The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-23 00:00:00

THE POPE AND COUAT adVOUR'S

CONFESSOR.

The Court of Rome has just exp9rienced a severe
disappointment. It is much given to working by
terror. Heretics, or other offenders against the
Romish Church, are invariably represented as
smitten with remorse and consternation at the ap-
proach of death, and the last hours of life are
described as opening to the deluded sinner a clear
perception of the truth which he had denied. We
are not without glimpses of the practice even here.
Every now and then names of eminence are quoted
as testifying to the pbwer of the Romish faith by
the confessions which were made and the " recon-
ciliations" which were sought at the moment when
the world and its vanities were disappearing from
view. Abroad, however, this machinery is worked
to mach greater purpose. We islanders must be
pretty well given up even by the tenacious Church
of Rome as a reprobate people, but it is very diffe-
rent when the offenders aro actually within the
fold—orthodox Catholics and loyal liegemen. Such
an one was Count Cavour, who, though no heretic
or dissenter, had dared to attack the Pope's tem-
poral power, and to inflict, for the sake of Italy,
the most terrible mortifications on the Holy See.
Cavour, however, in the midst of his projects and.
his successes, was overtaken by death ; and, if the
expiring statesman could but be represented as
having recanted his errors and deplored his sins,
what a triumph would it be for Rome! At the very
moment when all the capitals of Europe were re-
sounding with panegyrics on the departed patriot,
the Papal Court could tell a different story, and
could show that the unhappy Minister—a better
judge of the truth than his ignorant eulogists
—had died in repentance so deep and over-
whelming as might well deter any successor from
following in his steps. Such a chance was not to
be lost. Cavour in his last moments had been at-
tended by a confessor, and had received the sacra-
ments. That confessor was a parish priest and a
Franciscan friar, and in both capacities bound to
canonical obedience. What if he were summoned.

to Rome and there dealt with ? ?Might not a good
story be got out of him ?
This idea was carried into execution. Shortly
after the Minister's death Father Giacomo, the
priest in question, received an invitation to repair
to Rome, and there confer with no less a personage
than his Holiness himself. The communication was
couched in terms calculated to dispel anything like
apprehension, and to convey, indeed, the impres-
sion of a compliment. So to Rome Father Giacomo
went, and was at once presented to the Pope, from.
whom he presently gathered the nature of the de-
sign in hand. Nobody at Rome was under the

least mistake as to the truth of the case. Nobody
imagined that Cavour had made any kind of re-
cantation, or that any knowledge of such a fact
was concealed in the breast of his confessor, or
of any one else ; but a device had been conceived
of terrifying the poor friar into some admissions,
either by the authority of the Pontiff or the
machinery of the Inquisition. Accordingly, the
Pope, at his first presentation, accosted hini
angrily and abruptly with a demand for an imagi-
nary document. " Well, have you brought that
recantation ? Before confessing the Count it was
your duty to exact from him a formal retrao
tation of all that his hostility had conceived
against the Holy See, and I wish therefore to have
the account of that retractation in writing."
Father Giacomo, though somewhat startled at this
reception, replied with great sincerity that he had no
such account to give and no such document to pro-
duce; that Count Cavenr had died like a good Catho-
lic, to the edification of all around him ; and that,
though he had confessed his sins, as all Catholics do,
there was nothing in the occasion to take it out of
the ordinary category, or to suggest that the seal
of the confessional should be broken. To this simple
statement he adhered. In vain the Pope fulminated
his behests as the Vicar of Christ upon earth ; the
good friar was proof against even this adjuration,
and at last the Pontiff descended to a demand of
another kind. " If," said he, " you have not got
that recantation, you are bound to declare in writing
that you have been false to your sacred duties." AS
Father Giacomo, however, was conscious of no
offence, he was not disposed to indict himself as an.
offender, and the Pope was foiled at this point also.
The Holy Office then took its turn of persuasion,
but with as little success ; and after some days of
moral toz ture and as much coercion as it was safe
to apply, the friar was allowed to depart with a
menace of ecclesiastical deprivation hanging over
his head.

These details, which we publish from an authentic
source of information, carry instructive evidence both
of the policy still practised at the Court of Rome and
of the position to which that Court is at length re-
duced. As it is, no harm has been done either to
Cavour or his confessor; but if Father Giacomo
had been less holiest. or the Holy See less
impotent, we might have had a noble cha-
racter defamed or a poor priest doomed to
misery. Cavour would have been made his own
words, as uttered at a
wnen no self-delusion was practicable,
,utruaiduuecg, and h;-
would have been quoted to show that all the work
of Italian patriots was mere wickedness, and that
nothing but a belief in Merode and Antonelli could
be relied on to bring a man peace at the last. The
Papal Court would never have been tired of " im-
proving" that death-bed scene. No arguments
would have counterbalanced the confession of the
chief actor. The assailants of the Pope's temporal
authority would have been told, by aid of this
example, that their proceedings were leading them
to perdition, and that no man could oppose the
Papal Government except at the peril of his soul;
If the priest engaged in the affair had refused his
co operation, little more, in the days of Papal
power, would have been heard of him. As it was,
Father Giacomo, though naturally alarmed wileen
he found himself within the walls of Rome and is
the clutches of the Inquisition, was too well pro-
tected to be in much 'danger. With a French gar-
rison in the city, and the eyes of Europe fixed upon
the convulsions of the Holy See, even the Ministers
of Pius IX. durst not venture upon violence, though
we are told that the energetic intervention of the
Sardinian consul was required before the good friar
was permitted to return to Turin. The threat of
deprivation has been executed, and Father Giacomo
has lost his cure, but that will be of little account
to him in a country where his conduct is appre-
ciated, and the vindictive act will recoil upon its
authors.
The marvel of the story is that such an attempt
as this should have been made at the present day.
Whatever may be the infatuation of the Pope's ad-
visers, they can hardly have been at a loss to dis-
cern the folly of the game they were playing. They
knew perfectly well that Cavour had made no re-
cantation, and that no evidence of such an occur-
rence was to be procured. They must have had a
strong presumption that a Piedmontese priest would
not be likely to libel the idol of the Piedmontese
nation, and they must have been perfectly aware
that in case of his obduracy they were powerless to
coerce him. All the world knew that Cavours
confessor had been summoned to Rome, and every-
body was on the alert to watch the transaction.
The good priest could neither be driven to submis-
sion nor spirited away. The only machinery avail-
able against him was that of official pomp and pre-
tension. He might, perhaps, be overawed by the
actual presence of the Pontiff, or cowed by the au-
thority of the General of his Order, or terrified by
the forms of the Holy Office. If he resisted this
species of pressure, the Court of Rome was power-
less; and yet it acted as if the rack and the dun-
geon could be still employed for the attainment of
its will. The design, from first to last, was so trans-
parent in its purpose and so hopeless in its charac-
ter that we can hardly imagine how men of ordi-
nary prudence could ever have entertained it. True,
the object was one of high importance, but it was
in all probability unattainable, whereas failure
could only be attended by exposure and shame.
Rome has not succeeded in blackening the reputa-
tion of Cavour, or in getting hold of a story to shoy?
that Italian patriotism is synonymous with sacri-
lege ; but the world has been taugh. t by one more
lesson that Popery remains just as it was, and that
its pretensions are as likely to outrage the reason
daysof mankind
when n inot
a thissta
State
hadth
emergedcentury a s
fromtheythe
Were in
stag-
nant depths of superstition.—Times.