666 



KOMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 



our very faithful troops treated with every kind of 

 insult and license, and impudence let loose without 

 restraint far and near, where but just before the filial 

 affection was conspicuous of those who were en- 

 deavoring to alleviate the grief of a common fattier. 



And ever since that day there have ensued before 

 our own eyes things which cannot be mentioned 

 without exciting the just indignation of all good men ; 

 wicked books stuffed with lies, obscenity, and blas- 

 phemy, have begun to be exposed for ready sale, and 

 to be disseminated everywhere: a multiplicity of 

 newspapers intended to corrupt minds and morals 

 are published, tending to insult and calumniate re- 

 ligion, and to influence public opinion against us, 

 and against this Apostolic See : foul and improper 

 pictures are displayed openly, and other contrivances 

 of the same kind, by which sacred persons and things 

 are held up to ridicule and exposed to public derision, 

 are exhibited : honors and monuments are decreed 

 to those who have suffered by legal trial and sentence 

 the just punishment of most heinous crimes ; many 

 ministers of the Church, against whom every species 

 of odium is stirred up, are narassed with all kinds of 

 insult, and some of them are stricken and wounded 

 by the blows of treacherous assassins ; some religious 

 houses have been subjected to illegal search ; our 

 Quirinal Palaces have been broken into ; and from 

 his residence in one of them a Roman cardinal has 

 been roughly thrust out by violent orders ; and other 

 ecclesiastics of our household have been shut out of 

 their use, and subjected to molestation : laws and 

 decrees have been put forth which avowedly injure 

 and destroy the liberty, immunity, property, and 

 lawful rights of the Church of God ; and all these 

 most terrible evils, unless God avert it, we grieve to 

 see are likely to progress ; and we meanwhile are 

 hindered by reason or our present position from ap- 

 plying any remedy ; and are every day more rudely 

 reminded of the captivity in which we are held, and 

 of the absence of that full liberty which is pretended 

 in lying words to be left us for the exercise of our 

 Apostolic ministry over the world ; and is professed 

 to be meant to be secured to us with safeguards (as 

 thev are called) by the intruding Government. 



We cannot here, venerable brethren, pass under 

 silence the commission of an atrocious crime, which, 

 without doubt, is known to you. As though the 

 possessions and rights of the Apostolic See, sacred 

 and inviolable by so many titles, and respected 

 during so many centuries, could be to-day contro- 

 verted and disputed, and as though the grave cen- 

 sures, which are incurred ipso facto, and without 

 fresh declaration by the violators of these rights and 

 possessions, could lose their force by rebellion and 

 popular audacity, they have had recourse to cover 

 the sacrilegious spoliation we have suffered in spite 

 of the common law of Nature and of nations, they 

 have had recourse (we say) to the show and comedy 

 of a plebiscite, already employed, when the other 

 provinces were robbed from us. And those who are 

 in the habit of rejoicing in the worst actions did not 

 blush to parade, as in triumph, through the towns 

 of Italy, rebellion and contempt of ecclesiastical cen- 

 sures, tlius insulting the true sentiments of the great 

 majority of Italians, whose religion and fidelity tow- 

 ard us and toward Holy Church, forcibly repressed 

 in all sorts of ways, cannot have free course. 



As to ourselves, charged by God to rule and govern 

 the whole house of Israel, and made the supreme 

 defender of religion, of justice, and of the rights of 

 the Church, in order that we be not reproached before 

 God and before the Church for having been silent, 

 and for having by our silence consented to this unjust 

 revolution, renewing and confirming that which we 

 have already declared in the allocutions, encyclicals, 

 and briefs above mentioned, and recently in the pro- 

 testation which, by our order and in our name, the 

 Cardinal-Secretary of State communicated on the 20th 

 of September to the ambassadors, ministers, charge's 

 d'affaires ef foreign nations accredited to us and to 



this Holy See, we declare anew before you, venerable 

 brethren, with all possible solemnity, that it is our 

 intention, resolution, and will, to retain in their in- 

 tegrity, intact and inviolable, all the dominions and 

 rights of this Holy See, and so to transmit them to 

 our successors : that all usurpation of these rights, 

 whether of a recent or of an earlier date, is unjust, 

 violent, null, and void : and that all the acts of the 

 rebels and invaders, already accomplished or still to 

 be accomplished, with the view of conficming in 

 whatever manner this usurpation, are by us from 

 this moment condemned, annulled, quashed, and 

 abrogated. We moreover declare and we protest 

 befoie God and before the Catholic world, that we 

 are in such captivity as to render it altogether im- 

 possible for us to exercise our pastoral authority with 

 security, ease, and freedom. Finally, following the 

 advice of St. Paul: " Quae participatio injustitiae 

 cum iniquitate 3 aut quae societas luci ad tenebras ? 

 quae autem conventio Christi ad Belial?" (2 Cor. 

 vi. 14, 15) we announce and publicly and openly 

 declare that, faithful to our ofhce and to the solemn 

 oath which binds us, we neither consent nor will con- 

 sent to any project, of conciliation which may in any 

 manner whatever destroy or lessen our rights, which 

 are the rights of God and of the Holy See ; and we 

 likewise profess that we are ready, thanks to the 

 Divine assistance, and in spite of our great age, to- 

 drink to the dregs for the Church of Jesus Christ the 

 chalice which He first deigned to drink for her, and 

 that we will never commit the fault of yielding to, or 

 acquiescing in, the unjust demands which are ad- 

 dressed to us. For, as our predecessor Pius VII. 

 said : " To do violence to this sovereign empire of 

 the Apostolic See, to separate the temporal power 

 from the spiritual, to disjoin, to tear asunder, and to 

 cut up by the roots the offices of pastor and of prince, 

 is nothing else but to desire to ruin and destroy the 

 work of God ; nothing else but to labor for the 

 greatest injury to religion ; is nothing else but to de- 

 prive it of a most efficacious bulwark, so that the 

 supreme ruler, pastor, and vicar of God may not have 

 it in his power to give to Catholics who, scattered all 

 over the world, ask of him aid and succor, that help 

 which they claim from his spiritual power, and 

 which no one may hinder." 



But since our admonitions, expostulations, and 

 protests, have been without effect, by the authority 

 of Almighty God, of the Holy Apostles Peter and 

 Paul, and by our own, we declare to you, venerable 

 brethren, and by you to the whole Church, that all 

 those who have perpetrated the invasion, usurpation, 

 and occupation of any of the provinces of our do- 

 minion and of this our beloved city, or have done 

 any of these things, of whatever dignity they may 

 be, and even though they should be worthy of most 

 special mention, and in like manner all their agents, 

 abettors, assistants, counsellors, adherents, and all 

 others, either obtaining the execution of those 

 things, under whatever pretext or in whatever man- 

 ner, or executing them themselves, have incurred, 

 according to the form and tenor of our letters apos- 

 tolic, recited the 26th of March, 1860, the greater ex- 

 communication, and the other censures and ecclesias- 

 tical penalties published by the Holy Canons, apos- 

 tolical constitutions, and the decrees of general 

 councils, and particularly of the Council of Trent. 

 (Sess. 22, C. 11 de Eefdrm.) 



But, calling to mind that we hold on earth tho 

 place of Him who came to seek and to save that 

 which was lost, we desire nothing more ardently 

 than to embrace with paternal love the wandering 

 sons who may return to us ; and, therefore, raising 

 our hands to heaven in the humility of our heart, re- 

 mitting and recommending to God the most just of 

 causes, which is His still more than our own, we 

 conjure and supplicate Him, by the bowels of His 

 mercy, to aid us by His succor, to aid His Church, 

 and to bring about through His mercy and compas- 

 sion that the enemies of the Church, thinking upon 



