GASPARRI RESIGNS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 863, 6 January 1930, Page 9

GASPARRI RESIGNS

ILL-HEALTH CAUSES VATICAN CHANGE PAPAL SECRETARY OF STATE ROME, Saturday. The Pope has accepted the resignation of the Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Gasparri, owing to the latter’s ill-health. It is expected that Cardinal Pacelli, formerly Papal Nuncio at Berlin, will succeed Cardinal Gasparri. Cardinal Gasparri is Secretary of State to the Pope and president of the PontiCommission for the interpretation or the code of canon law. He is regarded as an expert jurist and his book on marriage is looked upon as a classic. He celebrated his golden jubilee as a priest early in 1927. April, 1928, Cardinal Gasparri asked the Pope, not for the first time, to re-he-ve him of the functions of Secretary of State. It was said that one reason for this request was that his post had become superfluous, as the political direction of the Vatican had passed entirely into the hands of the Pontiff. In May the cardinal sent a circular to the members of the Pope’s Noble Guard, demanding their resignation from the Catholic Centre Party, a Fascist body. This was regarded as a retaliation for Mussolini's order disbanding all the Catholic Boy Scout troops. Pope Pius X. confided to him the great work of the codification of canon law, a work which was completed in 1918. Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli studied theology in Rome, entered the priesthood and has spent almost all his life in the department of the Papal Secretary of State. His name came into prominence during the war through his having acted as an intermediary in the interests of peace on the initiative of the Pope in June, 1917. In 1920 he was appointed Nuncio for Germany, but continued to make Munich his headquarters for some years. Indeed, it was not till November, 1924, that he transferred them to Berlin.