Subject: The Pope—Foe of Mankind. Part V. How Popes are elected: Jesuitical funds and frauds dominant in nearly all modern conclaves.

Interesting truly is a papal conclave. “Con” and “clavis” are two Latin words signifying respectively “with” and “key;” liberally translated, “under lock and key.” For, while the cardinals are in meeting for the purpose of electing a pope, they are supposed to be locked in, absolutely, from the world, communing with the Holy Ghost and with a conscience enlightened of God only.

How very worldly and corrupt have been, however, many of the conclaves! To go no further back than the days of the infamous Borgia, who bought the papal tiara and called himself Alexander VI, we see venality, mendacity, immorality, and greed dominating a body sworn to act in the interests solely of the Christian religion.

Supposed to represent the apostles of Jesus Christ Himself, the humble and devoted fishermen, who, truly filled with the Holy Spirit and governed by its inspiration, undertook without shoe or scrip to convert a powerful, prejudiced, self-centered, and cruel world, the college of cardinals is indeed a very different body.

Appointed, for the most part, by intrigue, often by corruption, and as frequently through favoritism the most objectionable, the cardinals of the Roman Church are the most carnal-minded, venal, and selfish politicians on earth. So judging them, in his day, Wolsey, one of the most astute of modern statesmen, and typical churchman of his time, sought the papacy several times in succession. In his efforts to become ” Vicar of Christ,’ ‘ and wisely doubting the efficacy of the “Holy Ghost’ ‘ alone, he used very lavishly the gold and political influence of England, but Charles V of Spain and Germany, as well as other continental sovereigns, stood between him and the prize.

Men inferior to Wolsey in ability, and not superior to him in virtue, were the winners of an honor as absent from Christ-like character, surrounding, or suggestion as the very court of Satan.

Men of the Italian race have been, for several centuries, selected to fill the papal throne, to the exclusion of churchmen of almost all other nations. Why? Because the jealousies of greater peoples than the Italians have made pathway to the “chair of Peter” easy for sons of a blood and country not in the race for world-wide domination in temporals.

While, however, Italians have exclusive entree to the papacy, the government of other countries take lively interest in the selection of a pope friendly, or at all events not hostile, to their policies and purposes, Not a papal election but brings to Rome the most adroit and unscrupulous of worldly diplomatists. They fully understand the cardinals; and the cardinals understand the diplomatists just as thoroughly.

Every papal election since the days of Borgia, four hundred and more years ago—he was elected in 1492—has been, with exceptions that might be counted on the digits of one hand, a bargain and sale as flagrant as ever disgraced the rotten borough system of Britain before 1832, or has since defiled the ward elections of New York, Chicago, or San Francisco.

A papal conclave is a gathering intent primarily, often exclusively, on doing that which will bring to the scarlet-clad few, given the right to vote, the most ready cash. There is always a strong candidate—sometimes two or more in evidence— a short time before the dead pope has gone to his last account. Each of these men knows that it is money which in such an election counts. He begs, borrows, or steals with the earnestness of a seeker for parliamentary, civic, or congressional honors.

The various governmental agencies also get busy. It can happen that no government is pleased with the aspirations of the avowed candidates. Each of these agents looks around for a satisfactory candidate, and if one is found, finds the cash necessary to move the “Holy Spirit” of the conclave to decide on his election.

The really strongest and really ablest candidates are often defeated for a weak and docile prelate, whom skillful managers of the Curia may manipulate without difficulty. For four centuries, if we except the forty years of their temporary suppression, 1773-1814, the Jesuits have played telling and frequently decisive part in the election of popes.

Stop at nothing to attain an end do these unscrupulous men. Says Hon. R. W. Thompson in his celebrated work, “The Footprints of the Jesuits,” Chapter XII, pp. 196, 197:

Wheresoever they [the Jesuits] were sent among heathen and unchristianized peoples, they gave trouble to the Church and inflicted serious injury upon the cause of Christianity. When they found a missionary field occupied by any of the monastic orders, they endeavored either to remove them or to destroy their influence by assailing their Christian integrity, so that they could have everything their own way. They accustomed themselves to obtain their ends by whatsoever means they found necessary, considering the latter as justified by the former. Not in Paraguay alone, but wheresoever else they obtained dominion over ignorant and credulous populations, it was mainly accomplished by persuading them to believe that conversion to Christianity consisted in the mere recital of formal words the professed converts did not understand, and in the ceremony of baptism without any intelligent conception of its character or of the example and teachings of Christ. The seeds of error they thus succeeded in scattering broadcast among the natives of India, China, and elsewhere, have grown into such poisonous fruits that all the intervening years have failed to provide an antidote, and it remains a lamentable fact that the descendants of these same professing converts have relapsed into idolatry and continued to shun Christianity as if all its influences were pestilential. They [the Jesuuits] became Brahmins in India, and, by practicing the idolatrous rites and ceremonies of that country, brought the cause of Christianity into degradation. Continuing steadily to follow the advice of Loyola, they everywhere became “all things to all men” by worshiping at the shrines of the lowest forms of heathen superstition, as if they were the holy altars of the Church.

Would such men, I ask, stop at anything to secure the election of a pope friendly to their deceit and treachery? There is a saying common enough in Rome:

Three popes have we, the white pope (the reigning pontiff), the red pope (the cardinal prefect of the Propaganda), and the black pope (the general of the Jesuits), greatest of all three. When rebuked for their temporizing with paganism, or rather surrendering to its superstitions, Mr. Thompson adds :

They [the Jesuits] justified themselves upon the ground that any form of vice, deception, and immorality became legitimated by Christianity when practiced in its name. In China they engaged with the natives in worshiping Confucius instead of Christ, and made offerings upon his altar without the slightest twinge of conscience. They omitted nothing, howsoever degrading, which they found necessary to successfully planting the Jesuit scepter among the Oriental populations, until at last, after a long and hard struggle, they were brought into partial obedience by the Church, whose authority they had defied, and whose precepts they contemptuously violated. . . . They shamelessly cast aside the profession of Christianity as if it were a thing of reproach, and performed with alacrity the most revolting Hindoo rites, seemingly as regardless of the obligation of obedience to the Church as of their own dignity and manliness of character.

Mr. Thompson does not mince words:

They substituted fraud, deceit, and hypocrisy for that open, frank, and courageous course of conduct which a sense of right never fails to suggest to ingenuous minds. They unchristianized themselves by becoming Brahmins and pariahs, crawling stealthily and insidiously into the highest places, and sinking with equal ease and skill into the lowest and most degrading.

Imagine men like these Jesuits prepared, for temporary gain, to paganize themselves in tireless activity during a papal election! Tammany politician the most corrupt, ward heeler the most conscienceless that American politics has ever known, could not hold candle to these adepts in mendacity and hypocrisy. We have heard of ballot- stuffing, of vote-buying in a thousand forms, we have heard of fraudulent counts and lying certificates of election, we have heard and known of assassinations to prevent lawfully-elected officers from taking their seats ; but at no crime less than those perpetrated by the worst of American politicians have Jesuits hesitated, in order to place pontiff of their choice on the papal throne.

Remember, let Americans in particular, that under the American flag Jesuitism flourishes as it does not seem to thrive elsewhere; save, perhaps, in Britain and the overseas dominions of that empire. The Jesuits under the Stars and Stripes are more powerful and wealthy than they were in the whole world before their suppression in 1773. There are in the United States proper several Jesuit provinces and missions. The headquarters of these provinces and missions are New York City; St. Louis, Mo.; San Francisco, Cal. ; El Paso, Tex.; New Orleans, La.; Spokane, Wash. ; and Buffalo, N. Y.

The Jesuits are particularly strong in the Philippine Islands. In the 1907 “Official Catholic DirectoryV statement for the Archdiocese of Manila we read :

The Jesuit Fathers.—Came to these Islands in 1581. In 1595 they founded the college of St. Ignacio, which was made university canonically approved by the pope and the king of Spain in 1621. Latin, rhetoric, mathematics, theology, canon and civil law were taught therein. At the same time they established the famous college of San Jose, which to-day is affiliated to the Santo Tomas University and is the hall for the medical department the colleges of San Felipe, Santa Cruz, and Cavite, and also a printing house. The Jesuit Fathers came back to the Philippines in 1859. Since then they have established the institutions above cited and opened great many missions in Mindanao. In the Ateneo there are 31 priests and 22 brothers. In the Normal School there are 19 priests and 13 brothers. Total, 50 priests and 35 brothers. Very Rev. Pio Pi, supr., 157 Arzobispo st.

From the “Official Catholic Directory,” 1913, P. J. Kennedy and Sons, Publishers, New York, pp. 814 and 871 :

New York—Maryland 362
Missouri 384
New Mexico—Colorado 67
New Orleans 132
California 139
Philippines 57
Total 1,141

To which may be added for the Diocese of Dallas, Tex., 11 belonging to the Sicilian province, and for that of Havana, Cuba, 34; a grand total of 1,186.

Large sums of money are, by the Jesuits of the United States and Canada, sent to Rome regularly to help elect friendly popes and to keep the pope ‘ ‘ right ‘ ‘ after election. The present pontiff is a creature of the Jesuits. They aided freely and generously in his election: they dominate his councils and procure from his pontifical pen the most stupidly reactionary documents the Church has known for thirty years.

When the papacy stultifies itself, to the Jesuits it looks for defense. Pius X, knowing how he was elected, needs the skill and daring of such defenders as the sons of Loyola.

Pius X owes his election to the “veto” exercised by Austria against Rampolla’s proposed selection. Each of the four Catholic powers — Austria, France, Spain, and Portugal—had for three centuries exercised the right of vetoing the election of any pope not satisfactory to its government. On account of Cardinal Rampolla’s pro-Gallic tendencies and other reasons Kaiser Wilhelm induced Austria to veto his election to the papacy. To illustrate how completely the “Holy Ghost” dominates the election of a Roman pontiff, let it be borne in mind that to Cardinal Satolli, bastard son of Leo XIII, Rampolla was most odious. By Satolli ‘s agency Kaiser Wilhelm ‘s activities were set on foot during the conclave. It is, therefore, to Wilhelm, not to the “Holy Spirit,” that credit must be given for the selection of so reactionary and retrogressive a pope as Pius X.

The latter immediately after his enthronement showed his gratitude to the “Veto” by formally abolishing it forever. Talk of American politics! The most astute and adroit American boss ever known is mere pigmy in political management compared to the bosses of the Sacred ( ?) College of Cardinals. When the world wants to learn what real political activities are like, what deceit, mendacity, and venality in action really resemble, let it cast eye on the secret workings of a Roman conclave!

The public press in large part stultifies itself by treating these conclaves—these reunions of pious (?) and learned (?) men—as free agents firmly resolved on doing the right. Never yet has conclave, since conclaves were first invented, been free from a corruption, intimidation, dissimulation, and fraud that would put to shame any purely secular gathering of grafters and boodlers.

When Pius X dies, the hand of Jesuit, gilded and crafty, will control the conclave called to select his successor. The ” White Pope” dies, but the “Black Pope” (the general of the Jesuits) never ceases to operate.

No reason, however, this, that Christian people should lose hope or drop activity. The human heart longs for higher and better things than this life can ever afford or Romanism would permit. It leaps out into the future and grasps the hope of the better life for which Jerome of Prague died and Luther strove. It longs for immortality!! Man calls his highest imagination into requisition to find it. Freed from Romanist chains, he looks up into the very gate of heaven and asks, “Will man live again ? ‘ ‘ “Is there life beyond ? ” ” Will the longing desires of my nature be satisfied?” “Will I live forever?” Questions of the soul are these—questions that call forth the answer, “He that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die.” The poet, hearing this answer, breathes to us in words of deepest tenderness the message that infidelity’s no hope is the dawning of hope for every Christian man. It is the dawning of the hope that —

“There’s a home in the skies where the weary will rest, A glorious home in the land of the blest; There tears will be wiped from the sorrowful eye, And the broken heart will forget to sigh.

No pestilence rides on the wings of the air, No wave of affliction or sorrow is there; In darkness that region shall never be furled, For the smile of the Lord is the light of that world.”

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