The Pope made a speech last Sunday, which renewed the
protest of the Holy See against the loss of the temporal dominion. His drift was to assert that the Church is now hardly more free than when the early Popes had to take refuge in the Catacombs, and often to face martyrdom. Of course, he is free, he says, to defy the power of the State, just as his pre- decessors were free to defy the persecution of the Pagan world; but the Pope cannot have worship instituted in churches which the Italian Government has closed, cannot appoint his own Bishops without serious struggles with the State, and cannot even secure Catholic schools for Catholics by any exer- cise of authority, but only by appeals to private and voluntary agencies. He must, therefore, always continue to protest against the violent deprivation of the temporal power, and. demand its restitution ; but till he obtains it he will use all the power he has, with perfect confidence that God will restore her former independence to the Church, in his own good. time. No doubt it is quite essential to the position of Leo XIII., temperate as he always is, to use this kind of language. But in his secret soul, he must be well aware that there are many equivalents to set off against the limitations of which he corn- plains, and that hardly at any former time has the Holy See been so inaccessible to the power of threats from such Govern- ments, for instance, as the German Government, while the German Government, in its turn, has hardly ever been more accessible to the power of the Holy See.
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