OUTRAGES IN ROME.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 118, 2 June 1871, Page 3

OUTRAGES IN ROME.

The ' Standard' s<ya the following protesv was left on the 10th instant with Mr W. Jervoi.se, lowm lenevs of the post recently held by Mr. Odo Russell, for transmission to the British Ambassador at Florence:

" We, the undersigned, British subjects, state for the'information of her Majesty's representative at the Italian Court that on this day, Friday, the 10th March, 187 i, we were subjected to inconvenience, insult, and danger, when attending the Lenten service in the Church of the Gesu in Kome. We think it right to say that we had no political motive whatever in visiting the Church. The greater portion of us are Catholics, and went for the purposes of devotion simply ; some of us are Protestants. We were nearly strangers to each other, our common danger to-day being our first introduction. The sermon, which was preached by a Jesuit father named Tommasi, and contained nothing political, or calculated to irritate anyone, was over about twelve o'clock. The congregation, on attempting to leave the church, found the doors beset by a band of men s >me hundreds in number—armed with bludgeons. Those\vho tried to get out were driven back into the church, and compelled to remain there for a considerable time. MSome took refuse in the garden adjoining, and were subsequently escorted to their homes by National Guards. We stayed in the church until Signer Gadda, the Koyal Commissary, appeared with twenty or thirty soldiers, who made several arrests within the church. The soldiers had t eir swords drawn, and with cries of ' Birboni' slashed right and left as they chased men and women into the side chapels and behind the rails of the high altar, where a priest was celebrating mass and administering to communicants. Women fainted, and one of us saw a female savagely struck in the forehead with a swordj the blood Hushing from the wound. Several of us saw unoffending persons struck with swords. Sitinor (xadda was present, during all this. When we appealed to him for protection, and informed him we were foreigners and British subjects he escorted us with a file of soldiers to the outside of the church as far as the Via Cassarini, when he saluted us and left us. We went then to the residence of M .Jervoise, who requested us to put in -writing the facts which came under our knowledge. We append our names :

" (Simiefl) W. Meziere Brady, D.!)., a vice-regal chaplain in Ireland ; William Winchester, M.A , Oxon., late of her Majesty's Indi n Service ; ".Dudley B. Coppinger, late Captain her Majesty's 51fch Kegiment; C. Bexley Vansittart, student of the University |of London ; M. Francis Lomax, Westfield House, Lancashire; I<\ H. Vansittart, S. M. Coppinger, E. 11. Busk, London.