's eldest
sister, died. She had been with her brother nearly all his life,
having gone at the age of seventeen to keep house for him when he was
a curate at Tombolo, afterwards accompanying him to Salzano. During
the years when he had been at Treviso and Mantua she had lived with
her mother, until her death, after which she came to Venice with her
two younger sisters and her niece. On Cardinal Sarto's election to
the papacy the little group made their home in Rome in a small
apartment not far from the Vatican, where they led a quiet life of
charity and good works.
Those who went to pray beside the dead woman were equally struck by
the humble surroundings and the peace that prevailed there. A small
room, a common iron bedstead, a sweet, almost transparent old face
framed in a plain white cap, violets scattered here and there over
the body. The funeral took place at the church of St.
Laurence-outside-the-Walls, and all the cardinals in Rome were
present, together with a great crowd eager to do honour to one so
near and dear to the Holy Father. Her brother alone could not be
present. Following in spirit the funeral procession he knelt in his
private oratory praying for the soul of his sister. Telegrams from
every part of the world bore witness to the sympathy felt for the
sorrow of the pope who had made the sorrows of the world his own.
This demonstration of love and interest was a comfort to him in his
grief and touched him deeply.
But a fresh blow was in store in the sufferings of his children in
Mexico. Carranza had headed a revolution against Huerta, the
president of the Mexican Republic, An ex-bandit named Villa, who was
Carranza's chief supporter, soon turned against him and started a
counter-revolution of his own, followed by a systematic persecution
of religion. Many priests were forced to flee the country, ten
bishops crossed into the United States to save their people from a
favourite trick of the insurgents, who would arrest a bishop and,
relying on the people's love of their pastor, then demand an
exorbitant ransom. Horrible outrages followed; priests were shot,
hanged or thrown into prison; churches were converted into barracks,
the sacred vessels were carried off to the bar rooms as cups. The
venerable Archbishop of Durango was compelled to sweep the streets;
religious were shot for refusing to betray the hiding places of their
brethren, while the fate of many of the nuns is not to be described.
Although the revolutionary government set up a press bureau in the
United States to deny these facts and fill the mails with calumnies
against the Church, the truth became gradually known--not in all its
entirety until after the pope's death--but enough to wring the brave
old heart with a fresh pang of anguish . . . .
"The _sedia_ advanced," wrote one who was present about this time at
a service in St. Peter's, "bearing the pope aloft above the heads of
the people. He was in a red cope and a high golden mitre. His face
was sweet and sad; his soul, far away from all this show and
splendour, seemed lost in the contemplation of the distance that
separates the things of earth from the things of Heaven, while his
hand moved from side to side in blessing. The sadness was so deeply
engraved on that pensive face that it seemed as if no smile could
ever lighten it; truly he bore on his shoulders the weight of the
world's grief. Suddenly a movement in the crowd brought the
procession to a halt; the thoughtful face was raised as if the pope
had awakened from his contemplation; he bent forward. A smile of
infinite sweetness and kindness, like a ray of sunshine in a winter
sky, lit up for a moment those sad features, while beneath me I heard
two Italians murmur, 'O Father, dear, dear old Father!'"
XII
THE POPE OF PEACE
At the private consistory held in May 1914, Pius X, alluding to the
consolation which had been afforded him by the celebration of the
sixteenth centenary of the Peace of Constantine the year before,
spoke words which in the light of later events might well have seemed
prophetic.
"During these months," he said, "the Catholic world, while confirming
its own faith, has presented to the suffering human race the Cross of
Christ as the only source of peace. To-day more than ever is that
peace to be desired, when class is set against class, nation against
nation; when interior conflicts by their increasing bitterness not
infrequently end in open hostility. The wisest and most experienced
men are devoting themselves to the betterment of human society,
trying to find some means of putting an end to the terrible massacres
entailed by war, to secure for the world the benefits of lasting
peace. Yet this excellent endeavour will remain almost or wholly
barren if at the same time an attempt is not made to establish in the
hearts of men the laws of justice and charity. The peace or the
strife of civil society and of the state depend less on those who
govern than on the people themselves. When the minds of men are shut
out from divine revelation, no longer restrained by the discipline of
the Christian law, what wonder if many, with blind desire, rush
headlong down the road to ruin, persuaded by leaders who think of
nothing but their own personal interests.