III. What The Popes Have Done For Rome. 151 But never does the Holy Father exhibit his title as Vicar of Christ more strikingly than in the midst of tribulations. If he did not suffer, he would bear no resemblance to his Divine Model and Master; and never does he more worthily deserve the filial homage of his children than when he is heavily laden with the cross. I envy neither the heart nor the head of those men who are now gloating with fiendish joy over the calamities of the Pope; who [150] are heaping insults and calumnies on his venerable head, while he is in the hands of his enemies,190 and who are confidently predicting the downfall of the Papacy, from the present situation of the Head of the Church, as if the temporary privation of his dominions involved their irrevocable loss; or, as if even the perpetual destruction of the temporal power involved the destruction of the spiritual supremacy itself. "The Papacy," they say, "is gone. Its glory is vanished. Its sun is set. It is sunk below the horizon, never to rise again." Ill-boding prophets, will you never profit by the lessons of history? Have not numbers of Popes before Pius IX. been forcibly ejected from their See, and have they not been reinstated in their temporal authority? What has happened so often before may and will happen again. For our part we have every confidence that ere long the clouds which now overshadow the civil throne of the Pope will be removed by the breath of a righteous God, and that his temporal power will be re-established on a more permanent basis than ever. But whatever be the fate of the Pope's temporalities, we have no fears for the spiritual throne of the Papacy. The Pontiffs have 190 Some time ago, my attention was called to a certain excommunication or "curse," then widely circulated by the press of North Carolina. The "curse" is attributed to the Holy Father, and is fulminated against Victor Emmanuel. In this anathema, cursing and damning are heaped up in wild confusion. When this base forgery appeared, an article exposing the falsehood of the production was published. We fear, however, that many who read the slanderous charge did not read its refutation.