Memories of a Professor

...When he left our tiny college home, we little thought of the subsequent career which was destined to be his and none would have forecast it...

...It was my privilege some three years ago to have a private audience with him of about an hour...

...walked unostentatiously among his fellows and mingled with his colleagues, the sons of miners and farmers or lords of the manor, with equal facility and charm...

...His voice is quiet, rather deferential in tone and modesty personified in the expression of his pedagogical views...

...The elect of the Church Militant assisted at the funeral obsequies of this great champion of the Faith...

...Among its alumni are numbered four cardinals and other distinguished men in Church and state, and it teaches them that irrespective of their success they are all sons of the alma mater...

...Within forty-eight hours the new Pope called into his presence the youthful cardinal-he was only thirty-eight years old at the time-and handed him a portfolio without advising him of its contents...

...This is written on the golden shores of California, the country that has been hallowed by the labors of the sainted Spaniards who crossed the seven seas "for the propagation of the Faith of Christ...

...Over the administration of the temporalities of this great basilica, and in the performance of the elaborate ceremonies incident to the ritual of the Church, he brought all the fervor and devotion of his exemplary soul...

...Though born in London while his father was secretary of the Spanish legation there, he had traveled extensively, but had never contacted with the atmosphere of a college hitherto, either as student or professor...

...He was his amanuensis at the time of the publication of the immortal encyclical on labor...

...It may not work out elsewhere...

...Because of that sentiment, I kept up a correspondence with my old professor from the time I left the college-but at infrequent intervals...

...Yet he holds us in the hollow of his hand, though we are a rough and ready outfit, brought together from the ends of the world-one from Trinidad, two from America, two from Hindustan, one from Spain, two from France, a goodly percentage of them from Ireland and Lancashire, still the heart of Catholic England...

...It was recalled that while in Winnipeg on this particular mission, his linguistic accomplishments were given a remarkable demonstration at a formal welcome extended to him at a Catholic educational institution where ecclesiastical and state officers were present...

...But the glimpse of him I shall never forget, on Maundy Thursday, carrying the monstrance in his hands, with his face plainly showing evidence of obliv-iousness to all around him, walking through the aisles of Saint Peter's with representatives of all the nations of the earth around him, bearing "the Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world...

...Twenty-one of his colleagues of the College of Cardinals participated in the ceremonies, while all Rome ceased its daily toil in memory of the illustrious churchman who had walked humbly with God and man all his fruitful years...

...While the French political press and platform, and parliamentary rostrum denounced him as reactionary and impossible, the Catholic world stood in awe of this giant of the Church putting his pious soul into conflict with the materialistic principles of the anticlerical government of France and not quailing at any stage of the encounter...

...During his administration came the acute clash with the French government and the Combes ministry...

...He was of a noble family with a long lineage of distinguished devotees to Church and state...

...Ushaw is a college of the old school, where clerical and lay students are educated side by side, where the prospective man of the world is taught as is his future priestly chum, the necessity of thorough religious education and devotion for the battle of life...

...His linguistic attainments alone made him of incalculable service in the cosmopolitan character of the correspondence and audiences of the Vatican...

...Over the waste of forty-five years, I am again in a classroom in a little college at Ushaw in the north of England, listening to a man without a trace of a foreign accent teaching us French...

...True to an almost universal custom to allow the new pontiff complete independence of judgment as to the policy of his administration, Cardinal del Val surrendered his portfolio of Secretary of State, and was assigned to the most distinguished position of arch-priest of Saint Peter's...

...I can still visualize the outline of his figure, rather tall, ascetic of face, alert of movement and with a pair of dark eyes that pierced to the heart...

...Under the circumstances surrounding the situation at Ushaw it has been pronounced a success...

...In each address, speaking extemporaneously, he replied in the vernacular of the particular language of each address and with most appropriate sentiments...

...As though prophetic of his future life, and particularly of his preeminently diplomatic successes he adapted himself to this new situation without difficulty or embarrassment...

...he did the duty completely that was assigned to him...

...He was noted for his solid piety, his fervent absorption of soul in the college chapel, and as with us students, so among his elder conferees he had that indefinable charm that stamps the Christian gentleman according to the Newman definition...

...He had been nurtured amid aristocratic surroundings all his life...

...While in this position he was appointed as papal nuncio to go to Canada at the time the perplexing school question had become a thorn in the side of both Church and state...

...Up there on the Durham hills it is a hardy race that survives the bleak east winds, the long damp winter with its intermingling frost and snow and slush and rain...

...Their illustrious fellow-countryman of the same apostolic mold, a voluntary exile from the land of his sires, will be, as he dearly wished, near the remains "of his beloved father and Pontiff, Pius X," in a foreign soil, while his patrimony has been left by the terms of his will "in toto" to be distributed to the "congregation for the propagation of the Faith...

...and in due course of time Pope Leo appointed him archbishop of Nicoea and the head of the great Academia Ecclesiastica of which he had formerly been a student...

...On the death of his beloved patron and friend, Leo XIII, in 1903, the Consistorial College of Cardinals selected the young archbishop as its secretary, again testifying to their appreciation for his marvelous gifts of tongue...

...On his mother's side he had a strong strain of Irish blood from Waterford...

...But, to me, I shall be able to think still more clearly of the precious days of my boyhood and of the high privilege, of which I was the unworthy recipient, to sit at the feet of this modern Gamaliel, and try "not to lose the common touch...

...and the confidence he thus reposed was heightened continuously during the eleven years of his pontificate by the extraordinary ability, tact and fortitude with which the duties of his high office were fulfilled...

...He was buoyant and cordial in the extreme, recounting experiences of our college days and reminding me of incidents that had been altogether obliterated from my memory...

...This was the only time he ever crossed the Atlantic Ocean...

...As though to advise him by concrete example of the language difficulties alone in the province of Manitoba, addresses were given to him, as a test of the students' proficiency, in Latin, French, German, Polish, Italian, Spanish and English...

...When he opened it, and read the news it contained, he swooned to the floor...

...God rest him everlastingly in His bountiful arms...

...There was not a vestige of waning strength or mental fatigue-just as invigorating and stimulating as when I had last seen him years ago in his gorgeous Borgia suite in the Vatican as Secretary of State...

...But he accepted this with the fortitude of a stoic and went among us as though he had never seen the cloudless sky of sunny Spain...

...He was as young as some of his pupils and not much older than the youngest of us...

...The Pope had selected him for the most responsible position and the greatest office in his gift, that of Papal Secretary of State...

...The world knew then what "non possumus" meant as it came from the devoted life of the great cardinal...

...There was nothing spectacular about his career...

...He only is at peace with God, who is at war with the force of evil...

...That was the customary preface to his selection as cardinal to succeed the archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Sarto as Pius X, who immediately appointed him as cardinal to succeed himself...

...I recalled from that source that as soon as he left Ushaw he was assigned by Pope Leo XIII to become a student at the Ecclesiastica Collegio Da Nobili in Rome, to prepare for a diplomatic career in the Church...

...One of the government officials turned to a colleague who was a devout Catholic and said, "No wonder the Catholic Church succeeds when it can enlist the services of such amazing talents...

...The world war broke the heart of his saintly supreme pontiff, and Pius X passed to his eternal reward, and again a Consistorial College had to assemble to determine upon his successor, which in the providence of God was determined in the person of Benedict XV...

...A Spaniard-speaking English and French with equal fluency-absorbing the intricacies and idioms of the Italian language with alacrity, he became at once a marked man...

...Thus he fought and the success of his uncompromising stand on principle is recognized today as the salvation of the independence of the Church...

...When the young ecclesiastic recovered consciousness he begged to be relieved of the burdens of this exalted office, but the sovereign pontiff more than ever satisfied by this evident humility and the wisdom of his choice, commanded him under holy obedience to submit...

...He was ordained "ad titulum patrimonii sui" and immediately attached to the person of Leo XIII and the secretariat of the Vatican, coming in that manner in daily contact with the luminous intellect of this great pontiff of the Church...

...Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re" was again exemplified as the only method where principle is involved...

...The great Leo had been a most effective diplomat himself and he saw that with the long array of diplomatic forbears of the young student the Church would produce an envoy extraordinary...