



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, gently stroking its feathers. When every one is anticipating
his speedy dissolution, he rises from his bed, goes over to his
writing desk, and puts into poetry some beautiful thought that fills
his mind. And in the midst of all his suffering he is full of
devotion. He prays incessantly to the Mother of God. St. Leo's day
comes, and ever since his childhood he has not failed to be present at
Holy Mass on that day particularly; he directs that Mass be said in
the adjoining room, and he devoutly follows it. He was a member of the
Third Order of Franciscans, and in order to receive all the wonderful
privileges that are granted to the faithful who are identified with
that Third Order, he sends for the Capuchin cardinal to give him the
last blessing. His faith is strong and tender. In the visions that
pass before his mind the joys of paradise are vividly depicted. He
would stay to give his last breath for the Church, but the alluring
vision of heaven beckons him away. And in the midst of it all nothing
can quench his unconquerable desire for work. There are some things
that are unfinished; he calls Cardinal Rampolla and directs their
execution. The Biblical Commission is very close to his heart, and he
gives an admonition to his secretary that its work be prosecuted to a
speedy end. These and many other little touches of character coming
from the death chamber do not fail to paint the portrait of one of the
greatest Popes the world has ever known.

Leo has been a providential man in the fullest sense of the word. He
has been a Moses who has led the hosts of the Lord from a captivity
that was more galling than the slavery of Egypt of old through the
desert of suffering into the promised land. The forty years that have
elapsed since the breach of Porta Pia have brought untold victories to
the church. The Robber King battering at the gates of Rome is readily
offset in the eyes of discerning readers by the eager visits of the
Kaiser, the head of the Lutheran Church, and the English King, the
head of the Episcopal Church, to pay reverence and homage to the head
of the great Mother Church of Christendom, and everywhere throughout
the world, people who are outside the fold have been devoutly praying
that he might be spared to the world for many years to come. One
cannot help contrasting the feelings of non-Catholic people to-day
towards the Church of Rome with the sentiments of antagonism that were
expressed but a generation ago. Not a little of this is due to the
commanding, and at the same time attractive, figure of the great White
Shepherd of Christendom. There have been popes who have emphasized
certain characteristics, and they stand out in history as striking
types of these special characteristics. Innocent III. was a great
reformer; Sixtus V. a great statesman; Pius V. was crowned with the
aureole of sanctity; Gregory VI. was a man of great learning; but Leo
seems to have united in his own person in a very marked degree all
these great qualities. His gifts were of so universal a nature that it
is difficult to say which one belongs to him in the more pre-eminent
degree. His genius has illuminated every department of religious
activity, be it statecraft or be it letters; be it the devotional side
of the church, or the philosophical, or the diplomatic, or the purely
religious.

As a statesman he has rallied to the support of the church the
influences of the great civil powers. When he began his pontifical
career England was the enemy of the Papacy; Germany was persecuting
the Catholics of the Empire; the United States of America had
established no definite relations with the Holy See; while Spain, and
France, and Austria, Catholic at heart, were too much worried over
internal difficulties to be the earnest supporters of the Papacy that
they should be. After twenty-five years there is no stronger friend of
the dying Pope than the Emperor of Germany. The antagonisms that were
openly enunciated in the German Empire against Catholics have been
replaced by expressions of fealty. The Emperor has come to look upon
the moral power of the Papacy as one of the most potent supporters of
the throne. Leo has so stood for the authority of constituted
governments, and the Catholic religion has had such influence in
inculcating reverence and submission among the people, that were there
no force of this nature, it would be necessary to create one in order
that its work may be done. In Germany the people to-day are about
equally divided between the Catholics as loyal supporters of the
throne and the socialists, who, if their programme were carried out in
its entirety, would sweep the throne away and abolish the authority
that it stands for. In England the same is true, though perhaps not to
as large an extent as it is elsewhere. In Spain Leo has upheld the
throne that was tottering to a disastrous fall. If it were not for his
influence, Spain would to-day be in the grasp of the revolution or
broken up into a number of smaller states.

In the United States the devotion of twelve million Catholics has done
not a little to cement together the stones of our social fabric by
infusing the spirit of religion into the educational life of the
country, and by standing for the permanency of the family and the
integrity of the home.

Here is a sheaf of victories in the diplomatic world that would make
any man's life a blessing to the world. Of course it is a profound
pity that more has not been done in France. That it has not been done
is no fault of Leo's. If his advice had been taken, and if the
Catholics of France had rallied to the support of the existing
government, it may well be supposed that the present deplorable
condition of religious affairs would not have come to pass. Instead of
witnessing the religious orders persecuted by an infidel government,
there would probably have been a change of heart in the civil
authorities, and as of yore France would be the eldest daughter of the
church. The same may be said in Italy. The Italian people are more
loyal to the Holy See to-day than ever. The sympathy that has gone out
to the prisoner of the Vatican, as well as a certain sentiment of
co-suffering that the people, ground down by heavy taxation, have felt
with the Pope, have made them more loyal in their fealty to the head
of the church.

Not only in statecraft has Leo proved himself an adept, but as a
scholar he has elevated the standards of literary taste and of
ecclesiastical studies. In calling the professors of the Catholic
world back to the scholastic philosophy he has laid the foundations
deep and strong for theological science, and he has pointed out the
way back to the great truths of the supernatural order for much of the
rationalistic and scientific knowledge of the age. During the last
half of the nineteenth century agnostic science triumphed in most of
the universities of the world; but the human mind could not be content
with its barrenness and its negations, and in reaching out for
something more positive, as well as for a solution of the religious
problems that always perplex human hearts, the old philosophy of
Aristotle constituted the best vantage ground, and with this solid
basis to stand on the scholars of the day can much more readily reach
out for that amalgamation between the modern and ancient schools.
Historical science owes not a little to the man who threw open the
archives of the Vatican, and who wanted the truth to be told, no
matter who was injured thereby, and not a few scholars have profited
by the initiative of Leo, with the result that a good deal of the
history that was written in German and English under the influence of
the fierce antagonisms of the Protestant revolt will have to, and is
now being rewritten. In Biblical science the rationalizing Higher
Critics were having a free hand and a wide field, with the result that
the sacred books were torn into tatters and the old reverence for the
Scriptures as the word of God was dying out among non-Catholic people.
The Bible was all they had to depend upon, and when it was gone there
came a decadence of the religious spirit. Leo came to the rescue, and
there was nothing closer to his heart than the outcome of the Biblical
Commission he established, and amidst the suffering of his last
sickness one of his admonitions was to see that these investigations
were brought to a speedy and wholesome issue. So too in social
studies, which are now vexing the nations, Leo has given a Magna
Charta in his Encyclical on the "Condition of Labor." He has affirmed
principles there that seemed radical in their enunciation, but now
that they are being applied to practical difficulties, are doing not a
little to bring about the harmonization of Labor with Capital. The
Catholic University of America was born of his inspiration; the
universities in France and Germany and among the Slavonic peoples were
started through his initiative. Seminaries in Rome for the education
of the students of the Oriental rites owe their existence to his
generous gifts and derive their permanency from his largesses.

All these and many more great things that he has done for the
intellectual, make him the very prince among scholars.

In the midst of his many labors with governments and among scholars he
has not forgotten the devotional life of the people. His own spirit of
prayer has been imparted to the multitudes, so that there has been a
distinct revival in the devotional life of the church. The devotion to
the Sacred Heart, with its first Friday throngs, has received a
distinct impetus from his instructions. The time-honored Rosary has
become a more favorite devotion among all classes, and the October
devotions, as well as the prayers after daily Mass, have become
distinctive features of the devotional life of the church through his
directions. The same may be said of the devotion to the Holy Spirit
with its annual Pentecostal novena. He has not only known what to
suggest, but his practical sense has so arranged that his suggestions
were not mere ephemeral directions but were soon incorporated into the
very soul-life of the people. No one can look back over the last
generation and make any contrasts without saying that Leo has done as
much for the religious spirit of the world as any of his predecessors.

All these considerations convince us that Leo has been an all-round
great Pope. He has been a Leader among men. He has left the impress of
his spirit on his age. His life has spanned one of the most critical
periods of human activity. When the old order had been completely
changed, in the rearranging of the new elements and in the
re-establishing of new forces there was need of one with more than human
wisdom to guide our ways and to direct our feet. If ever in the world
there was need of a providential man; of one whose feet, while planted
on the earth, yet whose head was above the clouds, and whose heart was
in touch with divine things, it was during this marvellous age of
ours; and Leo has been such an interpreter of divine wisdom to the
children of men. His long life has covered the nineteenth century;
there were wrapped up in him the experiences of men and things through
this most fateful of all eras; and it has been permitted to lap over
into the twentieth century, so that with the wisdom of the past he may
point out the ways to greater triumphs in the years to come.

His Message to the Twentieth Century is one of the most thrilling
documents that have been sent out to the world. It ranks with the
Magna Charta of English history or the Declaration of Independence of
our own, and in the years to come it will be enshrined as they are in
the hearts of multitudes of people:

"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 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, Great Pontiff of the age, thou mayest well lay down the burden of
thy four score years and ten! Thou deservest well of humanity. You
have been a great leader in the Church of God. The weary pilgrimage of
a desert land is over, and from Nebo's height there stretches before
you the Promised Land of rest and joy and everlasting bliss.

  "Hail, Champion of the Faith! whose beacon light,
   Held high in trembling hands, illum'ned the world
   With such a blaze as ne'er before hath shone,
   E'en from the torch that Gregory upheld
   Or Pius kindled. Hark, the swelling sound
   From many million throats! Thy children see
   The Signal, and in serried legions stand
   Before the grateful world, and with one voice
   Demand for thee, Great Father and Great Friend,
   The joy and peace that is thy due."



THE PAPACY NEVER DIES.

AT the present writing the question of choosing a successor to Leo
XIII. in the pontifical chair is of paramount importance. For this
reason the traditional method of selecting a Pope is a topic of more
than ordinary interest.

Popes may die, but the Papacy lives for ever. With temporal princes
their succession may come to an end. Reigning families may become
exhausted; dynasties have come and gone; but by divine right the line
of the Popes will last till the end of the world. The methods of
electing the successor of St. Peter have changed in the nineteen
centuries that the Popes have reigned, but as soon as one is
canonically elected he assumes unto himself all the prerogatives of
the Papal Chair. There is no prince in all Christendom whose power is
greater. The influence of the Vicar of Christ is not confined to any
race or people. It is not exercised by force of arms, nor is it
maintained through the civil power. His jurisdiction is over the
hearts of 260,000,000, and his word is obeyed with far more alacrity
and submission than is accorded to any other ruler in the world. He is
the successor of the Prince of the Apostles. He holds to all the
faithful the place of the Vicar of Christ, and they acknowledge his
infallibility in matters of faith and morals. These facts alone give
to the election of the Pope an importance that is not attributable to
any other event in history.

In the first place, it is a condemned proposition to maintain that the
laity have any strict right of suffrage in the election of the Pope.
In ancient times the vote of the Roman clergy, cast in the presence of
the faithful, was the elective power; but as the papal dignity
increased in wealth and splendor of temporal authority it often became
an object of human ambition. For this reason it was deemed necessary
to enact laws that definitely settled the mode of election. This was
done by Symmachus in the year 499.

The history of the interference of civil princes in the election of
the Popes fills many a dark chapter in the papal records. It is the
old story of the state, with its stronger power, laying its blighting
hand on the liberties of the church. It was not till 1059, under
Nicholas II., that the Papacy was completely emancipated from any
subjection to the Empire, and his successor, Gregory VII., the
glorious Hildebrand, was the last Pope who ever informed the emperor
of his election before proceeding to be consecrated and enthroned. The
Third General Council of the Lateran (1179) confined the right to
elect to the cardinals without reference to the rest of the Roman
clergy or of the people, and required a two-thirds vote for a valid
election.

The word conclave is of a little later origin. It originated in the
custom of selecting a hall whose door could be securely fastened (_cum
clavi_--with a key) behind the voting cardinals until they agreed by a
two-thirds majority on a candidate. In some instances, where the
stubborn electors held out, a diminishing quantity of food was served
so as to hasten an agreement, and in one instance, where a year and
one-half elapsed before a definite result was obtained, the roof was
removed and the venerable fathers were left to the inclemencies of the
weather until they came to a conclusion.

Any one may theoretically be elected Pope. He need not be a cardinal,
nor even a priest. He need not be an Italian. Not a few persons of
ignoble birth and of mean antecedents have been elected to the Papacy,
which they have illustrated by their virtues or their learning. Sixtus
V., 1585-1595, was a swineherd in his youth, and he repeatedly
affirmed the fact when he was Pope. It was Sixtus V. of whom Queen
Elizabeth of England said, when asked to marry, that she would offer
her hand in marriage to no one but Sixtus, and he would not accept it.
The present Cardinal Gotti's father was a stevedore. Almost every
nationality has had a representative in the chair of Peter, but for
several centuries the Italians have kept the accession within their
own nation, for the reason that the popedom has been a civil
principality.

As soon as the Pope breathes his last the Cardinal Chamberlain takes
possession of the Apostolic palace. He proceeds to the death chamber,
assures himself of, and instructs a notary to certify to, the fact
that the Pope is really dead. Then the ring of the Fisherman is broken
and the seal destroyed. The body is embalmed and carried in procession
to the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in the Vatican basilica, where
it remains for three days, the feet protruding a little through an
opening in the iron railing which encloses the chapel, that the
faithful may approach and kiss the embroidered slipper. The nine days
of funeral services are gone through with. During the last three days
the services are performed about an elevated and magnificent
catafalque. On each of these days five cardinals in turn give the
absolution, and on the ninth day a funeral oration is pronounced. The
body is reverently put into a cyprus-wood coffin. This is put into a
leaden case properly inscribed, and then all is placed in a wooden box
covered with a red pall, and in this condition it is carried to the
last resting-place, previously selected by the deceased.

On the tenth day the cardinals assemble in the forenoon, and the
preparations are made for the Conclave. All the persons who are to
remain in the Conclave--as prelates, custodians, attendants on the
cardinals, physicians, barbers, masons--are passed in review and take
an oath not to speak even among themselves of matters concerning the
election. Every avenue leading to the Conclave, except the eight
loopholes, is walled up by the masons; but one door is left so that it
may be opened by the late coming cardinals or to let out any one who
may be expelled, or who for any good reason may be obliged to go out.
Any one who leaves cannot return. This only door has a combination
lock, to be opened by the key of the prince marshal outside and of the
cardinal chamberlain inside.

The food for the cardinals is introduced by a turn, so well known in
convents of cloistered communities.

The next day, after Mass of the Holy Ghost, the balloting begins, and
continues until some one receives the necessary two-thirds. The
ballots are cast into a chalice on the altar.

There are now 63 cardinals in the Sacred College. Some may, on account
of distance--as Cardinal Moran of Australia--or on account of age or
infirmities, be prevented from being present. If they were all present
it would require 42 votes to elect. It would seem from the present
aspect of the Sacred College that a good many ballots may be taken
before the requisite number is secured.

In the last Conclave Cardinal Pecci was so pre-eminently a leader that
it took but one ballot practically to settle the question of his
election. In all probability it will take more than one to settle the
choice in the present Conclave. It is ordinarily very foolish to
prophesy, but it is especially so when the subject matter of the
prophecy is the outcome of the Conclave. There is an old Roman proverb
which says, "He who enters the Conclave as Pope comes out of it as
Cardinal." It does not always happen that the verdict of the Cardinals
ratifies that of public opinion or of the public press. In fact the
more prominent cardinals, who are well known to the world at large,
are generally the leaders of parties, and are for that very reason the
less likely to draw unto themselves the suffrages of two-thirds of the
Sacred College. They are the ones who have positive characteristics
and practically stand for definite policies, and for that reason they
have awakened opposition to themselves. Moreover leaders are not
always necessary in the Papal Chair. Leo XIII. has been so
pre-eminently an aggressive character, and his brilliant mind has
illuminated so many departments of church work, and his organizing
hand has co-ordinated so many church activities, that a quiet, placid,
conservative man might easily maintain the _status quo_ for many years
to come. The meek and humble Cardinal Chiaramonti, who became Pius
VII., was far better fitted to withstand the eagle-like aggressiveness
of Napoleon the First than Cardinal Consalvi would have been, or a
dominating spirit like Sixtus the Fifth would have been. If the latter
were pitted against a Napoleon, there would have been wreck and ruin
throughout the Church.

Moreover, in discussing the _papabile_, one is often deceived in the
qualities of a cardinal's character. Cardinal Pecci was ranked among
the liberals, and it was expected that he would establish a policy of
agreement with the Italian government; but the very first act of Leo
XIII. was to affirm irrevocably the attitude of protest against the
usurper who ruled in the civil principality of the church. There is
always a reserve in the ecclesiastical world in Rome that the outside
world rarely penetrates, and consequently it knows little of the great
moving forces in the Sacred College.

These things have been said in order that too much weight may not be
placed on any conjectural list of would-be popes. Still it is
allowable to discuss the chances various candidates may have and the
characteristics that would seem best fitted to the times and the
difficulties before the church.

The question of the Christian Democracy is one of the great burning
problems. Socialism is a growing quantity in Germany and elsewhere. It
can be met in the best way by diffusing a deep and wide-spread
knowledge of the truest socialistic principles among the people. Hence
the propaganda of Christian Democracy was instituted by Leo XIII. The
next Pope must carry this work to its fullest perfection. The next
Pope must be one who will extend a warm hand of greeting to the
throngs who have been born amidst Protestantism and who now are as
sheep without a shepherd. Organized Protestantism is fast going to
pieces, and unless the next Pope opens wide the door