Pope Pius the Tenth

by F. A. Forbes

"I hear that you are a santo and work miracles," said a lady one day, with more enthusiasm than tact.

"You have made a mistake in a consonant," replied the pope, laughing, "it is a 'Sarto' that I am." No less witty was his reply to a man who came to solicit a cardinal's hat for one of his friends. "But I cannot give your friend a cardinal's hat," said the Holy Father. "I am not a hatter, only a tailor" (sarto).

The Portuguese revolution in 1911 was a fresh heartbreak to the pope, for the Portuguese Republic was bitterly anti-Catholic and anti-clerical. The first action of its representatives was to expel the religious orders and to confiscate their buildings and belongings. This was done in the most brutal manner, nuns being driven off to prison after their convents had been looted and some of the inhabitants put to death. Many died of the privations endured, while others testified to the humanity of their gaolers by going mad. Religious instruction of any kind was prohibited in the government schools; priests were arrested and imprisoned; the Bishop of Oporto was driven from his diocese. The separation law of church and state fell more heavily on the Church in Portugal than even that of France, and its object was the elimination of the Christian faith from Portuguese society.

These things fell heavily on the heart of the Father of Christendom, who sorrowed with his sorrowing children, He protested against the injustice in his encyclical "Jamdudum in Lusitania," in which he set forth and condemned the oppressive measures of the republic. A touching letter of thanks expressed the gratitude of the persecuted clergy of Portugal for the pope's courageous protest. That some of the harshest features of the law seemed in a fair way to be relaxed during the years that followed was some small consolation to him.

In the spring of 1913 the health of the pope gave cause for anxiety, an attack of influenza which had greatly weakened him being followed by a relapse, with symptoms of bronchitis. From every part of the world came assurances of prayers and sympathy, while in Rome the anxiety felt by all lay like a weight on the city. But he made a quick recovery. He was not a good patient, and his doctors had the greatest difficulty in keeping him quiet. No sooner was he convalescent than he accused them of being tyrants, whose only idea was to make him waste the time that belonged to the Church. Over and over again they would find that in their absence he had disobeyed orders and received somebody or settled an urgent piece of business.

"Just think of our responsibility before the world!" said Dr. Amici one day to his recalcitrant patient. "Just think of mine before God," was the energetic answer, "if I do not take care of His Church!" They began to talk to him seriously, trying to make him promise to do as he was told. "Come, come," said he with his irresistible smile, "don't be cross; surely it is my interest to get well quite as much as it is yours to make me so."

During the winter before this illness Rosa Sarto, the pope's eldest sister, died. She had been with her brother nearly all his life, having gone at the age of seventeen to keep house for him when he was a curate at Tombolo, afterwards accompanying him to Salzano. During the years when he had been at Treviso and Mantua she had lived with her mother, until her death, after which she came to Venice with her two younger sisters and her niece. On Cardinal Sarto's election to the papacy the little group made their home in Rome in a small apartment not far from the Vatican, where they led a quiet life of charity and good works.

Those who went to pray beside the dead woman were equally struck by the humble surroundings and the peace that prevailed there. A small room, a common iron bedstead, a sweet, almost transparent old face framed in a plain white cap, violets scattered here and there over the body. The funeral took place at the church of St. Laurence-outside-the-Walls, and all the cardinals in Rome were present, together with a great crowd eager to do honour to one so near and dear to the Holy Father. Her brother alone could not be present. Following in spirit the funeral procession he knelt in his private oratory praying for the soul of his sister. Telegrams from every part of the world bore witness to the sympathy felt for the sorrow of the pope who had made the sorrows of the world his own. This demonstration of love and interest was a comfort to him in his grief and touched him deeply.

But a fresh blow was in store in the sufferings of his children in Mexico. Carranza had headed a revolution against Huerta, the president of the Mexican Republic, An ex-bandit named Villa, who was Carranza's chief supporter, soon turned against him and started a counter-revolution of his own, followed by a systematic persecution of religion. Many priests were forced to flee the country, ten bishops crossed into the United States to save their people from a favourite trick of the insurgents, who would arrest a bishop and, relying on the people's love of their pastor, then demand an exorbitant ransom. Horrible outrages followed; priests were shot, hanged or thrown into prison; churches were converted into barracks, the sacred vessels were carried off to the bar rooms as cups. The venerable Archbishop of Durango was compelled to sweep the streets; religious were shot for refusing to betray the hiding places of their brethren, while the fate of many of the nuns is not to be described. Although the revolutionary government set up a press bureau in the United States to deny these facts and fill the mails with calumnies against the Church, the truth became gradually known—not in all its entirety until after the pope's death—but enough to wring the brave old heart with a fresh pang of anguish . . . .

"The sedia advanced," wrote one who was present about this time at a service in St. Peter's, "bearing the pope aloft above the heads of the people. He was in a red cope and a high golden mitre. His face was sweet and sad; his soul, far away from all this show and splendour, seemed lost in the contemplation of the distance that separates the things of earth from the things of Heaven, while his hand moved from side to side in blessing. The sadness was so deeply engraved on that pensive face that it seemed as if no smile could ever lighten it; truly he bore on his shoulders the weight of the world's grief. Suddenly a movement in the crowd brought the procession to a halt; the thoughtful face was raised as if the pope had awakened from his contemplation; he bent forward. A smile of infinite sweetness and kindness, like a ray of sunshine in a winter sky, lit up for a moment those sad features, while beneath me I heard two Italians murmur, 'O Father, dear, dear old Father!'"