Weekly Arizona journal-miner., 1903-07-29

Leo XIII who has just died in Rome
was remarkable man. He filed a
great office; he filed it in extreme
age, and be filed it eminently we'll.
He was nearly seventy when he was
elected to the popedom, and during
those years when men are in their
dotage, or in their graves, he dis
charged the many duties of that high
place and carried its heavy response
bility with zeal vigor and dig
nifty which no man at any age could
we'll surpass and which few men under
any circumstances have ever equal
led.
He was not by a great deal the
ablest or the best of the popes but it
is enough for his fame to say that he
showed himself great man in a great
and difficult place. He was the 26Oth
pope in direct succession from Peter
and it is bare historical truth to say
that in that long list there are many
names greater than his.
To go back no further than the
reign of his last predecessor it is not
rash to predict that with posterity
Plus TX shall rank higher than Leo
XIII. The great fight and the appar-
emily forlorn hope led by the Catholic
church in the nineteenth century TOR
religious truth and for Christian NOR
atty was finished when Leo first sat
in Peters chair.
Plus TX became pope in 1916 and
from that year to his death in 1878 the
church was engaged in a life and
death struggle all over Europe with
the forces of unbelief backed by the
power of every state from England in
the west to Russia in the east, and
from Sweden in the north to Italy it
self in the south. 1t was the old, old
cry, anything to crush the papacy
and destroy Catholicism. The most
discordant political parties the most
irreconcilable religious sects sank
their differences, infidelity itself was
allied with so called Christian
churches for the one great end of
driving Plus from Rome and thereby.
as was stupidity thought, of blotting
out the Catholic name and uprooting
the Catholic ideal from the minds
and the hearts of men. As matter
of fact the struggle ended in favor of
the pope, and from the Catholic point
of view as a matter of course it ended
in favor of the rock built church
against which Christ himself has said
the gates of hell shall not prevail.
When Plus was made pope he was
perhaps the youngest cardinal in the
world eligible for that office. Two
years afterward in 1913 the continent
of Europe was swept by storm of So
cial discomfort and of political revo-
luton. Every throne and every gov
eminent in the old world felt the
force of that mighty shock. When
things had somewhat readjusted them
selves the only institution which
showed no traces of mishap was the
church that knows no change nor
shadow of alteration. But the thirty
years thatsfolIowed from lS4S to 1878
we're crowded with direct and contin-
uous assaults upon the Catholic
church. These attacks were led by
the ablest and the most powerful SOW
ereigns and ministers of the different
European states. The Emperor Mich |
olas and Prince Gortschakoff in Rus |
STA, william | and Prince Bismark in |
Germany, Napoleon III in France, |
Victor Emanuel and Count CavOur in |
Italy, Lord Palmerston and Lord \
John Russell in England, these with |
the resources of the mighty powers |
which they represented behind them
where some of the enemies with whom /
Plus TX had to contend. He was the
gentlest and the most amiable of men
in social life but he was also the most
and the most uncOmpro-
missing of popes when there was ques-
ton of tampering with Catholic faith
or with Catholic morals. He was in
deed no diplomat.
When Lord John Russell the Eng
lish Prime minister said that the pope
should not be allowed to reestablish
the Roman hierarchy in England Plus
replied by appointing Archbishop
Wiseman to the See of Westminster
in the very heart of London and dared
Russell and all England to do their
worst.
When Bismark, fresh from the
triumphs of the Franco-Prussian war.
passed the Falk laws to prosecute the
people who had won his vic
tories, he first forced the Archbishop i
Of Cologne out of the oldest and the s
proudest of German Sees. Plus IN
with open arms received the exiled
prelate and flung his answer to the {
Falk laws in Bismark's teeth by max
ing the first victim of that tyrant :
and prince of the church. {
These are some of the things that {
make the name of Plus shine with {
light not inferior to that of the most
of his predecessors. These i
ire the qualities that make him sim
,ularly dear to the hearts of two hun
lred million Catholics All the world 6
owes lover and all the world Loves
/ fighter who standing for the right t
never counts the odds against him. a
Before Plus died he had the astis- {
action of seeing his enemies tired of V
he fray, eager to shake hands ana {