



Produced by Michael Gray, Diocese of San Jose




LEO XIII, THE GREAT LEADER

By Rev. A. P. Doyle


Written in August 1903,
in _The Catholic World_, a monthly magazine,
on the occasion of the death of Pope Leo XIII.




[Portrait of Pope Leo XIII.]

  _My course I've run of ninety lengthening years.
     From Thee the gift. Crown them with endless bliss.
  O hearken to Thy Leo's prayers and tears,
     Lest useless they should prove, O grant him this._



Leo XIII.'s Message to the Twentieth Century:

The greatest misfortune is never to have known Jesus Christ. Christ is
the fountain-head of all good. Mankind can no more be saved without
His power than it can be redeemed without His mercy.

When Jesus Christ is absent human reason fails, being bereft of its
chief protection and light: and the very end is lost sight of for
which, under God's providence, human society has been built up.

To reject Dogma is simply to deny Christianity. It is evident that
they whose intellects reject the yoke of Christ are obstinately
striving against God. Having shaken off God's authority, they are by
no means freer, for they will fall beneath some human sway.

God alone is life. All other beings partake of life, but they are not
life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life,"
just as He is "the Truth," because He is God of God. If any one abide
not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and
they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth
(John xv. 6).

Once remove all impediments and allow the spirit of Christ to revive
and grow in a nation, and that nation shall be healed.

The world has heard enough of the so-called "rights of man." Let it
hear something of the rights of God.

The common welfare urgently demands a return to Him from whom we
should never have gone astray: to Him who is the Way, the Truth and
the Life,--and this on the part not only of individuals but of society
as a whole.




LEO XIII., THE GREAT LEADER.

BY REV. A. P. DOYLE.



THE aged Pontiff breathed his last at 4 P. M. on July 20. Because he
had lived for over ninety years, and not for any other immediate
reason, the end came. Though there was an apparent dissolution of his
body under the devastating hand of time, still the mind is as keen and
the heart as full of zeal, and the spirit as eager for work, as though
the years of his glorious pontificate were before him.

During the last fortnight the gaze of all the world has been eagerly
fixed on the death-bed of the expiring Pope, and under the white light
of the public gaze he has loomed up, the great man he is, in all his
gigantic proportions. The world saw the corporal feebleness of age and
the ravaging hand of disease, but it saw also the conquering and
unconquered spirit of the greatest man of his age--the noblest Roman
of them all.

It is not time as yet to write his eulogy. We are too near the massive
proportions of a great life to give a proper estimate of its
greatness. It will be necessary to stand off from it at some distance
in order to get the proper perspective. Still there are, however, some
things that have impressed the world, and from these we cannot get
away.

During these days of his mortal sickness, when the struggle with the
grim monster became the keenest, Leo never is anything but the
Christian gentleman. Men of dominating minds and inflexible wills,
especially if they have been accustomed to rule, are sometimes
thoughtless of others who are about them. They have been so accustomed
to brush away obstacles that the directness and force of their
determination seem to know no fear or favor in dealing with things
that surround them. Leo never forgets the chivalry of Christian
gentleness. When the cardinals come in to see him, though he is as
near prostrate in body as he may be, still he rises from his bed to
meet them, and asks them to be seated. When Dr. Lapponi asks to be
relieved for a short while to visit the sick bed of his daughter, Leo
apologizes for the trouble he is giving to every one around him, and
says that they have all become martyrs for his sake. When one of the
Vatican pigeons lights on his window-sill and gently taps at the
window, he awakes out of his weakness and asks that the window be
raised and the bird admitted, and he feeds the pigeon as it lights on
his bed,