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Show POPE PIUS MISUNDERSTOOD. Too Many Cardinal Hats Spoken For United States. j Rome, Oct. 27. Some tim? after the recent conclave the Vatican was surprised sur-prised at a report from the United States that a high prelate of the church there had spoken repeatedly of the possibility of several Americans being be-ing nominated cardinals. As the good faith of the prelate in question could not be doubted. It was supposed that was. laboring under a misapprehension. His apparent mistake can easily be explained. ex-plained. Europeans generally, and Italians Ital-ians in particular, use the term "American," "Amer-ican," as applying to Canadians, citizens citi-zens of the United States and South Americans equally. According to this custom therefore, even if the pope, who c.oes not speak English, mentioned his intention to create several American cardinals, he did not mean that the should come exclusively from the United States. Gibbons Stands Alone. The argument has been made that the I'nited States, considering- its 12.0(X).(mx Catholic inhabitants, has not a sufficient number of representatives in the sacred college: that Canada has b?en without .1 cardinal since the death of Cardinal Tas-chereau Tas-chereau in l.SSS, and that the whole of Central and South America, with a Catholic Cath-olic population of over 50,000,i never had one. Brazil, the largest of the Latin-American Latin-American countries, has repeatedly asked for a cardinal. It is probable that the archbishop of Rio Janeiro will be the first South American prelate to be raised to the purple; but if this is done it will then be difficult to refuse the same favor to Mexico, and even more difficult not to extend thp privilege to the archbishops cf Buenos Ayres, Argentine and Santiago dc Chile. It has been suggested in order to make room for new cardinals, to reduce the cardinals in those countries which do not seem to be sufficiently appreciative of the privilege, as, for instance, France, which normally has seven cardinals. The suggestion sug-gestion also has been made to continue the system inaugurated by Leo XIII to bring about a better balance between the numbers of foreign and Italian caftdinals. Hard to Make a Choice. - In the United States there are several archbishops whose high attainments fit them to enter the sacred college. The archbishop of Philadelphia is considered first among, these, but the situation Is such that not only the personality of the . man to be selected must be considered, but also the importance of the geographical geograph-ical situation of the archdiocese. For instance, in-stance, if a new cardinal were to De named the relative importance of Phil 1-delphia. 1-delphia. New York, Chicago and St. Louig must be taken into consideration, as, owing ow-ing to their positions in the Catholic world, any one of them would be worthy to be the sec of the new prince of the Church. - ' According to opinion prevailing at the Vatican, it is not likeiy that In the next consistory or in th one following will a red hat be sent to the United States. |