Vatican Notes

About Rome there is much woeful wagging of heads. Vatican expenses have mounted. This year's income is reported already expended. What the Vatican's total income is has never been revealed since 1870, when the temporalities were confiscated by Italy. Pius IX (died 1878) left $6,000,000 of income-bearing capital. Of this sum his successor Leo XIII (died 1903) lost some $2,000,000 by poor investments, yet recouped himself by administrative economies. Pius XI's income-producing wealth is more than $7,000,000. But most of the annual income is derived from current donations. Most important is "Peter's pence,"-- of which the U. S. donates more annually than all the rest of the world.

The Pope appointed Bishop Raymond Marie Rouleau of Valleyfield, Quebec, Canada, to be Archbishop of Quebec.

The Vatican heard without comment that drops of red liquid flowed from the eyes of an obscure "Virgin and Child," a fresco on a building now being demolished, in Milan. Townswomen insist this was blood and was a sign of the Virgin's displeasure "at the men folk, who swear too much."

The Pope appointed as bishops three Chinese, the first of their race in Catholic history.

Recent notice to William Vincent Griffin of Peapack, N. J., and Manhattan that the Pope had made him a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory was but another mark of esteem to a man who, just turned 40, has been able to establish his real estate and industrial enterprises so well that he can now give considerable time to Catholic community welfare (Postgraduate Hospital, Calvert Associates, others).