were and still are used that it is the custom to adopt with regard to ordinary prisons. For example, it is well known that in the beginning of the Italian occupation of Rome the utmost surveillance was kept up on all going into or coming out from the Vatican. One met the Piedmontese sentinel at the entrance, and by him the government police; people were occasionally searched; and the guards had orders not to allow persons to show themselves from the windows or balconies of the palace. The lamented Mgr. de Merode, almoner to the Sovereign Pontiff, a soldier by early education, could hardly give credit to the facts that proved this. Full of indignation, he went himself to the spot, and from the balcony looked down upon the street below where the sentinel stood. He was at once saluted with the words, “Go back!” Again the command was repeated, and then the levelled rifle admonished the prelate that further refusal to obey was imprudent. The affair made a good deal of noise at the time, and the guards were removed from close proximity to the palace, remaining only a few hundred feet away. All things, then, considered, Pius IX. is a prisoner and the Vatican is his prison.
But not only is the liberty of the Sovereign Pontiff directly interfered with in this way; he is trammelled also in purely spiritual matters. The Pope, the rulers of Rome say, may talk as he pleases in the Vatican, as we cannot prevent him, and he will not be put down; nay, he may even promulgate his decrees, encyclicals, and constitutions by putting them up as usual at the doors of the basilicas of St. Peter and St. John Lateran; but any one who dares to
reprint them will do so at his peril; his paper will be sequestrated, if the document published be judged by the authorities of the Italian kingdom to contain objectionable matter, and he will be tried by due course of law. This mode of proceeding has been put in practice; the seizure of the issue of the Unità Cattolica for publishing an encyclical is well known, and was remarkable for an amusing feature. The edition for the provinces escaped the vigilance of the fiscal agents, and the Florentine liberal press, anxious to show how much freedom was allowed the Pope, on getting the Unità, printed the document. To their surprise, their issues were sequestrated. The letter of instruction on the subject of papal documents, and of surveillance, by the police, of the Catholic preachers, issued by the late ministry, to our knowledge never was recalled, and is therefore still in force; worse is contemplated, as we shall see later on. This coercion of his freedom of action extends also to the Pope’s jurisdiction in spirituals and in temporals.
The first instance of this is the exaction of the royal exequatur. We cannot do better than cite the words of the able legal authority, Sig. A. Caucino, of Turin, who has lately written a series of articles on the law of guarantees, passed by the chambers and confirmed by the king, of which we are speaking. On this subject of the exequatur he writes: “After the discourse of the avvocato Mancini, on the 3d of May, 1875, and the ‘order of the day’ by the deputy Barazzuoli, no one wonders that the nature of the application of the law of guarantees has been changed, and that all the promises solemnly made when it was necessary to forestall public
opinion, and promising cost nothing, have been broken. From that time to this the bishops named by the Pontiff, but not approved of by the royal government, have been put in the strangest and most unjust position in the world. It is hardly needful to recall that the first and principal guarantee in the law of May 13, 1871, was that by which the government renounced, throughout the whole kingdom, the right of naming or presenting for the conferring of the greater benefices (bishoprics, etc.) Well, after May, 1875, the bishops who were without the exequatur were treated with two weights and two measures: they are not to be considered as bishops with respect to the Civil Code and the code of civil procedure, of equity—and logically; but they are to be looked on as such with regard to the Penal Code, the code of criminal procedure, and the whole arsenal of the fiscal laws of the Italian kingdom.”
Incredible, but true. Let us see the proofs.
Mgr. Pietro Carsana, named Bishop of Como, instituted a suit against the Administration of the Demain to have acknowledged as exempt from conversion into government bonds, and from the tax of thirty per cent., a charitable foundation by the noble Crotta-Oltrocchi, assigned to the Bishop of Como for the time being, that the revenues of it might be used for missions to the people and for the spiritual retreat or exercises of the clergy. The Demain raised the question as to whether Mgr. Carsana had the character required for the prosecution of such a cause before the tribunal. The tribunal of Como was for the bishop; but the Court of Appeal of Milan decided in favor of the Demain, for
the following reasons, drawn up on June 28, 1875: “It cannot be doubted but that the episcopal see of Como is to be held as still vacant as to its civil relations, since Mgr. Pietro Carsana, named to that see by the supreme ecclesiastical authority, has not yet received the royal exequatur, according to the requirements of the sixteenth article of the laws of May 13, 1871.[86] If the act of the supreme ecclesiastical authority”—we call attention to that word supreme—“directed to providing an occupant for the first benefice of the bishopric of Como, by the nomination of Mgr. Carsana, has not obtained the royal exequatur, as peace between the parties requires, this act before the civil law is null and of no effect, the appointment to the said benefice is to be looked on as not having taken place, and the episcopal see of Como is to be considered as still vacant, and the legitimate representation of it, in all its right, belongs to the vicar-capitular” (Unità Cattol., July 25, 1876). A like decision was given by the Court of Appeal of Palermo, October 16, 1875. Thus, to use the words of this writer, “the Pope has a right to name the bishops to exercise their episcopal functions, but, as far as their office has a bearing affecting external matters of civil nature, bishops without the exequatur cannot exercise it.” These external matters of a civil nature, which might be misunderstood, be it said, are none other than the acts without which the temporalities of a bishopric cannot be administered. The
bishop may say Mass, preach, and confirm, but not touch a dollar of the revenues of his see.
It needs no great acumen to perceive how the Sovereign Pontiff is thus hampered in his jurisdiction. His chief aids are his bishops; but they are not free unless they subject themselves, against conscience, to the civil power. Every exequatur is an injustice to the church, no matter whether exacted by concordat or no. The church may submit under protest to the injustice, but the nature of the act of those requiring such submission does not change on that account. Hence it is clear that the Pope is at this moment most seriously hampered in the exercise of his spiritual jurisdiction. If to this fact of the exequatur we add the election of the parish priests by the people, favored by the government, the case becomes still clearer. But of this we shall speak fully at the end of the article.