THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 1903. POPE PIUS X.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 33, 13 August 1903, Page 17

THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 1903. POPE PIUS X.

IUS X. makes the two hundred and fiftyseventh unit in the long line of Roman Pontiffs that stretches back in unbroken perspective to the Fisherman-Apostle of Galilee. Of that historic line, the present occupant of the papal See makes the fourth that has been associated with the ancient city of Venice, the Queen of the Adriatic. Two of these— Benedict XI. (1303) and Innocent IX. (1591-1592)-sat in St. Peter's Chair for the brief space of only eight and two months respectively.

The third, Gregory XVI., had been a Camaldolese monk in the Queqn City, and his great and beneficent reign extended over fifteen years (1831-1846). It was a period of revolutionary storm and trouble. He met its reasonable demands by economical reforms in every branch of the administration of the Papal States ; its violence by conciliation, and, where this failed, by military force. And throughout his laborious pontificate, the saintly Pontiff lived the life of a simple monk, rigidly observing the austere rule of his Order, fasting much, sleeping little, making the floor his couch, never idle, and always intent on prayer. Recent cable messages indicate that Pius X. will, to a great extent at least, imitate th* simplicity of life which distinguished the papal career of his illustrious Venetian predecessor.

Greatness (as Disraeli says in his « Coningsby ') no longer depends on rentals, for the world 1 is too rich, nor on pedigrees, for the world is too knowing. The present succefesor of St. Peter has in him elements that make for true greatness and are not associated with money-bags or blue blood. He was, till the close of the recent Conclave, Patriarch of the venerable See of Venice. He is a man of the people— a former village-boy of the Veneto. He rose to supreme ecclesiastical eminence from the position of curate and village pastor through his commanding talent, his ripe scholarship, his oratorical gifts, his efficient administrative service, and the power of hierarchical ruling which he displayed in the great See over which he presided so ably for the past ten years. He is filled with the abounding charity which made him-as it had previously made his prede* cessor, in the evil days of the cholera scourge-the idol of the poor of Venice. They lose a loving father and friend. But the world is the richer by the gift that is their loss. There is in him a union of the qualities which seem to justify Cardinal Moran's eulogium of him as the happiest possible choice.

Pius X. was ' content to know and be unknown.' Ha sought, with earnest and reiterated entreaties, to escape; the burden of the high and responsible office of Roman Pontiff. And now, with the burden almost forced upon his unwilling shoulders, he stands in a position where his talents will have full scope. Apart from the character and attainments of the man who fills it, that exalted office has about it a sufficient grandeur. It is thus described by a non-Catholic writer : •To be the infallible spiritual guide of a multitude of people—perhaps a sixth of the population of the world ; to derive from the Chief of the Apostles, through two hundred and fifty-five intermediaries, a primacy of honor and authority among Christian folk ; to be seated in this ineffable honor in the city of Rome, imperial and eternal ; to operate a governing machinery of patriarchs, metropolitans, archbishops, bishops, priests, and innumerable Orders of monks, friars, and nuns— a machinery which in delicacy and efficiency is the wonder of the world ; to have interests and duties in connection with every nation in both hemispheres ; to watch all things political and ecclesiastical, on behalf of an organisation which has its tendrils in every cranny and crevice of the social structure of all Europe and America, and many parts of Asia and Africa-what position has earth to show which can compare with this for eminence of standpoint, breadth of view, and reach of power ? ' We pray that Pope Pius X. may occupy this position long, that if his responsibilities are great, his honors of achievement may be equally great, and that he may impress himself as deeply upon his generation ( as<, the, good old Pope into whose place Providence has raised him/