Pontiff's Week

P: Through his local bishops Pope Pius XI placed under interdict (cut off from rites of Mother Church) the towns of Afragola, Nicartro and Mirabella last week. Well these townsmen knew that Il Duce had closed Catholic clubs throughout Italy (TIME, June 8) and that Il Papa had forbidden religious processions as a protest gesture. But Duce or no Duce, Papa or no Papa, the townsmen paraded their saints.

Worst offender against Pius XI was Afragola (population 50,000). A mob of 5,000 rushed the local monastery, demanded the wooden statue of St. Anthony with intent to parade it.

Monks slammed the monastery doors in the mob's face. Cursing the monks, the scalawags rushed off to a carpenter shop where another statue of St. Anthony was roughly hewn. This they paraded, cheering, praying, stuffed a hole in the statue's side with paper money (some of it U. S. dollar bills sent home by emigrants).

P: Padua has just built two new hotels, hopes for big pilgrim trade during the 700th Anniversary Year of St. Anthony of Padua which began last week. Pilgrims particularly like parades. But Padua obeyed the order of Pius XI: "No parades!"

P: Italy is the Pope's footstool but the world is his parish. To the Vatican last week came ex-Empress Zita of Austria-Hungary. It was necessary for the Pope to listen for hours to her plans to revive the Hungarian crown (once a bulwark of the Papacy) in favor of her handsome young son "Little Otto" (TIME, Dec. 1).

P: Pope Pius does not propose to be treated by Orthodox Princess Ileana of Rumania and her mother Dowager Queen Marie as he was by Orthodox Tsar Boris of Bulgaria. His Orthodox Majesty, after marrying a daughter of Catholic King Vittorio Emanuele in Italy by Papal Dispensation (TIME, Nov. 3), remarried his Tsarina in Sofia with Orthodox rites (TIME, Nov. 10).

Last week Pius XI granted dispensations for the marriage of Rumania's Orthodox Ileana to Austria's Catholic Archduke Anton von Habsburg with two limitations: there must be only one marriage (Catholic) ; and Orthodox Ileana must rear all children she may have as Catholics.

P: Hot home to the Pontiff from Lithuania came Papal Internuncio Monsignor Bartolini whom the Lithuanian Government had declared persona non grata. Despatches from Kovno, Lithuanian Capital, accused Monsignor Bartolini of "interfering in Lithuanian cultural and educational affairs."

P: Mrs. Nicholas Frederic Brady, executive chairman of the U. S. Girl Scouts, had audience with His Holiness.

P: From Manhattan. Patrick Cardinal Hayes cabled ". . . Thank God that His Holiness rules the Church of God so valiantly.

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