Rome — allocution of his Holiness on Poland.
[from the London Tablet.]
Rome, April 27.
--An allocution was delivered by the Pope in the Consistory recently held at the Vatican.
The following translation is given by the Express: ‘
"The blood of the weak and the innocent cries for vengeance before the throne of the Eternal against those who shed it; and in our days do we not see also innocent blood shed in a Catholic country.--in unhappy Poland — where that same Catholic religion, for which Salet Fidello gave up his life, is so cruelly persecuted?
I should have wished not to speak of it before the next Consistory, but I fear that by keeping silence any longer I should draw upon myself the punishment of heaven denounced by the prophets upon those who leave iniquity to be committed, Va mihi quis tacui. Consequence compels me to false my voice against that powerful sovereign whose States reach even to the pole.
Listen! Here is this powerful monarch, who dares also to call himself Catholic, being outside our Holy Church, and who forgets the judgment of God which awaits him for his crimes.
This monarch persecutes with a ferocious cruelty the Polish nation, and he had undertaken the impious task of extirpating the Catholic religion in Poland, and of introducing agism by force.
The Priests of that Catholic religion are forcibly taken from their flocks; others are exiled; others again are condemned to forced labor or to infamous punishment.
Happy are those who have been able to fly, and who now wander without an asylum in a foreign land.
Churches are profaned; others are shut on account of the absence of the Priests — Finally this arrogant potentate has arrogated to himself a power which even the Vicar of Christ does not possess.
After having torn from his Diocese, exiled, and kept in captivity for a year, our well-beloved son, the Archbishop of Warsaw, he has dared to deprive him of that charge which he had conferred upon him. In casting opprobrium upon such acts we by no means give an encouragement to European revolution.
We well know how to make a difference between social revolution and the legitimate rights of a nation which struggles for its independence and for the safety of religion.
In stigmatizing the persecutors of the Catholic religion we fulfill a sacred duty of our conscience.-- This is why I have made you aware of the sad news received from that unhappy country, for which we ought to redouble our prayers.
We declare, in consequence, that we give our Apostolic Benediction to all those who shall have prayed for Poland.
Let us all pray for her."
The allocution has made a great impression in Rome.
May 1.--The Russian Charge d'affaires having asked the Pontifical Government for an explanation of the allocution lately delivered by the Pope, Cardinal Antonetil defended the right necessity of speaking as the Pope had done.
The Charge d'affaires acknowledged the virtue of Monsignor Felinski, but said that he was a rebellions subject, having invited the Czar to renounce his possession of Poland.
Cardinal Antonelli has demanded from the Italian Government through the mediation of a central Power, the liberation of Cardinal Morichint, who has been arrested at Jeal, Ancona. ’ 