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Show POPE PIUS X FOR-IRISH HOME RULE. Pope Pius X received John Redmond, Red-mond, chairman of the Irish political party in private audience on Thursday, Thurs-day, April 27, enquired into the religious, relig-ious, political an industrial condition condi-tion of Ireland, and expressed his com-Iletb com-Iletb sympathy with the Irish National party. This is not the first time that a Pope has encouraged the national aspirations of the Irish people, instead of simply praising their fidelity to the faith and their well-tried loyalty to the Holy See. We need but briefly refer here to England's Eng-land's cruel attempt to set Ireland's religious loyalty against her nationalism. nation-alism. Ever from the evil day of the Act of Union, England, bitterly Protestant Pro-testant as she then was, stood ready to make some slight concessions to Rome, if Rome, in turn, would ban the Irish cause. As time went by, England Eng-land grew more and more conciliatory, till, with the waxing of the Irish Parliamentary Par-liamentary party under Parnell, in the '80s, she would willingly have established estab-lished an English legation at Rome if Pope Leo XIII. on his part would oppose op-pose Irish home rule. But the Pope rejected the offer with disdain. He put himself on record on the Home Rule movement in a letter to the Irish bishops dated August 1, 1S82, as follows: "The Irish are free to seek a remedy for their rights. It must not be thought that what is permitted to every other nation is forbidden to Ireland." Ire-land." Further, on the death of Cardinal McCabe, Archbishop of Dublin, who, like his immediate predecessor. Cardinal Car-dinal Cullen differed from the rest of the Bishops of Ireland politically, being be-ing cold to the Home Rule cause, the Pope appointed a Nationalist Bishop to the vacancy in the person of the Most Rev. William Walsh, and later gave the Cardinal's hat to Archbishop Logue of Armagh, another Nationalist. The British Government was answered. an-swered. It wan clear that it must .abandon all hope of ruling Ireland through Rome; and. after a little, the Norfolks and the Erringtons, representing repre-senting that group of English Catholics Catho-lics who have so ungratefully and fatuously opposed Irish Home Rule, turned their assumed diplomatic gifts to worthier 6nds than interfering in the name of religion with the temporal rights of their Irish co-religionists. From the advent of Pius X. it was clear that the Irish cause had another friend in the chair of Peter, not less sympathetic than was Leo XIII. When Sir Henry Grattan Esmonde. of the ' Irish Parliamentary party, went with an Irish pilgrimage of homage to the new Pope, and sought audience of his Holiness as representing his party and his people, he was received by Pius X. i with the honor of an ambassador. The Pope would not suffer the representative representa-tive of Ireland to kneel, but made him pit beside him and set forth the hopes , of his beloved land. : At the consecration of the great Cathedral of 'the Primatial See of Ar magh, last year, the Pope sent thither as his own representative, Cardinal Vineehzo Vannutelli; who, after the historic religious event, for which he was commissioned, made a tour through the country, visiting its chief churches and institutions, and also receiving and addressing such distinctly dis-tinctly politically bodies as the county councillors, personality of the initial stage of Home Rule, local self-government, and getting evidence on every side not only of Ireland's incorruptible Catholicity, but of her unalterable de- . termaination to win her legislative independence, inde-pendence, The Pilot. |