JUBILEE OF POPE PIUS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 857, 28 December 1929, Page 9

JUBILEE OF POPE PIUS

KING GEORGE’S MESSAGE OF CONGRATULATION

ROME, Thursday. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Pope Pius’s eutry into the priesthood King George sent the following message: “I cannot allow this happy occasion to pass without offering my sincerest congratulations and best wishes for your welfare and happiness. 1 ask your Holiness to accept my felicitations, and the assurance of my sincere friendship and the heartfelt respect and esteem I feel for the person and character of your Holiness.”

Achilla Ratti, Pope Pius XI., when Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, was elected Pope on February 6, 1922, in succession to Pope Bene'dict XV, He was the junior Cardinal Priest. He was born at Desio, near Milan, on March 31, 1857, the son of an engineer, one of six children. He was educated at Monza and Milan and later at the Gregorian University at Rome. He was a great student, especially in languages, of which he is proficient in many, ancient and modern, in 1879 he was dedicated to the priesthood. He was for some time Prefect of the Vatican Library and of the Ambrosian Library. In 191 She carried out a difficult diplomatic and ecclesiastical mission in Poland after the Armistice, and he did his delicate work with much ability and to the satisfaction of the Pope, who raised him to the Cardinalate, and appointed him Archbishop of Milan. The chief recreation of the Pope’s life had been Alpine mountaineering. He had done many difficult and dangerous climbs, especially on Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn. In 1923 he published “Climbs on Alpine Peaks.”