Prisoner of the Vatican by David I. Kertzer

Author:David I. Kertzer [Kertzer, David I.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2015-02-19T16:00:00+00:00

13. The Pope's Body

A FEW DAYS BEFORE he was elected pope, Gioacchino Pecci, in his role as chamberlain, called in the dead pontiff's relatives for a reading of his last testament, eleven sheets of paper written in Pius's hand, bound by a silk ribbon. To the surprise of some who heard it, Pius asked that he be entombed, not in one of Rome's great churches, but in the modest basilica of San Lorenzo, outside the city walls. He specified the exact location in the church that he had chosen and instructed that no more than four hundred scudi be spent to build the shrine. The inscription was likewise to be modest: "Here lie the bones and mortal remains of Pius IX," along with the dates of his papacy and the date of his death. The only symbol to be placed over the inscription was a death's head. In the meantime, as was the custom, the pope's body was placed in St. Peter's.1

Just what it was that led Leo XIII to decide to hold the funeral procession three years after Pius's death remains unclear. It was customary to wait until the death of a pope's successor for such a reburial ceremony, but the three cardinals Pius had named as his executors were, for some reason, impatient. Yet in their haste to have his body taken to San Lorenzo, they recognized the risks they were running. Such a move would require a procession through the entire city. Given what Pius IX, the last pope-king, represented to the people of Rome, the prospect of provoking violent anticlerical demonstrations surely occurred to them. Nor was it clear initially that the Italian authorities would allow such a rite, although the law of guarantees assured the pope the same honors as those given the king. Since 1876 the government had forbidden all outdoor religious processions in Rome, arguing that they threatened the public order. And, given the hostile climate, the Church leaders themselves had not been eager to face the taunts and worse of the anticlericals by marching through the city streets. It was for this reason that ever since 1870, even the annual Corpus Domini procession, normally one of the most impressive public rites in the Holy City, had been abandoned. 2

Pius IX's executors could hardly have been better placed in the Church: Raffaele Monaco la Valletta, cardinal vicar of Rome, Giovanni Simeoni, Pius's secretary of state, and Teodolfo Mertel, who, along with Antonelli, was one of the last men to serve as a cardinal without ever having been ordained a priest. In the recriminations and finger-pointing that followed the funeral events, some charged the three cardinals with having pushed a reluctant pope into approving the procession. Whatever the case, in discussing the plans with the pope and his secretary of state, the executors concluded that it would be too risky to hold the procession in daylight. It also appears that the pope thought it best to keep the rite as secret as possible to minimize the risks of confrontation or violence on the city's streets.

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