The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-06 00:00:00

TEE PAPAL EXCOMMUNICATION.

The following text of the excommunication has
been received at Mr. Reuter's office:—

Apostolic Letter of our Most Holy Master Pius IX..
Pope by the grace of God, by which the punishment of
major excommunication is inflicted on the invaders and
usurpers of some of our Pontifical Provinces.
PIUS P. P. IX.
" To the Eternal Memory of this Matter.

"As the Catholic Church, founded and established by the ,
Lord Christ for the everlasting salvation of mankind, has
acquired the form of a perfect society by its Divine charac-
ter, it ought, therefore, in the fulfilment of its sacred minis-
try, to possess that freedom by which it may not be sub-
ject to any civil power. And furthermore, in order to ob- ,
tain that the Church required those guarantees which were
in accordance with the conditions and necessity of the
times. It was, therefore, in accordance with Divine Pro-
vidence that, after the fall of the Roman empire and its
consecutive division lute several kingdoms, the Romish
Pope, whom Christ has established as the chief and the
centre of his whole Church, obtained temporal power.
Therefore it has been ordered by God in the wisest manner
that, as such a great number and variety of princes exist,
the Holy Pope should enjoy that political liberty which is
so much wanted in order to exercise his spiritual power,
authority, and jurisdiction in the whole world without any
impediments. And therefore it was necessary that the
catholic world should not have any reason to suppose that
the Romish Pope is subject to any influence of temporal
powers, or biased in the exercise of the religious powers
which the Holy see has to fulfil over the greater part of
the Christians. It is easily understood that the dominion
of our Roman Church, although having the appearance of
something temporal, nevertheless is really of a spiritual
character, by the holy destination which it enjoys, and by
the close ties by which it is connected with all Christian
affairs. But this does not prevent that all those things
which conduce to the secular welfare of the peoples may be
obtained by the Church, as the history of the temporal
reigns of the Roman Popes during so many centuries shows
most clearly. The general good and welfare of the peoples
being increased by the temporal power which we are allud-
ing to, it is not astonishing that the enemies of this Church
endeavoured to weaken and to embarrass it by many in-
trigues and all kinds of attempts.
" In these impious attempts they were vanquished sooner
or later by God, who always defends the Church. The
whole world knows already how during these sad times the
adversaries of the Catholic and Apostolic See have made
themselves detestible by their attempts, which were cha-
racterised by their lying hypocrisy in trying to deprive the
Holy See of its secular power. They could not obtain their
end by an open attack, and by force of arms, but only by
false and pernicious principles, by cunning dissimulation
in their conduct, and by maliciously provoking popular
risings. They did not blush to counsel the peoples to sedi-
tion against their princes, which is clearly and distinctly
condemned by the apostle, when he says : Let every soul
be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power
but of God ; the powers which are ordained of God :
whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the or-
dinance of God, and they that resist shall receive to them-
selves damnation.' These wicked innovators, in attack-
ing the temporal power of the church and its temporal do-
minion, and in despising its venerable authority, go so far
in their impudence as to feign esteem for the church and
obedience to her commands , and it is the most to be de-
plored that some of those on whom, as sons of the catholic
church, the duty was imposed to protect that church and
to maintain its power, have sullied themselves by their
wicked acts. In these mischievous and perverse intrigues,
which we deplore, the Sardinian Government has the prin-
cipal part, as it is generally known how much in that king-
, dom the church has suffered injuries and restrictions which
we have already vehemently lamented in our consistorial
allocution of the 22d January, 1855. The Sardinian Go-
vernment has until now despised our just reclamations, and
has even dared to inflict on our church great injury and to
attack its secular power, while according to the will of God
the Holy See of St. Peter's, as stated above, ought to be
protected in the liberty of its apostolic office. The first
evident signs of the hostile attacks were seen at the Paris
Congress of the year 1856 ; when that power, among other
hostile declarations, proposed to weaken the temporal power
of the Pope and the authority of the Holy See. But last
year, when war broke out between the Emperor of Austria
and the Emperor of the French and the King of Sardinia,
no fraud, no sin, was avoided which could excite the
inhabitants of the States of the Church to sedition.

Hence instigators were despatched, a great deal of money

was spent, arms were supplied, excitement was created by
bad pamphlets and journals, and fraud of every kind was
employed, even on the part of those who were members of
the embassy of that country at Rome, without any regard
to honesty and international right, as they pretended their
dignity, in order to be enabled to misuse it, to pursue their
dark projects for damaging our Papal Government. When,
then, in some of our provinces the sedition, which for some
time had already been entertained clandestinely, broke out at
last openly, the agitators directly proclaimed a royal dicta-
torship, and commissioners of the Sardinian Government
were immediately appointed, who then, in assuming other
titles, undertook to govern those provinces. During these
occurrences, we, remembering our serious office, did not fail
in our allocutions of June 20 and September 26 of last year to
complain loudly of these violations of the temporal power,
and to remind the violators of the punishment and atone-
ment which are imposed by the canonical laws, and which
they become liable to. It might have been expected that the
origiaators of these violations would, in consequence of our
repeated admonitions, abstain from their unjust projects,
especially as all the chiefs of our holy church, as well as the
faithful believers of every rank, dignity, and class, joined
their own protests to ours, in order to defend unanimously
the rights of the Holy See and of the Church in general, as
they very well understood how much the temporal power,
which is nn this occasion, is necessary
for the maintenance of the Papal power. But—we shudder
in saying it—the Sardinian Government has not only de-
spised our admonition and complaints, and our religious
resentment, but, by persevering in its wickedness by force,
money, threats, terror, and other cunning means, they ob-
tained the universal vote in their favour, and dared to in-
vade our provinces, to occupy them, and to subject them to
their power. This is a great profanation, as rights of others
have been usurped against the law of nature and of God ; every
law has been overthrown, and the bases of all temporal power
and human society have been undermined. We perceive on
our side, with the greatest grief, how useless would be all
further complaints against those who, like deaf adders, close
their ears, and who do not listen to our complaints and ad-
monitions ; and on the other side we feel what the cause of
our Apostolic See and the whole catholic world requires,
for stigmatising the attempts of those wicked men in order
not by tarrying to prejudice the dignity of our grave office.
It resulted that, faithful to the examples of our illustrious
predecessors, we exercise that authority which gives us the
power to loosen and to bind, in order to employ the neces-
sary severity against the guilty, and to give a salutary
example to others.

" Having invoked the light of the Holy Spirit in private
and public prayers, and having taken the advice of the
reverend brothers, the Cardinals of our holy Romish
Church, we declare, in accordance with the authority which
we hold from Almighty God and the most Holy Apostles,
Peter and Paul, and also is accordance with our own autho-
rity, all those who have taken part in the sinful insurrection
in our provinces, in usurping, occupying, and invading
them, or in doing such deeds as we complained of in our
above-mentioned allocutions of the 20th June and 26th
September of last year, or those who have perpetrated some