THE NEW POPE.
IT has been a subject of universal remark that when the newly elected Pope, who has taken the title of Pius XI., blessed the people after his election he did so not, as had been the practice for many years, from an interior loggia, but from the outer loggia, whence his words reached the whole Italian crowd waiting in the piazza. Nobody doubts that there was a calculated significance in this return to the original practice. But how much significance? Some people have hastily jumped to the conclusion that the new Pope, who is a scholar and a widely travelled man, and therefore presumably a man of toleration, intends forthwith to enter into closer relations with the Italian Government. Others tell us that though Cardinal Gasparri has for some time been urging the desirability of a rap- prochement, the new Pope is not in favour of any definite plan for tightening the bonds. Naturally, however, he would like the relationship to be much easier than it is, and one can fairly assume that this is his desire without pressing his significant act after his election to yield more than its proper meaning.
To us it seems that everything depends upon whether the Pope acts as though a grasp upon temporal power is as important to the Roman Church as spiritual power, or whether, while being content to claim as little temporary power as the traditions of the Vatican permit, he con- centrates his attention upon the supreme task of spiritual and moral leadership. So long as temporal claims are made with jealousy and with inopportune persistence, the in- herent rivalry between the Vatican and the secular Govern- ment of the country cannot very well be put out of sight. Whatever may be in the Pope's mind, however, the War had a deep effect upon Italy, as it had upon all the other belligerent countries. Religion in Italy is normally, so to speak, popular, and during the War it became more popular than before. There is thus a silent movement among the people, which tends to make it more and more difficult for the Vatican and the Government to remain in a state of mutual bickering and animosity. The average Italian is- proud of the Papacy as an institution ; he likes to think that all paths lead to Rome ; and he reflects with gratifi- cation that from Rome emanates a power which is world- wide in its ramifications and influence.
A strict and logical dissociation between the Vatican and the Government might have been possible if the Vatican had found it possible to sustain that decree which forbade Roman Catholics not merely to sit in the Italian Parliament but to vote for the deputies. That veto, however, was dropped because of its utter impossibility, and there has been no more distinct feature in recent Italian politics than the growing strength of the Catholic party. We imagine, therefore, that if the Pope acts in accordance with his reputation there will be a drawing together of the spiritual and the secular in Rome, even though he may not have approved as yet of any clear policy to that end. Another sign that the old bitter- ness is passing away was the fact that the Government troops in the piazza presented arms when the new Pope appeared on the outer loggia. It may be said that the order to present arms was given by the officer in command as a merely obvious act of courtesy and good manners when the Pope suddenly emerged. It may be so, but we fancy that that is not exactly the -way in which things happen in /tall. Probably the Ministers of the Grown had learned in advance of the Papal plan; and probably- they had carefully discussed it and decided what their response should be. Not many Papal elections have proceeded so ne,ady in accordance with expectation. At some elections the names of Cardinals who were at first most talked about as likely candidates were- gradually thrust into the back- ground, new names emerged, and perhaps ultimately (as in some American Presidential elections) there was a landslide towards the election of somebody whose chief merit was that he excited the minimum of division. It was whispered that the late Pope desired what has actually happened ; he wished Cardinal Ratti to be his successor, and whether the whisper was true or not, Cardinal Ratti was certainly supported from the beginning, both by ecclesiastical and lay opinion. Although he was at -the bottom of the list of Cardinals, having been made-a Cardinal only last year, he is respected throughout Italy as combining scholarship and diplomacy with the power 7—displayed while he was Archbishop of Milan—of organ- ization. He was in turn Prefect of the Ambrosian Library and Prefect of the wonderful library of the Vatican. He was Nuncio to Poland, and also Ecclesiastical Commis- sioner of the plebiscite area of Upper Silesia. He is an excellent linguist and he has stayed in England at least once.
All Christians, to whatever communion they may belong, will be glad if there should be a real reconciliation between the Papacy and the Italian Government. We who are not Roman Catholics would perhaps be particularly glad because, as we have already suggested, such a recon- ciliation would imply an abatement of the Pope's tem- poral claims--claires which have always seemed to us to be a sad hindrance to spiritual force. No doubt the Papacy has reasons for having long harboured enmity towards the Italian Kingdom, apart from the tremendous limitations which the Italian Crown set upon the Papal sway. When the Kingdom of Italy was formed in 1861, Victor Emmanuel, in addition to reducing the Papal provinces from twenty to five, abolished a large number of monasteries. Six years later he confiscated church property, and, as everybody knows, in 1870 Rome itself was occupied. Through all this Victor Emmanuel showed himself to be not merely a ruler who was carrying out a State policy regarded as indispensable but one who was definitely anti-Clerical in spirit. Pius IX. played just the part which was expected of him in those circum- stances, in keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of his conquerors. He seems, nevertheless, to have been drawn at various - times by two quite different policies. If he often showed a desire for reconciliation, there is documentary evidence that about the time when he established the dogma of Papal Infallibility, he also contemplated establishing a dogma to. the effect that the temporal power of the Pope was a revealed' article of faith. This would have strained the situation more than ever. The recovery of the temporalities was the principal policy of Leo XIII. Pius X. did not work so hard fir this direction, for he was no politician. He was just a saintly man of great simplicity, appropriate to his peasant origin, and much kindness of heart. He was like an old-fashioned country vicar, and when he tried to deal with " Modernism " in Christian doctrine his intellect was quite unequal to the task. As for the late Pope, nothing much in the way of reconciliation with the Government was possible, even ii: he had willed it, owing to the distractions of the War.
But surely we may hope for something from the new Pope. He belongs to that middle class -which for sound- ness and steadiness is the most -valuable element in Italian life. A comparison between him and This X. reminds U8 of a haunting passage which Bacon wrote in his discourse entitled "Notes of a Speech concerning a War with Spain."
"Thirdly, in 88, there sat in the see of Rome a ,fierce thundering friar, that would set all at six and seven ; or at six and five, if you allude to his name : and though he would after have turned his teeth upon Spain, yet he was taken order. with before it came to that. Now there is ascended to the papacy, a personage, that came in by chaste election, no ways obliged to the party of the Spaniards : a man bred in ambassages and affairs of state, that hath much of the prince„ and nothing of the friar ; and one, that though he loves the chair of the papacy well, yet he loveth the carpet above the chair ; that is, Italy, and the liberties thereof well likewise."
We hope that Pius XI. will love the carpet above the chair—will do much to break down if he does not abolish the policy which makes a Pope a ielf-ineareerated prisoner within the Vatican. With what tremendous force could not a Pope speak who treasured the interests of the whole Italian people as though they were his own ; who came-into the open and dealt publicly with his fellow- men ; who breathed spiritual inspiration into the political life of Italy ; who was known, whenever he issued an encyclical upon faith or morals, to be speaking with wholehearted sincerity and with no backward, glances at temporal power—who was, indeed, beyond the sus- picion of wanting to do anything but spiritualize the Italian, nation I
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