"SISTER ROSA."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 293, 3 May 1913, Page 9

"SISTER ROSA."

i POPE'S COMPANION' AXD COUNSELLOR. Signora Rosa Sarto, elder sister of Pope Pius X., who died recently in lier modest little flat within a stone's throw of the great bronze doors of the Vatican, was anything but a great lady in the ordinary sense of the word. ''Sister Rosa," as she was known in the family circle, as well as to the outside public, had been her brother's closest companion from their childhood. He was the strongest affection of her life, and her few years' seniority gave her just that authority and influence over him in boyhood and youth that enabled her to become his help and adviser when he entered the priesthood. She acted as his housekeeper, looked after his creature comforts, nursed him in sickness, and hoarded his little savings, even scolding him when a shortage in the weeKiy cash revealed some act of charity which the young priest had been tempted to indulge in without consulting her. When Mgr. Sarto was raised to the purple Sister Rosa felt that 1 the first step in their separation had come. When, as Patriarch of Venice, she attended the Conclave of 1903 and the news came to his native city that he had been elected Pope, she burst into tears, and refused to accept the congratulations which were heaped upon her from all sides.

"HE IS LOST TO US." "He lias been taken from us," was all that she replied; "for us (her younger sister and herself) he is lost." The two sisters went to Rome, for the elder declared that in spite of his altered condition in life she would not be definitely separated from him. The little flat in the Corso Vitt'ore .Emanuele was at first invaded by fashionable callers of the black aristocracy of Rome, who came to offer their homage to the two simple old ladies. But sister Rosa, who was the ruling spirit, declined to make herself 'one of them." She received all advances coldly, and people said that lier new honors had turned her head, and she was proud. The truth was very different. She felt that she belonged to the humble though independent class which resents patronage, and prefers to stick to its own environment and traditions. She was of the feasant class by birth, and she intended to remain in her own sphere. "What do all those princesses and countesses want of me, a poor, simple woman?" she asked. "They came out of pure curiosity to see what the Pope's sister is like, and to comment on my speech and manners behind my back." Soon the callers became more rare, and finally the two old ladies were left to themselves. They changed their flat for one closer to the Vatican, on the Piazza Rusticucci, and Sister Rosa saw her brother every few days. When it was a question of taking a summer holiuay she refused to leave, "because," as she said, "life is uncertain, and 1' prefer to be near my brother." The doctor was consulted and the Pope insisted, and Sister Rosa went to the Alban hills for a month. With this exception she had never been out of Rome since going there soon after her brother's election.

DECLINED NOBILITY. The Pontifical Court desired to inscribe the two sisters on the list of Soman nobility as the natural sequel to their relationship with the Pope, but Sister Rosa declined in terms which excii.. Ie amusement of the Pope himself, and the matter was allowed to drop. When death came to Sister Rosa one of her last words was a request to see her brother, but it was not granted. Two hours after the end a closed carriage left the bronze doors, and a muffled figure in black stepped from it to the death chamber and laid a small crucifix on the dead woman's breast. Naturally the report that the Pope had left the Vatican was contradicted in official quarters, but the public are left to judge whether the ties of family and a life-time's affection were not in this instance allowed to override the tradition which keeps the Pope a. prisoner in his,splendid palace. Certain it is that no more genuine tears were' shed that those of Pius X. when the news was broken to him that his lifelong companion and counsellor had passed away.