The Temporal Power

PRESIDENT WILSON has been to see the Pope, and many persons are putting this fact with other facts, and concluding that there is at last a chance of the old ‘Roman Question’ being settled. The moment, they say, is opportune; indeed, it is unique. The world is on the point of resettling itself; surely, while it is regulating the position of, say, Esthonia, it will not overlook the position of the Holy See. This plea is being put forward urgently, if quietly and soberly, by Catholics all over the world. They maintain that the situation of the Pope is ‘abnormal ’ — using the word in the Italian sense, as meaning irregular, not properly regulated; that there is something wrong. Whether we like the Pope or no, we cannot now get away from the fact that he and his three hundred million Catholics exist and count for something in the world. Even those who like him least hold meetings and write books to point out the danger of him. And the interest taken, in Italy particularly, and in the world generally, in everything the Pope says and does, is a patent fact. It seems, then, worth while, even at the risk of adding an extra subject to the innumerable problems that have to be solved, to study the old ‘question,’ in order to find out if there is anything wrong; If so, whether it is possible to put it right; and whether it would be to the advantage of the world that it should be put right. The facts and the opposing points of view being, fortunately, fairly clear, an attempt wall be made here to study them as objectively and dispassionately as possible.

The subject seems to divide itself easily into three parts: the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Past is 1870, when the ‘Roman Question ’ came into being. The Present must cover the changes in the situation that have come about during the past forty-eight, and particularly during the last four, years. The Future involves a study of possible relations between the Holy See and Italy and the world, with the ‘abnormal position’ of the first-named regulated and the ' question ’ dead.

I. THE PAST

The entry of Italian troops into Rome by the breach of Porta Pia was the culminating stage in a process which had been going on for over ten years. In 1859 Piedmont and Napoleon III had driven the Austrians out of Lombardy; the Unification of Italy had begun. Revolutions broke out in Central Italy; the Austrian garrisons evacuated Bologna and Ancona; then came the first Italian advance into Papal territory. The Peace of Villafranca between the French and Austrian emperors contained the suggestion of an Italian Confederation under the nominal presidency of the Pope; in reality, it could do nothing to stay the inevitable march of events. Efforts were made then and later to induce Pius IX to cede part of the Papal territory, but he stood firm.

Still the process went on. Less than two years after Villafranca, on March 27, 1861, after Naples and the South had been joined up, the Turin Parliament voted the ‘Unity of Italy, with Rome as its capital.’

During the political intricacies of the years that followed, Italy was slowly closing in on Rome from north and south. The war of 1866 added Venice to National Unity. Then there was hesitation; a final effort to induce the Pope to yield met with the same firm refusal as before; and on September 20, 1870, Italian troops broke down the walls of Rome; Pius IX ordered the resistance to cease and retired to the Vatican, whence no Pope has issued since.

Now, if we want to get a just conception of a case, it is as well to face facts, and there is no getting away from the fact that, although the occupation by Italy of Papal property may have been inevitable; although the rulers of Italy may have had the soundest reasons for their showing that it was inevitable; and although a large part of the world seemed, by making no objection, to agree with them — still it was wrong. The Pope was legitimate sovereign of his territories, and Victor Emmanuel broke down the walls and took possession of his city, Rome.

We who have just cheered President Wilson from the station to the Quirinal, where he has been the guest of the King of Italy; we who only three months ago were proud and happy to stand in the square outside the old palace, and join the Romans in that wonderfully affectionate greeting they gave their King as he came back from the war — we may find a difficulty in realizing that less than fifty years ago the Pope was living there, that conclaves were held there. If a reminder is necessary, there are the figures of St. Peter and St. Paul on each side of the entrance, and the Virgin Mary overhead; and the historical fact is that in 1870 it was the residence of the Pope, and that King Victor Emmanuel broke through the city walls and came and sat down in it.

On the last day of 1859 the Emperor Napoleon appealed to the Pope for a voluntary cession of part of his territory as ‘the solution most conformable to the true interests of the Holy See.’ The Pope’s reply, sent on January 8, and published to the world in the Encyclical of January 19, 1860, was ‘Non possumus.’ He could not give up ‘what was not his’; by abdicating the provinces in the Emilia, he would be ‘violating the solemn oaths by which he was bound’ and giving a sanction to ‘pernicious principles which would weaken the rights of all sovereigns.’ His reply to King Victor Emmanuel’s letter of September, 1870, was practically the same. ‘He could not agree to certain demands or admit certain principles.’ The City of Rome, in fact, the States of the Church, the temporal possessions of the Papacy, were a sacred trust placed in the Pope’s hands by Divine Providence to guard on behalf of the Church. He simply could not give them up. But, inasmuch as Divine Providence leaves the making of history in human hands, as an inevitable part of the unifying of Italy, it came about that Piedmont possessed itself of the States of the Church and the City of Rome; the Pope from the Vatican, the King from the Quirinal, looked at each other across the Tiber, and the vast religious buildings of the city formed most convenient homes, when the occupants had been expelled, for the ministries, schools, libraries, law courts, and other public offices of the young kingdom. One has to recall these facts in order to get a fair notion of the controversy which has kept Italy and the Papacy at loggerheads for half a century, with mutual recrimination by extremists, of ‘Usurper’ and ‘Perennial enemy of Italy.’

II. THE PRESENT

But when we come to consider the controversy between Italy and the Holy See and Catholics, we find that far more important than the material occupation of the temporal possessions of the Pope is the resultant question of the liberty and independence of the Holy See. That is the real crux. The Papacy, the Pope, the Church, the Holy See, can live without this or that particular piece of territory; but the Supreme Pontiff must be possessed of complete liberty and independence, effective, apparent to the world, and satisfactorily guaranteed. For many years this side of the question was generally disregarded; yet it is the one that really matters. The facts of the material occupation were under men’s eyes, and to most people the whole question was summed up in the phrase ‘Temporal Power.’ If, however, it is to be understood, there must be a realization that Temporal Power was not an end in itself, but a means to an end, and that end was the liberty and independence of the Holy See.

The Catholic contention may be summed up thus: The Pope must be free and independent; he is Sovereign Pontiff, and cannot be a subject of anybody. He must have, too, an effective and apparent guaranty of that liberty and independence. Divine Providence gave him what is called ‘Temporal Power,’ — possessions, armies, the attributes of civil sovereignty, — and for a thousand years these served as guaranty. Now Italy has taken these away; the Pope is not free and independent; even if he is shown to be so on paper, there is really no effective and apparent guaranty.

Italy replies at once: ‘There is: there is the Italian law of May 13, 1871, better than any guaranty the Papacy has ever had; the best that could possibly be devised for it.’

There is the point of difference between Italy and the Holy See. Throughout the whole process of unification Italy professed the utmost respect for the Pope. In his speech at the Turin Parliament, when the unity of Italy with Rome as its capital was announced, Cavour said, ‘If the overthrow of the Temporal Power was to prove fatal to the independence of the Church, then I should state without hesitation that the unity of Rome with Italy would be fatal, not only to Catholicism, but to Italy herself.’

‘Free Church in a Free State,’ was Cavour’s motto. By the separation of the temporal and spiritual authority ‘the independence of the Pope would be placed on a far surer foundation than at present,’ So Italy took Rome and passed its Law of Guaranties; the Pope declined to accept it; and that is, fundamentally, how things have been ever since. The protest of Pius IX has been continued without lapse by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV, each one of whom has repeated it immediately on ascending the throne of Peter. Fundamentally the situation to-day is exactly as it was in 1871.

That is seen at once whenever the ' question ’ comes up for serious consideration. A pronouncement on the subject was made at Palermo in November, 1915, by the present Prime Minister, Signor Orlando, at that time Minister of Grace, Justice, and Cults. The Pope replied to it in a Consistorial Allocution ten days later. More recently, Baron Sonnino, the Foreign Minister, replied to a question asked in Parliament by a Catholic Deputy on the subject of the famous clause XV of the London Agreement, made when Italy joined the Allies, by which France, Britain, and Russia promised to support Italy in any protest she might make against the presence of a representative of the Pope at the Peace Congress. The three utterances make it quite clear that there is no change at all, fundamentally, in the position to-day from that of 1871.

We have the Catholic contention that the situation of the Papacy is abnormal. Says the Pope himself, ‘More than once already, following in the footsteps of Our Predecessors, we have lamented that the situation of the Roman Pontiff was not such as to grant him the use of that full liberty which is absolutely necessary to him for the government of the Church. But who is there who does not see that this has become far more evident in the present circumstances?’

On the other hand, Signor Orlando had said that while ‘ the Fundamental Law of the State which recognized the special sovereignty of the Supreme Pontiff ’ had provided perfectly for his liberty and independence in time of peace, it had not been framed to deal with the event of Italy being at war. But Italy had faced and overcome the resulting difficulties, so that whereas in old times ‘the sacred character of the Head of the Church had not prevented the Temporal Sovereign from undergoing persecution and violence, imprisonment, and exile, from Gregory VII to Boniface VIII and Pius VII, during the present frightful storm, which has not spared the most accepted principles or the most powerful empires, and which has proved the little worth of the most solemn international pledges, the Sovereign Pontiff governs the Church and carries on his sublime ministry with a fulness of rights, a liberty, a security, a prestige, altogether worthy of the truly sovereign authority belonging to him in the spiritual domain.’

Baron Sonnino repeated the same strain. Under the Italian law of 1871 the rights, the liberty, and the independence of the Pope are guaranteed far better and more effectively than they could be by any other means. Yet the Pope and Catholics say that the Law of Guaranties is no guaranty at all.

Evidently it becomes necessary to study this Law of Guaranties. And the first thing that jumps to the eye is the intention of the framers to give the Pope sovereign rank. His person is sacred and inviolable: any attempt against him, or provocation to commit the same, meets with the same punishment given to such attempts against the King. According to Article 3, the Italian Government pays sovereign honors to the Supreme Pontiff in the territory of the realm, and preserves to him the preeminence of honor paid to him by Catholic sovereigns. He can retain the usual number of guards attached to his person. Later clauses further confirm the Pope’s sovereign standing, in granting to envoys of foreign governments accredited to him all the prerogatives which belong to diplomatic agents according to international law. Italy gives the Pope the right to have his own post and telegraph offices; if he uses the Italian service, no charge is made.

In Article 4, however, we begin to see the limitation complained of by Catholics. The Italian Government sets aside, in favor of the Holy See, an annual sum amounting to $645,000, for the support of the Sovereign Pontiff, ‘the maintenance, ordinary and extraordinary, and the custody of the Apostolic palaces and their dependencies . . . for the ordinary maintenance and custody of the Museums and Library. . . . This sum cannot be diminished even in case the Italian Government shall hereafter undertake the responsibility of providing for the expenses of the Museums and Library.’

By Article 5, the Sovereign Pontiff, besides the endowment established in the preceding article, ‘ continues to enjoy the Apostolic Palaces of the Vatican and the Lateran, with all the buildings, gardens, and plots connected with them, as well as the Villa of Castel Gandolfo, with all its appurtenances and dependencies. The said palaces, villas, and annexes, together with the Museums, Library, and archaeological collections therein existent, are inalienable, and exempt from all taxes or burdens and from expropriation on any ground of public utility.’

Men break into your property, take forcible possession of your house and grounds, except one room to which you have retreated. They tell you that you may ‘continue to enjoy’ possession of that room, and offer you an annual sum of money for its upkeep. The room and its furniture are ‘ inalienable’; you have no right to dispose of them, but the new owners of the property will not take possession of them, though they may some time ‘undertake the responsibility of providing for the expenses of their upkeep.’ That is, rather crudely put, how Catholics interpret the Italian Law of Guaranties; and the conclusion they draw from it is that it gives the Pope, not the position of a sovereign, but that of a tenant at will of the King of Italy. Neither the law nor the money has ever been accepted by the Pope, and the latter goes back every six years into the Italian treasury.

But the Catholic objection goes even deeper than the dispositions of the law itself. The Law of Guaranties, they say, as a guaranty of the liberty and independence of the Pope, is not worth the paper it is written on. An Italian Parliament passed it: an Italian Parliament might revoke it to-morrow. The fact that it is called a ‘fundamental law of the kingdom’ does not save it from the possibility of revocation. Indeed, — to contemplate a more revolutionary contingency, — it is only a few weeks since a motion was put before the permanent Parliamentary committees for the calling of a Constituent Assembly. It was a snap motion, with no chance of being considered seriously at this juncture, either by Parliament or by the nation; but in nearly every committee it found supporters — in some even a majority. That the liberty and independence of the Sovereign Pontiff should depend on the transient will of a Parliament is inconceivable. To call it a guaranty is absurd.

The answer to this is difficult to find. The Italian answer, the bald statement that the Pope’s liberty and independence are guaranteed better and more effectively by the Italian law than they could be by any other means, is in reality no answer at all. That, even in these difficult times of war, Italy had maintained the Pope’s privileges, his liberty and independence, is true enough; but neither is that an answer. Pope Benedict XV, in the Consistorial Allocution in which he replied to Signor Orlando, bore witness to the ‘good intention that those who are governing Italy have shown to eliminate the inconveniences’; but, he went on, ’ that very thing shows clearly that the situation of the Roman Pontiff depends on the civil powers, and with a change of men and circumstances it also can be changed and made more difficult. No man of sense can affirm that a situation which is so uncertain and so subject to the will of others is indeed that which is suitable for the Apostolic See.’

There seems to be a deadlock to-day as in 1871. But just as the controversy came about then through the human means by which Divine Providence works, so by human means circumstances have changed very much during the past forty-eight, and particularly during the past four, years. A lot of water — two generations of it — has flowed under Tiber bridges since the troops of Victor Emanuel II made the famous ‘Breach of Porta Pia,’ and a great revolutionary war has come, to put a finite seal on the change which perhaps was still indeterminate till the war made people think.

When Italy took possession of Rome, Prince Lancellotti closed the great front gates of his palace until such time as the old order should be restored, and they have not been opened since. He was not alone in thinking that the occupation would be temporary. Numbers doubted New Italy’s ability to maintain itself, and looked forward to the restoration of the Temporal Power of the Pope over Rome. And the difficulties of the country were indeed enormous. Its expenditure was exactly twice its revenue; and even as late as 1894, when Baron Sonnino took in hand the reorganization of finances begun by Quintino Sella, its annual deficit was nearly twenty-five millions sterling.

How it has held on and prospered, we have seen; of its still latent capacities we have learned something during these four years of war. In any case the official Papal attitude, from 1871 onward, was clear and — it may be said, in consideration of what has been outlined above—natural: the new kingdom was not recognized; in official Catholic publications allusion was made, if it became necessary, to the King of Sardinia or to the Duke of Piedmont, who was called ‘ Colui che detiene,’ the Usurper; Catholics were forbidden to take any part officially in the life of the nation; Catholic sovereigns could not come to Rome to see the King. It was a clean-cut refusal to recognize.

A volume would be required to record all the incidents illustrating the gradual progress from the situation of 1871 to that of to-day. It may suffice here to show the contrast by noting just one or two recent facts. One is the practically official meeting of Italy and the Pope in the great thanksgiving service at the church of Aracœli, on the Capitol, after the Italian victory. The occasion and the choice of church made it official; it was organized by the authorized Catholic associations of the city; the religious representative of the Pope in Rome, his Cardinal Vicar, officiated, assisted by the chief Master of Ceremonies, who directs none but Papal functions; and among those invited and present was the representative of the King, the Duke of Genoa, Lieutenant Governor of the city, who came in full state, with Quirinal carriages and royal cyclist escort.

Another fact: the meeting of Cardinal Bacilieri with the King at the review at Verona; a spontaneous action on the part of the Prince of the Church. Another: the presence of the Queen and Royal Family at Cardinal Maffi’s service of thanksgiving in Pisa Cathedral; a spontaneous action on their part, which the Cardinal reciprocated by addressing them personally in the course of his sermon. Another: the presence — undoubtedly with the highest ecclesiastical authority — of the official Catholic societies and associations, with their banners, in the great patriotic victory demonstration in the Piazza of the Quirinal, and in the second great demonstration when the King returned to Rome — to the Quirinal, which was the Pope’s palace in 1870. Another — and politically, perhaps, the most significant: when the Pope sent out his Peace Note in August, 1917, he asked the British Minister to the Vatican, Count de Salis, to communicate it to those of the Allied sovereigns and rulers with whom he, the Pope, had no diplomatic relations, among them ‘The King of Italy.’ Just these facts may serve to give an indication of the distance that has been traversed since 1871.

The truth is that Italian Catholics must take their share in the life of the nation. They themselves feel it, — they insist on being good Catholics and good Italians, too, — and it is but common sense. The old ‘ abnormal ’ régime, which was summed up for them in the political sphere by the ruling ‘Neither electors nor elected ’ — this will not do to-day. It has been disappearing slowly. At the 1913 election, the Papal prohibition against voting for deputies for the Italian Parliament— ‘It is not expedient ’ — had disappeared in practice, though in theory, ‘Non expedit ’ was still the rule. Church and Government were in complete agreement that it was very expedient; indeed, that all good men should use their votes to keep down the subversive element in the Chamber. For many years, though in theory there has been no ‘Catholic. Party,’ there has been a small group of ‘Deputies who are Catholics.’ For two years, one of them has been a minister of the Italian Crown. This necessity that Catholics should be, and act as, full citizens has been there, if indeterminate, for some time: the war has lifted it to actuality.

The announcement has just appeared of the formation of the ‘Italian Popular Party’ in Parliament. This is, in fact if not in name, the Catholic Party; the whole press sees this, and Catholic Deputies do not hesitate to acknowledge it. One of them, Signor Cameroni, describes the new departure as ‘ the official consecration of this most important historical evolution, the conquest by Italian Catholics of full and unquestioned exercise of their rights of citizenship.’ Officially the Holy See is not involved; it accepts no responsibility for the programme and actions of the new party, which is autonomous, purely political, and in a quite different category from the‘Popular Union’ and other officially authorized Catholic organizations. Nevertheless, it is quite impossible that Italian Catholics should have initiated this movement without the knowledge and tacit consent of the Holy See, and it means, in point of fact, that the ‘Non expedit’ has gone by the board: Italian Catholics are now at liberty to take part openly and without subterfuge in the life of the State.

The change had to come. The ‘abnormal’ situation of the Papacy, the conditions of semi-hostility between Pope and King (while in point of fact they have the utmost respect for one another), have done untold harm to Italy, and they have been a nuisance to the world, creating over and over again perfectly unnecessary misunderstandings in countries—Ireland, for instance — where the Pope has many spiritual subjects. There has always been unofficial communication between the Vatican and the Italian Government. The affairs of the everyday life of the city and kingdom have necessitated this, more particularly on special occasions, such as conclaves, when Italy undertakes the protection of the Princes of the Church who come to Rome to elect the new Pope.

There is now no hostility on the part of the Italian Government toward the Holy See; its ‘dispositions’ as a government, indeed, are quite excellent. The good will of the Holy See may at least be deduced from instances cited above, to which may be added a document recently issued, primarily on the subject of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, but containing a statement of principle not without general significance. In a letter to his Cardinal Secretary of State, the Pope protested against the assumption that the dissolution of the AustroHungarian Empire must necessarily cause displeasure to the Holy See. More than once, he pointed out, he had urged Italy’s right to her unredeemed provinces; and he went on, ‘The Church, a perfect society, which has for its one and only aim the sanctification of men in all times and all countries, while it adapts itself to different forms of government, so it accepts without difficulty the legitimate territorial and political variations of the peoples.’ Later on in the letter, he referred, as he has done more than once before, to Italy as ‘Our beloved country.’ Strictly speaking, of course, there can be no parallel in the mind of the Pope between the breach of Porta Pia in 1871 and the ‘legitimate variations of the peoples’ in 1918. Still —

III. THE FUTURE

Before studying possible solutions, it will be as well to eliminate the impossible. Therefore let it be said at once that the old ‘Temporal Power’ is dead. Theoretically, the Pope may be perfectly justified in his contention that it was the guaranty of his liberty and independence for a thousand years, and that, if Italy and the world expect him to renounce all claim to it, they are bound to put something satisfactory in its place. But for all practical purposes it is dead. Everyone must realize, including Catholics and the Holy Father himself, that the civil sovereignty of the Pope over the old States of the Church, or even the city of Rome, is impossible. As people say, ‘If you gave Rome to the Pope, what could he do with it? He would most certainly ask you to take it back again.’ Sovereign the Pope is, and always will be; but the old Temporal Powder is dead. Let the ground be cleared of it.

The Holy See claims that it must have sovereign liberty and independence, apparent to the world and satisfactorily guaranteed. There is every indication that, if a way were found by which that were assured to it, it would ask no more. It would settle on those terms. It insists that, even if the dispositions of the present Italian law were satisfactory, the guaranty is insufficient. Very well, then: let us, without authority from either side, and purely as impartial observers, see whether the Holy See’s complaints cannot be remedied without treading on Italy’s susceptibilities.

The text of the law reads as if it were intended to certify the sovereign independence of the Pope; but in points such as the phrase ‘continues to enjoy,’ it fails to do so. Now, surely it should not be impossible, in consideration of the change that has come about in nearly half a century, that Italy should draw up a document which would satisfy the claims of the Holy See without hurting the feelings of any patriotic Italian. (There are a few extremists on both sides who will not be satisfied, to whom any suggestion of an understanding is obnoxious. These must be put out of court. They must be given to understand very clearly that their unnatural prejudices are not to be allowed to hinder a solution of the old problem which will be to the advantage of the world at large.) Such a document should enunciate in unmistakable terms the free and independent sovereign possession by the Holy See of certain territory; for, presumably, certain specified territory there must be. The extent does not matter, whether it be the States of the Church or as much as the Pope can put his foot on, so long as it is his. Otherwise he becomes the subject of someone. The present law mentions the Vatican, the Lateran, the Castel Gandolfo villa, and the gardens, plots, etc., round them. It has been suggested that that might be amended to include St. Peter’s and a certain acreage of the present unoccupied ground behind the Vatican, to give the Pontiff a little more room to breathe, and perhaps to put up a house or two as residences for Cardinals of Curia, or for other purposes in connection with the ecclesiastical administration of the Holy See.

Presuming that that satisfies the first complaint of the Holy See, and that Italy agrees, we arrive at the crux of the question, that of the guaranty. Many solutions of this difficulty have been excogitated from time to time. One of them, brought forward and considered, but rejected, thirty years ago, and revived as a quite new suggestion last month, was that of the ‘Strip to the Sea.’ The idea was that a strip of territory, reaching from the Vatican to the Mediterranean, should be given to the Pope, in order that he might be able to get on board a ship and go to the ends of the earth if he so desired, without passing through Italy — in any case, that his communications with the outside world should be free. A hundred years ago that might have been considered as a solution, but it is not one now.

All said and done, there seems to be but one solution approaching satisfactoriness — that of an international indorsement by the world at large of the agreement between the Pope and Italy. Italy hates the phrase ‘Internationalization of the Roman Question’; she regards it as a private matter between the Pope and herself. She resents any outside interference as derogatory to her sovereign rights and dignity. It may be questioned, first, whether her own actions in 1871 and previously justify her in that point of view; and, secondly, whether, by an international indorsement of such action as she might take in 1919, she would not really raise, not lower, her position. The Roman Catholic Church certainly is not national, not English, or Dutch, or Italian, or of any one country; it is international, spread over all the world. The Pope is Pope to the simplest Irish girl out in Australia, just as much as to an Italian Cardinal in the Roman Curia; his authority is the same over the one as over the other; his communication with the one for religious purposes must be as free and untrammeled as with the other.

This international character, and the necessity of the independence of the Papacy, have been recognized again and again: by Lord Ellenborough, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Brougham, Lord Palmerston in 1849, by many Italian statesmen, by Cavour himself, and most explicitly by the circular of the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs to His Majesty’s ministers abroad in August, 1870, seeking the‘adhesion of Catholic governments, now that Italy ‘was called upon to regulate with the Catholic world the conditions of the transformation of the Pontifical Power.’

The reply of the powers was an acknowledgment of the communication of the Italian Government, but Italy has never from that day to this received from any single power a definite sanction of the settlement which she arranged for the Pope’s position, but which has not been accepted by the Pope. Diplomatically the question can be reopened to-morrow. An account has been published of an incident at the Berlin Congress, when the Italian representative, Count Corti, endeavored to obtain the diplomatic sanction of the powers to the Italian occupation of Rome. He was told by M. Waddington, Lord Beaconsfield, and Count Andrassy, that, if the question were so much as laid before the Congress, they would at once leave the assembly. Italy, by submitting the question to the world, did admit its international character.

Would it be in the least derogatory to her rights and dignity that the world should now indorse any arrangement that she might come to with the Holy See? At present there is no agreement: Italy has made a settlement unilaterally, the Pope has not accepted it, and the world is looking on, conscious of a sore spot. But, presuming an arrangement made, Italy could announce to the powers that a settlement had been arrived at to the complete satisfaction of both parties; the world would give its cordial adhesion, with a feeling of relief that the sore spot had been healed; the Pope could make the same announcement, and the world’s agreement would be the one thing necessary for him, the guaranty. Italy would no longer be the ‘Usurper’; she would become the world-acknowledged protector of the Papal privileges, rights, and sovereignty — surely an improved position compared with that she holds now.

And the world would have reason to congratulate itself on the removal of a perennial fount of international complications and misunderstandings. We need only look back on the use Germany has made of the Roman Question in bringing influence to bear, first on the Holy See, then on Italy, to enable her to gain her own ends, to see the advantage of a settlement. In the good religious times of Catholicism in Germany, Bismarck, seeing that his Kulturkampf had failed, that he could not terrorize the Catholics, that, indeed, he could not govern without their support, did not hesitate to make the journey to Canossa. Germany suddenly became, not the enemy of Catholics, but the patron of the Pope. Pressure had to be brought to bear on Italy to get her into the German orbit. Catholics, therefore, in Italy and the world over, learned of the iniquities of the behavior of the Italian Government toward the Pope, whose person even was not safe in Rome and who might have to leave the Eternal City and take refuge — in Germany, his champion before the world. It was the utilization of the Roman Question for political ends, holding it over the head of Italy, at that time practically alone and weak. Germany, too, in the early days of seemingly triumphant victory, and in fury against Italian neutrality, announced that one of the results of the war would be the settlement of the Roman Question in a way that Italy would not like at all. It was never sufficiently remarked here in Rome how significant was the Pope’s retort through Cardinal Gasparri: ‘Not by foreign arms but through the realization by the Italian people where their true interests lie.’

But in the spring of 1915, when Germany was playing for the continuation of Italian neutrality as against her intervention on the side of the Allies, at the time when Von Muehlberg was still busy at the Vatican, the note changed. It was not the Vatican, but Italian neutralists, Clericals and others, whom Erzberger, under Büllow’s orders, was courting. Later, when the die was cast, the note changed back again, and first the Jewish, then the Catholic, press in Germany informed the world of the danger threatening the Pope through revolutions in Rome and the incompetence and ill-will of the Italian Government. Catholic opinion in Spain during the first years of the war is an objectlesson.

Nothing is more certain than that, if the old question remains unsettled, German intrigue will seek to use it; nor can it be expected that the feeling of disgust at the hypocrisy and lies of the Central Empires now prevailing at the Vatican will always remain strong enough to see through and resist the forceful subtlety which had gained the ear of the Holy See in 1914. As an example of international misunderstandings, one trifling incident may be illuminative. Only a year ago a well-read and cultivated Englishman expressed to the writer his conviction that the desire that the Pope should have the Temporal Power given back to him was at the root of all the troubles in Ireland. That is absurd. Still, it would do no harm to the British Empire if the Catholics in it, Irish included, knew that Great Britain had supported a settlement which the Holy See regarded as satisfactory.

Exactly what the Holy See would regard as satisfactory is an unknown quantity; it depends entirely on the judgment of the Pope. It may at least be regarded as certain that it would welcome a solution brought about — to quote again Cardinal Gasparri’s official statement— ‘not by foreign arms but by the triumph of those sentiments of justice which the Holy See hopes will spread more and more among the Italian people in conformity with their true interests.’ As long ago as 1887, Leo XIII expressed practically the same wish. In his Consistorial Allocution of May 23 of that year, he hoped ‘that the zeal for pacification with which We are animated toward all nations might prove useful to Italy in the way in which We arc bound to wish.’ What that way was, he explained immediately after, when he expressed the hope ‘of seeing swept away at last the fatal dissension with the Roman Pontificate, but saving always the claims of justice and the dignity of the Holy See, which had been injured, but not so much through the violence of the people as through the plotting of sectaries.’

From which side is the initiative to come? Considering the facts of 1870 and the preceding years, it is perhaps too much to expect the Holy See to make any advance. And anything that looked like pressure on the part of the Powers might well be resented by Italy, who is perhaps more sensitive on this than on any other one subject. Great changes like this come about through a previous confidential understanding; but it would seem that the initiative must come from the Italian side. Then the unknown will reveal itself: the extent to which the Pope, regarding only the interests of the Church, ‘the perfect society which has for its one and only aim the sanctification of men in all times and in all countries,’ will, under the changed circumstances, relax the rigidity which made Pius IX refuse to consider any compromise.

If what is called the ‘Internationalization’ solution were to succeed in bringing a remedy to the long-existent sore, it would serve to accentuate and extend the international character of the Holy See and to avert a possible cause of misunderstanding: the fear on the part of one or more powers that the Papacy might be an Italian institution, at the service of Italy for her political ends. From its position in Italy it must always be more Italian than anything else; but of late years it has been becoming more and more international. It is gaining a far wider outlook on the world, getting more and more in touch with distant countries, understanding their conditions and their points of view.

When Pius IX was elected Pope, in 1846, there were sixty-four Cardinals in the Sacred College. Thirty of them were in Rome; seventeen others were in various parts of the Papal States; eight occupied archiepiscopal sees in other parts of Italy; there were three in France, and one each in Austria, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium. There may have been two or three non-Italian Cardinals in Curia, but at the most the ‘foreigners’ did not amount to a dozen. To-day there are sixty Cardinals (not counting the two whose names have not yet been published to the world and who are considered almost certainly to be ‘foreigners’). Thirty-one of them are Italian, twenty-nine foreign, distributed among France, Spain, AustriaHungary, Portugal, the United States, England, Ireland, Canada, Brazil, Belgium, Holland, and Germany. (It has been noted here with satisfaction that the official Annuario of the Holy See does not this year speak of AustriaHungary or of Germany, but of the States which composed those two exempires— Bavaria, Bohemia, etc.) A few years ago it happened that the foreigners in the Sacred College momentarily outstripped the Italians. In other departments of Curia the process is going on, too, though more slowly, but the rate of progress is increasing yearly.

When Pius IX was elected Pope, the world was in ferment, as it is to-day. There is ample evidence to show that he would not have opposed the prevailing demand for reform had it been put forward reasonably. He did indeed institute notable reforms in the government of the States of the Church. But it was a question of principle, and it is doubtful if any permanent settlement could have been arrived at then, in view of the inevitableness of the Unification process and the determination of Cavour. None the less is it a fact that reasonable reform, reasonable agreement, was killed by the Bolsheviks of the day — ‘sectaries,’ as Leo XIII called them. That must not occur again. Pius IX’s intentions were excellent; his efforts were killed by the extremists on the other side, and the Church retired into its ‘Non possumus.’ There is every reason to believe — even judging alone from his official words and actions — that the views of the present Pope are moderate, his intentions generous. It would be disastrous if extremists were to be allowed to-day to repeat their success of the eighteen-forties and succeeding years. There will certainly be fanatical opposition here to any reconciliation project which an Italian government may consider. Trusting the country and taking a bold stand, a government could sweep aside such opposition,— numerically and intrinsically insignificant in proportion to the noise it makes, — as Salandra and Sonnino, trusting the country, swept aside, in May, 1915, the dishonest opposition to Italy’s just war. On its side the Holy See would have no difficulty in keeping in order the few, the very few, who still look with a jaundiced eye on Italy. The wrong done from the eighteen-forties on, left a train of results which have worked untold harm to Italy and created misunderstandings in the world at large. Presuming that there is now a conciliatory spirit at the Vatican, surely it is possible for Italy, backed up by the world in Peace Congress assembled, to close that era and cure its sore spot.