Leo XIII., though anxious to show that he is really
in favour of a larger interpretation of the Vatican Council's decree on Infallibility than the party which had the chief influence over the Holy See for many years previous to Pio Nono's death, is also most anxious, it seems, not to be mistaken on the subject of the temporal power. In the discourse which he delivered on the 23rd February to the representatives of the Catholic Press,. he was painfully explicit on this point :—" It is of the greatest importance," he said, "once more to remind Catholics that the supreme power of the Church, once divinely conferred on St, Peter and his successors, to hold the whole Catholic family in the faith, and lead them to eternal blessedness, according to the divine teachings of our Church herself, must enjoy the fullest liberty, and in order therefore that this authority may be freely exercised over the whole earth, divine Providence, after the perilous vicissitudes of the first ages, disposed that the temporal dominion should be added to the Church of Rome, and. that it should be preserved for a long series of centuries, amid the infinite mutations of peoples and overthrow of kingdoms.. For this certainly most grave reason, and not for ambition of reigning or greed of power the Roman Pontiffs have esteemed it the duty of the Apostolic Ministry to watch over the preservation and custody of the sacred rights of the Church, every time they saw their States disturbed and attacked ; and we ourselves, following the example of our predecessors, have not neglected to assert and revindicate the same rights. Nor shall we ever cease to do so." And he asks the Catholic Press to aid him in the great struggle for the recovery of this temporal power, which is so essential to his freedom. Is it, how- ever, true or false that Leo XIII. is not less free,—or rather much more free, in 1879,—than Pio Nono was (say) in 1849, or, again, in 1860? Did not the temporal power hamper his freedom as Pope then, far more than the loss of it hampers the freedom of his successor ?
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