WE behold to-day, beloved children,
the God-Man, born in a manger, to restore man to the greatness from which he had fallen through his own fault; and to place him once again on a throne of liberty, of justice and of honour which centuries of error and untruth had denied him. The foundation of that throne shall be Calvary: it shall be enriched, not with gold or silver, but with the Blood of Christ, the divine Blood which has overflowed upon the wdrld for twenty centuries to give a scarlet lkie to the cheeks of His Daughter, the Church, and which in purifying, consecrating, sanctifying and glorifying its children takes on the brilliance of Heaven.
Oh, Christian Rome, that Blood is your life. By TeaSOO of that Blood you are great, and even the ancient ruins of your pagan greatness arc !Well in a new light (and the heresies of the political wisdom of the Peters and the Caesars are purified and consecrated). You are Mother of higher and more human justice, which does honour to you, to your See and to those who hear your voice. You are the beacon of civilisation and civilised Europe and the world looks to you for all that is most sacred and most faithful, all that is most wise and most honourable in the exalted traditions and proud history of their peoples.
You are the mother of Charity, your splendour, your monuments, your hospices, your monasteries, your convents, your heroes and your heroines, your voyages and your missions, your generations and your centuries with their schools and universities, all their testimony is a triumph of your charity, that charity which embraces all, suffers all, hopes for and accomplishes all, becoming
all things to all men, consoling and comforting all, curing all and restoring them to that liberty given by Christ, uniting all peoples in a peace of brotherly love.
ONE COMMON FATHERLAND That charity which brings together all men, regardless of country, language or custom, into one limited family and makes of the entire world one common Fatherland; from this Rome, centre, rock and teacher of Christianity, from this•city called eternal by reasons of its relations with the living Christ rather than by reasons of its associations with the passing glory of the Caesars.
From this Rome, in our ardent and intense longing for the welfare of individual nations and of all humanity, we direct our appeal to all, beseeching and exhorting that tlie day be not delayed in which. whatever to-day hostility against God and Christ is driving men to temporal and eternal ruin, a fuller religious consciousness and new and higher objective may prevail, and that on that day there may shine resplendently over the manger of a new order among peoples the guiding star of Bethlehem, herald of a new order which will rouse all mankind to sing with the angels: " Glory to God in the Highest," and to proclaim as a gift restored at last by Heaven upon the nations of the earth. " Peace to men of good will."
On the dawning of that day with what great joy will nations and rulers freed in mind from the fear of the incipient dangers of future conflicts, transform the sword, nicked and jagged from constant use against their fellow-men. into ploughs with which to furrow the fertile breast of the earth under the sun of heavenly benediction, and to wrest from it their daily bread, dampened now by the sweat of their brows but no longer bathed in blood and tears of sorrow.