THE DARKEST CRIMES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 193, 8 December 1876, Page 13

THE DARKEST CRIMES.

When the Italian Government began the work of sacrilegious spoliation, ifc was- decreed, of course in a spirit of shameless hypocrisy, that the churches of Home should nob be included in the list • of confiscated property. The very law which, sanctioned the robbery of convents and monasteries, and other religious or educational foundations, contained a clause, reserving even a portion of he revenues of the closed houses for those engaged in the services of the Church. But the blind cupidity of the Government, which the sweeping spoliation of the past has failed to satisfy, destroyed this reservation, which it ma,de at the opening of its career of crime and lays its guilty, curse-marked hand upon- the altar itself. Long since it mocked at the law of God, now" it spurns its own enactments against robbery. Destruction falls on the churches of Rome as well as upon the convents. The possession of several churches has already been demanded ; no£ only the sacred edifices have been seized, but the vestments and the sacred vessels have been sold by the officers of the Government. The history of Italian sacrilege grows in length and darkness. The sanctuaries, the dwelling places of God, are to be demolished and on their sites Government offices are to be erected. The Holy Father had even to ask permission to remove the bones of the martyrs and other sacred relics. The Government that thus tramples religion in the dust and defies the wrath of heaven, cannot even plead in vindication the poor, worthless pretext that the ground occupied by these churches, these gifts of charity, doubly consecrated by the religious memories of centuries, was needed for civil purposes. There are more vacant pieces of property in Borne than the Government requires for its administration. The spoliation was prompted solely by a hatred of relig.on. It was an act of homage to the demon of infidelity The fate of Antiochus will bear repetition. The honor of the outraged Son of God requires it. — • Catholic Telegraph.'