312 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



which touches the Church. Every piece of information, and 

 every application intended for the Pope, has to be transmitted 

 through him. 



Thus the Cardinal Secretary of State needs encyclopaedic 

 knowledge and almost superhuman intuition and tact ; and 

 they are gifts with which Cardinal Merry del Val is richly 

 blessed. He has to pass quickly from subject to subject with- 

 out losing the threads ; he has to know what people are talking 

 about and to divine their real aims ; and to send them away 

 satisfied that justice will be done. One visitor may have im- 

 portant information or suggestions to make about the troubles 

 with France, Spain or Portugal ; the next may be urging or 

 opposing in all sorts of ways the candidature of an arch- 

 bishop, perhaps here in the United States, who he thinks 

 ought to be made a cardinal ; and the next may be some eccle- 

 siastical nobleman or official who desires to get the Pope to 

 take his side in a petty squabble : while another may bring 

 forth matters of real interest towards the growth of the 

 Church or the management of perplexing questions. 



No Prime Minister in Europe is so accessible, and, since 

 everything that concerns religion is considered to come under 

 the Pope's authority, the Secretary of State is deprived of that 

 circumlocution and that favorite refuge of statesmen : "Take 

 the matter next door," which is nowhere displayed with such 

 exasperating regularity as in the various departments of the 

 present Italian State government. The Cardinal Secretary, 

 however, is allowed the widest discretion, because one of his 

 most important functions is to save the Pope from unneces- 

 sary business. 



There are few people who know so much of the religious 

 affairs of all countries as Cardinal Merry del Val ; he is sim- 

 ply obliged to keep himself in touch with them, and being half 

 an Englishman, with English as his native tongue, he has a 

 grasp of the affairs of the various Protestant denominations 

 and of English and American opinion which no previous 

 Papal Secretary of State ever had. More than that, his knowl- 

 edge of English and American character, which is wonderful, 

 rests on the firm basis of having himself sterling Anglo-Saxon 

 qualities. 



His time for book reading is necessarily limited, but the 

 way he keeps up with the newspapers of all countries is ex- 



