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Show i . . . A LEADING Italian paper publishes a sketch of the new pope with this leadline: "The Man Who Smiles," and the qualification, strange though it may stem when applied to a pope, is entirely truthful. The grim fight of the conclave has brought forth the smiling man. Pius X. He has seen poverty hard poverty, too; he used, when a boy, to walk miles and miles every day to attend school, badly fed and badly shod in the trying climate of northern Italy, Ita-ly, and ho has met all the hardships of life with his serene, unalterable smile. I It was a strange sight, to be sure, .and an interesting; one, both from the standpoint stand-point of the historian and of the philosopher, phil-osopher, and supposing that the same iitorian and philosopher, and even the . mere mortal in pursuit of impressions and emotions universal,, had, that same 1 ''ay, a few hburs earlier, witnessed the I first appearance of the pope in the ca- tin dial of St. Peter, the contrast must I inevitably have struck him. between j the noble, pale, serene countenance of I the new pontiff and the expression in j the faces of his defeated electors. They a!i woj-e a mask of oolness, de rigrur I during such an important ceremony as I conclave, but under the frozen mask : lite tnof:t worldly passions strained the 1 muscles and wore out the alleged re- i pose and quietness of spirit.. No doubt j . ven i. our modern, impartial and nn- prejudiced minds the repetition of the historic fight assumes a character of ""i j oep interest and almost epic grandeur in i's ery characteristics of human passion and worldly motives. ' The characteristics of the new pope j S'-cm to be particularly the goodness ;;;:d .-dnvplicity inherent in a. life lived in wholesome contact wiih nature, in :h-. practice of .nil thr.t is honest and wr.affccud in the intercourse with others. The 'family of 'he pope is very humble and poor, ; t it comes from a 'ng line .,f pimis and honest ancestors, ti v.ho.n !h most nmarkable characteristics charac-teristics of the pope's personality the r,..ro rri'iirlcjililo .-is i iir-v :n.t-r.r nf rM t I lime purity of mind and humbleness of heart can be traced. There are many i;ch jUR-t households among the poorer and humbler people of Italy, and their nffsprinj; give mnietinies unexpected results. re-sults. Tin- new pope is an enthusiastic lover j of music. Even a gramophone will please him, not for any excellence of p'-rfoMiiatve in itself, but because it suggests music, generally good music. And even Hie suggestion of good music I pleases Pius X. The pope has a beau- Itifu!. c'.ear baritone voice, which he always al-ways uses at ecclesiastical functions in a, most effective way; he also plays , equally well the piano and organ, and 1 Lives the old Gregorian "canto fermo:" t I -from which accomplishments all lovers j of sacred music infer, not without some j u obability, the revival of sacred music J thioughout the Catholic world. I While the musical competence of the I new pope is above discussion, public I opinion seems to be quite uncertain as J to his classical training; in fact, very J marked doubts have been expressed as I 10 the existence of the latter. But. a I few young and learned priests who I have been under his tuition in theseni- inary at Mantova are ready to contra- I diet any depreciative statement to this ! effect. It. seems that Pius X does not I are to make a show of his learning, I but he possesses Just as good a stock of classical information as any scholar J mipht justly b proud of. I When he was teaching at .Mantdra he was 11 member of the board of exam- i tiers in the most diverse departments. and a young divinity studen-ts would iiddLi!y find himself kioloed out of a theorem of geometry through the efficient effi-cient assistance of his bishop, while the next one would hear him discourse gracefully and cleverly on a speech of Cicero, and others find him equally well informed on Greek and history. But the goodness of his heart was superior even to his erudition. He was notoriously poor; yet somehow, when Pope Leo XIII (for whom he cherished a deep veneration) suggested and recommended recommend-ed to the students of theology a careful care-ful study of St. Thomas Aquinas, he managed to scrape from his limited allowance al-lowance the money with which to buy and bestow upon the poorer students of the class the fourteen expensive volumes vol-umes of the "Summa Theologica." The vast range of his general knowledge knowl-edge was made more apparent when, I ' the teacher of moral theology in the seminary having died suddenly,, he undertook to substitute for him, and explained to the great satisfaction of his pupils the difficult canonical theories. theo-ries. "De justitia et jure et de con-tractibus." con-tractibus." And yet some people insist in questioning, as I said, his knowledge; also on the ground that he always speaks Italian, and preferably the soft, bright, expressive Venetian dialect, and that his Venetian birth is always clearly clear-ly felt in his use of the language, it is discussed whether his knowledge of French, English and German which Is not entirely denied is satisfactory. There is one thing, however, about the new pope which is not questioned, cither by friend or foe. and that is his amiable disposition, his kindness of heart and manner, and his really Christian spirit of charity and humility. humil-ity. Two more characteristics 'vill endear en-dear him to all Anglo-Saxons he is a born fighter, whose spirit is restrained, though not always quite' efficiently tamed, by consciousness of the duties which become a Catholic priest; and he has a curiously acute sense of humor. hu-mor. Two or three little stories will serve to illustrate the assertion. The following shows his humor: Don Giuseppe Giu-seppe Sarto (such was his title then) huing received from the pope his nomination nom-ination to the 0iscopal see of Mantua. decided just before leaving Treviso that he would go and pay his respects to his former bishop, Monsignor Calle-gari. Calle-gari. But as his train took him to Mantua at an hour too early, for pastoral pas-toral calls, he betook himself to the Church of Santa Giustina. and there informed the rector of his desire to celebrate mass, without, however, stating stat-ing his new episcopal dignity. His clothes happened to be, or rather were as always, quite modest, and the rector thought it well to inquire further into I the conditions of the unknown priest. "Where do you come from?" "From Treviso." "Wha is your business in Treviso?" "None." "Why, do you mean to say that you are no curate, no chaplain, not even assistant to the chapel; in short, nothing?" noth-ing?" . . "Just so. your reverence." "Well, Treviso needs sriests badly enough, and you claim that you io nothing. I will speak to your bishop in regard to that; meanwhile, you may celebrate- mass." " . .. "Yes, your reverence." And Don Giuseppe Sarto went and celebrated mass with great devotion and a humility of behavior quite exemplary, exem-plary, under the suspicious eye of a sacristan whom the unsatisfied "rector had ordered to watch the unknown priest. The celebration ended," very humbly, the priest was asked to sign the register of foreign offlciators, according ac-cording to the custom, and he signed thus: -"Giuseppe Sarto, fclshop-elect of Mantua." It is not stated what the rector had to say when he saw the ominous line. - I That happened many years ago; the following Is quite recent: Just before he left Venice for the conclave a lady of the aristocracy, taking leave of him, expressed her heartfelt wishes that the Holy Ghost should "descend on the person of His Eminence Sarto, thereby designing him to the pontificate. "Madame," "Mad-ame," replied his eminence, "allow me to remark that you have a very poor opinion of the Holy Ghost." To his resolute disposition the following follow-ing may bear witness: W'hile he was still a poor priest the curate's house in which he lived, having a little garden, he used to spend his spare hours in the open air, reading his breviary. A wall ' separated the garden from the public road, and in this, once, several youn? men stopped to talk excitedly, and one of them resorted to profane words. No sooner had he spoken than Don Giuseppe, Giu-seppe, leaping over the wall, bestowed uponthe irreverent fellow such a tremendous tre-mendous blow that it stung him for some time and inspired the others with a wholesome consideration for Don Giuseppe's persuasive powers. He was already cardinal when he boasted still with a well known monsignor of being able "to frighten, alone, a gang of thieves or robbers at night, and proved it v innfrniitln, .-.n-. s,, .. 1 .t . 1 . - country road a handful of ruffians wno attempted to disturb him. and bv often , going out in the night, all alone, with ! a latch key in his pocket, to render I assistance to the sick and dying. Once, among others, he was informed that a man who had long been a friend of his. although a free thinker, was on his death bed. The hour was quite late. He sent to inquire whether ths dying man would like to see once more "his friend Sarto." The answer was affirmative, and the Bishop Sarto went as a friend, not as a Roman Catholic priest, to comfort with pure human myapthy the death of the atheist. That speaks well for him. So does the fact that he has been known, to maintain personal friendly relations with Jew?, and other individuals or various political polit-ical opinions, and that his courtesv an 1 charity are unfailing toward every hu-' man being, without distinction of party or religion. - He has often pawned his pastoral ring to get ready money for the poor, and deprived himself and his family alike of every luxury, claiming that he is only the trustee, not the master, of the money which comes through his hands. ' It is stated that upon his election elec-tion to cardinal he bought the gar-I gar-I ments of state from the waiter of his predecessor, to whom they had been given, and had his own bishop's sash I dyed purple, rejoicing over the economy econ-omy which enabled him to do a little more good, be it even so little, than he could otherwise have done. He may be, if his antecedents keep good, such a pope as the church has not seen for !t long time.- Xot long before his election he declared de-clared his readiness to kiss the foot of all the eminentissimi. while he hated the thought of their kissing hia own; and that is exactly what he cannot prevent now. For the rules of the church are the proudest and most unswerving un-swerving In the world. And when, as the writer had the change to do, one has seen the triumphal procession of the pope In St. Peter's, and then heard the poor villagers of Riese talk of him and of the times in which he was plain "Don Bepi," the contrast is tremendously tremen-dously impressive. We had been accustomed to hear history his-tory talk of the swineherd who was Sixtus V, and. of many others like him, but to see the very same thing happen now, in our modern world, is indeed a good subject for astonishment as well as thanksgiving. Boston Transcript. |