ROME

New Zealand Tablet, 12 June 1913, Page 55

ROME

' RECEPTION OF PILGRIMS. The greatest disappointment experienced. by Pius X. since his latest illness began has been due to his inability to receive personally the thousands of foreigners who came to Rome for the celebration of the centenary of the Peace of the Church but have had to return without the consolation of seeing the Pope (writes a Rome correspondent under date April 20). Trench, Tyrolese, Austrians, Poles, Germans, and Italians from every part of the peninsula, to the number of about five thousand, have had this experience. Their regret has been alleviated by the receptions'given by Cardinal Merry del Val, who addresses the pilgrims, imparts to them the Papal Blessing, and accords to the ecclesiastical visitors all the spiritual favors which the Holy Father is accustomed to grant on such occasions. His Eminence fails not to distribute to them leaflets containing a report of the address with which Pius X. inaugurated the jubilee celebrations when receiving the Lombard pilgrimage two weeks ago, an address that is in reality a stern vindication of the rights of the Catholic Church and a bold arraignment of the various governments that show so much indulgence and tolerance to all except members of the'Church of Christ. Though far inferior in numbers to other foreign pilgrimages that have arrived, the group sent to Rome to represent the Belgian journalists is one of the most important bodies received by the Papal Secretary of State. At the head of ' the group of eighty, whom the Cardinal awaited in his own apartments on Thursday, the 17th inst., were the Bishop of Namur and Commendatore Leone Maillie, editor of the Courrier de Bruxelles and secretary of the Association of the Journalists of Belgium, to both of whom the Pontiff seems indebted for proofs of deep devotion to the Apostolic See. At the end of the audience, during which his Eminence presented three of the journalists with gold medals sent them by Pius X., Commendatore Maillie made the , annual offering which the Belgian journalists collect as Peter’s Pence, and which amounts this year to about 120,000 francs.