The Pope at Rome

"The Pope at Home . . . (Reading time 21 minutes 40 seconds)''--had he been given an opportunity to survey the proof-sheets of an article published under this heading in last week's issue of Liberty, nickel weekly, Achille Ambrogio Damiano Ratti, Pope Pius XI, the 260th successor to St. Peter, Bishop of Rome, might well have been somewhat astonished. He would have found, impudently set forth, only trite commonplaces about himself. The only little known fact concerned his predecessor, Pius X, namely that the "undergarments" of the late Pontiff "were badly worn out and patched in many places."

If this nickel's worth would have revolted His Holiness, what must have been his bedazzlement upon receiving, last week, mail addressed to him from Russia. In this he found an official communication from the Government at Moscow, which stated that he, Pope Pius XI, had been condemned to death. The letter arrived by registered mail and bore the signatures of Premier Alexei Ivanovitch Rykov, Party Secretary Stalin and other Communist bigwigs. It offered grounds for the condemnation in a reference to the Pope's financial contributions toward the support of the anti-Bolshevist movement.

After glancing through this extraordinary document, the Pope was so intrigued that he showed it to several of his Cardinals. Then he ordered it to be placed in the Vatican Archives; there to be preserved as an historical relic.