t for ten centuries,
finally became the seat of the new kingdom, and the scene of that
humiliation which Baha'u'llah had anticipated and which the Prisoner of
the Vatican had imposed upon himself.

"The last years of the old Pope," writes a commentator on his life, "were
filled with anguish. To his physical infirmities was added the sorrow of
beholding, all too often, the Faith outraged in the very heart of Rome,
the religious orders despoiled and persecuted, the Bishops and priests
debarred from exercising their functions."

Every effort to retrieve the situation created in 1870 proved fruitless.
The Archbishop of Posen went to Versailles to solicit Bismarck's
intervention in behalf of the Papacy, but was coldly received. Later a
Catholic party was organized in Germany to bring political pressure on the
German Chancellor. All, however, was in vain. The mighty process already
referred to had to pursue inexorably its course. Even now, after the lapse
of above half a century, the so-called restoration of temporal sovereignty
has but served to throw into greater relief the helplessness of this
erstwhile potent Prince, at whose name kings trembled and to whose dual
sovereignty they willingly submitted. This temporal sovereignty,
practically confined to the miniscule City of the Vatican, and leaving
Rome the undisputed possession of a secular monarchy, has been obtained at
the price of unreserved recognition, so long withheld, of the Kingdom of
Italy. The Treaty of the Lateran, claiming to have resolved once and for
all the Roman Question, has indeed assured to a secular Power, in respect
of the Enclaved City, a liberty of action which is fraught with
uncertainty and peril. "The two souls of the Eternal City," a Catholic
writer has observed, "have been separated from each other, only to collide
more severely than ever before."

Well might the Sovereign Pontiff recall the reign of the most powerful
among his predecessors, Innocent III who, during the eighteen years of his
pontificate, raised and deposed the kings and the emperors, whose
interdicts deprived nations of the exercise of Christian worship, at the
feet of whose legate the King of England surrendered his crown, and at
whose voice the fourth and the fifth crusades were both undertaken.

Might not the process, to which reference has already been made, manifest,
in the course of its operation, during the tumultuous years in store for
mankind, and in this same domain