LATE POPE BENEDICT

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2384, 26 January 1922, Page 3

LATE POPE BENEDICT

HOMAGE BY GREAT .CROWDS. r- a Ejecting scenes A witnessed. Rome, Jan. 24. The Pope is lying in state in the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, which is second on the right when entering Saint Peter’s. Immense crowds are paying Homage, includf ing'many peasants. Affecting scenes are being witnessed, thousands, kneeling- on the pavement of the church, praying for the soul of the departed Pontiff. The public is not allowed in the chapel, but the features of the dead Pone can be plainly seen through the grating. The Pope is dressed in his pontifical robes with a white mitre. The body is guarded by Inembers of the Pope’s Noble Guard, and late in the day it "was carped to the crypt where it will be buried. Extreme simplicity will characterise the funeral. London, Jan. 23. A leading article in The Times, dealing with the Pope’s attitude during the war, states that two of his most creditable acts were his intercessions with the French and German Governments for the exchange , of prisoners, and his rebuke of the Germanophile press campaign in t Spain. He was a man with high and noble qualities* and was deeply moved by.the horrors of the war. It is generally considered that the next Pope will be an Italian ,as France, will enter the Conclave shorn of three cardinals —Amette, Dubourg, and De Cugrieres. The Sacred College at present consists of sixty members instead of seventy, and the Pope’s sudden death has prevented the realisation of ■' French expectations of the creation of several new cardinals. ■ Rome, Jan. 23. The Conclave for the election of the Pope will assemble on 2nd "February.

James Della Chiesa, who was destined to be Benedict XV., the 259th successor of St. Peter, was born at Pegli, in the diocese of Genoa, on 21st November, 1854. After having completed his studies in the Cnprancian College and the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, Rome, he was ordained priest in 1878. In 1883 he accompanied Monsignor (afterwards Cardinal) Rampolla to Madrid as Auditor of the Papal Nunciature, and with him he returned to Rome in 1887 to serve as subordinate to the great Sicilian on the nomination of. the latter as Secre- ■ tary of State to the Pope. Monsignpr Della' Sliisea remained here unJffl. 1901, when Leo XIII. appointed him to the post of Substitute to the Papal Secretary of State and Secretary of the Cipher. On 10th December, 1907, Pius X. appointed him Archbishop of Bologna, and the

Holy 'Fa ther honoured him by per-

‘ sonally.consecrating him in the Sis- ( tine Chapel. Less than seven years of priulent administration in the im--"'7*>rtnnt See of Bologna won for him a place in the Sacred College, and he was created Cardinal in May, 1914. It may he noted that one of his predecessors as “Archbishop of Bologna, who afterwards became Pope, was the famous Benedict XIV. one of the most, erudite men of his time, and probably the greatest scholar amongst the Popes. The election of the Pope took place on 3rd September, 1914, and he was crowned on 6th September. Personal magnetism, an Italian intellect, and a spirit of self-efface-ment masked an undaunted tenacity of purpose —those were the characters upon which European writers dwelt in their studies of Benedict XV.

The youthful Giacomo had every

advantage in his native Genoa, entering the law school there when he was twenty-one years of age, only discover that he had what is known in Italian families as a vocation. At last he entered the Alma Collegio Capranica on probation as an ecclesiastical student, somewhat against the wishes of certain relatives, who. considered that the boy was throwing himself away. When, a t the age of fifty-three, with hair turning grey, Monsignor Della Chiesa entered the City of Bologna as its Archbishop, he found for a time that the sympathy of his See •n-as somewhat alienated, but the student body frankly succumbed to his magnetic personality, “a pensive personality, a compound of timidity with benevolence, and a certain eagerness to propitiate.” In his speech he employed a faultless idiom, as if rebuking the racy idiom of the local soil, whether of Genoa, Venice, CRome or Naples. His pulpit manner -appeared a trifle cold, his gesture had the dignity of the Italian aristocrat, and his reserve was accentuated by frequent pauses in delivery that"seemed deliberate, as if he were measuring the effect of his words upon his hearers.

historic ceremony. BREAKING THE PAPAL RING. Rome, Jan. 22. Preparations were immediately begun for the historic ceremonies connected with the death of the Pope. One of the first is the assembly of the cardinals to call the dead Pontiff by name, and when no answer is received a cardinal removes the “Fisherman’s Ring,” .the symbol of Papal authority. It is then broken, and remade for the next Pope. . Immediately upon the death ot a Pope the news is carried to the Chamberlain, who is supreme authority until the new Pope is elected. He proceeds to the chamber of the deceased Pontiff,'\ and a curious

ceremony takes place. With a small hammer he strikes the forehead of the dead man three times, calling him by his name (not his title) as he does so. Getting no answer, he removes the Papal ring from the dead man’s fingei’, and breaks it into pieces. The. fact of the Pope’s decease is communicated to the officials of the Papal Court, and summonses are sent out to all the cardinals who are absent, commanding their presence at the conclave to be held in ten days’ time in the place where the death of the Pope occurred. The body of the late Pontiff is embalmed, clothed in the robes of his office, and conveyed to a couch of state in one of the chapels of St. Peter’s, where the faithful flock to see it. A colossal catafalque, illustrated with inscriptions and adorned with statuary, is erected in the nave of St. Peter’s. Funeral rites are performed before it for nine days in succession, being brought to a conclusion by a funeral oration. On the evening of the ninth day the body is privately interred in a plain marble sarcophagus, on which only the title of the deceased appears. Here it remains until the death of the next Pope, when the tomb is opened, the coffin taken out, and conveyed to the crypt, and the tomb prepared for the reception of its new occupant.