526 



MEXICO. 



furnished with supplies and money through the 

 instrumentality of those who, a few months 

 previous, had been its bitterest enemies. The 

 complications which had threatened to disturb 

 the reign of the emperor many months before 

 his arrival, actually became intensified after his 

 assumption of the crown, and the close of 1864 

 found him, a professed liberal, hated by the lib- 

 erals, and at the same time, if possible, more 

 detested by the conservatives, who had called 

 him to his throne. 



The following letter from the Pope has an 

 important bearing on the subject of the confis- 

 cated Church property, and curiously forestalls 

 the sentiments expressed in his Encyclical 

 letter : 



SIRE : When in the month of April last, before as- 

 suming the reins of the new empire of Mexico, your 

 Majesty arrived in this capital in order to worship at 

 the tombs of the Holy Apostles and to receive our 

 apostolic benediction, we informed you of the deep 

 sorrow which filled our soul by reason of the lament- 

 able state into which the social disorders during these 

 last years have reduced all that concerns religion in 

 the Mexican nation. 



Before that time, and more than once, we had made 

 known our complaiuts in public and solemn acts, pro- 

 testing against the iniquitous law called the law of re- 

 form, which attacked the most inviolable rights of the 

 Church and outraged the authority of its pastors ; 

 against the seizure of the ecclesiastical property and 

 the dissipation of the sacred patrimony; against the 

 unjust suppression of the religious orders ; against 

 the false maxims that attack the sanctity of the Catho- 

 lic religion, and, in fine, against many other trans- 

 gressions committed not only to the prejudice of sa- 

 cred persons but also of the'pastoral priesthood and 

 discipline of the Church. 



For those reasons your Majesty must have well un- 

 derstood how happy we were to see thanks to the 

 establishment of the new empire the dawn of pacific 

 and prosperous days for the Church of Mexico ; a joy 

 which was increased when we saw called to the throne 

 u prince of a Catholic family, and who had given so 

 many proofs of religious zeal and piety. Equally in- 

 tense was the joy of the woi thy Mexican bishops who, 

 on leaving the capital of Christendom, where they 

 had presented so many examples of their fidelity and 

 self-denial toward our person, had the happiness of 

 being the first to pay their sincere homage to the 

 sovereign elect of their country, and of hearing from 

 his own lips the most complete assurances of his firm 

 resolution to redress the wrongs done to the Church 

 and to reorganize the disturbed elements of civil and 

 religious administration. The Mexican nation also 

 learned with indescribable pleasure of your Majesty's 

 accession to the throne called to it by the unanimous 

 desire of a people who, up to that time, had been con- 

 strained to groan beneath the yoke of an anarchical 

 Government, and to lament over the ruins and dis- 

 asters of the Catholic religion, their chief pride at all 

 times and the foundation of their prosperity. 



Under such happy auspices we have been waiting 

 day by day the acts of the new empire, persuaded 

 that the Church, outraged with so much imp .ety by 

 the revolution, would receive prompt and just re- 

 dress, whether by the revocation of the laws which 

 had reduced it to such a state of oppression and ser- 

 vitude, or by the promulgation of others adapted to 

 the suppression of the disastrous effects of an impi- 

 ous administration. 



Thwarted hitherto in our hopes, by reason, per- 

 haps, of the difficulties which attend the reorgani- 

 zation oi a society long overturned, we cannot now 

 refrain from addressing your Majesty and appealing 

 to the uprightness of your intentions, the Catholic 



spirit of which you have given so many striking 

 proofs on former occasions, and the promises made 

 to us by your Majesty of protecting the Church; and 

 we confidently hope that this appeal, penetrating 

 your noble heart, will produce the fruits we have a 

 right to expect. 



Your Majesty will undoubtedly perceive that if the 

 Church continues to be controlled in the exercise of 

 her sacred rights, if the laws which forbid her to ac- 

 quire and possess property are not repealed, if 

 churches and convents are still destroyed, if the 

 price of the Church property is accepted at the hands 

 of its unlawful purchasers, if the sacred buildings are 

 appropriated to other uses, if the religious orders are 

 not allowed to reassume their distinctive garments 

 and to live in community, if the nuns are obliged to 

 be for their food, and forced to occupy miserable 

 and insufficient edifices, if the newspapers are per- 

 mitted to insult the pastors with impunity, and to as- 

 sail the doctrines of the Catholic Church ; if this state 

 of things is to continue, then the same evils will cer- 

 tainly continue to follow, and perhaps the scandal to 

 the faithful and the wrongs to religion will become 

 greater than ever before. 



Ah, sire, in the name of that faith and piety which 

 are the ornaments of your august family ; in the name 

 of the Church, whose supreme chief and pastor God 

 has constituted us in spite of our unworthiness ; in 

 the name of Almighty God, who has chosen you to 

 rule over so Catholic a nation with the sole purpose 

 of healing her ills and of restoring the honor of His 

 holy religion, we earnestly conjure you to put your 

 hands to the work, and laying aside every human 

 consideration, and guided solely by an enlightened 

 wisdom and your Christian feelings, dry up the tears 

 of so interesting a portion of the Catholic family, and 

 by such worthy conduct merit the blessings of Jesus 

 Christ, the prince of pastors. 



With this purpose, and in compliance with your 

 own wishes, we send you our representative. He 

 will inform you by word of mouth of the sorrow 

 which has been caused to us by the sad news which 

 thus far has reached us, and he will better acquaint 

 you with our intentions and aims in accrediting him 

 near your Majesty. 



We have instructed him to ask at once from your 

 Majesty, and in our name, the revocation of the un- 

 just laws which for so long a time have oppressed 

 the Church, and to prepare with the aid of the bishops, 

 and, when it may be necessary, with the concurrence 

 of our apostolic authority, the complete and definite 

 reorganization of ecclesiastical affairs. 



Your Majesty is well aware that, in order effectively 

 to repair the evils occasioned by the revolution, ana 

 to bring back as soon as possible happy days for the 

 Church, the Catholic religion must, above all things, 

 continue to be the glory and the mainstay of the Mexi- 

 can nation, to the exclusion of every other dissenting 

 worship ; that the bishops must be perfectly free in 

 the exercise of their pastoral ministry; that the re- 

 ligious orders should be reestablished or reorganized, 

 conformably with the instructions and the powers 

 which we have given ; that the patrimony of the 

 Church and the rights which attach to it may be 

 maintained and protected : that no person may obtain 

 the faculty of teaching and publishing false and sub- 

 versive tenets ; that instruction, whether public or 

 private, should be directed and watched over by the 

 ecclesiastical authority ; and that, in short, the chains 

 may be broken which up to the present time have 

 held the Church in a state of dependence and subject 

 to the arbitrary rule of the civil government. If the 

 religious edifice should be reestablished on such bases 

 and we will not doubt that such will be the case 

 your Majesty will satisfy one of the greatest require- 

 ments and one of the most lively aspirations of a peo- 

 ple so religious as that of Mexico ; your Majesty will 

 calm our anxieties and those of the illustrious episco- 

 pacy of that country ; you will open the way to the'edu- 

 cation of a learned and zealous clergy, as well as to the 



