THE POPE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1117, 3 July 1913, Page 4

THE POPE.

A NEW ZEALANDER’S LETTER.

STRICT SECRECY OBSERVED,

The secrecy maintained concerning the illness of the Pope has been creating a stir in Roman Catholic circles in Europe, according to a letter received by the Dunedin Star’s Bluff correspondent from a New Zealander at present travelling in Italy. It is stated that although his Holiness may recover from his present illness and linger for months, he will always be an invalid, and practically bedridden. Naturally enough, a vast amount of speculation has been made as to his probable successor to the supreme head of the Roman Catholic

Church. Amongst the names of the candidates who are most favourably mentioned is that of Cardinal Merry del Val, the much travelled, who, with Cardinals Tutto and Cajetau de Lai, form a triumverate to carry on the government of the church. The triumverate will go out of existence when the Pope dies, but as the Pontiff may live for some months yet it will be all powerful until the end conies. The cardinals maintain unprecedented secrecy as to the Pope’s condition, and the only details which are given out are the laconic, optimistic bulletins of the doctors, which are supervised personally by Cardinal Merry del Val. In order to minimise the seriousness of the Pope’s condition, the Observatore R 'mano, the official organ of the Vatican, has been ordered to publish no information except the official bulletins. The cardinals who call to make enquiries as to the Pope’s condition, instead of meeting Cardinal Merry del Val and the physicians in the papal anti-chamber, are received by a minor official, who merely reads the bulletin to them. Cardinal Merry del Val rarely sees any of his colleagues. During the illness of Pope Leo XIII. Cardinal Rampolla, who was then Secretary of State, sent his secretary with bulletins to the journalists, who were received twice every day by Dr. Lapponi, the papal physician at that time, and received the fullest information, On the other

hand, the Vatican is now guarded as closely as if an assault weie feared. If Cardinal Merry del Val ever had any chance of succeeding to the Papacy he has surely lost it during the period of his increased power. It must be remembered that the majority of the cardinals are Italians, and they resent the idea of submitting to a foreigner, who, moreover, is the youngest member of the Sacred College, having been born in 1865. Even the Pope’s sisters—two plain, simple-minded peasants, who followed him to Rome, as they say, “to have somedody in the family near him in case of illness ” —have to bow to the authority of Cardinal Merry del Val, who is half English and half Spanish, The Pope insisted on being nursed by his sisters, who were continuously by his bedside, but it is contrary to the etiquette of the Vacticau for women to spend a night in the Pope’s apartment, and Cardinal Merry del Val refused to allow the rule, which dates back to the seventeenth century, to be broken. Every evening the two old women are compelled to leave the Vacticau with heavy hearts and the fear that their brother will die during their absence. Their anxiety is increased by the fear that their brother will die suddenly, and that in the confusion at the last moment a message summoning them to the Vatican will be forgotten, The elder sister (Maria) one evening during the week refused to leave the Vatican, and sent a telegrtam to her nephew, Mgr. Parolin, the parish priest at Passeguo, who is now there, and spends the night at the bedside of his uncle. From the foregoing it will be seen that the matter of succession is a delicate one, but as it is determined by the cardinals themselves in ballot it may be taken that the choice of an able successor will be assured.