foreign priests to replace the dispossessed clergy, the number of parishes
was arbitrarily reduced from seventy-six to twenty-eight. It was regulated
that nominations should, henceforth, be made by the government alone, and
by a single stroke of the pen were suppressed, both the Concordat
concluded with Rome, in 1828, and the act of re-union of 1815, by which,
when Bernese Jura, formerly French, was incorporated with Switzerland, an
engagement was made with France to respect, in every way, the liberty of
Catholic worship. France was not in a position, at the time, to enforce
the terms of the treaty. They who dared to call it to mind, accordingly,
were sent to prison or heavily fined.

Almost all the Bernese clergy, when banished from their churches and
presbyteries, sought shelter and protection on the hospitable soil of
France. From that country they returned often, under cover of night, to
their forsaken parishes, in order to administer the sacraments and perform
other religious offices for the consolation of their flocks, hastening
back to the land of liberty and safety before the approach of day. The
persecution was carried to such extremes that the Catholics were not only
deprived of their churches, but forbidden, under severe penalties, to
assemble for Divine worship, even in barns or such-like places. "As an
official of the State of Bearn," wrote a school inspector to a school
mistress, "you are bound to strive, with all your might, that the purposes
of the said State, as regards attendance at public worship, be carried
out. If your conscience does not admit of your attending the Church which
is recognized and approved by the government, I leave you at liberty to
refrain from attending any worship, but I forbid you to go to the barn,
where the deprived parish priest officiates, because I would not have you
set a bad example to your children."

No encouragement or word of consolation that Pius IX. could bestow, was
wanting to his persecuted children of Switzerland. In addressing Bishop
Lachat, whom he received with every mark of friendship, when he came to
represent the sad condition to which he was reduced, the Holy Father said:
"To you also it is now given to experience the greatest happiness that can
fall to the lot of an apostolic man. This happiness is thus expressed in
the New Testament: _Ibant gaudentes, quoniam digni habiti sunt pro nomine
Jesu contumeliam pati._ They went away rejoicing, because they were