The Alaska daily empire., 1914-09-03
Plus X.

The death of Pope Plus x, head of the vast Roman Catholic Church with it's 24O,OOO,OOO adherents, is an early fruit of the war of the nations. A man nearing his eightieth year does not look forward to long life, but unQues. tionably sorrow shortened the days of the venerable Pontiff. The war killed him.
 It is war that pits Catholics against Catholics. The Irish in the allied ar mics are mainly Catholic. France, in spite Of its political differences with the Vatican, is Catholic country, more devout than 1t was ten years ago, or five. The Pope's beloved Italy, not yet involved in the war but likely to be so, Is of the old faith. So is Belgium. Even in the empire of the Czar the millions of Poles are Catho- lies, while the dispersed fragments of the UnIate Church, practising the Greek rite under Roman authority, among the Russian Ruthenians. are viewed with especial tenderness by all Popes as representing the most promising. effort ever made to unite Eastern and Western Christianity.
 Upon the Galician side of the bor- der the Uniates have not been sub jectetd to oppression and still form a great and prosperous church of 3,O0O,- 900 adherents; half a million more are in Hungary, and the sect ramifies into Croatia and Servia, a living liz ature between the sundered commun- ions. Of Roman Catholics proper there are eight or nine millions in Hungary; all South Germany is preponderantly Catholic: Austria proper and Bohemia overwhelmingly so. The millions of Catholics arrayed on either side are, in fact, not far from evenly balanced. On each side the cruciix is borne to the wounded, and extreme unction administered to the dying. It is a Catholic war.
 The Pope is said to have been espe- cially grieved over the Austrian at tack upon Servia at a time when the Holy See had just concluded an ar rangement with the latter state guar anteeing religious liberty to Catholics within its borders-chiehy the Mails. sori or mountain men" of Albania an- nexed after the Balkan wars and treat ed at first with shocking cruelty; but including Uniates and others. That Austria, so long the paramount pow CT in the Holy Roman Empire, still so closely allied to the Vatican that 1t has the veto over Pope's election, should assail Servia at time so unpropitious for the church added poignancy to the sorrow of the Pontiff
 No Pope of history ever presided over more millions of people than Plus X. None. probably, was ever more be- loved. His peasant birth and nurture, his seventeen years as a parish priest, his transparent simplicity, made plain Joseph Taylor, as we should call him. seem more one of his people than had the Brilliant Leo, who was every inch an aristocrat. Perhaps it did not harm Plus X with most of his people that he was less skilled as a politician than his illustrious predecessor. Modern ism may have made headway against the Papacy; the pastoral letter of 1907 condemning it may have been an err TOT that Leo would have avoided; but the hndliness of the venerable prel- ate's face was an index of his char acter to millions of worshippers.
 The historians of posterity will not rank Plus x with the great Popes. His place is not with the Gregories and the Hildebrands. In the endless compli- cated struggle with the civil power in Catholic countries for authority over the local clergy, the property of the church and the monastic orders, he suffered some reyerses. The times. also. have changed. Ultramontanism is a waning force. But none of his defeats, none of his discouragements, ever went to Plus heart like the spec tacle of more than a hundrd million Catholics divided by the bloody chasm of war. Its sudden outbreak appalled, and amazed him as 1t appalled, and amazed the world. His dying message to humanity was prayer for peace. It was the sumit, as it was the end, of his career,-New York World
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