|
Australia and the Popes
Pope St Pius X : 1903-1914
The conclave of 1903 that resulted in the election of Giuseppe Melchiorre
Sarto (2 Jun 1835-20 Aug 1914) as Pope Pius X was the first that occurred
since Australia had become a nation. Cardinal Moran of Sydney
was eligible to vote in the conclave but declined to travel to Rome as he could
not have arrived in time. (Regular commercial air travel to Europe was still
some decades into the future.)
Controversial conclave:
The conclave was controversial, as was the pontificate of Pope Pius X that
followed it. Whichever side one stands on in the assessments of Pope St Pius
X it probably has to be conceded that Pius X imposed a cultural stamp, even
ideology, on Catholicism that continues to reverberate throughout the international
Church right up into the present day.
The conclave was controversial because it was the last wherein external secular
agencies were able to exercise a right of veto over the Cardinal electors as
to whom would be acceptable as Pontiff.
Three leading Catholic heads of State – the King of France, the King of
Spain, and the Holy Roman Emperor (later called the Emperor of Austria &
Apostolic King of Hungary) – claimed vetos, though they were rarely exercised;
no candidate against whom the veto was claimed had ever been elected Pope, though
in 1846 an attempted veto failed when the cardinal whom the Austrian Emperor
had entrusted to issue the veto arrived too late to find the conclave over and
the man he was meant to veto publicly announced as pope.
On this last occasion in 1903 when the veto was exercised to prevent the favoured
Count Mariano Cardinal Rampolla, Pope Leo XIII's Secretary of State, being elected,
the way was thrown open for the elevation of Cardinal Sarto, the Patriarch of
Venice — a man closer in outlook to the conservatism of Pope Leo's predecessor,
Pope Pius IX. Rampolla had been the clear favourite in the first four ballots
before the veto was announced to the conclave by Cardinal Jan Puzyna from Cracow
in the name of Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary.
In the fifth ballot the vote in favour of Cardinal Sarto was overwhelming and
he received 55 of the possible 60 votes. Interestingly, one of Pope Pius's first
acts as Pope was to abolish the veto of the Catholic heads of State. Also dating
from this time, Pius X imposed a stricture of excommunication for any cardinal
who henceforth leaked information of what transpired within a conclave.
Continued on next page... >>
<< Prev: Australia during Leo's pontificate |
Next: Pope St Pius X (cont'd) >>
The textual material on these pages was sourced from a large number of places all of which can be found through the links on each page. The material was researched, assembled and produced by Brian Coyne for Catholic Australia. The images used in the Flash animations are in the public domain. Other images used are in the public domain or sourced from the webpages to which they are linked.
| 
Print Article
