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Show WHEN PIUS X. WAS HAPPY. Long Ago, When he Was a Parish Priest, and He Would Be Happy Again in His Parish. "Rome," the English weekly published pub-lished in the Eternal City by "Vox Urbis," gives a touching account of an audience accorded the other day by the Holy Father to three newly-ordained priests of the English college. "His Holiness," says our contemporary, contempo-rary, is always so kind, an despecial-ly despecial-ly to young priests, that kindness and Pius X are synonymous, but on this occasion he seemed to outdo himself. Once he made all three of them smiie, even to the verge of laughter, when he referred to some feature of the university univer-sity life they have just finished. But that was only for a moment. He asked them what they were going to do when they returned to England, and they tedd him that one was to be a. professor in a great college and the others were to work on the mission. His Holiness has often spoken of the need and the value of good professors, nowadays especially, when error has been so often of-ten taught instead of truth, but he said in his very first encyclical that his warmest sympathies and his deepest interest would always be for the priests! Who snend their liven wmklnor amrniu and with and for th people. 'You are Ao have the better part.' he said to the young missionaries, 'and you are to have the sweetest consolataions.' Then His Holiness began to talk in the most touching way about the consolations of a priest on the mission. "He told them how people, living in the niidst of the world, surrounded from morning till night by sin and temptation would come to them in the confessional, and yet not have sufficient suffi-cient matter for absolution; how sometimes some-times a mother of a family, with a life full of trials and difficulties, would only be able to conjure up for confession, 'Father, I said something cross to the children. I said such-and-such a thing.' 'The poor, good women!' exclaimed His Holiness, with feeling. "And not a million of these things added together would amount to a venial sin.' What consolation there was here for the good priest who loved the souls of his people! peo-ple! And, more still, what an incentive to virtue and what a motive for humility! Then the Pope, looking; at them earnestly, and addressing them in tones that might be those of a brother, a father, an old friends. ' said: 'I was happy, very" happy, long ago when I was parish priest; and I would be happy now if I had to work again in my parish.' " |
