310 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



ishes of the province of Rome, and the fourteen cardinal 

 deacons, those who served as deacons in the early churches 

 of Rome w^hen the Church became recognized as a lawful re- 

 ligion after the persecutions. They are the Senate of the 

 universal Church, and are the body from which the Pope is 

 selected and, with the exception of the cardinal bishops, are 

 the honorary rectors or pastors of the churches to which they 

 are assigned. 



As Secretary of State, Cardinal Merry del Val has his official 

 residence in the Vatican palace itself. He also has a summer 

 villa at No. ii Via della Valtellina, a short distance outside 

 the Portese gate, to which he goes in a motor car from the 

 Vatican very much like the business man of to-day who lives on 

 the outskirts of the city. Here, too, he keeps up his athletic ex- 

 ercises and keeps himself in good bodily trim. Occasionally 

 he automobiles to Castel Gandolfo or to Lake Bracciona, 

 where he can indulge in swimming. But there is also another 

 side of the Cardinal which is scarcely so well known, and one 

 for which the exacting duties of his high office leave but little 

 time nowadays. While he was Cameriere Segreto Partici- 

 pante he used to go in the evenings to the Trastevere, where 

 the work which he organized among the poorest of the poor 

 of Rome has its headquarters in the poor boys' school and 

 club. This club, a forerunner of our Ozanam associations, 

 was developed by him for years with unfailing energy, and 

 now contains hundreds of boy members, many of them saved 

 from ruin by its influence. This is the kind of work into 

 which he has put his whole soul, and which he still looks after 

 through others, although he is Secretary of State. Not only 

 did he devote himself to the people of the Trastevere quarter, 

 but he was regularly in his confessional first at San Silvestro 

 and later at San Giorgio, and late at night numerous peni- 

 tents, many of them the poorest of the poor, might be seen 

 waiting their turn seeking for his consolation and direction. 

 And he is still a confessor — preferably for the poor — at such 

 times as he can be spared from his duties. It was charac- 

 teristic of him that when he was created a Cardinal he sub- 

 stituted for the usual feast which new Cardinals offer to their 

 friends and relations a banquet for his poor penitents and boys 

 in the Trastevere. 



The first duty of the Papal Secretary of State is to take 



