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Show PAPAL SECRETARY OF STATE J Italy's: participation in the European Euro-pean war necessarily involves to a certain extent the Holy See and the pope, and makes more important than, usual the papal secretary of state. Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, who holds that high office, is a man o undoubted ability and long experience in church and diplomatic affairs. He was born at Capovallazza di Ussita, in central Italy, on May 5, 1S52. In his younger days he taught theology in the Pontifical Roman seminary, and canonic law at Propaganda Propa-ganda Fide; and he was barely twenty-eight when he was appointed professor pro-fessor of law in the Institut Catho-lique Catho-lique of Paris, where he spent in scholarly schol-arly pursuits nearly twenty years. In 1S18 he went back to Rome to receive his appointment as apostolic delegate to Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador; along with the title of archbishop of Caesarea "in partibus infidelium." His American delegation lasted four years and was crowned with satisfactory results in every way. He was then made secretary to the congregation for extraordinary ecclesiastic affairs, one of the most important positions in ttie curia, since this is the office of correspondence corre-spondence with foreign governments, and after that president of the commission com-mission to codify the canonic law. After two years' hard work, having found it advisable to allow himself some relaxation, he took a vacation-traveling to the Holy Land in company with Monsignore, afterwards Cardinal Delai, and returned quietly to his work soon after. The purple cloth came to him one year later, with the consistory of December 16, 1907, not as the perfunctory conclusion of a bureaucratic career, but as an early and well-deserved recognition of very particular and brilliant merit. |
