El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1900-12-27
INDEPENDENCE OF THE POPE.
Archbishop Ireland Delivers Notable
Sermon in Neutrality-suspicious.
Why the Temporal Power of His
Holiness Should Be Restored.

A Washington dispatch says: Arch
bishop Ireland in a sermon preached at
ST. Patricks church, in this city. today
reviewed the question of the indie
pendence of the pope, and prophesied
that at no remote day, the Italian peo-
pie and Christendom at large would
| '"giye back to the papcy it's wonted
dignity and liberty The discussion
of what is known as the Roman -ques-
ton was especially significant as the
archbishop. during the latter's recent
visit to Rome. talked at length with
the pope.
The archbishop referred to the pope
as a prisoner in the vatican, voluntary
in that no physical force prevents his
leaving its precincts and involuntary
in that he could not go beyond the
vatican without impaIring his dignity
as pontiff and without seeming to ac-
cept the situation created for him of
the Italian government He said the
Catholic church is "a divinely created
organization. receiving directly from
Christ it's mission and all the rights
which are needed that it may live and
work; it's life and mission are express
ed in it's supreme chief, the successor
of Peter, and to him belong in a pre-
eminent manner all the rights inherent
in the church, and whose possession
is needed TOR fulfillment of its mission
and work willed by Christ. Hence the
pontiff's right to independence as a
consequence to temporal sovereignty"
The archbishop said: Al the pope is
a civil subject of an authority outside
of himself he has not the necessary
freedom. The ruler or government
would interfere make laws impairing
his freedom of action or strive to i'm
pose methods more serviceable to the
state than the church.
1.-The pontiff's words must bear no
possible suspicion that they were i'm
posed by men who have no authority in
things moral and spiritual. If the SOW
ereign pontiff be the subject of the
king of Italy, what guarantee is there
for other people and other rulers that
whether through fear or favor the Ital-
ian influences have not penetrated in
to the vatican, and that Italian inter
ests are not to be served. The peril
of national jealousies would be the
greater were the foreign countries at
the time warning with the king of Italy
We, in America, are willing, indeed,
to hearken to the words of Peter, but
it must be plain that they are not the
words of a foreign ruler, whose sole
purpose is the interest of foreign ma
tionality, not of the church. The sole
tiff is temporal sovereignty which
marks out for him sufficient space on
earth upon which he may work in full
fillment of his mission with all the in
dependence he needs. The ruler sewers
him from union with Christians in
other countries, reduces his church to
the condition of a national church and
disrupts the oneness of the universal
church. other churches than the
Catholic church do not demand civil
independence and temporal power for
their chieftains, because no other
church than the Catholic is a world
church, nor aims at being at the same
time universal and one; nor fulfills the
injunction of the Savior's teachings to
all nations"
The government of Italy he contend
ed, should have remained somewhere
outside of Rome.